Pete The Elder

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January 31, 2005

North Korea Pulling a USSR?

It looks like North Korea may be about to pull a USSR and collapse. For some reason letting about 2 million of your people starve to death, preventing any contact with outside world, and not allowing any freedom does not seem to have worked very well for Kim. For a more detailed description of how messed up North Korea is read this disturbing article by congressman Jeff Miller who traveled to North Korea in 2003. He notes that he did not see any old people his entire time there (he assumes they are all dead) and, "Not once did I see a North Korean reading a newspaper or a magazine, nor did I see any for sale. There aren’t many cars in the city to drive on the spacious 6-lane interstate through the metropolitan area."

Posted by Pete at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two Quotes For Today

Both in some way involve hate. Here is the current front runner to be the new DNC chairman Howard Dean, "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for". Some of the first things I think of when I think of what Republicans stand for are low taxes, free enterprise, smaller and more accountable government, less crime, more freedoms, optimism, a color blind society, and a strong national defense. Dean hates me (and if you are a Republican he hates you too) and for some reason I still want him to be the next DNC chairman. TKS thinks this is the Democrats version of a suicide note. Oh and Yeeeeaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!

Our second quote of the day comes from eighty year old Rashid Majid of Iraq who says, "We have freedom now, we have human rights, we have democracy. We will invite the insurgents to take part in our system. If they do, we will welcome them. If they don't, we will kill them."

Posted by Pete at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iraq, Vietnam, and Dead Parrots

Christopher Hitchens points out here how the Iraq War is pretty much the opposite of the Vietnam War. And he quotes Monty Python: "I suppose it's obvious that I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the principles of the antiwar movement of that epoch still mean a good deal to me. That's why I retch every time I hear these principles recycled, by narrow minds or in a shallow manner, in order to pass off third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism. But one must also be capable of being offended objectively. The Vietnam/Iraq babble is, from any point of view, a busted flush. It's no good. It's a stiff. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It's joined the choir invisible. It's turned up its toes. It's gone. It's an ex-analogy."

Posted by Pete at 05:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Student Expelled for Thinking

If this story is accurate it reflects very poorly on the school and goes against the traditions of free academic inquiry. LeMoyne College apparently expelled a student named Scott McConnell for writing a paper in favor of corporal punishment for students. No one from the school is quoted in the article and the author does not mention trying to contact representatives from the school, so there may be other reasons, but if the story is true this is very disturbing. Students should not be expelled for expressing unpopular views as long they are honest while doing so. They should not get bad grades (which does not seem to be the case here) for expressing unpopular views as long as they express the views well and the views are relevant to the subject at hand.

To quote a recent George Will article about Harvard president Larry Summers, "He thought he was speaking in a place that encourages uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. He was not. He was on a university campus."

Update 1/31/05: Captain's Quarters has much more including a link to this article which gives more details. He was a conditional student and received a letter from a professor that said "I have grave concerns regarding the mismatch between your personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals."

Posted by Pete at 04:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iraqi Election Links

Iraqis voting in Manchester England drove off around 200 non-Iraqis protesting the Iraq election. David Kahrmann (who is from the Iraq Election Team in Manchester) asked "Why are these people who are not even from Iraq protesting against these elections?" Normblog hopes "this could prefigure something wider."

Jeff Jarvis, a very reasonable liberal, has a description of "The Eeyore Analysis of Iraq". Jarvis voted for Kerry, but does not hate Bush. He wants Iraq to succeed far more than he wants Bush to fail and probably does not really want Bush to fail at all. He just wants the war on terror won and Iraq to be free. He says "Democracy isn't a right-or-left thing, folks. It's a right-and-left thing, remember?"

Scrappleface sums up the feelings of many in the media with this headline: Iraqi Voting Disrupts News Reports of Bombings.

Posted by Pete at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Welfare Reform in Germany

Most Western European nations need welfare and job reform. Germany has had double digit unemployment for years now and until recently you could stay on the dole there for years without having to work. Germany recently added a work requirement that if you are offered any job you have to take it in order to keep your benefits. Because prostitution is legal in Germany now women are being denied unemployment benefits if they turn down offers to become prostitutes.

Although it strikes us as obviously wrong to force women into prostituion, it does not strike me as wrong that people have to take some jobs they do not like. When I worked with welfare recipients in Texas the social workers and related laws were much more reasonable. They tried to find jobs that were appropriate to the person and avoided dangerous jobs, but that still meant people sometimes had to take jobs they did not like.

The other problem in places like Germany is the ammount of restrictions put on employers that are supposed to help workers, but end up making employers reluctant to hire people. The story linked to above says that brothels are required to provide health care for their workers. For instance in France it is extremely hard to fire any employee (It can take months!) and the burden of proof is on the employer to show that an employee deserves to be fired. In the long run these policies end up hurting workers more than they help because there are fewer job openings, less businesses to employ people, and less wealth overall.

Posted by Pete at 10:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2005

Spiderman in India

The Weekly Standard has a good column by David Adesnik about a new Marvel project to make a comic book for Indians about Spiderman, with Peter Parker being replaced by Pavitr Prabhakar. There are other differences too such as the comic being set in India and Pavitr Prabhakar getting his powers by magic for the express purpose of fighting evil instead of by radiation through chance. Also his Uncle Ben is killed after bravely confronting thugs abusing a woman after Pavitr had not bothered to save the woman when he had the chance, instead of the original version where Uncle Ben's death was a passive coincidence after Parker does nothing.

Adesnik points out that most super heroes in American comic books are American and that may reduce their appeal in other countries, but I think he overstates this some. Most of the better comic books cover universal themes and there are many examples of heroes who are from other countries. While it is hard to see how Captain America would be popular in some other countries, there are fairly major titles like The Mighty Thor and X-Men where many characters were from other countries. The author points out again that Superman was an immigrant, but one of the reoccurring themes in many major comics that has appeal in other cultures is heroes that are orphans (Batman, Spiderman, Superman, etc.). There are other immigrant heroes as well notably the Silver Surfer (also from space) and in a way even Hellboy (who is from Hell) counts as an immigrant. In the end I think the setting of most comics being America matters more than the nationality of the characters.

