A disturbing report from Iraq

The Associated Press reported Friday that three more U.S. Marines were "killed in battle" in Iraq on Thursday. The Marines, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5, died "of wounds from fighting in western Anbar province," the U.S. military said.

It goes without saying that the United States military has the capacity to wipe out enemy fighters without losing a single American life.

In a military battle.

So if U.S. Marines are being killed in "battle" in Iraq, it must be something other than a military battle. Because if we were engaged in a military battle, we would use all the tools at our disposal to win. And we would make every effort to protect our own forces from harm.

Whatever is going on in western Anbar province, it is not a military battle.

Exactly what kind of battle is it?

Are U.S. Marines being sent into areas where "the enemy" and "innocent civilians" are side-by-side in the same buildings, with orders to kill the former without injuring the latter?

Is that what they're calling a "battle?"

If that's the case, the president of the United States has ordered our fighting forces to risk their lives in an impossible mission.

Sorting out the criminals from the decent citizens is police work, not war. It's a job for people who speak the language and know the locals.

Even the best police force is helpless when gunmen take civilians hostage. All they can do is surround the building and wait, because to storm the place will only get a lot of innocent people killed.

If insurgent fighters in Iraq have taken entire cities hostage, the U.S. military faces the same quandary.

Let's assume it is not possible to surround an entire city and wait until the gunmen die of starvation, although if it is possible, we ought to try it.

In any case, it is wishful thinking to believe that the U.S. military can stop the Iraqis from fighting for control of their government. Their government owns the oil and all the major industries of the country. Their government hands out most of the jobs. Unless Iraq's state-owned enterprises are privatized, the government will continue to control everybody's job, income, and financial security, and the only way Iraqis can survive is by showing fierce loyalty to one of the groups that has a shot at winning control of the government. (See "The Motive for War: How to Stop the Violence in Iraq" and "Why the Iraq Policy Isn't Working.")

It's undoubtedly true that international terrorists are involved in the fighting in Iraq, but they are not the cause of it. Iraq would be in a civil war even if al-Qaeda did not exist. The Iraqis are fighting for control of the government because the government controls all the wealth in the country, and it is up for grabs.

If President Bush wants to succeed in his goal of helping Iraq become "a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror," he should stop viewing Iraq through the prism of the war on terror and start thinking of it as post-Cold War Eastern Europe. Instead of asking the Secretary of Defense for a plan to win the war, he should ask the Secretaries of Treasury, Commerce, Energy and Labor for a plan to help Iraq build a free, private-sector economy.

U.S. troops have been asked to put their lives on the line for freedom. But freedom is a condition that exists under a government of limited power. A government of unlimited power is not an engine of freedom, or prosperity, or social justice. It's a target for coups and violent overthrow.

That's what's happening in Iraq. That's the "battle" in which three U.S. Marines were killed last week.

It cannot be won and it should not be fought. Not by Americans. Not by anyone who values freedom.


Copyright 2006

Editor's note: You might be interested to read "A Plan to Get Out of Iraq: Blackstone's Fundamental Rights and the Power of Property" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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Solved: the mystery of the hefty toddlers

A new study of low-income families found that Hispanic pre-schoolers are twice as likely to be obese as white or black children, but the researchers "could not find out why."

The American Journal of Public Health published the study by Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Sara McLanahan, who studied two thousand three-year-olds in twenty U.S. urban areas. They observed and interviewed families and then used a statistical method known as regression analysis to make sense of the data.

Still, they couldn't figure it out.

"Is it possible," the researchers wondered, "that Hispanic communities regard chubbiness as a healthy sign in toddlers?"

Is it possible that not one of these researchers has ever ventured into a kitchen except to get a beer out of the refrigerator?

Beans cooked in lard, tortillas dipped in oil, cheese on everything, have you ever opened a Mexican cookbook?

No?

Then you've got what it takes to publish a study on childhood obesity in America. Quick, call Princeton and see if you can get a grant.


Copyright 2006

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The disappearing first lady trick

Today the president and the first lady left Washington to spend a week together at the ranch in Crawford. Or did they?

Getting on Air Force One:



Getting off Air Force One:



Maybe the president's father isn't the only one in the family with a fondness for parachute jumps.


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President Reagan's Favorite White House Eggnog

America Wants to Know sends greetings of the season to one and all, and sends a special hello to everyone who has suffered a loss and is enduring the holidays with an empty chair at the table.

Here's something to take your mind off it.

