January 26, 2005

Dr. Robert Gates, President
Office of the President
Texas A&M University
1126 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-1126

Dear Dr. Gates,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is a nonprofit organization with more than 800,000 members and supporters dedicated to animal protection worldwide. It has come to our attention that the Texas A&M Class Council will be hosting its annual "Elephant Walk" on January 28, which includes live elephants for photo opportunities. In the interests of public safety and animal welfare, we ask that you abandon the use of elephants at this event.

Elephants who are forced to perform are trained to do so through domination and painful techniques. Please visit our Web site Circuses.com to view footage of behind-the-scenes elephant training that shows how trainers beat elephants with sharp metal bullhooks and shock them with electric prods. We hope you agree that this systematic abuse of elephants is unacceptable and must be stopped.

Elephants are wild animals, and their use in a public forum poses a significant danger. It is well known that stressed elephants rampage, and when they do, they are nearly impossible to stop without lethal force. Since 1990, rampages by captive elephants have resulted in 65 human deaths and more than 130 human injuries.

While upholding traditions is an important way to boost school spirit, the cruel and dangerous use of animals to support these traditions should be history. PETA would be happy to donate elephant costumes for this year’s "Elephant Walk."

I look forward to hearing from you on this matter. Please feel free to call me directly at 757-622-7382.

Sincerely,

Nicole Meyer, Elephant Specialist
Captive Exotic Animals Department

Someone has pulled a fast one on PETA, I guess. Texas A&M's annual Elephant Walk involves no actual elephants. It is a tradition event where Seniors who are about to graduate wander the campus "like old elephants about to die." Keep sending in those contributions Petaphiles, they are doing good work!

UPDATE: This one will slip down the memory hole pretty soon, so click here for a PDF capture of PETA's page as originally posted.

MEA CULPA: Too hasty on my part. Upon re-reading the letter it refers to using live elephants for photo ops and is clear that PETA desn't think that the participating Seniors are, in fact, live elephants. My bad. Sorry, we don't have Editors here in the blogosphere, but the time elapsed from original post to this correction is roughly 2 hours. Lunch included. Which is something they don't have outside of the blogosphere. Much.

More on the proposed Hotel/Motel Occupancy tax: Why just Hotels and Motels? Don't restaurants benefit from the Horse Shoe also? Why should they not pay their fair share? Upon checkout, the bill payer could be asked to provide a driver's license to show that he/she is from Midland to avoid the extra tax on the meal. That way we could be sure to soak only out of towners.

Truly, add up all of the extra money that local hoteliers will have to fork over to the county. Another 3 percent per room per night. For all rooms occupied. Do you really think that the marginal benefit brought by the Horse Shoe complex offsets that?

And don't even bring the "the hotel doesn't have to pay that, it is passed through to the customer" argument. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

What expense in any business is not passed through to the customer? A extra surcharge on your product is no different from an increase in the electric bill or any other cost of doing business in Midland. And if the extra three percent tacked on by the county is meaningless then why don't these hotel owners just go ahead a charge it now and KEEP the extra profit?

I feel for the new owners of the Midland Hilton who have sunk so much of their own money into really improving that hotel....only to see the County come knocking for even more.

I wish the archives at mywesttexas.com went back further because I don't remember this as discussed as one of the financing sources for the Midland Horse Shoe....a project so important to the future of Midland that its fate could not be risked by submitting it to an actual referendum.

It won't stop here. It won't even rest long. Keep in mind that still out there is the feasibility study on the expansion of the Midland Center. Any takers that the report will not come back showing that "Surprise! It's feasible!"?

I hope that when the time comes for the city fathers to read this report that they will do their best to visualize what the report would actually say if the consulting firm was required to make up to the city, say, 25% of any shortfall on their estimates of increased income. (To be fair, the firm could also have 25% of any revenues over their projections....but it wouldn't change anything.)

From Powerline:

"After decades of tyranny, Iraqi expatriates have already begun to elect leaders to draft a new constitution. In the photo below, seventy-year-old exile Mehsin Imgoter weeps after casting his vote at a polling place in Southgate, Michigan. Imgoter explained to a reporter that he was crying because his son, who was killed during the 1990-91 Shiite uprising, was not able to vote with him."

• "Because the county hotel tax would be covered by guests and visitors coming to Midland, it poses no burden to the taxpayers."
• "By using the hotel occupancy tax, we can fund those operations though visitor dollars instead of property tax owners carrying that burden."
• "Because the tax would not burden property owners, Precinct 4 Commissioner Randy Prude called the county hotel occupancy tax "a win-win situation."
• "Prude said he and County Auditor Julie Marks also discussed a cell phone/telephone tax as a potential revenue source. A sticking point, he said, was taxpayers would bear the burden."

Even better: Fiscal Conservative by word but spendthrift enabler by deed State Senator Kel Seliger will sponsor this latest attempt to make the case that a tax increase hurts nothing as long as the guy on the other side of the county line pays it.

