Another interesting column on social security, with a lot of rebuttal to a number of arguments against reform.

Here's a sample:
Donald R. May: Who's afraid of Social Security reform?

The power taken from politicians will be immense, as retirees will have retirement incomes greater than they would receive from the current plan. Since the taxpayers will own their retirement accounts, trying to frighten them at election time with threats that the opponents will cut their Social Security benefits will no longer work. Once people start to accumulate money, they want to make their own decisions, decrease taxes, and get government nannies out of the way.

I can see the point, and agree that this is a worthwhile goal. I have faith in our political system, though: our political leaders will most certainly try to create other programs to take Social Security's place, to ensure continued dependency on government.

Did you guys know about this?

IMAO EXCLUSIVE!!! WISCONSIN TAKEN OVER BY NINJAS!!!

I just found out from a reliable source that Wisconsin has been taken over by ninjas. This has not been picked up by the national press as people don't pay much attention to Wisconsin. Their ninja warlord leader, Seikazu, led his warriors into Wisconsin this morning and easily defeated Wisconsin's sole defense, the Green Bay Packers. Seikazu then marched into the Capitol building, defeated Governor Doyle in a short battle, and then declared Doyle's kung fu to be 'weak' before he finished off the governor with his patented flying dragon kick.

What the further plans of the ninjas are is unknown. I recommend everyone check a map and see if your state is next to Wisconsin.

Interesting post about the politics of Social Security reform (through Instapundit).

TCS: Tech Central Station - The Strange Death That No One Cares About

As recently as two years ago, New Democrats declared that: 'We believe in reforming democracy and government to strip away top-down bureaucracy and give citizens and communities the power to solve their own problems. We must be willing to reform old programs in order to preserve our oldest values.' But today they have become just another force for reaction, defenders of those same 'old programs' and the very 'top-down' status quo they once professed to believe in reforming.

Found a link to a new blog, specifically on Social Security reform. Here's my favorite post there so far:

Social Security Choice: Is There a Social Security 'Crisis'?

Is there a Social Security "crisis"? Take this simple test. (Answers given at end.)

1. Astronomers discover that a small asteroid is on a course that will cause it to smash into the earth in 2018, killing millions of people. This is:

A. A crisis.
B. A problem.
C. George Bush's fault because of his "tax cuts for the rich".

2. Astronomers discover that a huge asteroid is on a course that will cause it to smash into the earth in 2042, killing everything including the cockroaches. This is:

A. A crisis.
B. A problem.
C. George Bush's fault because of his "tax cuts for the rich".

Our present situation regarding Social Security is analogous to the challenge posed by an asteroid on a collision course with earth. If we acted immediately, while the asteroid was still far out in space, a small nudge would be enough to cause it to miss our world. The longer we waited, the more force would be required to produce the needed alteration in trajectory. If we waited too long, the situation would become impossible.

The same principle applies to Social Security. The reason to act now is because we have attractive options available (including moving to a system including Personal Accounts) that won't have nearly the same impact if we wait. This having been said, the most important thing that we must do - and do now - to ensure the solvency of Social Security (and Medicare) is to increase our nation's rate of economic growth. I will explain why in my next post.

Answer Key:

If you answered "A" to the above questions, you are probably a normal, responsible American who believes that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

If you answered "B” to the above questions, you are probably Alfred E. Newman, maintaining your long-standing philosophy of “What, me worry?”

If you answered “C” to the above questions, you are probably Paul Krugman.

Well, duh.

JS Online: For couch potatoes, fidgeting may separate the thin from the fat:

"After electronically monitoring the every movement of a group of self-described couch potatoes around the clock for days, scientists came to this conclusion: Obese people spend a lot more time sitting than thin people."

Steve

Pat has another clever post. Her blog is a pretty good one.

First, read. Comments following.

Russian Information Agency Novosti:

NOT ANYBODY, BUT RUSSIAN PILOTS, CAN MISTAKE CLOUD FOR TRESPASSER PLANE

KALININGRAD, January 26 (RIA Novosti's Anatoli Nilov) - Air pilots from the Russian exclave on the Baltic sea (Kaliningrad region) have mistaken a cloud for a trespasser aircraft. The amusing incident was reported by the press service of the Baltic fleet on Wednesday.

'In the afternoon, the ground services said they had detected a violation of the Russian air border from Lithuania. A tentative examination showed it was a light plane', the press service reported.

A SU-27 fighter led by Major Alexei Pletnev rose from a military airfield near Kaliningrad, it said.

'Our fighter approached the trespasser to make it land or leave the Russian air space', the press service said. 'A closer examination showed that there was a cloud instead of the light plane and it was coming from the territory of Lithuania', noted not without humor the spokesman for the press service of the Baltic fleet.

Thought #1: we spent how many years being afraid of these guys?

Thought #2: this is not a story a Russian paper would have printed when the Commies were in charge.

Thought #3: they don't tell us whether the cloud actually left.