A few years back, the Los Angeles Times published a recipe for President Reagan's favorite eggnog, and we happened to dig it out this year from the stack of tattered recipe clippings where it spends most of its time.

President Reagan's Favorite White House Eggnog

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla
6 eggs
3 cups half & half
1 cup bourbon
1 cup brandy
1 cup rum
Freshly grated nutmeg

Place sugar, vanilla and eggs in blender. Blend until thoroughly mixed. Add half and half. Blend well. Pour into serving bowl. Add bourbon, brandy and rum. Stir until well mixed. Dust top of each serving with nutmeg. Makes 12 servings, 2 quarts.

Disclaimers: 341 calories per serving. Standard warning about consuming raw eggs. This is not a health food. Don't drink and drive.

Merry Christmas!

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Is Donald Trump a racist?

This week Donald Trump made a splashy announcement that he has forgiven Miss USA Tara Conner for her indiscreet behavior (underage drinking in New York clubs, allegedly a positive test for cocaine, and reports of promiscuous sex) and decided to let the blonde knockout take her crown to an alcohol and drug rehab for a short, image-enhancing stay.

"I've always been a believer in second chances," Mr. Trump declared.

"I wouldn't say that I'm an alcoholic," Miss USA sobbed.

Although this is certainly not the first time that a human Barbie doll (Stoli sold separately) has received fabulously favorable treatment from men with their jaws on their chests, there is one additional factor in this story that appears to have gone unnoticed.

The first runner-up, Miss California Tamiko Nash, is African-American.

Can it be that Donald Trump and NBC (who co-own the Miss USA Pageant), as well as the advertisers who pay the bills for the glamour showcase, would rather be associated with a cocaine-using blonde party girl than the equally beautiful black woman who would have replaced her?

Just asking.



Copyright 2006
Barbie (R) is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc.

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Beware of lying weasels on commission

The Los Angeles Times ran a painful story Sunday about a man who retired at 54 and then turned over his retirement savings to a broker who promised him -- well, what difference does it make what he promised him, you already guessed the ending of the story.

Over $700,000 in 401(k) money and pension benefits, if you were wondering, went down the drain thanks to "overly risky investments with high fees."

The Times reports that Americans have about $2.9 trillion in 401(k) accounts. When the individual account holders eventually take over the management of that money, they are likely to become roadkill under the tires of some lying weasel's BMW.

If you or someone you love is trying to decide how to invest 401(k) or pension money, do your own research and make sure you completely understand what you're doing. Don't take the word of anyone who throws jargon around in an attempt to make you feel that you can't possibly get a grasp of the subject. If you were smart enough to put that money away, you're smart enough to understand how to invest it.

Don't be rushed, don't be pressured, don't be intimidated. And unless you're willing to get burned, don't chase after higher returns than the big, mainstream investments are offering.

America Wants to Know recommends the investment advice of The Granville Guys to anyone who would like a simple, stress-free approach to successfully investing money in the stock market. (Go ahead and click it; we make nothing, they make nothing, nobody's on commission here.)

Check it out at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/granvill.htm.


Copyright 2006

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What you don't know about the death penalty

On Friday, a federal judge declared California's method of execution unconstitutional. I'll spare you the gruesome and hideous details. Let's just say that U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel's 17-page ruling outlined several problems with the state's procedures for lethal injections. Until the problems are fixed to his satisfaction, the judge said, executions in California violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Judge Fogel's ruling is the latest in a series of federal court rulings over the last few decades challenging state death penalties in one way or another.

What you don't know is that the people of the United States never agreed to allow the federal courts to oversee state executions. What you don't know (unless you've read The 37th Amendment or "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing"), is that the Bill of Rights, including the 8th Amendment, was never intended to apply to the states at all.

Even with the 1868 ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declared that no state could deny due process of law to any person, it was understood and agreed that this did not mean the Bill of Rights restricted the states in any way.

Over the next sixty years, many people brought cases before the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to rule that the states were obligated to provide criminal defendants with jury trials, attorneys, the right to remain silent, and a list of other rights spelled out in the first eight amendments to the Constitution. They were turned down every time.

The first eight amendments "were not intended to and did not have any effect upon the powers of the respective states," the Supreme Court ruled in 1900, adding, "This has been many times decided."

Obviously, everything has changed. But it wasn't changed with the consent of the people of the United States. It was changed, gradually and slowly and in bits and pieces, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1925, the justices began to select small pieces of the Bill of Rights that they thought were fundamental to the idea of "due process of law." They decided that no state would be allowed to infringe a fundamental right unless state officials could somehow justify the need for the law. States would be required to show a compelling reason, not just a rational reason, that the law was necessary to achieve a permissible purpose.