So now we have (here we go again) "leveled the playing field". But did we?

What about the competetive advantage that the ability to charge a lower room rate (or make a higher profit at the same rate) afforded local hoteliers? And if we are trying to get people to come to visit Midland, is making it ever more expensive to do so a smart thing? A lower cost of visitation is probably one of our biggest selling points, our constant claims to be "The Gateway To (fill-in-the-blank with your favorite attraction on this end of the state that isn't really that close to Midland)" notwithstanding.

To help pay for the will-pay-for-itself Midland Horseshoe the Commissioner's Court took the easy way out. They identified a tax where a fair amount of money could be extracted from two very attractive groups: 1) Local hotel owners that represent a small number of local voters, and 2) Out of towners who represent no local votes.

So it isn't even a tax, really. It is more like, say, a Sleeping Fee!

UPDATE: Sleepless in Midland is also posting on this subject.

UPDATE: Eric at Fire Ant Gazette disagrees. To be truthful, I had never even considered thinking of the overall tax burden as many, many, small (and therefore meaningless) little burdens. I kept adding them all up. He also adds:

"I'm well aware of the theoretical arguments concerning the impact of additional taxes on the demand for goods and services. But theory doesn't always predict actual behavior, which is why we'll always have way too many economists."

From Protein Wisdom:

"T. Bubba Bechtol, part-time City Councilman from Midland, TX, was asked on a local live radio talk show the other day just what he thought of the allegations of torture of the Iraqi prisoners.

His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience. His reply: 'If hooking up an Iraqi prisoner’s scrotum to a car’s battery cables will save one American GI’s life, then I have just two things to say:

Red is positive.

Black is negative.'"

From Gateway Pundit on voter fraud in East St. Louis:

"• A total of 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. Eleven of the voters requested absentee ballots for the election Tuesday. Hamilton couldn't be reached for comment.

• Of the 44 Democratic precinct committeemen in East St. Louis, 22 have at least three registered voters with different last names purporting to live at the committeemen's homes. Seven of those committeemen have five or more.

• One woman listed the Casino Queen, 200 S. Front St., as her home address. The same woman requested her absentee ballot be sent to a St. Louis address.

• At least 678 voters are registered for both East St. Louis and St. Clair County.

• At [East St. Louis Democratic Committee Chairman Charlie] Powell's home, 1714 Bond Ave., 17 voters are registered. Of those, 14 cast ballots in the March primary election.

"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."

From Yahoo News:

"Rush Limbaugh received a great birthday gift today from his New York City listeners -- Arbitron, the official monitoring service of broadcast radio, reports that listening Adults 18-49 years old grew more than 50 percent over the last year. As the ratings roll out nationally from city to city, New York's WABC-AM numbers are out first, demonstrating the following overall gains for The Rush Limbaugh Show: Adults 18-34 are up 25 percent, Persons 12+ are up 35 percent, and Adults 25-54 are up 47 percent. (source: Arbitron MSA, Fall '03 to Fall '04)"

"AIR AMERICA' RATINGS TURBULENCE IN NY CITY: Surprising many observers who expected it to shine during election season, all-liberal upstart WLIB (1190 AM) -- base station for Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo -- actually headed south, shedding 15% of its summer audience to finish fall at 24th place in just-released ARBITRONS..."

From iowahawk:

"Think you have Free Speech in this country? Well, think again. When the ESU Caravan for Global Sanity arrived in Washington, the DC pigs confiscated our Cheney effigy head, calling it "a security problem," and then told Professor Harmon we couldn't wear ski masks and march next to the Marine band. Then, on the bus ride back to campus, Busdriver McHitler made Jared turn down Radiohead on his boombox. Finally, when we got back to ESU, we found out the deposit on the cancelled buses was non-refundable, so we had to dip into $900 of our mandatory student fee budget. What next, man? Gas showers?"

From Ace of Spades HQ: A hint of where these assaults on personal liberties are headed:

Four employees of a health care company have been fired for refusing to take a test to determine whether they smoke cigarettes.

Weyco Inc., a health benefits administrator based in Okemos, Mich., adopted a policy Jan. 1 that allows employees to be fired if they smoke, even if the smoking happens after business hours or at home.

Company founder Howard Weyers has said the anti-smoking rule was designed to shield the firm from high health care costs. 'I don't want to pay for the results of smoking,' he said.

The rule led one employee to quit before the policy was adopted. Four others were fired when they balked at the smoking test."

"They're firing people for what they do in their own homes? I assume the ACLU is speeding to the scene as I write. Oh, that's right, it's because 'Howard' wants to shield his company from high health care costs.

Well, I guess that's it for Bob in accounting, who likes to make his own 'Super-Mac Smackdown' sandwich by stuffing a Quarter Pounder between two Big Macs.

Or Rita the receptionist, who says that every night is 'partay night', and could drink Otis (Hello? The guy from Mayberry) under the table.

