3 January 2008 a Thursday

It stormed all night, windy with occasionally heavy rain, and this morning at 7 a.m. it was a cold 66 degrees! Unbelievable! I'm told the forecast is for more of the same through Sunday! Now, at 9:30, it's all the way up to 70.0 on my digital read-out and people are wearing sweaters and long pants. I kid you not.

Not much happening in Iraq and the New York Times is unclear about the one suicide bomber they report:

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown insurgent group that American intelligence says is led by foreigners, has staged repeated attacks in Diyala against the Sunni tribesmen, known as Awakening Council members. Its object, officials say, is to fray the alliance the groups have struck with the United States.

In December, the insurgent group stepped up attacks against the Awakening Council in Diyala to about one a week, according to United States military officials. On Saturday, jihadist Web sites posted an audio recording of the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, also a Sunni, calling Awakening Council members “infidels” and “traitors” for siding with the Americans. The extent of the insurgent group’s links to Mr. bin Laden’s network is unclear.

It is also unclear whether Mr bin Laden is in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan, all places where he would be a foreigner, as well. In fact, the Times says, nothing is really very clear to us at this point.

New Hampshire, now, that's a really populous state! Would any of this really be 'news' if the media weren't so desperate for some?

At 77, the ebullient legislator has opened the tax debate with a proposal that suggests something startling: Regarding two matters, Rangel is a Reaganite. Ronald Reagan opposed using the tax code "as a means of achieving changes in our social structure." Rangel -- in his 19th term, a man of House proprieties -- says, "I don't think the tax code should be a substitute for the appropriations process in making social change." Social policy should be, he thinks, the province of "the standing committees." The question for tax writers "is not just what is fair and equitable but what is good for the economy."

Furthermore, Rangel proposes reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30.5 percent, a rate that still would be higher than the average corporate rate among major industrialized countries. Rangel would entertain arguments for an even lower rate if compensatory revenue could be found.

My only problem with this is that surely Rangel knows that reducing tax RATES do not necessarily reduce tax RECEIPTS, which is the important thing. For instance, if corporations earned $100 billion (just to have a number) then reducing the tax rate from 35% to 30.5% would indeed reduce revenue by $4.5 million, but that's presuming that lowering a tax RATE would have no effect upon corporate practices which would lead to increased income as a result.

What we know about tax rates, for sure, is this: both a 0% rate and a 100% rate are likely to produce the same amount of revenue: nothing. Nobody is going to invest capital into a corporation as well as work at anything which will all go, one hundred percent, to taxes. You wouldn't bother to put your money into the bank if all of your interest was taxed at 100%, and a bank is relatively safe compared with running a corporation.

So we can see intuitively that there must be some RATE between 0-100 which will produce the maximum amount of tax RECEIPTS because of the way that the tax, alone, influences the behavior of the corporations when it comes to taking a risk with their money in order to try to earn an effective return on that investment. The trick is determining the right number. And George Will says:

Surely no one really believes that corporations "pay" any taxes, because in the end result the corporations pass the taxes on to consumers. Still, since taxes are added to prices, eventually the consumers shop overseas in order to get a cheaper product, thus you can see why, as Will notes, the average corporate tax rate among industrialized nations is lower than ours. It's also a reason why American corporations move overseas.

It also is heartening that Rangel bothers to define (sort of) a four-letter word that many Democrats, who rarely define it, treat as a four-letter word: "rich." At what level of income are people rich? It "certainly isn't $200,000," says Rangel, who insists that under his plan "very few people making under $500,000" would not get a tax cut.

Perhaps this is the compassionate liberalism of a Democratic Party that represents the rich: The conservative Heritage Foundation reports that Democrats hold a majority of the wealthiest congressional districts and that half the richest households (single filers earning at least $100,000 and married filers earning at least $200,000) live in states where both senators are Democrats.

But no "income level" makes you rich, unless it has been sustained for a long time and has produced adequate investments as a result. People aren't taxed for being rich, they're taxed for earning income. Do you really think that Kennedy pays taxes at a rate proportionate to his wealth? Of course he doesn't.