Posted by Pete at 09:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 28, 2005

An Attack on the Cut Scene

Slate has an interesting article criticizing the growing use of cut scenes in video games. I agree with most of what the author is saying cut scenes are nice, but plot matters less and less as games become more open ended. For a movie you need a good plot, but games are a different genre.

Posted by Pete at 03:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 27, 2005

Ball Four and CNN

I am about halfway through Ball Four and I now understand why establishment people did not like it at the time. It portrays the average major league baseball player in 1969 as a pill-popping, boozing, womanizng, non-autograph signing peeping tom and that the average owner would lie to and mistreat players. Bouton also insulted pretty much all of his current and former bosses. Assuming what he wrote is true, then I can't blame his coworkers for feeling betrayed by him. That does not mean he should not have written it as it was a book that should have been written because it contained important truths, but I can understand why they would be mad. He broke a form of trust even though a lot of the things previously kept quiet were illegal and/or immoral. For instance the fans deserve to know that that many players were using stimulants and that some players were not signing their own autographs.

What I can't understand is why he was the first person to write about all these things when they had been going on for years and hundreds of people including many journalists knew about it. I think it is like what happened with CNN and Iraq (see here, here, and here). CNN did not report atrocities CNN knew were occuring in Iraq in order to get its reporters permission from the Iraqi government to stay there. Any reporter who went public with what happened in baseball (and maybe this is still true for baseball and other institutions) could lose his access to players and teams and maybe even lose his job. The truth should still come first and it is why I can never again trust CNN when it is reporting out of a dictatorship.

Posted by Pete at 07:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

FBI Investigates Milwaukee Elections

Found this story through Powerline: "Citing a Journal Sentinel review that found more than 1,200 votes cast from invalid addresses in Milwaukee, local and federal law enforcement officials launched a joint investigation Wednesday into potential voter fraud in the Nov. 2 election."

Also in the article:

"The number of people listed on the city's voter rolls as having voted in the Nov. 2 election is about 8,300 fewer than the number of ballots cast. This appears to be because the city was unable to process thousands of same-day registration cards because they contained illegible or missing information, such as a signature or date of birth. Milwaukee officials are unsure exactly how many cards have not been processed, and the number could be as high as 10,000. A Journal Sentinel computer analysis of voting records uncovered more than 1,200 ballots cast from invalid addresses in the city. At least 186 of those ballots were cast from addresses that were among those challenged as non-existent by the state Republican Party days before the election."

Remember that Kerry only won Wisonson by 11,384 votes. Previous Wisconson post.

Posted by Pete at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 26, 2005

More East St. Louis Voting Fraud

Here are some more examples of East St. Louis voting fraud from Gateway Pundit. Half of the 44 Democratic precinct committeemen in East St. Louis have at least three people with different last names claiming the committemen's homes as residences. In one of these cases "30 registered voters, most with different last names, are purported to live at 1232 Cleveland Ave. in East St. Louis. The address is registered to Oliver Hamilton, a Democrat and 20th precinct committeeman." Also some of the addresses claimed as residences by voters are illigitimate with one case where someone used a riverboar casino as their address.

These are my favorite two quotes from the post:
"I don't have any concerns about voter fraud in East St. Louis," said Charlie Powell, East St. Louis Democratic Committee chairman and 9th precinct committeeman. "The Republicans are raising all this fuss to stymie the black voter in the black communities."

"At Powell's home, 1714 Bond Ave., 17 voters are registered. Of those, 14 cast ballots in the March primary election."

Posted by Pete at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 25, 2005

Updated List of Voting Reforms

A few months ago I did this list of voting reforms and I think it is time for an update. So here is the revised list:

1. Make sure the person voting is allowed to vote (non-felon where relevant, citizen, at least 18, not dead or a cat, etc.) and only allow them to vote once per election. To do this you need to eliminate practices like same day registration, make sure all states coordinate their voting registrations so that people are not registered to vote in more than one state, and require a state issued photo ID to vote. Related to this, make sure that the addresses people use to register are real residential addresses (not PO boxes, non-existent addresses, vacant lots, baseball parks, etc.) and if possible determine if they live there. The state ID address needs to match the address they use register to vote. Update 1/26/05: Also have voters marked with indelible UV ink so that they can't vote multiple times in one election.

2. Have non-partisan third party observers/inspectors. These people will have the tricky job of making sure there is no intimidation and that there are no symbols of any candidate or any other form of campaigning near the poling place. Who will these people be? Maybe people from big accounting firms or some other relatively neutral place.

3. Make sure the number of voters matches the number of ballots. Allow for a very small margin of error, but if the election could be decided by the amount of missing votes or voters, then the election should not be certified.

4. Have a paper trail. When electronic voting is used the machine should spit out a paper receipt like an ATM spits out that then goes into a sealed box. This allows for manual recounts when needed and lowers the incidents of conspiracy theories when one side loses.

5. For really important elections (like president) have a sheet of paper with big print for the name of the candidates with big boxes right next to each name. Then give everyone voting a pencil. (note this last reform is a fantasy and will never happen).

Posted by Pete at 03:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More Wisconson Fraud

Captain's Quarters reports that there were 1,242 votes in Milwaukee that came from invalid addresses. The number of invalid address voters was four percent of the total vote in Milwaukee. 75% of these bad addresses came from same day registrations and same day registrations made up almost a third of the vote in Milwaukee. We have got to get rid of same day registration. It is a huge invitation to fraud and it looks like many people are accepting that invitation in places like Milwaukee and Minnesotta.

Previous Wisconson Fraud post.