Maybe 'Howard' likes to have a drink or two (or three, or four) with his steak (rare), so even though his liver and colon could end up emptying the company coffers, he doesn't mind certain personal habits [emphasis mine] that can drive up health care costs. Hey, sounds fair to me."

But it sounds all too familiar.

Via Michele Malkin:

"Jordan Zane Trimarchi was born last Tuesday with a 3.5 centimeter tumor in his lower left ventricle. Surgeons at Columbia Presbyterian Children's Hospital in New York City were able to remove some of the tumor, but not all of it. At this point, Jordan's only chance is a heart transplant--but that won't happen unless a suitable donor is found.

Jordan's father, Jeff Trimarchi, a regular reader of this blog, is asking the blogosphere to help get the word out. Jeff's e-mail address is jeff.trimarchi@verizon.net. More details are available at www.jordanzane.com."

But that is not all! Since I Tivo'ed the premiere of the new CBS series Numb3rs I was able to play back, freeze frame, and....well...okay...steal the formula that the guy used to find the "hotspot" (Yellow Area) where the perp likely (96% probability) lived based on the locations and distribution of his attacks.

I thought, hey, let us see if based on voting patterns this same formula can determine who it was that elected Christine Gregoire the new Governor of Washington state.

Voila! The formula worked perfectly!

Today a lady writes to the MRT editor in favor of the proposed smoking ban. In support she relates a harrowing personal tale of the consequences of secondhand smoke. Her infant son stopped breathing and had to be rushed to the emergency room where she learned he was allergic to smoke. She goes on to tell us that he fell very ill later in life from exposure to secondhand smoke. But this second exposure did not happen by accident; it happened when she took him, knowing he was deathly allergic to smoke, to a family gathering where she knew there would be lots of smoke.

This perhaps offers a new insight into the motives of the smoke free crowd. Several of us have laid out the reasons we are against a ban on smoking in bars/restaurants, based on the freedom the owner should have and the ability of non-smokers to avoid going there. But now I see that this lady seems to be telling us that she is incapable of making wise decisions for her family, so the government must do it for her and, by inference, for all of us. The premise that limited government is best, is predicated on the idea that we are capable of making better decisions than the government can make for us. Despite her story I still believe in that idea.

Since she seems to believe in micro-control by government, does Child Protective Services need to go to her house and investigate her for knowingly endangering her child? She did admit to taking him into an environment where he was in danger. I guess that in her world, the government needs to act to eliminate the need for this decision on her part, but in this particular case the ban would have to cover private gatherings, because that is where she took her son and exposed him to danger.

Two things you must read:

Here being one view of the current state of the American tsunami relief effort. via Michele Malkin.

And here on the change by the EU and UN when addressing Palestinian violence against Israel. If you have been following this at all, you will think you are reading news releases from some Parallel Universe of Clear Thought and Fair Treatment for Jewish People. Follow all the links. This is truly a sea-change. We'll see if it lasts.

Thanks to Free Will Blog and yourish.com.

I should have been more skeptical of the Times, which has apparently gotten so unreliable that you need to turn to Reuters for more accurate reporting . . . .

Heh. Instapundit on the NYT coverage of the James Dobson/Spongebob kerfuffle. Actually, we need a word for a contratemps or brouhaha that does not quite rise to the level of a kerfuffle, 'cause that's what this is. A sub-kerfuffle.

Anick Jesdanun of the AP, says here that bloggers need an ethical standard like journalists have.

You mean like the one Dan Rather uses?

New Sisyphus delivers a brutal Fisking to Thomas Friedman over Friedman's article on the ultimate "Blue State": Europe. An excerpt:

"In Friedmanland, France is Europe and Europe is France (plus perhaps Germany, but only if the Christian Democrats/CSU aren't in power). Never mind that the President enjoys solid support in Iraq from half of Europe in the form of actual boots on the ground (United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova, Norway, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovakia, Macedonia, and until terrorism-stained elections the better half of Spain). Nope, so long as enlightened opinion in the Quai D'Orsay says non, then Europe is against us! Certainly no one Tommy talks to is pro-Bush. I mean, he is a journalist after all."

Jay Nordlinger on the festivities yesterday. I agree on this being the best line in the coverage:

The best line I heard uttered by a TV commentator yesterday was from a correspondent at Fox News. I forget who it was. He was noting that Senator Kerry was seated only 30 feet from where the president would speak, "And what a difference 30 feet makes."

And didn't Kerry look happy? Check out the front page photo of today's MRT.

One of our favorite state legislators from last year's walkout/flyout to Albuquerque is back in the news:

"We should be just as concerned with students' physical health and performance as we are with their academic performance," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio.

Well, yeah, but isn't this a little heavy-handed? This is the Body Mass Index bill (SB 205). More meddling from our elected nannies.

Do we think that parents can't see that their kids are overweight? What about those of us who have kids that can't put on weight no matter how much they eat/we feed 'em? Are we going to be notified that we are starving our kids? Geez!