The entire complaint about reductions in tax RATES being "tax breaks for the rich" is a cynical populist scam at the great unwashed public who can be roused into a rabble with pitchforks and torches. The rich not only don't pay taxes for being rich, in addition they have at their behest dozens if not hundreds of methods already in existence for sheltering whatever income they do show. Now THOSE include some serious "breaks", written deliberately into the convolutions of the tax code. But will you ever see THOSE tricks eliminated?

It's in the loopholes where the breaks lie. Don't look for any to be closed soon, not with the Democrats in power. You see, they've run another hugely successful scam that still works marvelously: despite the clear evidence to the contrary, they have convinced the rabble that the Republicans are the party of the rich.

Go down the list of the American Senate if you want to get a wry laugh over the party of the rich.

To the woman who asked if he would be too old to be president after eight years in office, the 71-year-old Arizona senator assured everyone that he had a hearty gene pool. "My health is good, my campaign schedule is heavier than anybody else's, and I've said many times I can out-campaign anybody," he said. "Last Christmas my mother decided she wanted to drive around France. She tried to rent a car and they said she was too old so she bought one."

I'm hoping for the same thing. My Dad drove well until he was over 90, I used to ride with him all the time. Planning ahead can compensate for slower reflexes.

In a recent interview, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida stated: "The need for guns in the cockpit is just nearly not [sic] as acute as it once was. There are all kind [sic] of screening systems, there is now the reinforced cockpit door, there are air marshals, we now have a lots of checks and balances." Hearing this, some might ask, "Do airline pilots still need to be armed?" The answer is, "Absolutely — now more than ever."

Consider this: Arming pilots is not a new idea. In fact, airline pilots flew armed in large numbers from the dawn of commercial aviation to 1987 with no record of incident. When the federal government disarmed pilots in 1987, many pilots predicted cockpit takeover attempts — including the late Captain Victor Saracini, who, in horrible irony, was the captain of United flight 175 on September 11, 2001 when his Boeing 767 was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It was the disarming of pilots in 1987 that inevitably led to the September 11 cockpit takeovers. ...

Mr. Nelson tells us that we don't need armed pilots because airport security screening now provides a meaningful layer of protection. Anyone who has been through passenger screening in recent years might wonder what planet the senator is talking about. Recent internal Transportation Security Administration testing (TSA) has shown that screeners missed 60 percent to 75 percent of the prohibited items.

It's always struck me as terribly foolish that some people can worry about pilots being sensible enough to fly the aircraft safely but not sensible enough to know how and when to use a gun.

On New Year's Eve, Gallup's poll delivered unto us the good news that 84% of Americans say they are satisfied with how things are going for them personally. What Woody Allen might say about that phenomenal datum of good cheer one can only guess. One then has to account for the darker data Gallup released two weeks earlier: Some 70% of those responding believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. ...

Starting tomorrow morning, with the results of the Iowa caucuses, the state of the nation likely will strike many as worse. Aaargh, those fools in Iowa have handed victory to the most dangerous man or woman in America. This we've gotta stop!

For the next 10 months they will be agitated, glum and apoplectic about many things. The candidates themselves, professional marketers of anxiety, will contribute. Then come a Wednesday morning after the presidential vote in November, nearly half the country, the losers, will see darkness falling across the land.

I well remember the first election of which I became aware...1944. I overheard heard all of the adults in our small community of three families and four bachelors speaking in worried tones about how the reelection of Roosevelt would destroy the country. My 9-year-old mind took the word 'destroy' literally and I also took into consideration how seriously concerned they all appeared to be, not in the least because everybody there appeared to feel the same way,

The reason I remember this so well is because after Roosevelt won, everybody shrugged and life continued just the same way that it had been. I nervously waited for destruction for some time, though, and when it didn't happen I developed a profound distrust of all things political after that.

None of this is to suggest that what is at stake in the election doesn't matter, or that those deeply invested in it are misallocating life's limited days. It matters.

It is to suggest that the never-off eye of modern political media leaves the impression that nothing good is possible. If progress happens, as with the surge in Iraq or a new therapy for cancer, it must be diminished by "analysis," listing four things that could "go wrong." As a way to absorb the way the world works, this is depressing. Good things happen. Get over it.

Not watching CBS or reading the New York Times would make that easier to do.