Posted by Pete at 02:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard is one of the few philosophers out there who still really interests me. I have read more about what other people think of him than I have of what he actually wrote. I have never actually finished any of his works and I can not think of any other major philosopher where that is true and I have even read complete works by dense writers like Hegel and Kant. I started reading Either/Or a few years ago, but did not get his obsession with Mozart and Don Giovanni. I even watched Don Giovanni one night to try to see why he was making such a big deal out of it. I put Either/Or down and moved on to other books. I seem to agree with Kierkegaard in general although I need to read a lot more of him to make up my mind. I think I agree with his views on choice and his description of what it means to be a Christian in the modern world seems true as well, specifically being born into Christedom is not enough. Would that make Kierkegaard a born again Christian in today's world? I bring Kierkegaard up because I recently finished listening to a short tape series on him in the Giants of Philosophy series that was narrated by none other than Charlton Heston. As soon as I finish with Ball Four I think I may start on Either/Or again.

Posted by Pete at 10:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Do You Think Elections Matter?

Some liberals do understand how the general public views wacked out leftists. For instance most Americans like democracy and think elections matter. Here is Tom Frank from the New Republic (you have to register to read it):

"To begin with, there were the posters on the wall: MONEY FOR JOBS AND EDUCATION, NOT FOR WAR AND OCCUPATION. Let’s leave aside that the meter is somehow dissatisfying (nine syllables followed by eight—no flow at all). The main point is, if the shallowness of this statement bothers you, to what party do you look for comfort? To the Democrats, many of whom condemn building firehouses in Baghdad and closing firehouses at home? Or do you say to yourself, in that moment, “I don’t much care for Newt Gingrich—nor does anyone else—but I bet he hates that goddamn poster as much as I do”? I know where I was leaning.

Then there was the pooh-poohing of elections—any elections. Former soldier Stan Goff (supposedly of the Delta Force, Rangers, and Special Forces) spoke at length about the evils of capitalism and declared, “We ain’t never resolved nothing through an election.” This drew loud, sustained applause. Nothing to get worked up about, I thought; just a leftist speaker spouting lunacy. But today it seemed particularly bad. It wasn’t just that I was missing what might be lovely canapés (or perhaps spring rolls being brought about on trays with delectable dipping sauce); rather, it was the thought that the speaker was dismissing something that Afghanis of all ages had recently risked their lives to participate in, something Iraq’s insurgents view as so transformative that they are murdering scores of Iraqis to prevent it. No, what I needed to counter this speaker was not a Democrat like me who might argue that elections were, in fact, important. What I needed was a Republican like Arnold who would walk up to him and punch him in the face."

Posted by Pete at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 24, 2005

Climate of Fear Update

Back on November 12 of last year I wrote this post about how several Democrats were suspected of slashing the tires of Republican get out the vote vehicles in Wisconson. Here is the update: 'Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann filed felony charges against five Democrat Party employees who slashed tires on 25 vehicles rented by RPW for get out the vote activities in last Novembers elections. Those charged include the sons of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore and former Milwaukee Mayor Marvin Pratt.'

Also according the charges filed they also had plans to vandalize the Republican headquarters in Milwaukee. Wisconson has had other troubling voter fraud incidents as well with there being far more votes then eligible voters. No word yet on whether Barbara Boxer cried about this.

Update to this update: It just gets more intereesting. The Washington Post reports: 'Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Seth Boffeli said the five were paid employees of the presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) but were not acting on behalf of the campaign or party.'

Posted by Pete at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sam Cooke

Hindrocket at powerline has a good biography post celebrating the birth of Sam Cooke of Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers. Hindrocket writes: 'Sam Cooke was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on January 22, 1931, grew up a son of the church in Chicago, and died a violent death under unsavory circumstances in Los Angeles on December 11, 1964. In the beginning, writes Cooke biographer Joe McEwen, Cooke was black America's favorite gospel singer. At age 19 Cooke replaced the lead singer -- his idol R.H. Harris -- in the popular and aptly named harmony gospel group, the Soul Stirrers. (In the photo of the group below, Cooke is at the bottom center.)

The Stirrers had long since established themselves as pioneers of the new gospel sound, forged on contemporary compositions and strong lead singing alternating with a second lead. Harris had introduced the technique of singing slightly behind the time and ad libbing to the theme, producing an effect "enough askew to create irresistible syncopations," according to gospel historian Anthony Heilbut.'

There were a lot of really good gospel groups and music of the Sam Cooke era that have now practically disappeared. My personal favorites can be found in the 2 cd set There Will Be No Sweeter Sound: Columbia-Okeh Post-War Gospel Story '47-'62. This has tracks by groups like Bill Landford & The Landfordaires, the Deep South Boys, The Sons of Glory, and Sister Myrtle Fields. This music is a lot different and a lot better than anything you will here today in either popular contemporary Christian or secular music.

Posted by Pete at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Jack Kemp is a Shill for Tyranny

It is funny how quickly people can ruin their reputations. Jack Kemp used to be admired by a lot of people and I even voted for him for Vice President back in 1996. Back then I thought if something happened to Dole, Kemp could be a fine president. A few months ago if Bush had nominated Kemp to a cabinet post I would have thought it was a good idea. Now it looks like Kemp has sold out to tyranny and I hope he never again gets a position of authority in government. First he got tied up in the UN oil for food scandal when he tried to get the sanctions on Iraq lifted late in the Clinton administration and early in the Bush administration (both administrations turned down his suggestion) and now he is a shill for the tyrant Chavez in Venezuela who has made criticism of himself a crime, has taken control of the media, and has political opponents locked up or killed. I am not the only one who no longer likes Kemp because of this. Preston over at Junkyardblog feels the same way.

Posted by Pete at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

East St. Louis Voting Fraud

Some scary voting fraud in East St. Louis. (via powerline) This is not just stealing elections, it is stealing elections and plotting to dispose of people who catch you doing it. In this case the FBI raided the office of Kelvin Ellis, a Democratic precinct committeeman, and took boxes of files, his briefcase, and his hard drive in investigating an election fraud case against Ellis. After this happened Ellis conspired to plant cocaine on the witness who had tipped off the FBI and then decided to hatch a plan to have her murdered. The thing that most surprised me in this story is that Ellis has pleaded guilty to extortion while he was serving in another elected office and was sentenced to 21 months in prison several years ago. Yet the Democrats still made him a precinct committeeman. No word yet on if this incident made Barbara Boxer cry.