...heard about this on the news on KWEL and found the article by googling "van de putte obesity." Google roogles.

Lileks on the re-branding/rejuvination of network news:

"Attempting to revitalize the institution of the Evening Sermon is akin to rethinking ocean liner travel at the dawn of the jet age. Scrap ‘em. Put your news division to work on a 24-7 product I can run in a small window on my laptop, fire every reporter who is incapable of ending a story without some glum portentious warning, and get the hell out of Washington. Declare “Des Moines” day for no particular reason and report the hell out of urban Iowa; it’ll certainly be more interesting than another round of Senatorial posturing. Have an internet channel that consists of nothing but a guy walking around New York interviewing people. Have another channel devoted to South American news broadcasts. Aim it all at the internet. Get over yourselves and the Hudson river, and maybe you’ll be a brand again.

Air America is almost certainly non-viable.

It is NPR without the dole.

(Hat Tip Vodkapundit)

See that monitor in the picture above? I have been wanting it for some time now.

I just ordered it. Take that George W. Bush!

UPDATE: Sorry. Dyslexic. I thought it said free-spending day. Oh, well.

From New Sisyphus:

"When you get home you TELL the Americans God bless George Bush and God bless the United States of America. You tell them not to believe everything they read in the newspapers, and that there are plenty [here] who think this. He is the best man for the job in the dangerous time we have now. You TELL them."

No. Even more amazing. A comforting man-on-the-street encounter with a Frenchman!

This is an interesting item brought up from the comments (Hat tip "R"). The post was found on a site named Craig's List.

UPDATE: A database query here lists KCRS as the only 50,000 watt station in Midland....but KCRS is a Clear Channel station and I don't think Lowry Mays trades his stations through Craig's List. I could be wrong. KWEL is shown as having 2.5kw. Also interesting is an application for a 50,000 watter at 1550 on your AM band.

We haven't blogged/flogged the election for several weeks now, but there is news worthy of our attention. It seems that there are significant vote irregularities in the Wisconsin presidential poll. Voters there can register on the day of the election, have their vote counted and later the election officials have to check the validity of the registration. Guess what? LOTS of the day-of-the-election registrations don't check out now. Hmmmm. What to do?

Surely the Voter Rights Watchdog Democrat Machine is on the case, just like in Ohio, searching out the scofflaws that took the rules of voting so lightly? Surely the bad people that tried (but just as surely failed, right?) to scam the system have been found out and brought to justice? Surely the populace of Wisconsin is in an uproar over this obvious embarassment to their collective civic-mindedness? Um. No.

Would that be because Wisconsin went for Kerry by less than 12,000 votes, fewer than the number of ballots now in question? I think maybe yes, but you decide. Michele Malkin has all the scoop and lots o' links. Thanks, Michele!

Let Every (Correctly Registered And Officially, Non-partisanly Verifed) Vote Count! Once!

Iowahawk. Again. Now.

Anyone still want to make the arguement that Red Staters are not a lot more familiar with the Blue Staters than the reverse?

"To let these smokers damage that cilia escalator system within the lungs, means those particles inside the lungs cannot get out. Why should I be contented to let them do this cilia damage when I am not the one doing and enjoying the smoke but they?"

- The Eurasian (from the comment section)

"From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be...Swedish! Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside, so we can check! Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now...16 years old!"

- General Exposito, from Woody Allen's Bananas

Coincindence? I don't think so!

And speaking of The Bar (which we have been if you had been following the comments on the smoking ban ordinance)...The Bar has updated it's website and the owner, Scott Gunn, has a page that should become a blog. It is called Ramblings by Scott and can be found here. (Note to the webmaster for The Bar: MovableType is great! And cheap!)

Mr. Gunn did have this to say on his oughta-be-a-blog:

"When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered
that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this
problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a
pen that writes in zero gravity, upside-down, on almost any surface
including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to
over 300 C.

The Russians used a pencil.

Your taxes are due again--enjoy paying them."

I would also be curious to know if that pencil that they took into space wasn't a good 'ol Ticonderoga #2.

UPDATE: The Blog Troll Ralph's typically feline retort notwithstanding, what the blogosphere lacks in editors it more than makes up for in massive peer review.

Case in point: The Original Space Pen story is a hoax. From Snopes.com:

"Fisher did ultimately develop a pressurized pen for use by NASA astronauts (now known as the famous "Fisher Space Pen"), but both American and Soviet space missions initially used pencils, NASA did not seek out Fisher and ask them to develop a "space pen," Fisher did not charge NASA for the cost of developing the pen, and the Fisher pen was eventually used by both American and Soviet astronauts.

[snip]

Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized pens in 1965. Samples were immediately sent to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Manager of the Houston Space Center, where they were thoroughly tested and approved for use in Space in September 1965. In December 1967 he sold 400 Fisher Space Pens to NASA for $2.95 each.

Lead pencils were used on all Mercury and Gemini space flights and all Russian space flights prior to 1968. Fisher Space Pens are more dependable than lead pencils and cannot create the hazard of a broken piece of lead floating through the gravity-less atmosphere."