By the 1970s, state officials were in federal court on a full-time basis, trying to justify their laws and procedures on panhandling, nude dancing, police searches, parade permits, confessions, abortions, sodomy, religious displays, school suspensions and the death penalty.

The question here is not whether the judges made the right decisions. The question is: Who decides?

State officials are accountable to the voters and bound by their state constitutions. Federal judges are appointed for life, and though theoretically bound by the Constitution, law and precedent, the current fashion in judicial interpretation leads many of them to strive for a wise policy decision instead of adhering strictly to the constitutional limits of their power.

The revered model for these judges is the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ordered the desegregation of state public schools. The Supreme Court said racial segregation was impermissible under the Fourteenth Amendment, even though the men who wrote and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment said plainly at the time that nothing in the amendment touched the ongoing practice of racial segregation in the schools.

Brown v. Board of Education gave and still gives judicial "activism" the rosy glow of moral rectitude. At the same time, it gave the idea of deferring to state officials a bad name.

You can see its legacy in the California death penalty case.

While anyone would feel revulsion reading the details of bungled executions by lethal injection, the Constitution leaves it up to the people of each state to run their own criminal justice systems.

At no time in the nation's history did the people of the United States agree to allow the federal courts to halt state executions. The federal courts usurped that power from the states and now regularly delay and disrupt capital punishment as state officials and victims' families watch helplessly.

Sometimes that appears to be a good thing. But you should know that you never agreed to it.


Copyright 2006

Editor's note: For complete source notes, please see the appendix to The 37th Amendment: A Novel, "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm.

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Playing chess in a burning building

President Bush has just completed a week of consultations in search of a new military strategy for victory in Iraq. He had said he would reveal his plan in a speech to the nation before Christmas, but now he says the speech will take place in January.

He has good reason to procrastinate.

There is no mix of troops, no strategy of deployment, no combination or coalition or increase or decrease of military forces that will solve the problem in Iraq.

There is no military solution.

The problem is economic, and the solution is economic.

It is easy to become distracted by an analysis of the fine differences between Muslim sects, between tribal groups, and between regional leaders. But in the final analysis, the differences are not the cause of the fighting.

The money is the cause of the fighting.

The fighting in Iraq, like the fighting between the Palestinians of Hamas and the Palestinians of Fatah, like the fighting between the Crips and the Bloods, like the fighting between Tyson and Holyfield, is taking place because the winner gets the money.

Boxers fight for prize money. Gangs fight for drug money. Palestinians fight for control of government-owned accounts filled with international donations. Iraqis fight for control of a government that owns the oil, the oil industry, the agriculture industry, and state-owned enterprises controlling the country's manufacturing, communications, chemical, textile and financial industries.

The solution, the only solution, is the privatization of the state-owned enterprises. The people of Iraq must be permitted to earn or buy shares of the businesses in the country. They need secure, private bank accounts. They need a path to economic security as individual citizens, instead of what they have now, which is total reliance on the leaders of their group to provide them with the jobs and loot that come along with control of the government.

In their circumstances, you would act exactly the same way. You would show fierce loyalty to the boss and never say a word out loud against him, for fear that you would lose access to the means of economic survival. If you had a family, you might give your life to make sure they were economically secure and not cut off from the well-spring of money controlled by the leader of your group.

Think of it as a nationwide episode of "The Sopranos."

Think of it as a middle management job in a horrible company that happens to be the only place to work in the whole country.

Picture yourself with no options for employment unless you fight for and win control of the government.

If you can imagine that, you understand what it's like to live in a Soviet-style economy. Elections don't make a country free. Government-built schools and hospitals don't make a country free. Private property makes a country free.

It is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportion that the President of the United States doesn't know that.


Copyright 2006

Editor's note: You might be interested to read "The Motive for War: How to Stop the Violence in Iraq" and "A Plan to Get Out of Iraq" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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Saving children and losing voters

Senator John McCain has drafted legislation that would require millions of Internet sites, from commercial sites to individual personal blogs, to report any illegal images or videos posted by users of the site. The reports would have to be filed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which would forward them to police. Site owners could be fined $300,000 if they fail to find and report the illegal content, or if they fail to keep records and information about the incident for a minimum of six months.

Senator McCain calls his proposal the "Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act." He might as well call it the "Get Rid of Bloggers I Don't Like Act."

