Shots Across The Bow

As Promised....

Here's Peanut!

And the Winner Is.....

It's 9:24 and the winner has not been announced. However, through my powers of deduction, I have already ascertained the winner on American Idol.

Katharine McPhee will be the next American Idol.

Here's why, and it has nothing to do with talent.

The only time a guy has won Idol is when there are no girls remaining in the field.

And, Simon gave Taylor the kiss of death last night be proclaiming him the winner. People don't like Simon, and there will be many who vote against Taylor just to make Simon look bad.

These two factors are all it will take to sink Taylor to second place, leaving the off key amnesiac as the winner.

UPDATE: Sometimes, I'm happy to be wrong. This is one of them.

Books on Teen Pregnancy

In a comment below, I half jokingly said I was going to have to write a book on helping a teenage daughter with her pregnancy. I've just done an Amazon search, and now I'm not so sure I was joking. Almost every book I previewed talked about teen pregnancy as something that must be "recovered from," instead of celebrated. It seems like no matter how hard they try, they can't get past the circumstances of the pregnanacy, and that colors every aspect of the advice they have to give.

They're not all like that; after searching through about 50 titles, I found 5 or 6 worth a closer look. But man, most of them sound like grief counseling for the mother is the first order of the day, and that's just wrong. Understanding that your life has just changed forever is one thing; grieving for it is another, and something that I think is entirely unnecessary.

I think we look at it from an adult perspective; our lives have become relatively stable and we see the magnitude of pregnancy relative to that stability. We forget that kids, especially teenagers, have been living with rampant instability for several years as they go through adolescence; pregnancy and motherhood is just one more in a long line of changes they've weathered.

Isn't it possible that most of the trauma we normally associate with a teen pregnancy springs not from the pregnancy, but from our reaction to it? What happens when we celebrate the pregnancy instead of recover from it? What happens when we allow the circumstances to fall away and let the creation of a new life take center stage?

We allow the pregnancy to be what it should have been anyway, a positive step, albeit an accelerated one, into adulthood.

10.5 The Apocalypse

0.5 The complete waste of time.

I've got a question. What the heck happened to Kim Delaney? She used to be very attractive; now she's kinda scary.

Privacy? What Privacy?

We're absolutely insane in America.

Completely bonkers.

And I'll prove it.

For the last couple of weeks, we've been freaking out over the idea that the Federal government is examining phone records with no personal information attached in an attempt to isolate calling patterns that might indicate terrorist operations. We're upset that the government would even think of invading our privacy that way and we want someone's head on a platter.

But it's okay that I have to show a State ID card, sign a log book, and provide my name, address and Social Security number if I want to buy some cold medicine.

It's called perspective and I think we need to get some.

PS: For the record, I don't like either invasion of privacy. It just seems to me that getting the phone logs is much less invasive than the whole cold medicine thing and has a much greater justification.

My First Craving Run.

My daugher had her first ultrasound today, and I'm holding in my hands three pictures of Peanut, AKA Maria, AKA Caius, all depending on who you ask. As soon as I can hook up the scanner to my laptop, I'll share them with you. By the way, I went on my first pregnancy induced craving run tonight. I was sent to fetch McDonald's French Fries and a vanilla milk shake.

It's better than the fried chicken livers and tin roof sundae ice cream I had to get for her mother.

President Bush Secures the Borders

President Bush received praise today from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for his tireless work in securing Israel's borders.

Now, if we could only get him to expend the same amount of energy to secure our borders...

Flotsam and Jetsam

From time to time, instead of a long, intricate piece on a single subject, I get in the mood to write just a few lines about a multitude of subjects.

Immigration. Ok, let me get this straight. The President's plan is to build a 300 mile fence to guard a 1700 mile border, and then invite approximately 92 million people to come in over the next 20 years. With that plan, we may need every bit of the 1400 mile gate Bush left in that fence. By the way, according to the San Fransisco Chronicle, 10% of Mexico's population now lives and works in the US.

That's not immigration; that's a migration.

Katrina Recovery Despite being the only thing in New Orleans that failed faster than the dikes and levees, Ray Nagin has been re-elected as Mayor. But it should be okay; hurricanes don't hit the same place twice.

Wait, that's lightening, isn't it?

Uh oh.

English is the Official Language Wait, it's not the "official" language, but the "national" language. Wait again, it's not the "national" language, but it's the "common and unifying" language. Okay, it's not even the common and unifying language; it just happens to be the language we all speak because we're all racists and too ignorant to realize we should all be speaking Spanish.

Back to New Orleans According to Drudge, the DNC (Dean's Nutjobs and Cranks) worked to get Landreiu elected instead of Nagin, and despite raising 3.3 million to Nagin's 0.5 million, lost abysmally. This is the same organization that claims it will be able to regain control of the House in November.

Anti-Immigration Policies

[Foreigners] can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban [foreigners] from spots on town councils. And the Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for [natives]

No, this isn't a description of the House Immigration Bill, called xenophobic by Mexico's Vicente Fox. It's a description of the immigration policies of Mexico.