Hat Tip to Mark L. in the comments.

Out here on the Prairie we are a fiercely independent people … less we kin git sumpin fer free. Floyd Ivy, in today’s MRT Speaking Out column, tells us it just does not matter what we are spending on our bus system because someone else is paying. He says the system is efficient because efficiency is defined as meeting the needs of the people who need the system. Do whut?

He does admit that if we ever face paying for it ourselves we’ll need a new definition of efficiency.

Walser, we are well aware of your "Sam Fixation"......but don't even think about doing something like this.

Somethin' interestin' goin' on in our own backyard:

...a plan to build a suborbital space facility on a sprawling ranch under the wide open skies of West Texas.

Read the whole thing. It is probably well-thought out and certainly is well bank-rolled at this point. Where does the line for rides form? Hattip to Instapundit.

I don't want to be too difficult here...but here goes:

Item One: Ammonia: used in Floor and Toilet Cleaner" and Item Two: "Acetate - used in Nail Polish Remover".

According to Network Solutions, the domains floorcleanerfreemidland.com and nailpolishfreemidland.com are still available. Better hurry!

Seriously, though. Look at the whole list. Is second hand smoke even the greatest threat among all of those things on the list that is used to sex up that which is contained in cigarette smoke?

And the rest of the fact list:

"Secondhand smoke is also known as involuntary smoking or passive smoking because non-smokers can inhale the same chemicals, toxins and carcinogens in tobacco smoke inhaled by active smokers. In fact, most of the toxic chemicals produced by cigarettes end up in the air non-smokers breathe rather than being inhaled by the smoker."

If I go to, say, The Bar in downtown Midland and know for a fact that there will be second hand smoke there (as everyone who darkens the door there does) can that be called "involuntary smoking". I say no. I make a decision to go based on my personal choices and preferences. So does everyone there. Why are we more eager to interfere, offcially and governmentally, than we are with, say, any fried chicken joint?

And this:

Secondhand smoke is the third leading preventable cause of death in the US, killing over 53,000 non-smokers each year.

Even half an hour of secondhand smoke exposure causes heart damage similar to that of habitual smokers.

I invite readers and City Councilmen alike to just do a Google Search on "Second Hand Smoke Myths" and you can find things like this from Reason Online:

"In a political environment where such extravagant claims are credulously accepted, it's useful to be reminded that the scientific debate about the hazards of secondhand smoke is far from settled. A study in the May 17 issue of the British Medical Journal shows once again how tricky it is to measure the effects of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)."

Naturally, either side will present as fact that which supports their case and at least underplay what doesn't....if they don't outright ignore it.

What bothers me is the assault on individual liberty and how quickly and easily it comes to self-described conservatives here in Midland.

Don't want second hand smoke around? Don't go to a smokey bar. But wait, you say, what about the poor employees who have to..." Sorry. Won't fly. They don't, in fact, have to work there. Any more than King Crab fisherman (probably the most dangerous job there is) have to work at that trade. Or the mechanic at the Ford or Chevy house that is breathing good amounts of "second hand exhaust" (see Item #6 above). Do we even need to mention coal miners?

These individuals weigh the risks v. the benefits and make their own individual decisions concerning their employment.

One suspects that local political talk of individual decsisions and individual responsibilities must be going the way of the talk of lower taxes and governmental interference in the marketplace.

While I agree with Howard Fineman's observations..one, that the mainstream media had become a (left leaning, -Ed.) political party of its own, and two, that those days are now over....I don't agree with his version of events as to how the MSM came about.

I am more in line with Peggy Noonan:

"Mr. Fineman asserts that the MSM came into existence after World War II, which is essentially true, but goes on to claim that it came into existence as the result of the fact that "a temporary moderate consensus came to govern the country." Please. America was a political battleground in those days, fighting over everything from McCarthyism to the true nature of communism to the proper role of government to Vietnam. The MSM didn't come into existence because of a brief period of political comity. The MSM rose because it had a monopoly. And it fell because it lost that monopoly.

Let me repeat that: The MSM rose because it had a monopoly on information."

Here is a local issue we will undoubtedly be hearing (way too much) about in the near future: eliminating cigarette smoking in public in Midland. What do the readers of Jessica's Well think of this? Should all right thinking people be in favor of this for the public good? Is a smoking ban something that the city government ought to be involved in? Is it more of the "nanny state" sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong? Or just a bunch of local busybodies with nothing better to do?

The line forms on the right for commenters' feedback and discussion.

UPDATE: Commenter Cindy posits that smokers are necessary to the functioning of Modern America, and is more than willing to do her part. I like the way she thinks.

Jessica's Well has been actively blogging (not counting the two weeks surrounding this past Christmas) since March of 2002. Sure, not quite three years in human years but in Blog years that is more like 21 years. (It is no coincidence that blog and dog sound alike.)

