April 2006 Archives

It's interesting that whenever angels are depicted in art they invariably have wings, and yet God never does. It seems that there aren't many serious depictions of God other than as a cloud or a bright light, but even when he is depicted in a human-like form (or do humans have a God-like form?) he is never winged. (For instance, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, below.)

Maybe God, unlike his angels, just doesn't have anywhere to go. On the one hand, it must be nice to be omnipresent; on the other, I suppose that when you're God, everyone comes to you. And when you do go out, you've got angels to carry you around.

Guess who is the new vice-chaircountry of the United Nations Disarmament Commission? Which country is now responsible for overseeing the commission's priorities of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation?

The recent record of the Disarmament Commission was far from satisfactory, but now, more than ever, it should use the opportunity of an agreed agenda to strengthen the disarmament machinery to effectively deal with new emerging threats and challenges, the new Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Nobuaki Tanaka, said today upon the opening of the Commission’s substantive session. ...

In other business, the following delegations were elected as Vice-chairpersons, by acclamation: Chile, Uruguay and Iran.

Yes, that's right -- Iran is now in change of preventing nuclear proliferation.

(HT: James Taranto.)

Naturally Los Angeles is working hard to stay at the forefront of the insanity surrounding the debate about illegal immigration.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood America's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform. ...

"There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno," said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it weighs the issue. ...

In California on Thursday, the state senate passed a resolution recognizing "The Great American Boycott of 2006," saying it would educate the United States about the contributions made by immigrants. The measure passed 24-13 along party lines with dissenting Republicans arguing that it sanctioned lawbreaking and encouraged children to skip school.

Teachers' unions in major cities have said children should not be punished for walking out of class. Los Angeles school officials said principals had been told that they should allow students to leave but walk with them to help keep order.

Mark my words, nothing good can come from this. It's hard to see how "closing down" cities will gain sympathy from anyone... it's more like an act of terror and intimidation. I sincerely hope that these massive demonstrations don't turn violent, but I'm not optimistic.

I'd be a little more careful choosing my words if I were writing about a man mysteriously struck and killed by lightning.

The neighbors had been chatting outside around 6:30 p.m. about the upcoming hurricane season when Bennett, shirtless and in sandals, hiked up his shorts an inch and took three steps toward Thompson.

He was smiling when the sky lit up with electricity.

The lightning bolt struck his head from behind, and yellow sparks formed inside his mouth, Thompson said.

Standing about 25 feet away, Thompson watched in horror as her friend — the most caring and energetic man she'd ever known — died without a word.

Right. The ads at the bottom of the page may also be in poor taste.

In our flawed, evil, competitive world, it's ironic that greed can create more good than can "kindness".

If pursuing profit is greed, economist Walter Williams told me, then greed is good, because it drives us to do many good things. "Those areas where people are motivated the most by greed are the areas that we're the most satisfied with: supermarkets, computers, FedEx." By contrast, areas "where people say we're motivated by 'caring'" -- public education, public housing etc. -- "are the areas of disaster in our country. . . . How much would get done," Williams wondered, "if it all depended on human love and kindness?"

Greed gets people to cooperate. If you want to benefit from other greedy people, you have to make sure they benefit from you.

In this context it's important to note that "greed" does not imply a willingness to cheat or break the rules, simply a desire to maximize your own benefit by trading with others who are each also want to do the best they can for themselves.

No one person made my dinner possible. It took thousands of people to get me the food. And none of them did it for me. As economist Adam Smith put it, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

It's a strange system that's far less than ideal, but it's apparently the best system possible considering our innate human failings.

(Earlier Greed Is Good post).

Mark Steyn proposes a fun experiment to help understand the world's reaction to Ahmadinejad and the crazy Iranians.