Dixie Chicks Release New Album The new single vanished from the radio before the album even went on sale. Is it due to mediocre musicianship, or is it a backlash from theirpolitical posturing? At the time, the Chicks claimed that the backlash from NAtalie Maines comments was non-existent. I'm bettting they change their tune as their new album slides down the charts faster than Bush's approval ratings.

A Tale of Two Daughters

I haven't blogged for about a week and when you finish the piece below, you'll understand why.

A Tale of Two Daughters

Sitting there in the doctor's office, it appeared that they had nothing in common. Although they were both 17, they dressed differently; their families were different; they lived in different parts of town; they hung out with different crowds; even the music they listend to was different. If you passed them on the street, you'd never know that they had anything at all in common; you'd think that their stories would be completely different, and for the most part you'd be right. But for a few brief moments, their stories converged to bring them here, to a doctor's office.

Fear.

One girl masked it in irritation, constantly moving in her seat, picking up a magazine, turning a few pages then tossing it down on the small table, only to pick it back up a moment later. This cycle repeated endlessly, punctuated by loud sighs and exasperated glares at anyone who met her gaze. By contrast, the other girl sat quietly in the waiting room, her head down and her gaze fixed firmly on a single spot of the bland carpet. She appeared to be doing her best at becoming invisible, and succeeding remarkably well at it.

But it was fear that drove both of them; fear of finding out something that they already knew in their hearts, otherwise they would't be here in this waiting room on this day.

Time crawled as they sat in the room, waiting impatiently for their name to be called, but when it was called, they each wished for more time, for a few more moments of ignorance before their worlds changed forever.

Once they had their turns in the examination room, time condensed to a blur of questions, examinations, prescriptions for vitamins, and about 15 different pamphlets and brochures about what they could expect over the next several months. But through it all, they really only heard one word.

Pregnant.

It echoed and reverberated, looming larger and louder in their heads like an oncoming freight train, driving out everything else the doctor said.

"I'm pregnant," they each thought, dazed by the shock of confirmation. There was no emotion attached to the thought, not yet. It was too big, too much to process. What would happen next? What could they do? How would their lives change? Wold they have any lives left?

What would their parents say?

And here is where their stories once again diverge.

One girl, call her Abigail, went home, and waited a few days to work up the courage to tell her mother. She knew she had to tell her eventually, but was afraid because she didn't know how her mother would react, and she knew how her father would. He'd yell at her, call her names, tell her how stupid she was, and try and force her to give up the baby, either to an abortion or an adoption. He'd always told her that only bad girls or very stupid girls got pregnant, and no daughter of his was bad or stupid, so if she got pregnant, then she wouldn't be his daughter anymore. She hoped her mother would stand between her and her father to cushion his rage. Abigail hoped she'd be more supportive, and would help her throughout the pregnancy, and to raise her child.

She was disappointed.

Abigail's mother was furious, and told that if she was old enough to make the adult decision to have sex, and old enough to decide to keep her baby, then she was old enough to take on other adult responsibilities as well. Far from helping her during her pregnancy, her mother said that Abigail would either have to move out of the house, or start paying rent, and that meant dropping out of school and getting a job. She told Abigail that she had just ruined her life, despite all the effort she'd put into raising her right, and she refused to waste anymore time and effort since it obviously wasn't doing any good. Abigail's father was just as bad as she'd suspected, calling her nasty names, and trying to force her to give the baby up for adoption.

Knowing that nine months in that house would break her heart and spirit, Abigail moved out and got a small apartment with her baby's father, a guy only a year or two out of high school himself. She dropped out of school, and got a job waiting tables that lasted until she couldn't physically do the work anymore. Then she just stayed home alone while her boyfriend worked twomshifts to try and make ends meet. By the time the baby came, whatever love there was between her and the father had died, strangled by brutally hard work and grinding poverty. He saw his daughter born, held her for a moment in the hospital, then walked away, never to be heard from again.

Left with no choices, Abigail moved back home with her baby girl. It was better than she'd expected; babies have a way of helping people get past hurts they'd given and received. When the baby was old enough, Abigail went back to work while her mother watched little Eva for her. Abigail's father doted on little Eva, and eventually, he told Abigail that he was proud of the decisions she'd made, and the strength of character she'd shown in the face of her parents' anger.

And so her life went on. Eva hadn't been the great tragedy of her life; that honor went to the emotional outbursts and anger that accompanied her conception. Instead, little Eva became a small slice of salvation, bridging the gaps and knitting the family back together. Abigail's life was changed irrevocably the day she learned she was pregnant. Her dreams of college and a career as an architect were ended on that day. But she had a beautiful little girl, and that counts for a lot.

But did her dreams have to die?

Let's turn out attention to the other girl in our story, call her Eileen. She too left the doctor's office afraid to tell her parents the news, but she knew that they would support her because they had told her that they would. Her parents were divorced and she lived with her father. They had talked about sex, and birth control, and what could happen Her father had said that if she decided to be sexually active to let him know and he would make sure she went to the doctor and got on the pill, or whatever form of contraception the doctor recommended. He'd also told her that if she ever did become pregnant, that he would do whatever it took to make sure that it wasn't the end of her plans and dreams, that instead of throwing her out, he would help her in every way he could.