So as much as I want to keep blogging something has to give.

And that something is a complete re-design of the site. How tired am I at looking at this site? I am more tired of looking at this site than I am of reading Comments from The Eura....er...Online Casinos.

So a complete site re-design it shall be.

This I ask of you. Using the comments (now that they are working...WOOT!) please provide the link for any blog that you find particularly handsome in it's presentation and as they come in I will move these links to the body of the post as a resource to all other bloggers who may be suffering from acute crappy css syndrome.

UPDATE: One of the cooler resources I have found along these lines is Mandarin Design.

When was the last time you heard the term "Brutal Afghan Winter"?

Further proof that human (and particularly American) activity on the planet has altered the climate.

(With a nod to Mark Steyn)

CBS News: A faith-based organization?

Read this and tell me different.

And the debate that old media doesn't/shouldn't/won't rely on the new media greatly is pretty much over, Brian Williams and Jonathon Klien notwithstanding.

Still.....old media dead or dying. No.

Howard Fineman describes what has actually happened: The Mainstream Media (MSM) is not dead or dying per se but it is dead as a political party.

He closes with this:

"Were Dan Rather and Mary Mapes after the truth or victory when they broadcast their egregiously sloppy story about Bush's National Guard Service? The moment it made air it began to fall apart, and eventually was shredded by factions within the AMMP (American Mainstream Media Party) itself, conservative national outlets and by the new opposition party that is emerging: The Blogger Nation. It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the 'media' has any credibility.

And, as Walter Cronkite would say, that's the way it is."

If you don't read a single other thing on RatherGate, read this.

Now.

I mean it.

"With love, from YN2 Arellano, USS Abraham Lincoln."

From Robert Scheer (yeah, that Robert Scheer):

"Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security."

The panel report is part of a process -- a necessary process to deal with a difficult issue -- at the end of which four good people have lost their jobs. My strongest reaction is one of sadness and concern for those individuals whom I know and with whom I have worked. It would be a shame if we let this matter, troubling as it is, obscure their dedication and good work over the years.

Dan Rather

Short version: "I still work here, so I can't have done anything bad. I still think the the documents were fake but accurate. I really haven't learned anything from this. Neener, neener, neener. See ya, Mary!"

via the essential Matt Drudge. By the way, what was that frequency?

"Although the panel's report found no political bias by anyone at CBS, it was clearly a setback for the mainstream media......"

-Howard Kurtz and Dana Milbank, The Washington Post

From Jonathan Last at The Weekly Standard:

"MARY MAPES is right. In a response to her firing from CBS News, the former star producer accuses CBS of 'scape-goating' her and says that her dismissal is the result of 'corporate and political considerations.'

The key to Mapes's defense is her insistence that the documents she provided CBS were authentic. 'It is noteworthy the panel did not conclude that these documents are false,' she says. She could not be more right."

Then sit back and wonder if it was realistic to think that you would find any large part of it in a newspaper of any size or a broadcast of any length.

What is more, nowhere in this entire article does it explain who busted CBS on their *cough* alleged forgeries in the 60 Minutes II TANG segment. The closest that it comes is this:

"Questions were quickly raised about the typed memos, with some document experts saying it appeared they contained a computer character inconsistent with typewriters at the time."

"Document experts", huh? That would be a promotion from what Mr. Rather was calling them in the days immediately following his failed hatchet job.

So here we have a long article by the AP reporting on their brethren over at CBS and leaving out massive amounts of information....like the fact that none among CBS' brethren dared raise questions about obvious forgeries. It was the bloggers, the pajamahadeen,....you know, guys on the toilet with a modem.

Feh.

If you want to know what really went on/is going on, it is simple. Stay away from the Associated Press and click on the graphic above this post.

UPDATE: This is too good. Michael Savage's real name is....wait for it...Michael Wiener.

From Mark Steyn:

"As for the most striking photograph of this disaster, it's by AFP's Jimin Lai. I haven't seen it in any of the papers, oddly enough. It shows a tsunami-devastated village in Galle on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka: a couple of rescuers are carrying away a body while, behind them, smack dab in the centre of the picture, a young man looks on. He's wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

I gave up worrying 'Why do they hate us?' on the evening of September 11, 2001. But, if I were that Osodden bin Loser guy watching the infidels truck in water, food, medical supplies and emergency clothing for villagers whose jihad-chic T-shirt collection was washed out to sea, I might ask myself a more pertinent question: "Why do they like us?"

CBS can put out all of the internal reports on Ra^therGate that they want. Or not.

The question is: Has anything at CBS really changed since then?

Apparently not.

From TaxProf:

Good news for those who have or will donate to the various Asian Tsunami relief funds:

"The House and Senate yesterday passed by unanimous consent legislation (H.R. 241) to permit taxpayers to claim charitable deductions in tax year 2004 for donations they make for tsunami disaster relief until January 31, 2005, instead of having to wait until next year's filing season. Only cash gifts made specifically for disaster relief are eligible."