You know what's great fun to do if you're on, say, a flight from Chicago to New York and you're getting a little bored? Why not play being President Ahmadinejad? Stand up and yell in a loud voice, "I've got a bomb!" Next thing you know the air marshal will be telling people, "It's OK, folks. Nothing to worry about. He hasn't got a bomb." And then the second marshal would say, "And even if he did have a bomb it's highly unlikely he'd ever use it." And then you threaten to kill the two Jews in row 12 and the stewardess says, "Relax, everyone. That's just a harmless rhetorical flourish." And then a group of passengers in rows 4 to 7 point out, "Yes, but it's entirely reasonable of him to have a bomb given the threatening behavior of the marshals and the cabin crew."

That's how it goes with the Iranians. The more they claim they've gone nuclear, the more U.S. intelligence experts -- oops, where are my quote marks? -- the more U.S. intelligence "experts" insist no, no, it won't be for another 10 years yet. The more they conclusively demonstrate their non-compliance with the IAEA, the more the international community warns sternly that, if it were proved that Iran were in non-compliance, that could have very grave consequences. But, fortunately, no matter how thoroughly the Iranians non-comply it's never quite non-compliant enough to rise to the level of grave consequences. You can't blame Ahmadinejad for thinking "our enemies cannot do a damned thing."

As Mr. Steyn points out, the Iranian braggadocio should be enough to motivate us to substantial action.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

From "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, and most well-known for being inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the United States and was dedicated in 1886. Since then, it has served as one of the most recognizable symbols of freedom around the world, and a physical repserentation of the American Dream. More recently, it's symbolism has been co-opted by defenders of illegal immigration, but what served our country well as a banner in the 19th century may well be less than ideal for the world of the 21st century.

Consider than when the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886, the population of the United States was 50 million and there were vast tracts of unsettled, unclaimed land that we needed people to fill. We needed as many people as we could get, because if we didn't settle the land, we'd lose it. We couldn't have babies fast enough, but we were happy to get anyone brave enough cross an ocean for a shot at freedom and prosperity.

21st century America has reaped enormous benefits from what strarted as a trickle of "huddled masses" and eventually became a brain drain, sucking in many of the best educated and smartest people from around the world. And, frankly, we'd still like to get all the smartest people, but is that really what's best for the world? Similarly, what happens if America drains not just the smartest, but also the most ambitious, daring people from the rest of the world?

In a lot of ways it's good for America in the short term, but what are the long term effects? Does America want to be a bastion of wealth surrounded by the dregs of societies who weren't even able or motivated to sneak across our borders? I think that it would perhaps be better for everyone if rather than importing people, America exported liberty. How? Maybe with a "guest worker" program like President Bush has suggested, if it could ever be enforced (not likely). More realistically, America exports freedom by using our economic and military power to undermine tyrannical, corrupt governments and by empowering the ambitious and daring to prosper in their own lands.

As I've mentioned before, Mexico's economy and polity are crippled by corruption that's enabled by a flow of money and legitimacy from America. That corruption will never be rooted out and eliminated as long as the most ambitious Mexicans are fleeing to the United States and as long as the pathetic Mexican economy is propped up by more than $16 billion each year in remittances sent by Mexicans living in America. While considering how to deal with illegal immigration, I hope Congress and the President are simultaneously thinking about how to push Mexico's government towards reform. If Mexicans had a chance for freedom and prosperity in their own country, I'm sure they'd prefer it to the rampant corruption that dominates their nation now.

In the same way that a generous, rich uncle can inhibit growth and ambition among his nieces and nephews, America's well-meaning internationalism often causes more long term harm than short term good. America's Cold War nuclear umbrella provoked the self-emasculation of most of Western Europe and Canada; much of the foreign aid given by American taxpayers goes straight into the pockets of tyrants who use it to oppress their people; and our tolerance of illegal immigration may look like compassion or pragmatism, but it also undermines the people and societies we're purporting to help.

Free movement of people is an economic boon, as long as the exchange is muturally agreed upon. Most Americans know, however, that they're getting the short end of the stick with illegal immigration and don't want to make the deal, which makes the illegal immigrants thieves. Ambitious, daring, motivated thieves -- but stealing wealth from others has never lifted a person or nation out of despair.