And this humorous item about Kerry from R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr in American Spectator:

Just a few weeks ago Kerry blundered into buffoonery once again. Impatient with unsubstantiated claims that the 2004 Swift Boat advertisements lied about Kerry's hoked-up military record, Boone Pickens, one of the funders of those ads, publicly challenged the critics to demonstrate the ads' inaccuracies. He promised to provide $1 million to anyone who succeeded. Astonishingly, Kerry took the bait. With the consummate presumption that makes him the "comic perpetual motion machine" that he is, Kerry wrote Pickens: "While I am prepared to show they [the Swift Boat Veterans, often his fellow officers] lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false, I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt." That said -- and only that said -- Kerry asked for his cool million.

Pickens's perfectly reasonable response was to ask for Kerry's proof. As of today, no proof has been tendered by the Massachusetts Braggart. Pickens also cleverly asked for the journal that Kerry allegedly maintained in Vietnam and "Your military record, specifically your service records for the years 1971-1978, and copies of all movies and tapes made during your service." Megalomaniac that he is, Kerry filmed himself in Vietnam. Some of his fellow servicemen thought the films faked injuries and actions.

It is reported that Kerry's fellow Democrats were embarrassed by Kerry's unsubstantiated charges and empty whining. It brought to the public eye all his self-absorbed melodrama from the catastrophic 2004 race. Frankly, I sympathized with the Democratic leaders, but Kerry's guff deserved to be put to the test. Thus on November 21 I unveiled on The American Spectator's website "The Crybaby Kerry Clock." I promised that it would silently tick tock away beneath a smug depiction of Crybaby Kerry, counting the hours until he came forward with his promised evidence of the Swift Boat Veterans' false advertising, his Vietnam journal, and his military record. No evidence has been forthcoming. We have all had a good laugh. Yet it is time to move on, as the cliche traffickers put it. On January 4 the historic clock will cease to exist, and we shall all have to await Crybaby Kerry's next catastrophe of self-promotion.

Yet as retired Marine Corps Major Michael E. McBride wrote in Townhall.com, Kerry "has always had the power to clear up any of the Swiftboater challenges; all he had to do is allow the Navy to distribute unaltered copies of his service record, medical records, and DD214. It is essential that these records come from DOD, so that they cannot be tampered with by Kerry or his supporters. The DOD copies are the true copies of record and the only viable evidence for these maters." McBride, citing Kerry's long reluctance to do, so goes on to write, "it is unlikely that any credible evidence exists to refute the base charges of the Swiftboaters."

While you can conceivably imagine Kerry not needing another million bucks, how come none of his many supporters do? As much as I dislike the guy, I could use the million and would sure point out a lie if I could. Can't anyone do that? Is there no Kerry defender in financial need?

Has everyone forgotten that the Swift Boaters offered to drop their campaign if Kerry would only provide the things McBride mentions? Wouldn't that have been simple enough to do?

Was there ever any question, from the beginning, that we intended to leave Iraq? Wasn't the question always when and under what conditions? Always? In fact, the truth is that we probably never will totally leave Iraq any more than we have South Korea, only the conditions under which we stay will be changed.

The truth is that neither Iraq nor the United States can afford to have all of the troops leave, no matter how stable the conditions.

I don't agree. If things are going well, Republicans would be fools not to make a big issue of how right they were about Iraq and how wrong the Democrats were. Harry Reid's "Lost" declaration ought to be played on a weekly if not daily basis.

A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers’ committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.

The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that “the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals.”

The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: “In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences — just as organized military rape would have done.”

The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers’ eyes.

You get it? The lack of military rape does the same thing organized military rape would have done! And they don't rape Arab women because they're not really human? What planet does this guy come from? For quite some time in the American South the blacks were not considered to be equally human, but that didn't stop rape from taking place.

My great baseball years were in Salt Lake City in the late '50s at Derk's Field, a tidy little ballpark with seats so close to the players that you could easily see the expressions on the faces of the infielders. Foul balls used to whistle into the stands with no screen in the way and survival was a matter of staying alert and avoiding the ball rather than trying to catch it. We always sat on the third base side just towards home plate from the line to 2nd base so we could watch baseball's most exciting plays, the close play at third or at home, and both were literally only a few feet away. The seats were benches in those days.