Also, here is a whole page of links to funds courtesy of Microsoft.com.

(Although....if it is tax deductable now that means less tax to the U.S. Government, which means less money to the U.S. Military...who is doing the heavy lifting for damned near the entire West save the Aussies. God Bless the Aussies.)

Can you guess what this number represents?

It is the total amount of extra tax burdens placed on taxpayer/citizens in order that their respective towns and cities can "level the playing field" with each other in their relentless pursuit of rent seekers....er....economic development activities.

And the number shown above is for Texas alone and for only the last two Fiscal years. Worse yet, doesn't even count the almost $300 million spent by the State of Texas itself which makes it a even billion.

George and Laura Bush? Check.

General Tommy Franks? Check.

Wahoo McDaniel? Who is Wahoo McDaniel?

Well, I am glad you asked. Sleepless in Midland has the answer.

And those who have been reading the comments lately are also aware that Mr. Muir was generous enough to offer to make me a cartoon alongside Sam in her little black dress.

But before anyone gets the wrong idea about the above panel in today's Day By Day cartoon and whether or not it is me I just want say:

You bet it is me! And anyone, including Chris Muir himself, who tells you different is a damned liar!

Brought up from the Comments on an earlier post:

"This morning's Standard-Times had a story buried in the front section about the City Council voting unanimously to fund the grant...lots of the affected workers showed up, and the councilmen present "couldn't vote against them." The mayor was absent, in Washington, and had left his opinion to NOT fund."

Going to the Standard-Times' website I knew that I must have arrived at the correct article when I ran across this headline: "Texan's Demand For Pork Increasing"....but as accurate as that headline would be for the Economic Development activities both in San Angelo and Midland it did not turn out to be the article I was looking for.

The article mentioned by the commenter can be found here.

Brandon Crocker at The American Spectator on the statistics behind American "stinginess." Read the whole thing.

Such use of military personnel and equipment, however, is not counted in the OECD's calculations. Nor is direct food aid. Nor is aid from private citizens or charitable organizations. Nor is development aid to Iraq. Nor is the New York office space provided to whiny U.N. bureaucrats. The OECD only counts direct cash assistance from governments (to governments)...(snip)...the least effective (aid) is the type that Jan Egeland and the OECD trumpet -- direct government-to-government aid. Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Yasser Arafat's widow, Suha, grew rich on the latter form of aid, but most Haitians and Palestinians still live in squalor.

UPDATE: Here and here is Michele Malkin, writing about the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its group providing relief in Indonesia. Read all of this, too, and be proud.

UPDATE UPDATE: This is for Walser: the French don't like our leadership role. From The Belgravia Dispatch, via Instapundit. (My, the new Moveable Type front end is much better looking, no? Post and see.)

A Wonderful Find in the Blogosphere (hat tip Instapundit): The Diplomad, a "Blog by career US Foreign Service officers. They are Republican (most of the time) in an institution (State Department) in which being a Republican can be bad for your career -- even with a Republican President".

An excerpt from a goodie on the tsunami disaster:

"Well, dear friends, we're now into the tenth day of the tsunami crisis and in this battered corner of Asia, the UN is nowhere to be seen -- unless you count at meetings, in five-star hotels, and holding press conferences.

Aussies and Yanks continue to carry the overwhelming bulk of the burden, but some other fine folks also have jumped in: e.g., the New Zealanders have provided C-130 lift and an excellent and much-needed potable water distribution system; the Singaporeans have provided great helo support; the Indians have a hospital ship taking position off Sumatra. Spain and Netherlands have sent aircraft with supplies.

The UN continues to send its best product, bureaucrats. Just today the city's Embassies got a letter from the local UN representative requesting a meeting for 'Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom, United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries.' Wow! Put that on a business card! And she must be really, really special because she has the word 'coordinator' twice in her title!

The letter, in typically modest UN style, goes on to explain that 'Ms. Wahlstrom's main task will be to provide leadership and support to the international relief effort. She will undertake high-level consultations with the concerned governments in order to facilitate the delivery of international assistance.' Oh, and she'll be visiting from January 4-5.

Once, again, a hearty Diplomadic 'WOW!' She's going to do all that in two days! The Australians and we have been feeding and otherwise helping tens-of-thousands of people stay alive for the past ten days, and still have a long, long way to go, but she's going to wrap the whole thing up in a couple of days of meetings. Thank goodness she's here to provide the poor lost Aussies and Yanks with leadership. The Diplomad bows in awe to such power and wisdom."

Cheer up America! We only pay 40% of the tab on this nonsense.

UPDATE: Read back several posts and witness the "stinginess" of the Americans! By the time you are through reading you will want to find a giant bulldozer and push the uniquely useless UN into the East river.

And speaking of Rent Seeking: Get a load of this...also from the San Angelo paper:

"An economic incentive grant to R.G. Barry, a local footwear manufacturer with recent financial woes, goes to the San Angelo City Council for a vote today.