But she was still scared, because she knew he woud be disappointed that she hadn't been careful, and had made a bad decision.

She walked into the living roomwhere he was watching television and just blurted out her news.

"Well, I've got big news," she chirped, "I'm pregnant!"

Her father wasn't sure she was serious. He saw a twinkle in her eye, and thought she was just kidding since she'd just come back from her first gyno appointment.

"Are you kidding?" he asked carefully.

"No," she said, and it was only then that he could see that the twinkle in her eye was actually a film of tears, as she fought to hold them back.

He got up from his chair and enfolded her in a hug, trying to show her that everything was going to be OK, and that he wasn't angry. He wondered what to say to her, how to ease her fear and her pain. He was prepared to handle any eventuality but one, and that one was abortion. He prayed briefly for guidance, and then spoke to her.

"I know you're scared, but it'll be alright. Whatever it takes, we'll do it. You know that I love you and I'll take care of you no matter what. You know how I feel about abortion, but that is a decision that you'll have to make for yourself."

She stopped him right there and said, "I've already decided; I want to keep my baby."

He sighed with relief. His biggest worry was no longer on the table. His little girl had made a big mistake, but she wasn't trying to run away from the consequences of her decision. He heard the firm decisive tone in her voice and he was proud of her.

"Okay sweetie, here's what I want you to do. I know you're scared, and it's understandable, but as much as possible, I want you to relax. We're all going to be here for you, and while the circumstances could be better, the important thing that I want you to focus on is that you're growing a baby, and that's the closest thing to a miracle most people ever come. You're growing a new life inside you, and that's a very cool thing. We'll take care of everything else; you just take care of yourself and that little guy growing inside of you."

"It's a girl, Dad," she said. "I just feel it."

"Okay, then take care of that little girl growing inside of you. I'm not picky."

Eileen laughed a bit, and he could feel the tension melt from her. Yes, there were going to be tough times ahead, but with the full support of her family, she and her baby would be okay. With a little hard work and sacrifice, she could still go to college and fulfill her dreams.

It wasn't a tragedy; it was a baby, and that's a cool thing.

And now you know why I've been so quiet over the last week; I've had more important things to deal with. Last week, my daughter found out she's pregnant. We've been setting things up for her at school, and planning for the future. The timing is actually pretty good, because it turns out that she has enough credits to graduate after the first semester next year. Since the baby is due in early January, that means she can finish high school, have her baby, recover and bond with her (she really is sure that the baby will be a girl), and still walk across the stage to get her diploma with the rest of her class in June. It also means she'll have plenty of time before going on to college in September.

And she will go on to college.

My biggest focus over the last week was to get everyone around her on the same page, and that has been tricky. Times have changed, but they haven't changed that much yet. A lot of folks still focus on the difficulties of an early pregnancy, even when those difficulties are pretty easy to manage. 10 years from now, I want my daughter to be able to look back over the next nine months and remember them as a joyful time when she brought her first child into the world, not a stressful time where people either scorned or pitied her. She deserves neither of those things.

She's having a baby, and that's a cool thing.

Hollywood: Not as Stupid as The RIAA

Warner Brothers is releasing movies and TV shows as bittorrent files for sale on the internet.

Warner Brothers plans to announce today that it will make hundreds of movies and television shows available for purchase over the Internet using BitTorrent software, which is widely used to download movies and other copyrighted material illegally.

The agreement between Warner Brothers and BitTorrent is an unusual deal between a major Hollywood studio and a company whose file-sharing technology has raised the ire of the movie industry.

For its part, Warner Brothers says it is trying to stem the piracy of movies on the Internet by offering consumers an easy and fast way to download movies legally.

I've been using bittorrent as a time shifting mechanism for quite a while now, especially since it makes it very easy to skip the annoying commercials. I just download the files, unzip, and then watch at my convenience, without having to sit through the comercials.

I'm betting that the WB rips will include the commercials, but the fast forward button will take care of that.

But I was thinking about this after hearing the announcement, and it's becoming more and more clear that traditional TV marketing is dead; the advertisers and networks just haven't fully realized it yet. Most of the networks and studios are trying to cling to the old world, using the courts to try and prevent the new technologies from flourishing. Just like during the home video explosion, when studios tried to legislate a tax on blank tapes to make money off of people taping shows off TV, the old guard is trying to hold back development of new technologies, instead of riding the wave and finding new ways to deliver their products and serving their customers better.

That was the whole impetus behind the DMCA.

While it's nice to see WB actually trying to embrace the future instead of avoid it, I wonder if they fully realize how things are changing. Think about it; how many companies are going to sponsor programming when they know that most of the audience will either delete or fast forward past the commercials? And if the sponsors dry up, who is going to pay for the content?

The viewer will.

Cable premium channels have already shown the way. People will pay directly for content if the price is right and the quality is high. They'll even put up with things unheard of in the past, like waiting 2 years between seasons, or watching even if the season is only 11 shows long.

It seems to me that this gives the content creators tremendous freedom to tell much better stories. First, they no longer have to shoehorn a story into 52 minutes, with spaces for commercials at regular intervals. If this weeks story takes 75 minutes instead, no worries. If act 1 takes 13 minutes instead of 18, no need to find filler material to stretch it to the first commercial.