As university students, seats cost us 50¢ each and we went to lots and lots of ball games. In those days I had my own rat pack, a lot of whom came from the mineralogy lab class I taught at the U of U, and we typically went to the game in my car. One beer vendor adopted us and was very happy on the game days when we attended.

The ballpark took up a city lot 13 blocks south of the center of the city and there was on-street parking much of the time, especially if you came early like we did, which cost nothing. For impoverished college students (I think my GI Bill was $110 a month back then) it was the cheapest entertainment we could find, even including the beer. I can't remember what beer cost in the stands, except that the beer guy would buy a round for us every so often, but a 6-pack in those days was just under a dollar. On paydays we used to spring for Coor's at $1.11, a number I remember still.

I've been in a few major league parks since then, of course, but none of them matched Derk's for sheer enjoyment. The outfield backdrop was the magnificent Wasatch Mountains, a beautiful sight.

I really liked Salt Lake City except for the miserable winters. I almost always had an 0745 class and the university was fifteen minutes away on a clear morning, up to an hour on a snowy one. After I bought my first Jeep I learned not to hate driving to class nearly as much...in fact, it was kind of fun. But COLD! I used to arrive at class, despite gloves and heater (which was just getting warm by the time I got to the U) with my fingers so stiff from the cold that I could barely take notes.

Games at Derk's Field in the early spring and late fall could also be cold weather endurances, and we literally huddled together on those benches in those times, dressed in our winter coats and gloves.

And as much as I loved Salt Lake City, it also got so hot in the summer time that you could barely stand it! One time I had a job as an ice man, literally delivering block, cubed and crushed ice from the plant to various eateries and other consumers of ice, and that was not one of my favorite jobs except for the times I had to go back to the plant to refill the truck and got to get inside out of the heat.

When I decided I wanted to live in the tropics somewhere I did not have Costa Rica in mind, all I knew was that there were two temperatures I never wanted to see again: one was 100 degrees and the other 32 degrees. Salt Lake City saw both. My brother had a winter job shoveling snow at the University, and whenever a storm blew through in the afternoon and evening it meant he had to be up in the wee morning hours shoveling snow at the University...especially at the president's home. He learned to hate snow and moved away as soon as he could manage. There's nothing like shoveling snow at four in the morning to teach you to hate the stuff. I loved my Jeep, the favorite of all the cars I have ever had, because of the freedom it gave me from the restrictions of snow. One of our favorite evenings out was to go to the movies but most of the theaters were downtown and we lived up on SLC's "east bench". Many evenings when weather threatened we didn't dare go downtown to a movie because our old Chev would never make it back up the hill again if it snowed while we were in the movie. After we got the Jeep, though, we would have been able to help people get back up the hill again afterwards if there hadn't already been a crew of entrepreneurs out doing that already.

I think that Jeep was the greatest feeling of empowerment I have ever had, before or since. I drove it in some pretty desolate places, including the Utah salt flats. (And I'm including the 1960 upgrade I bought later, although the original 1950 was my true first love. The new one was faster, more powerful, and upgraded in several ways, but there's nothing to match first love, is there...)

And the early results are in from Iowa, with Obama's win so big, and Huckabee's, that neither one is likely to be overturned by a later count. I consider both of them to be the two weakest candidates in the field (I'm not including Ron Paul and the other dwarves, of course). Since I don't think either one of those guys can really win their nominations, what else have we learned, if anything?

Edwards, sadly, is as strong as Hillary, meaning he probably won't drop out. As much as I hate to say so, of those three I'd have to take Hillary. She probably lost the most by not getting rid of Edwards, since I really cannot picture Obama getting the nomination when the rubber meets the road. I'd rather have him than Edwards, though...in fact, you could probably even say that about Huckabee.

Romney really took a lickin' but second to a guy who can't win isn't that bad. Thompson looks much more real, and McCain did probably no worse--or better--than he might have expected from Iowa. Of all of them, Thompson probably achieved the most with his third place, since no one even theoretically expected him to be 1 or 2.

What have I learned about myself from my own reactions to the reports? Edwards and Huckabee would be my last choices, easily. I could live with Romney, Thompson and McCain, thus far, and Hillary if push came to shove. I'd be really unhappy with Obama.

And what was that Rudy guy's name? I have no feelings, I discover...if somebody told me he was out, or still very much in, the news wouldn't affect me very much either way.