My buddy Randy Kirk has started a new project designed to get kids reading by age five. Considering that most kids can't read when they graduate high school, this is pretty ambitious.

Nineteen years ago, my wife and I decided to teach our 4-year-old daughter to read. We had purchased this 150-year-old reader, and it seemed like it might be fun to see how far we could get teaching her with a book published in 1840. Amazingly, within the year, she was reading at the third grade level.

Is she a genius? We’d like to think so, but since that time, both of our boys have gone through the same program, and with even greater success at earlier ages.

Out of these early efforts a program for early reading was developed. Others have now tested the system with the same kind of success. And now, we are ready to offer it to you.

There's no doubt that our public school system is broken, and this looks like just the sort of thing I'd want to start my children with to make sure they aren't dependent on some government bureaucracy for their education.

Sometimes I watch cable news in the morning while I'm exercising, but I'm getting sick of all the "gas prices are so high!" stories. Duh. This isn't news. Gas prices have been high for years now, and there's no sign that they're going to drop significantly. Why waste airtime "reporting" a story that everyone already knows? It's pointless filler. No one needs an on-location report from some journalist standing in front of a gas station with $3-a-gallon gas; we can see that for ourselves one block away!

In contrast, how many blog posts do you read about high gas prices? Proportionally far fewer. If I were running a cable news network, I'd lose all the journalists and hire a few editors to scour the blogosphere and a few beautiful women to read the best posts on camera. We'd pick stories based on Technorati's "What's happening right now" section (no mention of gas prices in the top 10) and bring the best news and commentary the world has to offer. Then, instead of worthless trackbacks, we'd send $100 cash to each of our sources and show their URLs on-air.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is proposing a border security plan that sounds very similar to Hillary's. I don't know which politician decided to go this route first, and I don't care, but I like the general thrust of the idea: border security first, and then deal with the existing 12 million plus illegal immigrants second. I'd be much more amenable to a path towards legalization for the illegal immigrants who are already here if I were confident that there weren't another dozen million waiting in the wings. As it is, I trust Hillary zero and Bill Frist only a little more, but at least they're making the right noises.

When it takes up the immigration reform, the Senate must address border security, worksite enforcement, and the status of the 12 million people who are currently here illegally. But to build confidence among Americans and Congress that the government takes border security seriously, we have to act to help get the border under control right now.

By Memorial Day, the president plans to sign an emergency-spending measure, which we will use to fund this next step in border security. Democrat obstructionism on the larger immigration bill, I hope, will end before that. So far it has not: Minority Leader Harry Reid has acted to block the Senate from even voting on proposals like a ban on convicted felons taking part in temporary-worker programs.

Under any circumstances, security has to come first. We don't know how many criminals, gang members, and terrorists might have snuck across in the 20 years since Congress last made serious reforms to our immigration system. We need to know who is in our country, and why. A comprehensive immigration bill will allow all levels of law enforcement to focus on those who threaten to do us harm.

(HT: Glenn Reynolds.)

It's interesting that the factors seen in Iraq that apparently prompt so many to cry "civil war!" are even more prevalent in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority... yet few people who are critical of Iraq are also calling American/European involvement with the Palestinians a debacle.

Violent clashes and mass protests erupted Saturday across the West Bank and Gaza Strip between followers of the militant group Hamas and Fatah rivals, after a Hamas leader accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of treachery.

The two sides traded gunfire and hurled stones and firebombs, escalating a fierce power struggle between militant and moderate factions focused on control over Palestinian security forces.

Abbas said Saturday he would not allow the accusations to plunge the Palestinians into civil war.

Too late? Should the West withdraw its involvement with the Palestinians? Were the years of "peace process" a wasted effort?

(HT: Jonah Goldberg.)

Since 2004 leopards have been hunting people in Mumbai, killing several people a week in India's most populous city.

It’s a classic case of survival of the fittest and the fight for space between man and beast. All the more difficult in a city like Mumbai, whose burgeoning population is increasingly pushing deep into the forest.