And content! The sky will truly be the limit when subscription based TV becomes the norm. TV has always had an advantage over movies in the ability to really tell a good story, although it took them a long time to figure it out. For decades, TV relied on formulaic shows that reduced characters to caricatures and serious issues to punchlines. The golden rule of television was that nothing ever changed, and if it did change, we weren't supposed to mention it. Heck, they swapped Darrens on us and went on like we wouldn't even notice that there was a new guy. And whatever happened to Chuck Cunningham?

Eventually though, TV realized that, unlike a movie that's limited to about 2 hours, a TV show had 20+ hours per season to build characters and explore issues and tell real stories. It's no big surprise to me that some of Hollywood's biggest names are now gravitating to TV, because that's where the best stories are. Shows like Oz, Sopranos, Babylon 5, and others have shown that TV can tell a much richer, deeper story than any movie can hope to fit in 2 hours. Yeah, the big paycheck is still on the big screen, but the best work is on the small screen. This is a trend that I expect to accelerate as subscription TV becomes the norm.

So, breaking the old studio and network system should result in better content, delivered in a much more user friendly format.

It's a win win situation. That's why I'm certain that somebody will do their level best to screw it up.

They Know Me All Too Well

Thanks to SayUncle, I've learned that for the second time, this weblog you are reading has been identified as a porn site.

Why does this keep happening to me? I don't use foul language, I don't put up lewd pictures. What's the deal?

Anyway, Uncle sent me the site of the company that has classified Shots as porn, so I'm hoping to get it reclassified so you can go back to reading at work.

Stepping on Bill Hobbs's Toes

Bill usually covers the Tennessee tax and budget beat, but I heard something this morning on the radio that I haven't seen on his blog yet. Chances to scoop Bill come about rarely, so I'm enjoying this one.

Bill posted here that Tennessee's State tax collections are running significantly above budgeted amounts, resulting in a surplus of 116 to 177 million dollars.

On April 11, the Tennessee Department of Finance & Administration released data on tax revenue collections through March, the eighth month of collections for the fiscal year. With fully a quarter of the fiscal year to go, the state was already running a general-fund surplus of $103.1 million more than the budgeted estimate, powered by a $61.4 million surplus so far this year in sales tax revenue - and F&A estimated the full-year general-fund surplus would reach $177.4 million.

What Bill makes clear is that, according to the Tennessee Dept of Finance and Administration, the surplus is due to tax colections exceeding expectations.

But Gov Bredesen apparently doesn't see it that way.

Listening to the news this morning, I heard a statement from Bredesen, taking credit for the surplus, saying it was due to budget cuts and savings from Tenncare.

Bredesen, a Democrat, attributed the additional revenues to smart planning and his changes to the state's TennCare health-care program. That program's massive costs led Bredesen to cut nearly 200,000 adults from the rolls, reduce benefits and piece together another, cheaper health-care program.

Now, if somebody can explain to me how a cut in spending can result in an increase in revenue collections, then I'll be happy to give Bredesen the credit. However, it looks to me like a booming economy is the real benefactor here, not fiscal restraint from Nashville.

Goodness, did I actually use those words together in a sentence?

If Bredesen were a true fiscal conservative, his plan to spend the $177 million windfall wouldn't cost the State $266 million.

The DaVinci Code: The Book

This is what the fuss was all about?

Maybe I should be examining the text of the story for secret codes or messages or some such, because the story itself left me thoroughly unimpressed. Maybe it's just me; I guess it takes more than warmed over mythology combined with half baked conspiracy theories served with a snide order of anti-religious diatribes to get my juices flowing. Not to mention lazy writing, and lackluster plotting.

I've heard so much about how the plot twists and turns, that maybe I was expecting too much, but I had most of the plot figured out long before the book reached its "surprise" ending. The only real surprises was the disappointment I felt after reading it.

SPOILER ALERT: Below the fold, more details, including spoilers.

Let's talk about shocks that weren't shocking and twists that weren't twisty.

Ok, was there anyone who didn't realize that the Teacher was Teabing? Or that Aringarosa (Anybody else keep singing "Ring Around the Rosie" on that one?)and Opus Dei had been hoodwinked? Or that Sophia really was a descendant of Jesus of Nazareth?

That may have been one of the most incredibly stupid parts of the book. Supposedly this ultra secreet society, the Priory of Scion, had gone to absolutely herculean lengths to hide and protect the family of Jesus Christ, but it never occurs to Robert Langdon that they might change the famiy's last name?

How retarded is that?

Now let's talk about lazy writing. What's with Silas, going off to die in a field? Isn't that a bit anti-climactic? It's like Brown had no use for the character anymore, so he just pulled the plug. And Bezu Fache, what's his story? Why buy into the frameup so wholeheartedly, then switch to "Oh, they're both innocent," for no particular reason? And how did he know to call Ringaroundtherosie in the first place? His actions throughout the story make no sense; they're totally inconsistent from beginning to the end. About the only way his part in the story makes sense is if he was a member of some military arm of the Priory of Scion, a modern day Templar or something. But nope, Brown doesn't even hint at that. He just places the character where he needs him, with no thought about why Fache would act the way he does.