Posted by Pete at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 22, 2005

Watch Out For Social Security

Social Security reform is one of the most controversial issues facing our nation today. People are living longer and a system that was designed to only support a very small portion of society is now expected to support close to a quarter of our society. Frank J has a long and informative post on some of the most important facts about social security and recomendations on what to do with social security in the future that should help inform the debate. My personal favorite is "If you think Social Security is sneaking up behind you, quickly turn around and empty your gun in its direction and then throw your gun at it. It's going to steal all your money!"

Posted by Pete at 08:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 21, 2005

Cartels

I really do not like government sponsored cartels. I can understand the need for licensing and regulation in some industries, but the licensing requirements and regulations need to be reasonable and actually deal with the items or services being sold and should allow for as much consumer freedom as possible. I used to have a license to sell securities, which are complex to understand and there is a history of fraud associated with selling them so I thought my license (which included a rather hard test and criminal background check) was reasonable. For other jobs like professional engineers and doctors it makes sense to have some reasonable license requirements. Mostly you here about cartel horror stories from conservatives, which is surprising since cartels tend to hurt constituencies liberals claim to care about, primarily consumers and the poor. They also tend to hurt small entrepreneurs and are often an abusive use of government power, which is why conservatives and libertarians tend to dislike them.

The first example from National Review is one that people have been fighting about for years: coffin cartels. A coffin is a fancy box that takes no training to use or sell and can not hurt people because its occupant is already dead.. Funeral directors have a history of overcharging consumers for caskets and with the help of some state governments charged casket handling fees on consumers who tried to buy cheaper caskets from third parties. The funeral industry had virtually eliminated competition until the Federal Trade Commission ruled these fees illegal in the late 1980's. In states like Oklahoma however, you still must have a funeral director license to sell caskets and the license requires you to go through several years of extensive training that has nothing to do with caskets. Eugene Volokh has more information on the casket cartels here.

The second example is from Dangerous Dan who points out that the state of Florida created the Florida Tomato Committee to decide what is and what is not a tomato. This means that some breeds like the uglyripe, which is ugly but supposedly tastes really good, can not be sold in Florida, while other tomatoes that look good, but taste worse than the uglyripe, are allowed to be sold. The tomato cartel gets to decide what we get to buy, even if there is another version that we might like better. This benefits the big tomato growers in the short turn, but eliminates innovation and hurts small businesses and consumers.

Posted by Pete at 03:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 20, 2005

Climate of Fear Part 13

Thankfully I have not had to do any climate of fear posts recently. However with today's inauguration you could bet that the crazy lefties were not going to take losing peacefully. So here are a few examples of leftists using violence today to assault those they dislike or who disagree with them.

People in Seattle protest Bush's inauguration by assaulting members of the U.S. military and destroying government property. Here is a picture.

Near the inauguration itself several peace protesters assaulted members of the pro-American ProtestWarrior group for expressing a contrary opinion in support of Bush. The Washington Post reports: '"Your purpose is to instigate people. You're going to have to leave!" shouted the "marshal," DAWN's term for their ad hoc security force. "We're staying here," Kobrin replied. Then he went down under a hail of black boots. Once the marshals pulled the anarchists away, ProtestWarrior sued for peace and made for the exit. Their chant of "Four more years!" was answered by the anarchists' reply: "Wah wah wah!" It wasn't much of a contest. ProtestWarrior's contingent numbered 13, the other side in the hundreds. If they won any hearts and minds, no one said so. "I expected it, but I didn't expect to be kicked in the back," Kobrin said later.'

And here is a picture of Dick Cheney's limo after someone assaulted it today.

Posted by Pete at 08:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ball Four

I started reading Ball Four by Jim Bouton last night and was impressed by the relevance of something written in the introduction. The media has not changed much over the past few decades. When Bouton published this book in 1970 it outraged the press because he told truths about baseball that the press did not think we the public needed to know. Today the mainstream media is mad about the rise of institutions like talk radio, Fox News, and the blogosphere that allow people to publish truths that the mainstream media do not want us to know.

Here is relevant excerpt quoting David Halberstam on page ix of Ball Four: "As the book is deeply in the American vein, so is the reaction against it. The sportswriters are not judging the accuracy of the book, but Bouton's right to tell (that is, your right to read), which is, again, as American as apple pie or the White House press corps. A reporter covers an institution, becomes associated with it, protective of it, and, most important, the arbiter of what is right to tell. He knows what's good for you to hear, what should remain at the press club bar. When someone goes beyond that, stakes out a new dimension of what is proper and significant, then it is the sportswriters and the Washington bureau chiefs who yell the loudest, because having played the game, having been tamed, when someone outflanks them, they must of necessity attack his intentions, his accuracy. Thus Bouton has become a social leper to many sportswriters and thus Sy Hersh, when he broke the My Lai story, became a 'peddler' to some of Washington's most famous journalists."

Thus when someone points out that Dan Rather is using fraudulent documents, the important thing isn't that Dan Rather misled the public, but that people who do not work for CBS or CNN or the New York Times do not have the right to question or to publish truth. They are to be dismissed as right wing partisans or guys in pajamas no matter how accurate their criticism.

Posted by Pete at 01:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Hypocisy Thy Name is Moore

If you recall Micahel Moore made the movie Bowling For Columbine about how Americans were unreasonably fearful of crime and that we did not need so many guns. It turns out Moore's bodygaurd illegally carries a concealed gun. Fox News reports "Filmmaker Michael Moore's bodyguard was arrested for carrying an unlicensed weapon in New York's JFK airport Wednesday night." He may be charged with a felony.

As others have pointed out, this is very reminicent of gun control advocate Rosie O'Donnell who has long argued that law abiding citizens should not be allowed to have guns without the government's permission, but who thinks different rules should apply to her bodygaurds.