The forest, which is Mumbai's green lung is also a wildlife sanctuary and the leopards' natural habitat. But, in the last few months, the big cats have increasingly emerged from the forest and into the urban jungle, killing twenty-two people including children.

Residents are up in arms about what they call “official apathy”, but forest officials say it’s up to residents to take great care in the face of an unexpected threat.

"Take great care", but it's apparently illegal to actually kill one of the cats. Despite this formal preference for animals over people, some Indians apparently think the government isn't doing enough to protect the man-eaters.

It might be strange if i say that i was the happiest person when I heard Leopards had killed some 14-15 people in Mumbai. I’ll also support with my reasons why i’m happy. ...

3) There is nothing wrong with the Leapord in killing people (which is also a part of Population control ) who had encroached within its land. People deserve such capital punishment who for their selfish reasons occupy its terrain. One day it might happen that even domestic animals might seek revenge for the abuses made on them in India.

Though I don't want to make overly broad generalizations, one of the commonalities I've noticed among the Indians that I've met is that they don't tend to put a high value on the lives of people they don't know. Several of the Indians I know best, when asked, have said that of course this is true -- India has far too many people as it is, so why should anyone be overly concerned about the deaths of strangers? This reaction was particularly strong in response to the recent freezing winter in New Delhi and the resulting deaths of countless homeless.

I'm completely astounded, but Hillary Clinton is proposing the most practical approach to dealing with illegal immigration that I've yet heard. I don't trust her one bit to implement it, but I'd still vote for her plan.

A fence or a wall? She's for it.

A two-step process, where our borders are secured before the 11 million illegal immigrants already here begin to get legalized? She's for that, too.

The sudden crackdown by Washington on employers who hire illegal immigrants? She welcomes it.

The work and school boycott advocacy groups are planning for May 1? She's against it.

And she said she favors a "carrot-and-stick" approach with Mexico to provide that government and its "oligarchs" the incentives to give Mexicans more and better jobs in their own country.

"A country that cannot control its borders is failing at one of its fundamental obligations," she said of America's "broken system." She also said that "we do need an earned path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants here. ...

Most important, her support for a time lag between the two steps, with border security coming first by as much as two years, could be the right mix that breaks the congressional deadlock and solves much of the immigration problem.

"I would not support it if the legislation was just for border security and we had to come back to Congress for everything else," she said. "We need to structure it as one piece of comprehensive legislation, with a staged implementation." For example, she said, the legalization process could begin "12 to 24 months" after border control measures take effect.

As for how to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, "A physical structure is obviously important," she said. "A wall in certain areas would be appropriate," as long as it was not a "dumb wall" that could be scaled or tunneled. Advocating "smart fencing," she added, "There is technology that would be in the fence that could spot people coming from 250 or 300 yards away and signal patrol agents who could respond."

She also talked of using drones and infrared cameras and, when asked, agreed that Israel's anti-terror wall, which she has seen, might help guide the U.S.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what to say. I think this would be just about exactly the right approach.

So one major leaker from the CIA has been outed: Mary O. McCarthy was the source for the CIA-secret-jails story, among apparently many others. She's been fired but apparently may not face criminal charges.

Several former veteran C.I.A. officials said the dismissal of an agency employee over a leak was rare and perhaps unprecedented. One official recalled the firing of a small number of agency contractors, including retirees, for leaking several years ago.

Well that's pretty alarming. The whole point of classifying information is to put some teeth behind the otherwise routine requirement that employees not discuss their work with outsiders. Just about every business or organization has a general understanding of that sort, but since it's so much more important when it comes to national security it's taken to another level. Employees at businesses are fired all the time for disclosing proprietary information, so it's pretty surprising that CIA employees aren't fired for leaking classified information. Hopefully this is the start of a trend.

With the encouragement of the White House and some Republicans in Congress, [CIA Directory Porter J.] Goss has repeatedly spoken out against leaks, saying foreign intelligence officials had asked him whether his agency was incapable of keeping secrets.

In February, Mr. Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." He said it was his hope "that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

"I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less," he said.