As for the anti-religious diatribes, particularly anti-Christian, well, I think that speaks for itself. You can't have your protagonist claim that historical fact denies the divinity of Christ, and then turn around and claim "It's just fiction!" That dog simply won't hunt.

By the way, as I learned it, it's part of Catholic doctrine that Jesus had a dual nature; He was both mortal and divine. He was the Son of God, but he was also the Son of Man. If He could be born, could live and could be killed without sullying His Divinity, then I can't see how having a wife and child could do so. In other words, the Catholic Church really had no reason to suppress the idea that Jesus had a family.

Unless it simply wasn't true.

Basically, I thought the book was an average to slightly below average thriller. The discussions of religious symbology and iconography were interesting, and there's a historical note or two I'd like to look up, but as a whole, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. I certainly don't plan on seing the movie.

Gas Gouging: An Exhaustive Analysis: Part 1-Where does the money go?

Gas Prices. Everybody pays them; most think they're too high. Some even accuse the oil companies of price gouging. Most of those making the accusation base it on recent news headlines about record oil company profits, high CEO salaries, and extravegent retirement bonusses. It's almost like somebody wants us to think that oil companies are gouging.

But are they?

For the next few weeks, I'm going to take you on an in depth journey through the price of a gallon of gas. We're going to look at everything about the gas you put into your car, how much each step costs, and who makes how much money. We'll also look at historical prices for oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel, and see how today's prices match up. We'll also look at how oil company profits and margins stack up with other idustries. Finally, we'll put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and then we'll be able to say for sure whether here's any price gouging going on or not.

PART 1:Where Does the Money Go?

Gas prices are certainly igher than I'm comfortable with. It seems like my wallet empties of cash faster than my tank fills with gas. If somebody's gouging, I certainly want to know who it is, and the first step towards identifying the bastard is to figure out just exaclty what I'm paying for. In order to do that, we need to look at exactly where the money goes for a gallon of gas. Since we have all the numbers for February of 2006, that's what I'll use. The numbers all come from the Energy Information Administration website, a government agency that tracks all the numbers we need to use.

Now then, according to Gas Buddy, the average price for a gallon of regular gas in Tennessee was about $2.13. So how much of that found it's way into the oil company's pockets?

Well, let's break it down. First off, we have to deduct the taxes. This is the easiest to track since it's printed right on the pump. Federal taxes are 18.4 ¢ and state taxes are 21.4 ¢. That makes the actual price of a gallon of regular gas about $1.73. This agrees closely with the EIA number of $1.773. We'll use the EIA number for consistency, since it's certainly more accurate than my rough interpolation from a graph. Still, it's nice to have a secondary source. Next, the wholesale price in Tennessee averaged $1.615 per gallon. That means the distributer and the retailer split about 15.8 ¢ profit per gallon, with the bulk of that going to the distributer.

Refiners paid an average of $53.49 per barrel of crude. Now, this is where it gets tricky. A barrel holds 42 gallons of crude, which means the refinery is paying $1.27 per gallon of crude. The tricky part is that the barrel of crude can be made into a wide variety of petroleum products, not just gasoline, so determining the actual profit per gallon of fuel is difficult. One rule of thumb is to assume a straight one to one relationship, one gallon of gas per gallon of crude. If the refinery pays $1.27 and sells it for $1.615, then their costs and profits are 34 ¢ per gallon. What we don't know yet is how much of the 34 ¢ is profit, and how much is cost. Every chart, every source I've looked at lumps together refiner costs and profits. However, with the exception of California refineries, which have seen their profits and costs skyrocket over the last year or so, the figure for refinery costs and profits as a percentage of the price of a gallon of gas has remained fairly stable as shown by this chart. According to API, refineries ran a profit margin of roughly 15 ¢ per dollar invested, so we can figure that 18 ¢ of the 34.5 ¢ is profit.

OK, we now have determined all of our profits;, so, who profits the most off a gallon of gas?

	Profit per gallon
Refiner	18 ¢
State Tx	21.4 ¢
Federal Tx	18.4 ¢
Distributer/retailer	15 ¢

So, in Tennessee at least, the State makes the most off each gallon of gas, followed by the fed, the refiner, then the distributer and retailer.

The perceptive reader will notice that there's a piece missing in this puzzle. What about the producer of the oil? What kind of profits are they making?

That will be the subject of Part 2

Quick HIts

Yesterday was a long day and today will be even longer, which is good for y'all because I don't have time to write a long detailed story about my latest bout with poison ivy, including graphic descriptions of each blister and its location. Instead, you'll have to make do with this:

• Moussaoui gets his just reward. No 72 virgins for him. Instead he gets to sit and stew for 50 years or so in an 8x12 cell. In the end, he's not a martyr, not a warrior, just another animal that needs caging. Here's wishing him a very long, long life.
  
• China and Russia vow not to back UN sanctions on Iraq. This is actually a good thing. Now we won't have to waste 18 months trying to win UN approval.
  
• Starbucks Earnings rose 27% from last year. Can a Congressional investigation into coffee gouging be far behind?
  