Update: It appears that this was a former Moore bodygaurd that was arrested. It is still true that Moore uses armed bodygaurds.

Posted by Pete at 09:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 19, 2005

More Washington Fraud

Stefan Sharkansky of sound politics has a good column today in the Seattle Times about the fraud that happened in the Washington governor election and points out evidence of fraud I did not realize existed: There were several thousand more ballots than there were voters.

The basic story of the election is that the original count and the first several recounts showed that the Republican won the race. They did a final recount after discovering serveral thousand new ballots from pro-Gregoire King County that put Gregoire ahead by 129 votes. This put the total number of ballots counted at several thousand more than the total number of people who actually voted. Many of the votes also included, "double voters, felon voters, cemetery voters and unidentified voters".

Sharansky also includes his sample list of reforms: "requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration; requiring every voter to show both a photo ID and a pulse; and requiring that an election can be certified only if the number of votes equals the number of voters." I agree with reqiring a photo ID and a pulse. I agree in theory about the proof of citizenship, but without having a national ID card this may be asking too much. Pretty much everyone eligible to vote has a drivers license or state picture ID card, but many people do not have a passport or other readily available proof of citizenship.

His final recommendation of only certifying an election if the number of voters equals the number of ballots is one that I will add to my list of voting reforms everyone who wants honest elections should support. I may allow for a small margin of error in this category if it does not effect the result of the election. For instance in an election with 1,000,000 voters and 1,000,010 ballots where the winner has over 200,000 more votes, then the extra 10 ballots would fall within the allowable margin of error. In the case of Washington the 129 vote margin of victory with 2,000 extra ballots would not fall within the margin of error and would not be certified.

Posted by Pete at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 18, 2005

Magical Legalism

The Volokh Conspiracy is soliciting suggestions of works that fall into the genre of magical legalism:

"stories about law or lawyers that are basically set in the real world but with some magical or fantastic twist"

I suggested the episode of the Simpsons with The Devil and Homer Simpson where Homer goes on trial after selling his soul to the devil for a donut. The jury of the damned rules in favor of Homer after they learn he first gave his soul to Marge when they married, thus the soul is the legal property of Marge. I also suggested the Harry Potter books because several people in the books including Potter are put on trial for various magical offenses.

Posted by Pete at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2005

Wisconsin Vote Fraud

It looks like Bush may have won Wisconsin if Wisonsin voting officials had only counted legitimate votes. Here is the key passage from a long post at Boots & Sabres:

All told, it looks like there were a minimum of 36,000 votes cast in the City of Milwaukee for which no voter can be produced.

The election in Wisconsin was decided by 11,384 votes.

In the City of Milwaukee, there were 198, 907 votes cast for Kerry/Edwards and 75,746 votes cast for Bush/Cheney. As you can see, the City of Milwaukee came out strong for Kerry/Edwards.

You can do the math, but if these numbers are accurate, then Bush probably won Wisconsin if you only count the votes that were honestly cast. No word yet on whether Senator Boxer cried or not when she heard the news. Of course eliminating same day registration and requiring a valid form of picture ID would have eliminated most of this fraud.

Posted by Pete at 03:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How Are We Doing? Part 2

A couple fo days ago I wondered how are we doing in Iraq? Although no one know the real answer to that question it is important to get multiple sources of information. One interesting source is thie Arthur Chrenkoff piece in the Wall Street Journal that has a lot of information about good news from Iraq including information on fixing the damage that Saddam did to Iraq over the years and on the Iraqis looking forward to the upcoming elections.

Posted by Pete at 03:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dean At DNC

There is a fscinating post at TKS showing that the Democrats have not learned much over the past three years. Jim Geraghty has polling information that shows Howard "yarghhh!" Dean with a wide lead to become the next DNC chair, while moderates like the pro-life Tim Roemer are far behind him. In the case of Roemer many Democrats are specifically opposed to him.

I think the Democrats should have nominated Dean to be their presidential candidate instead of John what's his face. This is not because I think Dean would have won, but because the hard left believed in him and he would have lost by so much that it would beaten some sense into the Democrats left wing.

Posted by Pete at 03:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 15, 2005

How Are We Doing?

During the first few days of the Iraq war some reporters and news agencies started to wonder if we were in a quagmire because tbe army had to stop its advance towards Bagdad for a few hours so that its supply trucks could catch up with it. A few days later they had captured Bagadad in what was arguably the fastest and most one sided military assault in history. It was at that point I knew the media had screwed up its job and were not going to be a reliable source for what was happening.

I wish I could get an accurate portrayal of what was going in Iraq, but my only hope to do that is to read multiple sources and try to figure out which one is closest to the truth. In the psat few wars the only way to hear about this stuff was from the media unless you somehow had connections to the people there. Thankfully we have the internet now and that gives us primary sources like Iraq the Model and Blackfive that we did not have access to before. On Blackfive there is an essay by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan who is currently serving in Iraq who has several important details on battles like Faluja that you won't get to hear if all you do is watch CNN or read the New York Times.

Posted by Pete at 09:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 14, 2005

Conservative Students

There are several interesting articles about academic life today. The first of these is a long article from City Journal about the rise of conservatism among college students. These students often have to hide their beliefs in class to avoid being threatened by professors or to avoid getting bad grades. Some university administrators even encourage the burning of conservative student newspapers and use student fees to support liberal causes. In spite of these threats conservatism is still growing in the form of various religious, political, and intellectual student groups.

Even though I never got a bad grade because of my views there were times where the leftism in my recent graduate school was quite apparent. I was constantly lectured on the risks associated with the Patriot Act and the government search of library records. I repeatedly pointed out that no library records have ever been searched through the Patriot Act, but that the justice department under the Clinton administration had (rightly in my opinion) subpoenaed library patron records in the hunt for the unabomber before the Patriot Act was passed. This was new information that many of my classmates had trouble reconciling with an almost paranoid dislike of the Patriot Act. However, even accounting for the overemphasis on the Patriot Act in class I did not have to parrot your professor's politics to get a good grade at my universities. I even once saw the chair of my graduate studies department chew out some fellow students for improperly inserting politics (they were against Bush of course) into a class discussion that should have had nothing to do with politics.