Isn't it humiliating for the United State's premier intelligence agency to be untrusted by the foreign services we have to work with? Leakers like Mary O. McCarthy are traitors who endanger Americans and America's interests, even if they have good intentions... which I doubt. It seems a lot more likely that Mary O. McCarthy's leaked to cause political damage to President Bush than to enhance America's security.

Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.

Wow, that's a surprise.

Quotes later in the article show that there are at least a few sensible people left in the CIA who recognize their duties and take them seriously.

But another official, whose experience was at headquarters, said most employees would approve Mr. Goss's action. "I think for the vast majority of people this will be good for morale," the official said. "People didn't like some of their colleagues deciding for themselves what secrets should be in The Washington Post or The New York Times."

Paul R. Pillar, who was the agency's senior analyst for the Middle East until he retired late last year, said: "Classified information is classified information. It's not to be leaked. It's not to be divulged." He has recently criticized the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs.

I hope Mary O. McCarthy does get charged and thrown in prison or executed, but since that's not likely I hope that the blogosphere keeps tabs on her and excoriates whomever is foolish enough to hire her next.

Update 060425:
Mary O. McCarthy has denied leaking information about secret CIA prisons and apparently only admitted to having disclosed some other unspecified classified information to reporter Dana Priest of the Washington Post.

The statement by Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the Washington office of Hogan & Hartson who said he was speaking for McCarthy, came on the same day that a senior intelligence official said the agency is not asserting that McCarthy was a key source of Priest's award-winning articles last year disclosing the agency's secret prisons.

McCarthy was fired because the CIA concluded that she had undisclosed contacts with journalists, including Priest, in violation of a security agreement. That does not mean she revealed the existence of the prisons to Priest, Cobb said.

Cobb said that McCarthy, who worked in the CIA inspector general's office, "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking," namely the classified information about any secret detention centers in Europe.

Of course this is McCarthy's lawyer saying this, and keep in mind that the story above is from the Washtington Post, that paper which McCarthy admitted leaking to.

The Center for Immigration Studies has posted an insightful report about cheap and easy ways to reduce thei llegla immigrant population through attrition.

Proponents of mass legalization of the illegal alien population, whether through amnesty or expanded guestworker programs, often justify this radical step by suggesting that the only alternative – a broad campaign to remove illegal aliens by force – is unworkable. One study put the cost of such a deportation strategy at $206 billion over the next five years. But mass forced removal is not the only alternative to mass legalization. This analysis shows that a strategy of attrition through enforcement, in combination with a stronger border security effort such as the administration’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI), will significantly reduce the size of the illegal alien population at a reasonable cost. Reducing the size of the illegal population in turn will reduce the fiscal and social burdens that illegal immigration imposes on communities. In contrast, a policy of mass legalization is likely to increase these costs and prompt more illegal immigration.

Studies of the size and growth of the illegal population show that a borders-oriented strategy like SBI, which aims to improve border security and focuses mainly on removing criminal aliens, will achieve only limited results. If supplemented by attrition through enforcement, which encourages voluntary compliance with immigration laws rather than relying on forced removal, the illegal population could be nearly halved in five years. According to the government’s own cost estimates, such a strategy requires an additional investment of less than $2 billion, or $400 million per year – an increase of less than 1 percent of the President’s 2007 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security ($42.7 billion).

There are a lot of details in the report, but the key elements of the strategy are:

1) eliminating access to jobs through mandatory employer verification of Social Security numbers and immigration status;

2) ending misuse of Social Security and IRS identification numbers, which illegal immigrants use to secure jobs, bank accounts, drivers licenses, and other privileges, and improved information-sharing among key federal agencies;

3) increasing apprehensions and detention of illegal immigrants through partnerships between federal immigration authorities and state and local law enforcement agencies;

4) reducing visa overstays;

5) doubling the number of non-criminal, non-expedited removals;

6) passing state and local laws to discourage the settlement of illegal aliens and to make it more difficult for illegal aliens to conceal their status.