• Sen McCain said he'd prefer a country without free speech if it meant the government would be clean. History shows us the quickest way to get a clean government is to silence all the questioners. It worked for Castro. Just ask any of his adoring fans.
  
• The National Anthem in Spanish I have no problem with singing the National Anthem in Spanish. As long as it's the Spanish National Anthem. On a serious note, how can it be that we can't get any meaningful immigration reform bills to the floor, but some idiot can float a bill to force the singing of the National Anthem in English. Come on, people, set some priorities!
  
• A Silent Invasion A while back, I wrote about the immigration issue as an invasion, albeit a non violent one. As confirmation, look at the comments made by Khadaffi, who predicts that Europe will be a Muslim territory in a few decades, not through conquest, but assimilation through immigration. I'm not making this stuff up folks.
  
• Blue State Immigrants According to a chart at Les's, Blue Staters are moving to Red States which begs the question: If it's so great living in a Blue wonderland, why are they all moving here?
  
• Uniters, Not Dividers What issue unites 69% of Republicans, 56% of liberals and 66% of independent voters? Why, how to deal with illegal immigration, that's what. According to a Zogby poll linked at Right Wing News, a solid majority in nearly every major demographic group approves of the House approach to controlling our borders, i.e. strengthening the borders, gradually reducing the number of illegals, and no amnesty. The only exceptions were ultra liberal progressives and Hispanics, and a plurality of the Hispanics supported the House approach.

  Hey! What are the chances Karl Rove was behind the May Day Marches?

That's all the time I have for today. Y'all play nice.

Immigration and Racism; Logical Failures

The favorite cry of the open borders crowd is that anybody who supports tougher borders and enforcing our immigration laws is, by definition, a racist.

I'm for enforcing our borders. I support a tighter enforcement of our immigration laws. I oppose amnesty for illegal aliens in any form. I don't believe in rewarding behavior. While I can understand the circumstances that drive them to come here, I do not concede that harsh economic conditions in Mexico, Honduras, or El Salvador, gives them the right to cross into our country illegally. I generally support the idea of citizen patrols on our borders, like the Minutemen. So am I a racist?

According to some folks I am.

Never mind that I support opening immigration restrictions to allow more unskilled workers to immigrate legally. Never mind that I support revamping the immigration system so that it doesn't take years to bring a foreign born spouse into the country. Never mind that my reasons for supporting strong borders have nothing to do with the race of the people on the other side, and everything to do with the idea that a nation has not just the right but the duty to secure its borders.

David Neiwert at Orcinus wrote a series of articles on his blog detailing exactly how and why those folks who feel that securing our borders is a good thing are actually racists in disguise. He opens his piece with a throwaway line that not all Minutemen are racists, then spends thousands of words describing how they really are racists after all. His research is meticulous and thorough. There is no doubt that there are racists involved in the Minuteman project.

But does that mean that all Minutemen are racist, or that all folks who believe in securing our borders are racists?

Time for Logic 101.

Everybody who took math in high school remembers this one:

If A=B and B=C, then A=C.

Put in words, if A and B are the same, and B and C are the same, then A is the same as C. For example, If Mark is 13, and 13 year olds are adolescents, then Mark is an adolescent.

Pretty simple stuff.

Now,consider this construction. If Mark is 13, and some 13 year olds are fat, then Mark is fat.

Hmmm. That doesn't work as well, does it? So what's the difference?

The difference is the key word "some." We added a qualifier to the second term, so we can no longer equate the first with the third without using the same qualifier. We've moved from basic math into set theory. Now we have to say this:

If A is a member of Set B, and Set B is contained by Set C, then A is a member of Set C. This is a true statement. Our second example would become this: If A is a member of Set B and Set C contains some members of Set B, then A is a member of Set C. As before, we see that this statement is false. Going back to Mark, we can't say he was fat because according to our statements, not all 13 year olds are fat. Our conclusion is not born out be the facts.

Which brings us back to David Neiwert. Despite all his meticulous research into the sordid underbelly of the Minutemen and his excellent command of all the facts, his argument fails because its underlying logic is flawed. His argument boils down to this: If you support the Minutemen, and some Minutemen are racist, then you are supporting racism. Or if you take his opening disclaimer seriously, then replace racist with extremist, i.e. If you support the Minutemen, and some Minutemen are extremists, then you are supporting extremism.

Neiwert explains that one of the most dangerous aspects of the Minutemen ovement is that it has been embraced by the mainstream. He attributes this to the fact that the Minutemen have disguised the racist and extremist aspects of the movement. He's arguing that by hiding the repellant aspects of the organization, the Minutemen automatically become attractive. What he fails to investigate is why that would be so. Given his intense antipathy for border control (In one of his examples of the racist nature of Jim Gilchrist, he points to Gilchrist's use of the term illegal alien, instead of illegal immigrant. In another place he equates demonizing people based on their race with seeking to deport them based on "perceived immigration status.") this is not surprising. Based on the articles he wrote, immigration control is racism by default, even if it's an unconscious racism.

Obviously, I do not share that view.