Part of the problem arises from what professors and universities see their job as being. Is it a search for truth or a chance for indoctrination? Instead of asking us to investigate the history and examine the ethics of library searches we were often told to respond to the Patriot Act including in one case where I had to write a paper about what to do if our patrons were being investigated through the Patriot Act and how I should react. In contrast to this my undergraduate advisor had studied under Robert Nozick and seemed fairly libertarian in his views, but always assigned a wide variety of readings from Marx to Nietzsche to Nozick. In class he would often defend the minority position even if he did not agree with it, just so there would be a good debate and we would have to think harder. The problem with many of these city journal stories and with this story from a few days ago is that professors are telling their students what conclusion to come to before they have studied the issue, which is the opposite order that it should be in.

This brings us to the final link of this post, which is about a new PhD who thinks that Condoliza Rice should "loses the right to practice political science" because of her views. Eugene Volokh asks "I had thought that academics had a pretty standard response for dealing with people who promulgate ideas that academics think are unwise: It's called "criticism" via "persuasion." Why isn't that good enough for the good Doctor?"

Update: In related news Indian River Community College in Florida has basically shut down a Christian student group for attempting to show The Passion of the Christ. Administrators gave the original explanation for banning the movie was because the movie was rated R, but earlier in the year the college had allowed a play called F**king for Jesus that depicted actors performing simulated sex with a picture of Jesus. After the students complained about being censored the college imposed rules requiring faculty advisors to attend all student group meetings, which effectively shut down the group which had too many meetings for the advisor to attend all of them. The college has also demanded written apologies from the students who dared to complain that their first ammendment rights were being denied. Thankfully the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is on the case.

Posted by Pete at 09:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 13, 2005

Dead Formats

One interesting thing about art over time is how the use of formats changes over time. Some formats like plays seem to be fairly consistent. The style of plays change from Greek chorus to the more modern dialogs, but the format is still basically a bunch of people in costumes using predetermined scripts who pretend to be other people. Audio dramas are an interesting twist on this as they were non existent pre 20th century became extremely popular from the 1920's to the 1940's in the form of radio dramas and are now almost non-existent again. This was a thriving art form that because of technology changes died out rather quickly and is now almost forgotten even though people still listen to the radio all the time. Drama is often easier to create if you have a visual format and radio audiences generally would rather get their drama from tv or movies than from radio or cd because tv requires less work on their part.

I bring this all up because I recently listened to Alien Voices perform H.G. Wells The Invisible Man as a multi-voice dramatization. Alien Voices is a drama group composed of people who were at some point in their careers on one of the Star Trek shows. John de Lancie (who played Q on TNG) played the lead role, while Leonard Nimoy (who played Spock) played the cheating professor. I probably liked this performance (which included music and sound effects) more than I would a straight reading of the book, but even though it is easy to find audio books, new audio drama performances are still rare. This is unfortunate since audio drama is as good as other formats and many people might benefit from works done this way.

Posted by Pete at 03:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Voting Reform of the Day

According to the New York Daily News "Some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida". That means they get to vote twice if they want to and election officials do not bother to try to stop them. Why isn't Barbara Boxer crying about this? Maybe it is because 68% of these people are Democrats and only 12% are Republicans. It is unclear how many of these people vote in multiple elections, but it is clear that some do and this is a crime that goes unprosecuted.

When I was in college I lived in Texas for most of the year, but voted in California. I did not register to vote here in Texas until after I graduated and when I did register I recall the county voter registration office in California sending me a card making sure I was off their voting rolls now.

Powerline wonders why this is not a scandal and why we have more checks in place to make sure minors do not buy alcohol than we do to prevent massive voter fraud. At least buying alcohol requires a valid picture ID. Sound Politics has more as well and the Shark is doing a good job covering the rampant voter fraud that resulted in dead and non existent people electing the current governor.

Posted by Pete at 09:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 11, 2005

AP Courses

According this Washington Post story there is now a movement to get rid of the extra grade point assigned to Ap, IB and other advanced courses in high schools. Apparently around 30% of high schools do not have these courses and critics think the extra grade point is unfair to those kids who do have the chance to take the classes. My first reaction was horror that 30% of high schools do not have these courses. I took AP courses in high school for several reasons like the potential college credit and the higher grade point average. AP courses eventually led to me getting 30 hours of college credit and let me avoid classes in college that would have beeen a repeat of what I already had learned and the higher GPA probably helped me to get into some good colleges.

The other reason I took AP courses was that most of my non-AP courses were a joke. The teachers barely taught, I was bored and not learning, and most of my time was wasted in my non-AP classes. I focused on AP science and social studies courses and never took AP English. From my friends in AP English courses I learned they were constantly reading and writing and being challenged by their teacher to think and be creative. We watched videos a lot in my non-AP English courses and often I did not bother to read the assignments because I knew I could bs my way to an A. I still have never read The Scarlet Letter, but I got an A on the class test on it in the 11th grade and an A in the class. This compared to my AP history classes where I had at least half an hour of reading each night just to keep up and at least two essays to write each month. I did not always get A's in my AP classes, but unlike my most of my non-AP classes (where I always got A's) I always worked hard and learned a lot. I would not have been prepared for the college I went to (or any other serious college) had it not been for the AP classes. I suspect that other schools AP classes vary in similar ways with their non-AP classes and that a B in an AP class often represents much more learning and effort than an A in a non-AP class. Instead of not rewarding the students who currently take AP courses we should be encouraging more schools to give their students a chance to be challenged and more opportunities to learn.

Posted by Pete at 02:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Berger Going To Jail?