That's because anybody, even a senator, can post material in the comments area of somebody else's blog. The proposed law would make the blogger responsible for reviewing the images or other content, checking it for obscenity and legality, filing reports with the authorities and retaining every bit of documentation. One mistake on any of it would mean a fine steep enough to buy a house in most cities.

This is the kind of thing East Germany would have rejected as a little too Russian.

When CNET News reported Senator McCain's proposal, readers posted comments. Here are some of the titles of their posts:

"Shifting the responsibility of raising a child away from parents"

"McCain hates the first amendment"

"What if a website was defaced with porn?"

"McCain=One of the most dangerous..."

"Suppose you are a congressman, suppose you are an idiot..."

"CONGRESS LACKS THE POWER TO DO THIS"

"Bad idea for many reasons..."

"John McCain: Nanny State Advocate"

"The Man Who Would Be King!"

"So if someone wanted you in trouble..."

"Bad Idea, bad law."

"America becoming Big Brother state as in '1984' George Orwell fiction"

"The most dangerous politician in America"

"Encroachment on civil liberties"

Remember this if, during the next round of campaign finance reform, Senator McCain tries to get the comment area of CNET News closed down during the ninety days before an election.

Republicans aren't the only ones dressing up like Mary Poppins. Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman opened their umbrellas and floated into a press conference on video game ratings last week. The video game industry is paying for public service announcements on more than eight hundred television stations across the country. The TV ads will urge parents to pay attention to the ratings on video games.

The thinking, if you can it call it that, is that parents who don't know or care what games their kids are playing will be inspired by the commercials to become more involved and attentive.

Needless to say, the video game industry wouldn't have wasted its money on this nonsense if not for the constant pressure from lawmakers like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman. The fact that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from legislating on the content of video games doesn't seem to have entered into the calculations at all. If you run a business in America, politicians in Washington can make your life a living hell, one way or another. If a TV ad campaign and a press conference will mollify them, it is understandable that businesses would comply.

That doesn't change the fact that we are witnessing an abuse of government power. When politicians pressure businesses to take action "voluntarily" because the Constitution prohibits them from requiring that same action through legislation, they are violating their oath to uphold the Constitution.

Of course they don't care about that, but they might care about this: there are many, many voters in their early twenties to late thirties, college graduates and professionals, who grew up playing video games. And they might agree with the one who told me he would never vote for Hillary Clinton.

Knowing him to be a liberal Democrat, and too young to remember Whitewater or Travelgate, I asked him why.

"Because she wants to censor video games," he said. "Who does she think she is?"


Copyright 2006

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Nancy Pelosi's headache

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi woke up Monday to a CNN report that Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the man she chose to become the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "failed a quiz of basic questions about al-Qaeda and Hezbollah."

The quiz took place in an interview with Congressional Quarterly's National Security editor Jeff Stein. Rep. Reyes was asked whether al-Qaeda is Sunni or Shiite -- the two branches of Islam currently battling for control of Iraq -- and he answered incorrectly that al-Qaeda is Shiite.

CQ editor Jeff Stein pointed out that al-Qaeda was founded as a Sunni organization and believes the Shiites are heretics.

Rep. Reyes also was confused about the sectarian alignment of Hezbollah. Asked whether they are Sunni or Shiite, the incoming chairman of the Intelligence Committee hemmed, hawed, laughed, shifted in his seat, asked the reporter why he was asking such questions at five o'clock, asked if he could answer in Spanish, and then didn't answer.

Hezbollah is a Shiite group that is currently trying to topple the elected government of Lebanon. The U.S. State Department lists it as a terrorist organization.

Now, you may not know whether al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are Shiite or Sunni, but you have not been sitting on the House Intelligence Committee throughout the Global War on Terror and receiving classified briefings on the information collected by the very expensive intelligence agencies of the United States government. (If you have, welcome Congressman, to America Wants to Know.)

Speaker-elect Pelosi is in exactly the same situation as President Bush was in last February after the Dubai Ports World deal became public. (See "Roosting Comfortably.") She campaigned hard on the issue of accountability for intelligence failures. Now she faces the fact that the man she has chosen to chair the critically important Intelligence Committee, the man who will hear the briefings others are not permitted to hear, the man with the responsibility for evaluating the validity of classified information so that we do not stumble into another avoidable catastrophe, appears to be a disinterested, incurious, preoccupied bonehead.

That just won't do.

Speaker-elect Pelosi is going to have to replace Rep. Reyes as Intelligence chairman, and fast. The last thing this country needs is another learning experience.