If approved, the $183,315 grant would be one of the first the council has awarded that does not require a company to expand its operations or add more jobs."

It doesn't mention it in the article, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this company has received ED funds already from the San Angelo Development Corporation and that this is a "salvage operation" of more than one type.

How do we know that our local $4 million dollar per year economic development efforts work? Simple. The people who depend on this money being spent tell us that it works. Sometimes this information comes from local Chamber publications that get distributed with the local paper. Other times it comes from quotes by Chamber/City/MDC Tax proponents found in articles contained in the local Chamber's in-house news organ, the Reporter-Telegram. (Hey! We need another ED article! Call the guy whose salary is paid by the tax and ask him if all this ED stuff is working! --Ed.)

In any event these reassurances come from the same people out of the same echo chamber (no pun intended).....occasionaly buttressed by highly paid lobbyist Ray Perryman, still the only economist known to the local economic development folks.

Now comes another opinion from today's San Angelo Standard Times: An article by economist! Arthur E. Foulkes of the American Institute for Economic Research that outright states these "economic development" programs are ineffective...something argued on this blog since it's inception.

After reading the article you will see that economists have a unvarnished term for what the local ED folk would call "local businesses partnering with city government to improve the local economy": Rent Seekers.

From the article:

"The stated purpose of these economic development offices is to attract new businesses and industries to communities, or keep existing businesses from emigrating.

Economic development programs enjoy wide popularity. As professor Peter Eisinger of Detroit's Wayne State University has observed, there is 'extremely broad agreement as to the desirability of substantial government involvement in the creation of private-sector employment.'

Yet the sad truth is: Government economic-development programs rarely have lasting benefits -- for the simple reason that they run counter to good business practices."

[snip]

"The Government Account ability Office, in Washington, has tried to measure the impact of economic development programs using sophisticated econometric modeling. The agency (then called the General Accounting Office) reported nearly a decade ago, in 1996, that it was "unable to find any study" by any reputable organization "that established a strong causal linkage between a positive economic effect and an agency's economic development assistance." [Emphasis mine] Yet the spending continues."

And the money paragraph:

"Unsatisfying as it may be to the many proponents of economic development programs, government can best promote economic growth and prosperity by sticking to the basics: protecting private-property rights, enforcing the law, providing basic services and keeping taxes and regulations to a minimum. It should then do one final thing: Get, out of the way and let the economy work."

One, you have been hearing it from this blog for some time now, and

Two, this is what you unfailingly hear from our local elected officials (who, to a person, describe themselves as fiscally conservative) when the subject is the spending habits of those other non-local elected officials.

UPDATE: For more on "Rent Seeking/Seekers" go here and delight in the mention of "leveling the playing field" as one of the justifications for engaging in it. "Level the playing field". Sound familiar?

(Note: There is no link to the article on the Standard-Times web site, and the two or three instances of the article I have found on other web sites are heavily edited. To read the whole article click on the "Continue reading" link below.)

...for no danger is so great to international organizations and Kings as the peril of being proved unnecessary.

Though almost almost none of the food, supplies and logistical systems to provide relief have so far have come from the World Body, it appears existentially important to it that what has arrived wear the livery of the United Nations.

Coverage, here, of the attempted usurpation of the lead that has been set and the good being done by the US and Australia by the ineffective, feckless UN.

A Huge Hat Tip to wretchard at Belmont Club.

UPDATE: From the Free Will blog:

WFP (World Food Program) has "arrived" in the capital with an "assessment and coordination team."...The team has spent the day and will likely spend a few more setting up their "coordination and opcenter" at a local five-star hotel. And their number one concern, even before phones, fax and copy machines? Arranging for the hotel to provide 24hr catering service. USAID folks already are cracking jokes about "The UN Sheraton."

The word "feckless" is an adjective that come to mind easily when thinking of Annan/the UN.

Although the geological record shows that large asteroids occasionally strike the earth and that tsunamis sometimes ravage coastal areas, the rarity of their occurrence often precludes the formation of a political consensus to sustain preparations against them.

Read Belmont Club for thoughtful commentary on the incredible tsunami disaster. There are several more posts more recent that the one I have linked here. Read 'em all.

Tsunamis are a known quantity in the Indian Ocean. When they happen, tens of thousands die, but (very thankfully) they are very rare. The last one of significant magnitude was in 1883, created when the volcanic island Krakatoa blew up. Most deaths were in Indonesia, immediately adjacent to the exploding island, but the tsunami affected those in India, Sri Lanka, et al...a now familar list. One hundred and twenty-one years is a long time to maintain a warning system.

It will be found eventually that the USGS and NOAA probably tried to get the Indian Ocean countries to participate in their/our tsunami warning system. The learnings from the 1883 Krakatoa eruption and tsunami underpin much of the work that supports the existance of the Pacific warning system that we have now.

Factoid: The tsunami of 1883 was measurable on tide gauges around the world, including in Great Britain (as I am sure that this one will have been once the records are checked).