If you recall several months ago it was reported that Sandy Berger had illegally stolen and destroyed code word level secret documents that contained unique notes he had written while serving as the Clinton administration National Security Advisor. When this happened one of my friends who had recently worked for a defense contractor (and could not even tell me exactly what it was he did because it was secret) asked me if I thought Berger would go to jail. My friend was sure that if he had been caught doing anything like that with the information he had while working for the defense contractor he would be in jail right now and his information was not nearly as classified as what Berger stole. I responded to his question by saying that I thought Berger should go to prison, but that he probably would not. It looks like I may have been too cynical as the investigation has been proceeding without much publicity. There is now even a federal grand jury investigation and the FBI and prosecuters have interviewed Berger who admits to stealing the documents.

Posted by Pete at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 10, 2005

Geek Hierarchy

Sometimes I think I am a geek, but then I read posts like this and realize that I have a long way to go before I fully cross over into total geekdom.

According to this chart I am fairly high up on the geek hierarchy. I fall roughly in rank three along with anime fans who do not care about subtitles, video gamers, and Robert Heinlein fans, although I have had many friends who I know are several ranks lower than me.

Update: Madmarcos reminds me that there is another version of the chart where Phil is at the bottom.

Posted by Pete at 08:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

CBS Finally Fires Some People

CBS has now released its report (in PDF form) on how badly it screwed up the Bush National Guard story. The only real problem with the report at first glance is that it refuses to admit the documents were forgeries and that the report denies political bias played a role. It says things like "The telephone call prior to the Segment’s airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry - a clear conflict of interest - that created the appearance of a political bias." That is not only the appearance of political bias it is political bias. Besides that it appears the authors of the report took criticism of the story seriously, unlike the reporters and producers who first aired the report. They have gotten rid of four producers so far and forced Rather into an early retirement which is a good start and the rport authors are proposing other reforms of the CBS reporting process.

Posted by Pete at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 07, 2005

Crocodile Tears

In Washington state the governor's race went to the Democrat after a recount where several thousand extra ballots were miraculously found that happened t benefit the Democrat candidate. Of course the number of votes cast in some Democrat dominated precincts was higher than the total population of the precinct, but whatever. Today in the Seattle Post Intelligencer you have people admitting to committing vote fraud by voting for and signing their name in place of their dead spouses on absentee ballots. During the 2004 and previous elections Democrats in Minnesota went from poling place to poling place and registered and voted at each place. In Minnesota you do not have to have any proof you live in the precinct other than a witness who says you do. This same witness can act as a witness for multiple people and this year they had badges identifying them as such so strangers would know who could vouch for them at each precinct. Than there was the questionable election in 2002 during the South Dakota Senate race where Republican John Thune lost a very close race likely due to fraud that was even investigated by the F.B.I..

Senator Barbara Boxer did not cry over any of these cases and yesterday did not object to either Minnesota's or Washington's electoral votes being certified even though there is good evidence of widespread voting fraud in these states. Coincidentally John Kerry won both of these states electoral votes (except for one Minnesota vote which went to John Edwards). But Boxer did cry over Ohio getting its votes certified even though there are no serious allegations of fraud and Bush won Ohio by over a hundred thousand votes. The Democrats probably will not push hard for real voting reforms like this suggestion from Best of the Web:

Those who objected to the election result insisted they knew their effort would not succeed and their purpose was merely to urge Congress to reform the election system. Bring it on, says reader Dave Clark:

I hope the Republicans will respond to the grandstanding of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and the rest of the Congressional Black Caucus. This is a great opportunity to advance comprehensive election reforms that include some kind of uniform voter ID in every state. Election reforms could eliminate the huge advantage Democrats have in urban areas where there are more voters than the adult census population, like Philadelphia, Milwaukee and St. Louis. It could also track voters who use the absentee ballot provision to vote twice in different states. Could the Democrats win Pennsylvania if voting was cleaned up in Philadelphia?

My basic ideas on what serious voting reform would look like are here. I doubt Senator Boxer will introduce any legislation that comes anywhere near advocating these reforms. Unless she does introduce or at least vote for serious voting reform legislation it will show she is crying because her candidate lost not because she cares about legitimate elections.

Posted by Pete at 03:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 06, 2005

Academic Freedom

Ahmad Al-Qloushi is a Kuwaiti student at a college in California. During the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait he was a small child and several of his family members were tortured and one even died. He is very greatful for the United States for freeing him and his family. His Introduction to American Government and Politics professor assigned the class a paper on the constitution and he wrote a paper in praise of the constitution and the founding fathers. So of course his professor did what one would expect and threatened him with possible deportation if he did undergo regular psychiactric care. When the local media found out about this his professor filed a grievance against him with the school. Ahmed is now the President of Foothill’s College Republicans and is trying to form a chapter of Students for Academic Freedom.

Posted by Pete at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Schwartzenegger and Gerrymandering

Governor Schwarzenegger is advocating one of my pet reform issues: redistricting. He wants a panel of retired judges to draw up the congressional and state legislature districts in California to make the races more competetive. Iowa already uses a third party to do this.

The New York Times reports: Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, noted that of the 153 seats in the California Congressional delegation and Legislature that were on the ballot in November, not one changed party hands.

"What kind of a democracy is that?" he asked in his address.

Posted by Pete at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 05, 2005

Red Square

There was a small discussion this week in the corner about the tastefulness of Red Square restaurants. Jonathan Adler writes: I recently ate at the "Red Square" restaurant at the Tropicana in Atlantic City. The vodka selection is great, but the food was quite disappointing. Although the Russian themes were not drawn exclusively from the Soviet era, I found the communnist schtick a bit creepy. No doubt a German-themed restaurant would never pay equivalent homage to the 1930s and 1940s.

A corner reader responded: I actually approve of the Stalinist-chic decor -- not because I'm a closet Bolshie, but because using Bolshie iconography is a way of reminding oneself that the good guys won the Cold War. It's like using their dead as a trophy; Achilles dragging the corpse of Patroclus around Troy.