The cost of these changes would be tiny compared to the costs of allowing the illegal immigrants to stay.

Furthermore, President Bush and the Republicans in Congress should be ashamed that despite all the taxes we pay and the trust we put in them, ordinary Americans are doing more to protect our country than they are.

If the government doesn't build security fencing along the Mexico border, Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox says he and his supporters will.

Simcox, whose civilian watch group opposes illegal immigration, said Wednesday he was sending an ultimatum to President Bush to deploy military reserves to the Arizona border by May 25 or his supporters will break ground for their own building project.

"We're going to show the federal government how easy it is to build these security fences, how inexpensively they can be built when built by private people and free enterprise," Simcox said.

Where can I send money?

Maybe I haven't been following the news closely enough, but apparently this story broke six days ago and I only heard about it tonight: in 2000, President Bill Clinton tried to trick Iran by sending them fake plans for a nuclear bomb... but oops, he sent them real plans.

the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.

The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by James Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush administration's controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran's nuclear drive.

But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.

The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and "may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA," according to Risen.

It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet Union, to offer Iran the blueprint for a "firing set" -- the intricate mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.

The Russian was told by CIA officers that the Iranians already had the technology detailed in the plans and that the ruse was simply an attempt by the agency to find out the full scope of Tehran's nuclear knowledge.

But, contrary to orders not to open the packet, he added a note which made it clear he could help fix the flaws for money.

Risen states in his book, "It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints] was first approved by Clinton."

Holy crap, nice going.

(HT: Right-Wing & Right Minded and Its [sic] a Matter of Opinion.)

Mark Steyn lays out a compelling explanation of why we have to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

But it doesn't have to come to that. Go back to that Argentine bombing. It was, in fact, the second major Iranian-sponsored attack in Buenos Aires. The year before, 1993, a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed 29 people and injured hundreds more in an attack on the Israeli Embassy. In the case of the community center bombing, the killer had flown from Lebanon a few days earlier and entered Latin America through the porous tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Suppose Iran had had a "dirty nuke" shipped to Hezbollah, or even the full-blown thing: Would it have been any less easy to get it into the country? And, if a significant chunk of downtown Buenos Aires were rendered uninhabitable, what would the Argentine government do? Iran can project itself to South America effortlessly, but Argentina can't project itself to the Middle East at all. It can't nuke Tehran, and it can't attack Iran in conventional ways.

So any retaliation would be down to others. Would Washington act? It depends how clear the fingerprints were. If the links back to the mullahs were just a teensy-weensy bit tenuous and murky, how eager would the U.S. be to reciprocate? Bush and Rumsfeld might--but an administration of a more Clinto-Powellite bent? How much pressure would there be for investigations under U.N. auspices? Perhaps Hans Blix could come out of retirement, and we could have a six-month dance through Security-Council coalition-building, with the secretary of state making a last-minute flight to Khartoum to try to persuade Sudan to switch its vote.

Perhaps it's unduly pessimistic to write the civilized world automatically into what Osama bin Laden called the "weak horse" role (Islam being the "strong horse"). But, if you were an Iranian "moderate" and you'd watched the West's reaction to the embassy seizure and the Rushdie murders and Hezbollah terrorism, wouldn't you be thinking along those lines? I don't suppose Buenos Aires Jews expect to have their institutions nuked any more than 12 years ago they expected to be blown up in their own city by Iranian-backed suicide bombers. Nukes have gone freelance, and there's nothing much we can do about that, and sooner or later we'll see the consequences--in Vancouver or Rotterdam, Glasgow or Atlanta. But, that being so, we owe it to ourselves to take the minimal precautionary step of ending the one regime whose political establishment is explicitly pledged to the nuclear annihilation of neighboring states.

Lots more, all good.

I don't know abuot anyone else, but I think Sit 'n Sleep's radio ads are awesome. They always make me laugh. Maybe it's because I can relate to Irwin.