As I've written before, I believe we have every right to secure our borders, and to chose who we let enter our nation. And it doesn't matter one bit to me what the color of the guy on the outside happens to be. Anybody who believes he has the right to break in and take what he wans regardless of the law is a threat, no matter what color of the rainbow his skin happens to be, because by his actions, he has declared that the laws of our nation do not apply to him.

It's just that simple.

Now then, to the rabble rousers on the right, screaming about the reconquistadors; I want you to re-read the section on Logic 101. Realize that while the radical fringe elements of the immigration movement do exist, they no more define the immigrant movement than do the Nazis hiding within the Minutemen define me.

So you just might want to lay off the rhetoric, and work on a solution that deals with the majority of illegals, rather than the minority of nutjobs.

Sevier County Primaries

It's primary day in Sevier County, which basically means election day, since there are so few Democrats running, most races are decided today. I went over to my precinct ( the local elementary school) to vote, and had to laugh at all the candidates and their signs posted just as close to the voting machines as they were legally allowed, campaigning up to the last minute.

There were several races I was undecided on, so I figured I'd just vote for the candidate who had the prettiest girls campaigning for him.

Does that make me a chauvinist?

Question for the Day

If our sense of taste is mostly due to our sense of smell, how come perfume smells so good and tastes so nasty?

A Visit From the Future

I've always liked Dan Simmons as a writer. His novel Summer of Night is one that I really enjoyed. I stumbled across his website the other day, and found this piece there in his news section.

I tried to relax. “What do you want to talk about?” I said.

“The Century War,” said the Time Traveler.

I blinked and tried to remember some history. “You mean the Hundred Year War? Fifteenth Century? Fourteenth? Sometime around there. Between . . . France and England? Henry V? Kenneth Branagh? Or was it . . .”

“I mean the Century War with Islam,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “Your future. Everyone’s.” He was no longer smiling. Without asking, or offering to pour me any, he stood, refilled his Scotch glass, and sat again. He said, “It was important to me to come back to this time early on in the struggle. Even if only to remind myself of how unspeakably blind you all were.”

Most of us think that history is something that happened in the past, and that it's over. The way things are now, the way they've been since we were born, is the way things will always be. Borders are stable, governments all want what's best for their people, and humanity is advancing towards peace and prosperity for all mankind.

In short, we're ignorant and stupid.

History is what's happening now, not just 400 years ago. It's alive. The world is constantly in flux, no matter how much we'd like to think otherwise. The stability we take for granted is an illusion fostered by one simple reality. We, the United States, have the most capable military on the planet. Nobody messed with the status quo because they didn't want to pay the price.

Well, that may have been true 20 years ago, but it certainly isn't true anymore. We've given up that position of strength, and now we're seen as vulnerable. Other nations now believe they can do what they want, even attack us and that we lack either the ability or the will to fight back. Whether they're right or not is beside the point. Because they believe it, sooner or later they will act on it.

Some already have.

Dan's story isn't important because it details a Muslim threat; it's important because it recognizes a cold truth.

The Pax Americana is over

A Day Without Illegal Immigrants

Seeing as how I mow my own lawn, make my own bed, clean my own house, and wash my own dishes, (and all for slave wages), I think that in solidarity with my Hispanic hermanos y hermanas, I'll take the day off with them. So what if I'm here legally? That doesn't matter, right? I'm just as much a victim of unfair US immigration policy as they are. After all, if we opened the border completely, we could depress the wages for unskilled labor so far that I might actually be able to hire an immigrant or two to do all that work.

Whenever they weren't protesting the mean, nasty country they risked their lives to sneak into.

PROTEST UPDATE: I'm not sure why people are getting so upset about these protests. After all, the illegal aliens are just saying that they're all going to stay home today.

Isn't that what we wanted in the first place?

Come to think of it, what kind of a protest is it when the folks you're protesting against are telling you to stay home, and your form of protest is to....stay home? If America doesn't come to screeching halt, won't the amnestias lose their favorite argument, that America needs their labor?

UPDATE 2: The folks at Facing South discuss why there's been so little coverage of the May 1st boycott in the progressive blogosphere. Unfortunately, they have no answer, other than to shrug and say "There's an immigrant thing going on?"

Which says a lot.

UPDATE 3: Hot Air is keeping a running log of entries about the protest/boycott/demonstration here.

It's Dead ,Jim

Yeah, I know. McCoy never said it.

Well, I'm saying it. My desktop is deader than a doorknob. I came home from church this afternoon (the sermon was titled, "How Would Jesus Raise a Child," but should have been "How Would Jesus Raise Money for a New Church?") and went in to my ofice to check up on the world, and it sat there, a silent lifeless husk.

Not the world, the computer.

I pressed the On button and the power supply fans spun up, and the disk light came on but nothing ever hapened after that. Tne power light didn't even come on.

I'm figuring it's either the power supply, the motherboard, or the CPU. Of course, that's no big feat of deduction; there's really nothing left for it to be, unless I want to consider some extremely nasty virus that could crash the BIOS.

Anyway, for the near future, I'll be laptop blogging, which isn't so bad, actually. Now I can blog from my bed. And since I sleep sans pajamas, that means I've finally graduated from pajama journalism!