Copyright 2006

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The almost pointless fear of global warming

How alarmed would you be if a reliable source told you that in the northeastern part of Iceland, "existing ground cracks have widened and new ones appear every few months."

Not only that, but something "has caused the Atlantic Ocean to grow" and "torn Saudi Arabia away from the rest of the African continent."

Not only that, but the African continent may separate into three pieces, "allowing the Indian Ocean to flood the area."

Are you alarmed?

Well, calm down. These frightening things -- I didn't even tell you about the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions -- are part of the geological process known as plate tectonics. For two hundred million years, continent-sized pieces of the earth's crust have been grinding against each other, pushing under and over each other, and crashing into each other. Magma is rising up from below the earth's surface and putting pressure on the continental crust, the ocean floor is spreading, mountains are rising, trenches are forming, San Francisco is heading south and Los Angeles is heading north.

And there's not a thing we can do about it.

Nope, nothing.

We could tax ourselves into poverty to pay for giant bolts, and it wouldn't do a thing except provide jobs for giant bolt makers.

Of course, if you were a giant bolt maker, you might see some advantage in raising alarm about the drift of the continental plates. No one wants to leave their children and grandchildren a churning, flooding, erupting, quaking planet.

Think of the movie Al Gore could make about that.

Global warming, like the movement of continental plates, is something that has happened throughout the history of the planet (see "The awkward truth about global warming"). Projections of how long it will last or how bad it will be are just guesses, as evidenced by the upcoming report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Citing improved data, the panel has reduced its estimate of global warming by 25 percent and now believes the ocean levels will rise no more than seventeen inches by the year 2100, down from a previous guess of 34 inches. The report says there has been an unexpected cooling effect from -- you'll love this -- the use of aerosol sprays.

You can expect this report to be very unwelcome news to the many people who are working hard to raise alarm about global warming. They will emphasize that global warming is still projected to be a global catastrophe, even if the projections continue to melt away faster than a glacier on a sunny day.

Before you give up your car and stop using electricity, ask these questions:

How much of global warming is caused by human activity and how much by natural factors like volcanic eruptions and solar activity?

If greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity are marginally reduced, will it make any difference at all in the rate of global warming?

What is the cost, in dollars and jobs, of marginally reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity?

When you have the answers to these questions, you can evaluate the policy proposals being waved around by campaigning politicians. Without the answers to these questions, you have nothing but a general sense of alarm, which will only lead you to accept a program of higher taxes and more restrictions in the name of saving the earth.

And that may be the point of an otherwise pointless campaign to stop the natural processes of the planet.

There are no atheists in a foxhole, so the saying goes; people who are scared to death will believe what their rational minds cannot verify. You are in that state of mind when you start to think you are incapable of understanding and have no choice except to follow the orders of those who seem to know.

That's how people are convinced to voluntarily surrender their money and their freedom to people who promise to save them.

Historically, that has been the real path to global catastrophe.


Copyright 2006

Source note: Scare your friends with the U.S. Geological Survey's essay, "Understanding Plate Motions," at http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understanding.html.

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NBA commissioner caught cheating

One of the mysteries of the ages may have been solved by AM 570 sports talk show host Joe McDonnell.

Why did NBA Commissioner David Stern suddenly and for no known reason decide to replace the leather game ball with a microfiber composite ball?

The players, who were not consulted, were extremely unhappy about the change, telling sportswriters and anyone else who would listen that the synthetic ball handled differently and not as well.

On Monday, the players' union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. The commissioner's decision to change the basketball without notice to the union violated the league's collective bargaining agreement, they said.

On Tuesday, David Stern sounded like a man who was about to fold. He told the New York Times that the NBA should have sought more input from the players. While still insisting that the new ball is an improvement, he conceded that the players' unhappiness will have to be addressed. He said he'll talk to Spalding, the ball manufacturer, to see what can be done.

Now, throw out your New York Times and listen to Los Angeles radio host Joe McDonnell, who is reporting that David Stern mandated the use of a synthetic game ball after his wife was lobbied by her good friend, animal-rights supporter Nanci Alexander, who happens to be married to Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander. The Alexanders are major donors to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, those paint-throwing fur haters who also have a thing about leather.

If Joe McDonnell is right and David Stern allowed his wife to make a decision affecting the quality of play in the National Basketball Association, it can only mean:

She caught him cheating on her.

She's got enough jewelry.

Half of everything he's got is more than he was willing to pay.

The commissioner really should have gone to the players and explained his predicament. They might have been more sympathetic than he expected.


Copyright 2006


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