I'm sure you've heard the ads. They start out with Larry, the owner, pushing some new sale he's got going -- same-as-cash till next year, 50% off, etc. Then comes Irwin, his accountant, who protests that if they follow through with the sale they'll go out of business -- "You're killing me Larry!" But, of course, Larry prevails and concludes every commercial with the 1-800 number and a promise that "Sit 'n Sleep will beat anyone's advertised price, or your mattress is FREEEEE!!!"

My love for the commercials led me to visit a Sit 'n Sleep store when recently purchasing a new mattress. Unfortunately, even though they'll beat advertised prices they won't beat negotiated prices at other stores, and I ended up getting a better deal from Mattress Gallery.

Last night was one of the best so far. Taylor was great, and so was Katherine. It was nice to see Chris do something a little different. Anyway, who cares about all that, what's important is who gets eliminated tonight! My prediction is that either Paris or Eelliioott will be leaving the show, and I only wish it could be both.

Here's how I'm currently grouping the idols; this will give you some sense of the order in which they'll be eliminated.

Bottom two: Eelliioott and Paris.

Middle two: Ace and Kellie.

Number Three: Taylor.

Top Two: Chris and Katherine.

Interestingly, TradeSports bettors rank the idols differently. Here are the odds they're putting on each idol going home tonight:

Hey, I don't like Ace either; I wouldn't be sad to see him go.

Poison is one of the most effective tools of the assassin, and yet the vast majority of people give almost no thought to protecting themselves. A few drops of the right common household chemicals in the coffee mug you left carelessly on your desk at work could give you a very bad day, land you in the hospital, or even kill you. So while it's not likely that most of us experience many assassination attempts, it's only prudent to take a few simple steps to make your life a bit more poison-proof.

1. Never eat or drink anything that someone else selects for you. This includes waiters at restaurants and bartenders.

2. Only purchase products selected randomly from a large collection. If there's only one bag of sugar left on the grocery store shelf, don't take it, it might have been planted there for you to find.

3. Never consume food or drink that have been left unattended.

4. Always inspect cups and dishes for unknown substances before putting food in them.

5. Before eating or drinking, taste a small quantity and evaluate it for impurities. If it tastes unusual, throw it away. If no ill effects result from the taste within a few minutes, it's probably safe to consume the rest of the product.

6. Eat and drink slowly so that if there's any poison you'll have a chance to detect it working before you consume the whole quantity. This practice can save your life, since all poisons require certain dosages to be lethal.

7. Learn how to induce vomiting.

8. Learn which poisons should be treated with induced vomiting and which should not. In general, most poisons should be vomited except those from a petroleum or corrosive chemical product.

9. Carry a small quantity of activated charcoal. After vomiting if necessary, you should drink a large quantity of water mixed with up to five tablespoons of activated charcoal to dilute and absorb the poison.

10. Stay within range of emergency medical personnel and call an ambulance if you think you've been poisoned. But don't trust the medics too far!

Mark B at the SMI Weblog (subscription required) notes an interesting phenomenon that most people are probably not aware: the equity market can be a hedge against personal ability devaluation.

As with the bones of the body, the financial markets are similarly connected. Understanding those connections can help us see how certain changes and news events often affect stock and bond prices.

For example, today's stock market losses are a reasonably clear reaction to the stronger than expected jobs report released this morning. Why would a good jobs report send the stock market lower? Because strong growth in jobs can lead to a tighter labor market. Tight labor markets lead to higher wages, which is inflationary. And inflation is generally thought to be bad for stocks.

The connections don't stop there. Higher potential inflation is also the bane of the bond market. So today's jobs report makes it more likely that the Fed will raise interest rates higher/longer, and has already caused the bond market to send long-term rates higher (pushing bond prices lower in the process). Since mortgage rates largely follow the rates of longer-term bonds, today's good job news may turn out to be bad news for mortgage shoppers. Which of course wouldn't be good news for the housing market.

So as unemployment goes down, wages go up, which means that the value of each worker's personal ability goes up; in reaction, stock prices go down. This isn't rocket science, but it's interesting that equity and salary can be inversely related (across the economy as a whole).