101st Fighting Keybordists

In the right side column, you'll find a new banner and blogroll, that of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists. Organized by Fred of IMAO and Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, and Derek Brigham of FreedomDogs the 101st is their way of co-opting the disparaging sobriquet used by some on the left to refer to those of us who support the war in Iraq and the general war on terror without actually enlisting. By their argument, if you don't sign up to fight, then supporting the fighting makes you a coward, a hypocrite or both. The logic of such a charge is so flawed that the proof is left to the student as an exercise.

The surprising thing is that the charge has been leveled at me from time to time, despite the pictures at the top of this page, making it clear that I did serve. Apparently, when confronted with an actual veteran, the goalposts are moved. My service doesn't count because I was on a Navy ship and not subject to actual bullets whizzing past my head.

Whatever.

There are others who like the chickenhawk argument, but apply it only to those of us who believe that our writing actually contributes in some way to the war. According to their argument, writing to express your support of the troops and their mission is a meaningless act.

Oddly, they never seem to think that their writing opposing the troops, or their mission, is equally meaningless. How curious.

Anyway, anyone who has studied history knows that one of the factors that affected the outcome of the Viet Nam War was public opposition stirred up by activists and the media, and it is certainly true that a great deal of that opposition was stirred up by people who wrote. Words have power.

And since words have power, I'll do what I can here to counter the lies and propaganda from the other side. (Incidentally, not all anti-war writings are lies and propaganda. It is possible to oppose the war out of principle, and I have no problem with that, other than I think those who do are wrong.) The job in Iraq needs doing, and I support the guys over there doing it.

A Dying Breed?

According to Donald Sensing, individual blogs are the past; group blogs are the future.

I have also contemplated the future of blogging and have concluded that single-author sites are the wave of the past. Group blogging, with only a few exceptions such as Instapundit (of course), is becoming the norm. I think it almost certainly because the time requirements for a single author to keep a site going are oppressive, if the site is to have a significant daily readership - say, more than 2,000.

After posting, Rev. Sensing apparently got pasted with a lot of angry emails, and several websites posted angry denunciations of his comments.

He responded with an update on his original post:

My, my, such over-reactions from commenters...the vast majority of blogs have low readership now, and by that I mean in the dozens...the fact is that low-readership blogs are not significant in importance to the blogosphere at large, no matter how important they are to their authors or few-dozen readers...they are utterly unimportant to everyone else and have no effect whatsoever in larger society.

As the soon to be exception to irrelevancy Instapundit would say, Ouch.

You know, I can understand where the Reverend is coming from. It is a lot of work to post regularly, particularly if you're a thinker and not a linker. It makes sense to want to get some help, get other people on board to cover topics you don't have the time or the energy for. In fact, it makes so much sense, you almost wonder why nobody else ever thought of it.

But somebody else did think of it. They called it a newspaper.

I'm not putting down group blogs by comparing them to newspapers, but what I am saying is that without the rest of the blogosphere, group blogs will be reduced to little more than electronic newspapers, with all their inherent limitations. (The two main ones being lack of space, and lack of deep research. After all, why dig deep into background when you only have a few column inches to deal with?) This is the key error that Reverend Sensing makes.

Yes, most blogs have low readership, but that is nothing new; most of the millions of blogs have always had low readership.

Yes, most of the millions of blogs out there are unknown to most of the rest of the world. Again, that's nothing new.

And yes, many blogs are of interest only to the blogger and his or her friends and family. Occasionally not even them.

But to suggest that these blogs are insignificant, unimportant, and irrelevant simply because of their low readership is wrong, and reveals a tremendous misperception about what makes the blogosphere so unique.

Here's the thing. Picture the blogosphere as a network of computers. Rev. Sensing is looking at the blogosphere like it's an old style mainframe connected to dedicated terminals. The terminals have very limited processing power, and that's mainly used to route traffic back to the mainframe. The mainframe does all the heavy lifting and feeds the information back to the terminal. In this analogy, blogging's big guns are the mainframe, and everybody else is just a terminal. Each terminal is slaved to the mainframe, and worthless without it.

But that's the wrong paradigm.

The blogosphere is more like a network of parallel processors. Each processor may only be able to handle a small part of the computational load, but by operating in parallel, the aggregate becomes much more powerful than the sum of the individual processors. By the same token, each individual blogger may carry only a small portion of the information load, but the research and knowledge bearing capacity of this distributed system is far greater than the old media could ever handle. Remember Memogate? In the space of a few hours, bloggers were able to analyze and discredit the forgeries with a precision and wealth pf detail that the New York Times and CBS couldn't come close to matching.

In this paradigm, most bloggers may appear insignificant most of the time, but without them, the overall performance of the system would be perceptibly degraded. Yeah, a blog bout knitting may seem totally irrelevant unless you knit (I do, by the way) but what if the knitter also happens to be a nuclear plant operator, Navy Vet, health physics technician, technical writer, science writer, and all around knowledgable kind of a guy? Wouldn't it be nice to have all those areas of knowledge connected and available as an active part of the blogosphere?

Because that is the true strength of the blogosphere, and what makes it robust. It's not the big dogs; it's the millions of little ones. Without them, the blogosphere would be just another newspaper.

And who really needs that?