I went to the Red Square restaurant in Las Vegas with my wife on our honeymoon a few years ago and I agree with both of the above writers to some extent. I agree with Adler about the food and drink. Although the bar was very good (I had a Chernobyl to drink) the food was mixed, especially for the price you pay. I thought mine was fairly good, while my wife was not too impressed with her meal. I also agree with the second writer who said it was like Achilles dragging Patroclus around (although it was Hector he drug around, not Patroclus). What better way to insult the commies than to go a restaurant in a casino on the strip (if I recall correctly it is in Mandalay Bay) that is based around a commie theme, and then lay down fifty bucks for a meal before you go off to risk your money gambling or to see an extravagant overpriced show.

Lenin and Stalin would have hated all that Las Vegas stands for: the freedom to do whatever you want with your money no matter how selfish or risky or stupid. And I am sure the restaurant makes a big profit exploiting these commie themes which is like having Achilles go for an extra victory lap around the walls of Troy.

Posted by Pete at 04:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Home Schooling and School Violence

There is a long post on home schooling and reporting child abuse over at junkyardblog. The article he critiques goes over the potential problem of isolated home school kids not having people report abuse. From speaking with the public school teachers I know, they do occasionally report abuse to authorities, usually in the form of neglect. Whether this actually helps the situation much is debatable since these families are often reported multiple times by different teachers in the same school or by the same teachers as different siblings come through the class and the case workers do little or nothing to help. Even reporting a case can be difficult as it can take over half an hour to do so and a teacher can not easily step out of the class for half on hour very easily.

The other issue the article ignores is the endemic violence in public schools. Homeschooling might prevent some abuse from being reported, but sending your child to a public school knowingly exposes your child to a potentially violent environment. I attended five different public schools in my life and there was bullying and violence in each. Elementary school was not that bad compared to my high school which had one shooting and a couple of small race riots, but it was not uncommon for fights to start even in elecmentary school. The worse part about it was that it was usually the same kids staring the fights each time. Maybe they would get suspended or detention, but a few weeks later they would have started another fight. I did not get into fights very often and generally avoided most of the bullying. The only fight I got into in high school was my P.E. class in 10th grade with a guy who had been picking fights with other people in the class all semester. These people had tried to ignore him, but when he pushed me and said he was going to kill me, I pushed back. We only fought for a few seconds and the teacher saw that he had clearly started it. So he sat out P.E. for the rest of day and was back again the next day to threaten me and the rest of the students in the class. If my experience was an isolated incident than that would not be a big deal, but it is not. This seems to be the standard practice at many public schools with the kids who threaten other students and start fights getting minor punishments while the rest of the students who want to live in peace have to watch their backs in the locker room and walking down the hall.

There is either an unwillingness or an inability in many administrators to expel the kids who cause most of these problems. A public high school teacher I know told me a story about one of her worst students a few years ago. This student was physically larger than she was and she had tried to send him to the administrators for punishment after he had disrupted her class. He was always sent right back to her. She eventually allowed this student to sleep through her class each day as this made him happy, did not distract the other students, and kept everyone out of physical danger. Partly because of situations like this she no longer teaches. The administration failed in its duty to maintain security and order in the school. Expulsion is an underused tool by many administrators in situations like this. If a child is a physical danger to the other children (or to teachers) in the school they need to be removed. I would say the same is true for the kids who are constantly causing disruptions in the classroom (often they are the violent kids), but the violent ones need to be removed first.

Posted by Pete at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 04, 2005

Stupid Team Names

The Angels have followed the lead of Washington to come up with a stupid team name. First the Montreal Expos (an ok regional name) became the Washington Nationals (a very boring name). Now the Anaheim Angels (formerly known as the California Angels) have become The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. First of all the assonance does not work. To many words that start with A. If you are going to make your team name too long you should make it way too long. They should have gone for broke and gone full circle and called them The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim California.

I wonder in these cases how the decision on a name is made. Is it a committee that comes up with the name so that a poor compromise is reached that no one likes but is a solution so everyone can go home for the day? Is it a boss who thinks this is a great idea and no one has the guts to tell him how dumb it sounds? Does the boss know it sounds dumb, but does not care? Does he figure that people will buy the new jerseys and hats and that the profit from sales will more than make up for a dumb name? So far the Angel's owner has seemed to care a lot about winning and maybe he figures he can use the profit to pick up a couple more good players. That is what I am telling myself anyways.

Posted by Pete at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 03, 2005

Cats Vs. Dogs

One of the great questions of our time is whether cats or dogs are better. Although I have had both cats and dogs and have neither now I greatly prefer dogs. How they are better than each other depends on whether one means they make better pets, are more useful, or if they are morally better. I suspect that cats make better pets, but that dogs are more useful and, if animals can be measured morally, dogs are superior. Dogs tend to avoid evil activities like this for instance and must be trained to do so, while cats freely and eagerly participate.

Posted by Pete at 09:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 01, 2005

Moneyball Part II

I was thinking about the calculations of the value of on base percentages the other day and I think I discovered a slight flaw in the measurement of the value of on base percentage. In Moneyball and many other theories of valuing baseball statistics a walk is considered equal to a single. They both get the batter to first base. But in many cases that is not all they do. If there is a runner on base a hit often advances them farther than a walk. In some cases (when there is no one on first and men on second and/or third or when there is a man on third but no one on second) a walk will not advance these runners at all. In these same cases a hit will most often advance these runners. The other benefit of a hit is that it will sometimes advance a runner more than one base, while a walk at most advances a base runner one base.

How does one measure this? I am not aware of any statistic that measures a hitters ability to advance runners. RBI kind of measures it, but a hit can still be beneficial that moves a runner from first to third and this is not an RBI. The biggest problem is that walks are only determined by the batter and pitcher, while base advancement is determined by hit placement, runner speed, and fielding. However it is determined the runner advancement statistic would need to be figured in somehow along with on base percentage and slugging percentage to get the true worth of a batter.

Posted by Pete at 02:38 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Paper Trail

Stories like this make the need for paper trails for electronic voting seem obvious. North Carolina is having a do over for the election of state agriculture commissioner because some electronic voting machines lost votes in a very close election. Here are some reforms I suggested a while ago.

Posted by Pete at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack