Badges?

 
A trio of bandits confront a miner packing out his gold. They claim to be Federallys (police) but the miner is suspicious and asks to see their badges. “Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!” With those words Alfonso Bedoya achieved screen immortality in his role as the Mexican bandit “Gold Hat” in John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 

Shakespeare belies his own words

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
Shakespeare may have reached a dusty death described in the pessimistic passage below but his work lives on and contradicts the "signifying nothing" phrase.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

--From Macbeth (V, v, 19)

Democrats guilty of racism in Maryland politics

'Party trumps race' for Steele foes�-�Metropolitan�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Maryland Democrats call black Senate candidate an "uncle Tom" and pelt him with Oreo cookies at rally.

Federal Budget is busted

E-mail sent to Senator Conrad, copy to Sen. Lugar:

Sir:
I watched your presentation on C-SPAN today (10/20/05) concerning the federal deficit and debt. Thank you for trying to wake up your colleagues and the public to this oncoming disaster. We have had a long run of (relatively) good economic times and still are running huge deficits and piling up the debt. What will we do if we have a run of poor economic performance?

While the Bush administration should be blamed for part of the situation I remind you that Congress must, by law, appropriate every dollar the government spends. When will the Congress bring spending in line with revenues?  Like many citizens, the Congress needs to cut up the credit cards and scale back on the (federal) high living.

William Combs

The OJ Simpson verdict is announced on TV at IU. 

People and animals respond to novelty

Put a new object into an animal’s cage. It will be investigated immediately. Some species, like apes, will play with it for a while. A new restaurant comes to town and everyone wants to go there. Sometimes a new car model that is very different, like the retro looking Chrysler PT Cruiser or the new Morris Minor will attract buyers due solely to their novelty. I call these novelty cars. Often, enthusiasm fades after a time and the car is pulled from the market. In what passes for pop culture, often driven by TV and magazines, novelty is king. The new pop stars, the new look, the new sound etc. draws people like moths to a light. Often, novelty is the only asset and the ‘buzz’ dies down and people move on to the next novelty.

Your own facts

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts," said the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "Facts are what separate good political reporting and analysis from hot air.”

The frog experiment

The frog experiment...Put a frog into a pan of hot water and he will jump out. Put a frog into a pan of cool water then gradually raise the temperature to a boil. The frog will stay in the pan and die.

Jury selection

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."
- Mark Twain

Model High School

CBS had a story on 60 minutes about the most highly rated High School in the country, located in southern California. Children from as far away as India and Taiwan attend the school. There is a waiting list to get in and academic standards are very high. Video showed mostly oriental faces in the class room. They noted in the segment that this shows there is hope for American education and this school could serve as a model. How absurd! Let’s see them take gang-bangers from east L.A. and have the same success! When your students are pre-screened , well prepared and from highly motivated homes you cannot claim the school is a “model” for other schools who have to deal with the real world. Note also that the U.S. spends more per capita on education than any other nation. The Washington, D.C. schools have the highest spending per student in the country.

Is it Real Science?

NY Times reporter Paul Krugman comments on how we lay persons can be deceived by fake "science".

"There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that non-scientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?

Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth." The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.

Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitist who think they're smarter than the rest of us."

As a co-author of technical papers I experienced the peer review process. Journals that publish peer reviewed papers are called refereed journals. In legitimate science research the researcher writes an outline of his findings with enough detail for other experts in the field to judge if his work is worth publishing. His outline is sent to several experts for comments and these comments are reviewed by a committee. The committee is conscious of their Journal's reputation for quality research and decides if the full paper will be accepted for publication. The full paper is then available to anyone interested, usually only other people working in the same field. This process is called peer review and usually weeds out poorly done research. Also, researchers are very conscious of their reputation and do not want to risk ridicule from their peers.

Show horses and work horses

Sen. Trent Lott (r-Miss) has the gift of gab. When he was leader of the Senate a reporter asked him why some Senators were on TV so much more than other Senators. He said the Senate has show horses and work horses. The work horses are off camera getting the people's work done. Senator Lott has that 'gentlemanly' southern accent and expression that is pleasant to the ear. He also is outspoken and candid...rare qualities in Washington. That and a moment of poor judgement at Strom Thurmond's retirement party cost him his Senate leader job.

In my career in the civil service I knew some "show horses" who looked good and sounded good in meetings but did not do the hard work and never got their hands dirty. They got promoted to management.

U.S. Senator Trent Lott

Dilbert cartoons featuring Wally

Wally is such a worthless employee he is funny. I knew some like Wally in my civil service career...it was not funny in real life.

It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution

Thomas Friedman is a Pulitzer prize author and columnist for the New York Times. He has shown insight into the Muslim terrorist problem. Here are some excerpts from his columns:

"Why are young Sunni Muslim males, from London to Riyadh and Bali to Baghdad, so willing to blow up themselves and others in the name of their religion? Virtually all suicide bombers, of late, have been Sunni Muslims. There are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans. Angry Norwegans. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims, over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?

Neither we nor the Muslim world can run away from this question any longer. This is especially true when it comes to people like Muhammad Bouyeri - a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin who last year tracked down the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islamic intolerance, on an Amsterdam street, shot him 15 times and slit his throat with a butcher knife. He told a Dutch court on the final day of his trial on Tuesday: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."

It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. In the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.

Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia. The Muslim worldÂ’s silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against...

Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a ShiiteÂ’s being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governorÂ’s being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are indifferent to their brutalization. At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually sanitized as 'resistance' to occupation.

It is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village. What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.

Some Muslim leaders have taken up this challenge. This past week in Jordan, King Abdullah II hosted an impressive conference in Amman for moderate Muslim thinkers and clerics who want to take back their faith from those who have tried to hijack it. But this has to go further and wider. The double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst. "

Note from Bill: There are many local and satalite TV stations in the Muslim world that stream constant propaganda that demonizes America, Israel and the non-Muslim world. Terrorist activities are overlsanitizedsanatised. Film of Americans arresting Iraqis will be shown over and over with angry commentary but innocent victims of car bombs are ignored. The Muslim public is taken in by this and the Clerics add their own lies and inflammatory rhetoric. The result is a lot of misinformed, angry people.

Muslims killing Muslims

3/25/2004 7:34 AM
Muslims: (letter to H-T)
Radical clerics have hijacked the Islamic movement worldwide and are turning their followers into murderers. Muslims are killing Hindus in India, Jews in Israel and murdering Christians all over the Middle East. These sinister Emirs preach death and destruction to the infidels (non-Muslims). The Nazis exterminated people based on race. The Communists murdered millions based on their supposed class. Now, the Emir’s are urging genocide for all people who have the wrong religion. For the (male) suicide bombers, the Emirs promise martyrdom in heaven with 72 virgins. This thinking is primitive, superstitious claptrap that should have been left behind in the middle ages. Where are the moderate Muslims? Why are they silent? Why have there been no letters in the H-T on this subject from Muslims.?

Aid to Africa...Who gets it?

Robert Mugabe is the dictator of Zimbabwe. He has ruined the country's economy and looted it for himself and his supporters. Africa has many of the most corrupt governments in the world. Nigeria is notorious for total corruption of all public services.

A reporter observed this:
On a hot, dusty road a convoy of three black Mercedes luxury cars throw up a cloud of dust onto people walking who have no transportation. The government offfcials in the cars are part of the corrupt clique that rules the country. The people on the road refer to their government as "the men of the Mercedes".

The Chinese Invasion

Interesting article on Chinese imports.
The Chinese Invasion

A sad subject

Saw a TV commercial. It probably was a public service type, I don’t recall. It showed a senior lady (maybe mid or late 60’s) in her kitchen. She pauses, turns and heads for her living room saying something like “I hope the kids have good weather for their trip this weekend. We should ....” then she stops and realizes the living room is empty and she is alone. Her face becomes sad and she returns to the kitchen. A message then comes on about caring for loved ones especially if their spouse has passed away. This affected me so much I could hardly stand it.

Thomas Sowell: Liberals and class: part III

Great article on menial, "dead end" jobs.
Thomas Sowell: Liberals and class: part III

Social Security Online

Fixing social security is possible but will require political courage on the part of Congress and the President. Before Bush offered his investment plan to save Social Security the Democrats refused to offer their own plan. Instead, when pressed on what their plan was, they said that it was up to the President to provide leadership on this issue. Knowing that any workable plan will be painful to some part of the public the Dems want the Republicans to take the heat. Bear in mind only the Congress can change social security law. The President can suggest or he can veto.
Now that Bush has offered a plan the Democrats still avoid countering with their own plan and instead they demonize the President. I listened to a leader of the Democratic National Committee encourage Democrats to tell people that President Bush wants to destroy social security. Now, still dodging their responsibility, Democratic Congressional leaders say they will offer a plan only when the President drops his investment idea. It’s hard to imagine a more cynical and politically dishonest position by the Democrats.

Social Security Online

New graduates...take heed! 

Dogs are loyal

Loyalty in the Senate:
Senator Frist may have expected that he could rely on his friends in the Senate to stick by him in a showdown over the filibuster. But Harry Truman once said that, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

quote from Thomas Sowell.

The Death of Archimedes

I remembered seeing this picture many years ago in a book and was able to find it again with Google. 

Archimedes was Known to the Romans

The Death of Archimedes:
The Roman general Marcellus invaded Sicily and the city of Syracuse in 212BC. Archimedes was one of the great scientists of the ancient world. Marcellus was aware of the talents of Archimedes and wanted him captured alive. The following is from the Roman records.

The city was turned over to the troops to pillage as they pleased, after guards had been set at the houses of the exiles who had been in the Roman lines. Many brutalities were committed in hot blood and the greed of gain, and it is on record that Archimedes, while intent upon figures which he had traced in the dust, and regardless of the hideous uproar of an army let loose to ravage and despoil a captured city, was killed by a soldier who did not know who he was. Marcellus was distressed by this; he had him properly buried and his relatives inquired for—to whom the name and memory of Archimedes were an honour.

The filibuster debate:
The Senate filibuster is used when you want to prevent a vote. If your opponents will have 51 votes on an issue you can stop the vote by endlessly talking and not yielding the floor. To override a filibuster takes 60 votes.


Suppose that when you go to vote next November a group of protesters block the door at your precinct. The protesters say that polls show their candidate will lose if the election is allowed to proceed. You complain but are told officially that the protesters have a right to do it and it is called a filibuster. Is this democracy?

Is the constant drumbeat of bad news in the media wearing us down? The national news is a litany of grim and disturbing crime stories, bad economic news, political criticism and disasters. I know it is the nature of the news to focus on the negative. The airplane that did not crash is not news nor is the CEO that does not steal, the company that is not downsizing, the postal employee who goes to work peacefully, or juveniles who are not involved in drugs or gangs. On the local level I think the H-T does a good job of putting out positive reports on community activities and development. However, I admit that I usually read the crime reports first each day.

In a nation of 300 million there is always something bad happening somewhere. If you look for it you will find it. Time for a reality check… most people want to do the right thing, crime statistics have actually improved, our government is not as bad as critics say and Americans have a good standard of living. Is there a country anywhere in the world without problems and citizens who complain? Try to remember these things. Lighten up!

Ltr to H-T op-ed

The late Johnny Carson

I laughed when Johnny would remark something like "It was hot today." Then Ed McMahan would ask Johnny "So, how hot was it?" An Johnny would make a joke. 

It's been a nice spring here in Indiana. Birds, flowers, other stuff (hey, I'm old but not dead!) 

The Holocaust:

I read a theory that if Jews and other civilian victims in Germany and Europe had guns and resisted the Nazis who rounded them up the cost to the Nazis would have been so high they would have had to halt the process. The lengthy and costly fight in the Warsaw ghetto is an example of where victims fought. The Nazis continued to locate and herd victims to the camps even as the Allies were closing in during the late stages of the war. It has been said that the manpower and rail assets used for this hurt the German war effort significantly but were continued nonetheless. It's estimated six million Jews and another six million non-Jews, including many Polish people, perished in these camps.

Details of the camp system and genocide were kept secret even from the German public. At the time of arrest, victims were led to believe they would survive the camp experience. Human nature worked in the Nazi's favor. Imagine a scene where some want to fight the heavily armed SS and Gestapo forces. Others would point out how dangerous this would be and how it would endanger the lives of women, children, elderly and so on. These cooler heads would prevail. After all, why risk death when you have a chance to survive by cooperating? Can we fault civilized people for this reasoning? The diabolical Nazi's held out (false) hope knowing this would occur. Another tactic was to have victims make detailed lists of their personal property, allegedly so they could recover it later. At the camp entrance a large sign stated "Arbieten Macht Frei" (Work will make you free). The Nazis were cruelly clever in these tricks that greatly reduced the victim's resistance.

Today we are accustomed to total news coverage of world events but imagine the plight of civilians and refugees in WWII Europe...No reliable information of what is happening, rumors spreading like wildfire, Official sources spreading lies and propaganda. Imagine yourself, perhaps with a family to care for, trying to find out what is really going on. Should you stay where you are, move, hide or follow others? Where will you find food and shelter? There are stories of small groups leaving their homes and possessions and making their way over arduous and risky territory and through knowledge or luck they found safety. With hindsight we also know many refugees would have been better off staying in their homes. But at the time, they had no way of knowing. When civilization collapses who do you turn to?

Another incident that is not as well known is the murder of 30,000 Polish army officers by the Soviets. WWII started when the Nazis invaded Poland. Prior to this they had made a secret deal with the Soviets so that Russia invaded eastern Poland at the same time. Later, of course Germany reneged and attacked Russia as well. But in the meantime solid evidence has come out that Russia took Polish officers (POWs) and murdered them. Their bodies have been discovered in a Polish forest. Did these victims know what the communists were planning? Were they perhaps led to believe they would be released? These officers, representing some of the best of Polish society, would be viewed by Marxists as bourgeois and a threat to socialism. Communists eliminate this class by eliminating the people in that class.

First amendment Sleaze:
The founding fathers were very concerned that political discussion or criticism of the government not be restricted and our constitution reflects this. But every time the subject of censorship or decency on TV comes up it involves either violence or sex. I have never heard of a case where political speech was at issue.

So despite the high blown talk about first amendment rights and freedom of the press it really comes down to networks and stations wanting to make more money by adding violence and sex to TV programming. After all, the TV executive's salary and bonus depend on ratings and they are desparate to get those ratings. If you will think about it, sex, violence and cursing on TV have increased dramatically in the last few years.

Did anyone see the super bowl ABC ad with the blond dropping her towel for the football player?

I read that the club Fed in upstate NY is full of Wall Steet crooks doing easy time...mowing the golf course, etc. 

Corporate Thievery:
The Godfather advised his son that “a lawyer could steal more money with a briefcase than could a hundred men with guns”. In 1995 Disney executive Michael Ovitz was fired after 7 months on the job and received a $140 million termination fee. Shareholders of Disney have filed a suit seeking to recover the fee plus $40 million in interest. Defendants are Ovitz, CEO Michael Eisner , and the Disney board of directors. Eisner and Ovitz were friends for 25 years before he was hired. Eisner then fired his pal after only seven months and handed him $140 million of Disney assets. This does not pass the smell test. Eisner himself has received well over $ 1 billion in compensation as CEO of Disney. I hope the shareholders win their case against these bandits and their co-conspirators on the board of directors. We need to restore confidence and a sense of justice in American corporations.

Published in H-T op-ed. PS: How much is $140M? 2300 people working one year making $60k+ per year. What burns me is that they will get away with it and then go on book tours bragging about their careers...like the GE ex-CEO Jack Welch is doing now.

Number 1 on my list of best sci-fi movies. Made in 1953. 

Scifi movies are fun:
I have probably seen most of the good films in this genre and many of the bad as well. My favorites that come to mind are:

1. War of the Worlds (1953)
2. Alien
3. Aliens
4. The Thing (195-)
5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (195-)
6. Jurassic Park
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still
8. The Terminator
9. Blade Runner
10. Independence Day

Marx and Lenin would be horrified!:
Consider the quote and link below regarding the Communist government of Vietnam. Supposedly, Communism exists to stop exploitation. Nike has about 43,000 workers in Vietnam. International groups accuse Nike of unsafe working conditions there.

"Government advisers speak openly of their desire to attract foreign capitalists to exploit the local workforce, a process that could be speeded up this year, if Vietnam succeeds in its bid to join the World Trade Organisation. "WTO accession is an imperative," says Le Dang Doanh, an economist. "It's the only way to continue high growth. Foreign investors want to use Vietnam as an export base because of its cheap, skilled labour."
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Thirty years after the fall of Saigon, the celebrations can finally begin

Mother of all Web link lists:
The link below will take you to the C-SPAN web resources page. It is the most extensive I have seen regarding public interest/political sites.
C-SPAN.ORG

Democrat hubris:
The article linked below makes a good case. I wonder how long the link will be valid? That is, how long do web sites keep this stuff?
The 'We're Smart, You're Dumb' Principle

In Matthew 5:4-6 ...for (the meek) shall inherit the earth.

"It's going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth after they inherit it."
-Kin Hubbard

Muslims Murdering for Allah:
It is awful how the insurgents are killing Iraqis. This is Muslim murdering Muslim. If you include the nine year Iraq-Iran war and the Iraq invasion of Kuwait the slaughter of Muslims by Muslims in recent times is huge. Bin Laden pretends he is concerned about Americans hurting Muslims while his hands are covered with Muslim blood. The radical Imans and bloodthirsty insurgents slaughter their fellow Muslims like they are cattle and then piously praise Allah. It is disgusting and primitive.

Why Poverty?
According to the World Almanac 2005 – which now lists illegitimate birth rates under the politically correct heading "Nonmarital Childbearing" – nearly 70 percent of black children are born outside of wedlock. With Latinos, the rate is almost 45 percent, whites nearly 30 percent, and Asians 15 percent. Overall, about 34 percent of America's children today are born outside of wedlock.

Bearing and raising children has a big economic impact on any normal family of two married people. Out-of-wedlock births to a single mom are devastating to the chance of escaping poverty. We are not talking about mature women with good jobs deciding to have a child that they can support and raise. We are talking about mostly teenage girls who are clueless about work and responsibility and welfare queens having multiple children. This is the largest single factor in family poverty statistics. In the black community, especially, leaders we see or read in the media seem to be in total denial about this.

On a lighter note may we consider the question: Are we just clever monkeys? I don't know the answer and neither do you but it is sure confounding to think about.

Waiting for help from the UN ( Rawanda, Bosnia, Darfur,...) 

Satellite Orbits 

Satellite stuff

(Click to enlarge pic)

When you put up a satellite dish on your house in Indiana you’re required to point it to the South West. The reason for this is television satellites must be in an orbit over the equator and they are roughly centered on North America. Therefore we need to point our dish south and west. The only way an orbit can be synchronized with the rotation of the earth so that the satellite appears to be stationary overhead is with the equatorial orbit at an altitude of about 23,000mi. There is no other orbit which can achieve this apparently stationary antenna effect.

Once a satellite is put into orbit it must be maintained in that orbit by the use of small gas jets on board. Orbit’s can decay over time and the satellite must be steered back into its proper position and attitude (pointed correctly). Interestingly, running out of gas for the jets is frequently the cause of death for the satellite. This can occur perhaps after eight or ten years. Note that the space shuttle can only reach low earth orbit and therefore can not reach Geostationary satellites to repair them.

The global positioning satellite (GPS) system requires three satellites be in view to an earth observer in order to calculate location. Therefore many GPS satellites are used in many orbits. Spy satellites like to fly low to take detailed pictures and frequently use an elliptical orbit so that they are quite low on their nearest approach. But when they are out on the ellipse they are useless and you must wait for them to swing back. By using control jets orbits can be modified so that the satellite can take a different track. If your orbit is north-south (polar orbit) the earth will rotate underneath the satellite and different areas of the earth will be in view on every pass.

Discredited theories.
Freud’s theories have now been mostly discredited by new knowledge about the effects of chemicals on the brain, genetics and culture. Freud made up names such as ego, superb ego and id to create a theory of behavior. This is not science, this is fantasy given undeserved credibility by impressive terms that sound scientific. Marxs, Engels and others created a phony scientific aura around communism by making up and defining terms like proletariat, bourgeois, etc. We need to remember these theories were put forth in a more primitive era (both men were born in the early 1800’s). It has always been more difficult to be truly scientific in the “soft” sciences like Society and Economics. Many people feel qualified to expound their theories in these areas simply because, after all, they are a member of society and part of the economy.

Fanatical and ruthless men such as Lenin used Communist theories to justify revolution. I saw a biography on the History channel on Lenin. An anecdote...He loved listening to classical music but denied himself that pleasure in order to focus on his ‘work’. He also wrote furious telegrams to his field commanders asking how many people they had executed and demanding that they increase the pace of killing. The Britannica encyclopedia once had a dissertation by him on propaganda. He noted that there needs to be a obvious, crude type aimed at the lower (presumably ignorant) classes and there is need for a more sophisticated type aimed at the educated. A very cynical guy and a bloodthirsty fanatic responsible for countless deaths.

Even today there are still many regimes propped up by these theories. Of course, they also use relentless propaganda to give a false credibility to their fantasies. Advances in Economic science and the success of free enterprise have discredited Communism for most observers but nevertheless the appeal is still strong for many. Lest we think of this an academic argument consider “The Black Book of Communism”. This book claims Communism has caused 100 million deaths.

The following is from the Amazon.com website book description:

Amazon.com: Books: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

When it was first published in France in 1997, Le livre noir du Communisme touched off a storm of controversy that continues to rage today. Even some of his contributors shied away from chief editor Stéphane Courtois's conclusion that Communism, in all its many forms, was morally no better than Nazism; the two totalitarian systems, Courtois argued, were far better at killing than at governing, as the world learned to its sorrow.

Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them. Courtois and his contributors document Communism's crimes in numbing detail, moving from country to country, revolution to revolution. The figures they offer will likely provoke argument, if not among cliometricians then among the ideologically inclined. So, too, will Courtois's suggestion that those who hold Lenin, Trotsky, and Ho Chi Minh in anything other than contempt are dupes, witting or not, of a murderous school of thought--one that, while in retreat around the world, still has many adherents. A thought-provoking work of history and social criticism, The Black Book of Communism fully merits the broadest possible readership and discussion. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly:
In France, this damning reckoning of communism's worldwide legacy was a bestseller that sparked passionate arguments among intellectuals of the Left. Essentially a body count of communism's victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives. The verdict: communism was responsible for between 85 million and 100 million deaths in the century. In France, both sales and controversy were fueled, as Martin Malia notes in the foreword, by editor Courtois's specific comparison of communism's "class genocide" with Nazism's "race genocide." Courtois, the director of research at the prestigious Centre Research National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and editor of the journal Communisme, along with the other distinguished French and European contributors, delivers a fact-based, mostly Russia-centered wallop that will be hard to refute: town burnings, mass deportations, property seizures, family separations, mass murders, planned faminesAall chillingly documented from conception to implementation. The book is divided into five sections. The first and largest takes readers from the "Paradoxes of the October Revolution" through "Apogee and Crisis in the Gulag System" to "The Exit from Stalinism." Seeing the U.S.S.R. as "the cradle of all modern Communism," the book's other four sections document the horrors of the Iron Curtain countries, Soviet-backed agitation in Asia and the Americas, and the Third World's often violent embrace of the system. A conclusion "Why?" by Courtois, points to a bureaucratic, "purely abstract vision of death, massacre and human catastrophe" rooted in Lenin's compulsion to effect ideals by any means necessary. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Honesty: (article from the net)

We certainly hear a lot about thieving CEOs and corrupt politicians but sometimes the public has dirty hands as well. Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly.

It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number for each child. Suddenly, seven million children-children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year's 1040 forms-vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States. As the inimitable Will Rogers put it, "The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than the game of golf has."

This image speaks for itself. About 25% of adults smoke. About the same percentage of high school seniors smoke....why are they ignoring the warnings? 

Lee Hamilton is a former congressman from Indiana who served 29 years in Congress. He was also was co-chair of the 9/11 commission. I went to a talk he gave at the Indiana University Law School. He has written a book about how Congress works and was promoting it. I bought his book and had him sign it. He’s a very good speaker. He talked about a loss of civility in the Congress which he says is very noticeable from the time he became a congressman until now. There are now senators who will not talk to each other. He said that consensus is needed for Congress to be get anything done but civility is part of what is needed for that. He said “anyone can blow up a meeting but it takes real political skill to pull together a consensus”. He said lack of consensus building is the most serious problem in congress today. I watch C-SPAN some and have seen some nasty speechmaking. Right now feelings are running hot over the Tom Delay ethics issue and filibustering. Nancy Pelosi is the Dem minority leader in the House and frequently 'demonizes' the Republicans in her speeches. Reluctantly, I have to admit she is very good at it. When you verbally put horns and a tail on the opposistion it will make consensus difficult.

Mr. Hamilton also said there are about 20,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. He feels they are a necessary part of the system. He pointed out the most of us in the room are represented by lobbyists even if we don’t realize it. If you are a union member, belong to a church, work in education, and so on there is likely a lobbyist working for you.

Mr. Hamilton also talked about using your access to your congressman as a way of reaching your government. He pointed out that if you asked to speak to the president, the vice president or a cabinet member or even a deputy secretary you would not get access. But you can speak to your congressman at various town hall meetings, political breakfasts and so on. What I find is that if you have some personal problem with the bureaucracy the congressman may be able to help you. If you are just unhappy with what Congress is doing your congressman (or his staff) will perhaps politely acknowledge your complaint but as one of 535 he’s not going to be able to do much of anything.

A man stood up to the make a comment in the Q/A session and who is a former state representative in Indiana. He remarked about how all uncivil the public can be with their representatives. He talked about people feeling they had the right to call him names and grab his arm...things they would not do to their neighbors. I know this happens at every level…ask someone who is a school board member. You have to be fairly tough to serve in these jobs and be able to take heat.

I got up nerve to ask a question. I first complimented the congressman on the 9/11 report which I had checked out of the library. I expected a typical unreadable government report but was surprised to find it was very readable and I read most of it. One of the prior questions from the audience was really a complaint about tax cuts for the rich. This a hot button for me (see my archives) and prompted me to ask a question regarding the entitlement part of the Federal budget which has become very large and threatens to consume the whole budget. I asked what the Congress will do about that. Mine was the last question in the session and obviously requires a difficult answer. The congressman politely blew off the question. What I should have asked is the following: It is very hard for the public to focus on the Congress or understand how it works. After all, a group of 535 people all working on various committees is a hard thing to focus on. Bills get changed in conference behind closed doors. Appropriations are lumped into massive omnibus spending bills at the last minute so that most congressmen are voting blind. Where do you put the blame or the praise for the results? Is easier to blame or praise the president. He is one man and we can listen to his speeches and read about his activities and make our judgments. But the Congress is such featureless body that I give up trying to deal with it. Another interesting topic I might ask about is why almost all democracies have taken on the parliamentary style of government rather than the U.S. model. I would like to hear the congressman’s opinion as to the relative merits of the two systems.

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The 2005 U.S. budget is $600B in deficit, personal credit card debt averages $8000, we have the lowest personal savings rate in the G8. 

Wal-Mart:
The LA Times won a Pulitzer for a 2003 series on Wal-Mart. Very good stuff! To read the articles click on the link and then select 2004, National Reporting, Works.

The Pulitzer Prizes

"I am cursed to see both sides of every question". I don't know who said it but it can make it difficult to be an advocate and easy to appear indecisive. To win an arguement, pretend to be a lawyer ("If it doesn't fit you must aquit!").

Grandchildren and old movies.

A Grandchild story:

Grandson Eli, who is 5, likes a book I have about movie bad guys (The Bad Guys, by William K. Everson, Cadillac Publishing Co.) It is full of interesting old movie stills and actor portraits focusing on movie villains. The old silent era stills are especially dramatic with the over-the-top expressions and makeup of that era. As a fan of old movies for years this book is one of my favorites too. In the movie "Sunset Boulevard" the Norma Desmond character is a former silent film star who quit when talking pictures took over. She expressed her feeling about sound by saying "Voices! We didn't need voices! We had faces!"

I have often felt that the villains and character actors in these films were the most fun part of the movie. You can’t have a hero without a nasty villain and it takes good character actors to flesh out a film.

Eli brings the book and climbs into my lap and we start looking at the pictures. He knows the captions are words and he wants to know what the words say. Early on, I found that the actual words (actor names , name and date of movie, etc) were not that interesting so I began to make up dialogue for the pictures like: “drop that gun mister” or “let that girl go”. Soon, Eli insisted on hearing a mini-plot and dialogue for each picture that caught his interest. He points to someone in the picture and asks “what is he saying”. It strains my creativity making up dialogue and mini-plots. Eli keeps asking “and then what happened?”. Off the cuff story telling is hard. It is in our genes to like stories and we all want to know “what happened next?”. Nevertheless, it is a joy for me to have a comfortable chair, a child, a book and some imagination.

Movie stuff:

My favorite westerns are "High Noon", "The Shootist" and the Clint Eastwood movie “The Unforgiven”. I would give honorable mention to "My Darling Clemintine" and "The Big Country". In "The Unforgiven" the kid (wanabee gunfighter) remarks to Eastwood’s character (old, hardened gunfighter) that some guys they had shot “had it coming”. Eastwood replied “We all 'got it coming' kid.”

I saw an interview with Clint in which he was asked if he realized his films were seen all over the world. He said he was once on a street in some remote corner of some 3rd world country when people recognized him and began calling out “Cleent! Cleent!”. I have come to realize that American films and TV are seen everywhere and our stars are as well known overseas as they are here. Unfortunately, a lot of films put the U.S. in a bad light and probably account for some of the anti-American feeling abroad.

Saw a biography and interview of Charles Bronson. He was an old man at the time. In a discussion of his ‘tough guy’ image, especially in the “Vigilante’ films, he took pains to point out he was just playing a role. He said “I’m not like that. It was just a part I played." The young or unsophisticated audience confuse actors with their roles. I guess this is part of the fun of being a movie fan for some. Charles Bronson did a workmanlike job. He had the good fortune to have interesting looks and the determination to develop his physique and his craft. Interestingly, at one point Bronson was the most popoular film star in the world outside the USA. He was asked how he made it out of the small coal mining town in Pennsylvania where he was born. He said he made good choices.

I now realize that film makers are in the business of telling a story and an actors job is to assist in that. A good film that can pull you in requires a good story, script and character actor support as well as lead actors. To be a good actor, it has been said, means remembering your lines and not bumping into the furniture. Director Ridley Scott, well known for films like ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Gladiator”, said he is in the business of ‘creating other worlds’. I enjoy these ‘other world’ epics the most of any type of film.

Geezerdate.com

 

"Make good choices, Dear." -quote from a silly movie...Jamie Lee Curtis speaking to teen daughter as the daughter leaves for school. Regardless of the source, it is good advice and captures what teens are facing.

Where are the economists? The outsourcing of American jobs to low wage countries is a hot topic. The related trade deficit is a crisis, according to the media. Workers are pessimistic about the future. Many feel leveling the playing field in trade means Americans will be “leveled “(by reduced wages and benefits). But there is a puzzle here as well. The economists, the experts who have made a career out of studying such things as free trade, say outsourcing is a good thing. These days you have to read this in their books because they are not saying it in public. Lou Dobbs, the CNN news guy, talks gloom and doom about outsourcing on every broadcast but never has economists on to defend outsourcing. The President’s economic advisors apparently like outsourcing and now want to dramatically expand trade with South America. There is a disconnect here…the media and the public are distrustful and afraid while the economists press for fewer restrictions and more trade. Here in Bloomington there must be many economic experts. I invite them to defend their profession by explaining, in layman’s terms please, why outsourcing is good thing and why we should not worry about being “leveled”.

Op-ed ltr sent today.

The much feared SEC (corporate watchdog) 

The GAO did a study looking at five cases where the court ordered restitution be paid totaling $568Million. They found that after eight years only 7% had been paid.
ref: www.gao.gov, report GAO-05-80

School funding: (my letter published in my local paper op-ed page)

I think good teachers deserve good pay but is more money really the answer for education? If that were the case the schools with the highest funding should be the best. In 2001 the average annual expenditure in the U.S. for grades K thru 12 was $7284 per student. The average for Indiana was $7287. The most costly school system in Indiana was Gary at $9349 per student. The top three states in spending averaged close to $11,000 per student. These were NY, NJ and Washington DC which have some of the worst performing schools in the country. Western European nations such as England, France and Germany spend much less on education than the United States and apparently get better results. It seems that, on average, school success has little to do with funding. The excellent education series printed recently in the H-T indicated that a child’s parents and peers are the main factors that determine success in school. I think most people already know this. It is praiseworthy that our country spends more to help bad schools but the figures show more funding will not overcome shortcomings in the home and the neighborhood.

References:
(1) http://ftp2.census.gov/govs/school/01fullreport.pdf
(2) http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/200101.pdf

Love those great old Scifi movie posters! 

Microsoft in the Early Years

Row 1: Bill Gates,?,?,Paul Allen

Education, Work and Crime

Young people hear so much about the value of education and “stay in school” admonitions that they surely get bored by it. And those most in need are most likely to ignore or defy such advice. If I were advising young people I would use a different approach.

I would ask my young audience (I am thinking Junior High to young adult) “what can you do?” What knowledge or skill do you have that anyone would pay wages for? This is a tough question and is perhaps unfair for the youngest but nonetheless it gets at the heart of the matter. University is not the answer for everyone. For many, a skilled trade learned through training or on the job would be better. Good mechanics with documented training credit can make good momey. There is always demand for HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning)technicians who are certified.

I would also ask “can you show up?”. A frequent complaint of employers is that workers cannot get out of bed and get to work on time or at all. It seems a basic enough ability but this is a widespread problem especially in low pay and part time work. A person who is reliable and has a work ethic is a valued employee and is worth training.

Related to this subject is your desired standard of living. Today in the USA basic needs are met for most people even if they do not work. The issue becomes wants...nice car, nice house, nice clothes, vacations, entertainment, etc. So I would say to young people that if you can forgo “wants” then you will not need training, education or a work ethic. But, quoting Shakespeare , “Aye, there’s the rub.” If you want, want ,want then prepare to work, work, work.

There is an alternative to work and it is called Crime. For people who can’t show up, refuse to be trained or educated, have no work ethic and still have “wants” there is this path. From earliest times when it was perceived that one can steal a crop rather than grow it, crime has been part of humanity. When the number of criminals becomes large relative to the number of workers society collapses into chaos and ruin. This includes the purse snatcher and the CEO who is stealing the company assets. A study was published back in the 1970’s that showed that if the number of dishonest workers and businesses approached 20% of the total our country could not function.