Steve

In my hubristic youth, I purported to have many answers. As life inserted its realities, my easy wisdom evanesced quickly into a universe of seemingly unrelated facts. However, in conjunction with an increasingly hoary head, the puzzles of life are again beginning to coalesce into a more reasonably understandable picture.

As my teaching/coaching career came to an end, a mother of three students came to me and suggested that I watch Mr. Holland's Opus and see myself in it. I did so and was humbled to tears at the honor she gave me in that comment. I had spent many years in the trenches with these kids and had become very close to many of them. Now, as most of them have married and are having families of their own, I jokingly claim their children as my grandstudents or grandplayers. Back here in Wisconsin, one step-daughter, Nichole, has given me a grandchild and another, Natalie, is nurturing one that is due in September.

Conversations with a close friend once brought him to the conclusion that I read Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and see myself in it. (As Myshkin, the idiot) I have not read it as yet and wonder about the 'honor' given me in that comment.

My wife, Linda, was the only member of our family that received a flu shot this year. Matthew, Kimberly, and I are all down with the flu but Linda escaped scot-free. Kleenex is at a premium as mucus is rising here as fast as the tax rates in Baraboo; as fast as OldWhig's hackles and dander toward the idea of larger government.

So, a grandchild on the way, being likened to the idiot, and suffering from the flu... unrelated facts or circumstances of life? Nay, nay, I tell you! These are integral clusters of pixels forming a single coherent picture of meaning. These situations point out very plainly to the discerning mind that 1) I am a phlegming idiot, and 2) that I am an expectorant grandfather.

Now isn't that definitive proof of intelligent design, you dogmatic offspring of Beelzebub and High Priests of the Temple of Darwin ?

Not sure all of this advice is the best, but, just in case there are any non-football fans out there:

FOXSports.com - NFL Playoffs- How to fake it on Super Bowl Sunday

Funny thing is, the Packers are 3-0 against human-mascot teams, 0-1 against animal mascot teams.

Human Mascots Typically Triumph Over Animal Mascots In Super Bowls:

SAN DIEGO (Wireless Flash) - The New England Patriots are in luck: History shows that when a team with an animal mascot opposes a team with a human mascot in the Super Bowl, the two- legged mammal usually beats the four-legged one.

According to sports journalist Peter Kennelly, in the last 38 Super Bowls, teams with an animal mascot have played against a team with a human mascot 25 times, with the human mascot team winning 18 of those battles.

That�s good news for the Patriots, who will line up against the Philadelphia Eagles Feb. 6.

The most successful animal-beaters over the last four decades are the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers, who have both been victorious four times.

On the flip side, the teams with an animal mascot that have taken the biggest whupping from the humans have been the Buffalo Bills and Denver Broncos, with four losses each.

Still, the Eagles have some hope this year, because animal mascot teams have triumphed over human mascot teams three out of the last six times they went head to head in the Super Bowl.

Wrote about Social Security again next door. Just had a few thoughts, but nothing too original, I'm afraid.

Here's something, though, that I'd heard of before but didn't include:

OpinionJournal - Outside the Box

There already is a model for such a reform, the Thrift Savings Plan, or TSP, for federal employees. It allows them to contribute up to $12,000 into a personal account they own and control. Employees can chose from five different funds: government bonds, a fixed-income fund, a common stock fund, international investments and a small-cap stock-investment fund--or a mixture of them. Today, nearly 3.5 million federal employees participate, and the fund's value is more than $120 billion. No one has lost his shirt, and participants own real assets for their retirement.

Will reform opponents deny to the common man a program that has been such a boon to government employees? Time will only tell.

Steve

From Scottish Soccer Hooligans Weekly (SNL):

Effigies? What for? You should use the real guy!

Well this explains a lot (from today's Best of the Web, titled "What Makes Democrats Tick?").

The 19 'blue states' - those won by Senator John Kerry - account for 95 percent of the cases of Lyme disease reported in 2002, they wrote. The disease, caused by bacteria that are carried by deer ticks, is concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest.

From Tuesday Morning Quarterback today: the real threat to civilization isn't global warming, nuclear terrorism, or prime-time nudity - it's a lack of places to park!

Tuesday Morning Quarterback has long feared parking space, not resource exhaustion or population pressure, will doom civilization. Already it is hard to park even in many suburban areas of the United States; many shopping malls are hard to park at, and the whole premise of the shopping mall is ease of access by car. Streets in New York City are clogged in part because many drivers are circling looking for places to park. In downtown Bethesda, Md., the small city near my home, it is hard to find a place to pay to park. Every year 16 million new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks are bought in the United States, but few new parking spaces are added. It's even becoming hard to park in remote areas! Grand Canyon National Park is vast, larger than all of sprawling Los Angeles, but five million cars per year now flood into this nature preserve, and all parking spaces are gone by eight in the morning. Visitors become outraged when they discover they have driven hundreds of miles to great outdoors and can't find a place to get out of their cars.

The country that is really going to collapse under the weight of cars with no place to park in (sic) China. Holding 1.2 billion people, China has far less usable land area than the United States, owing to mountains and deserts. And those 1.2 billion people crammed into less usable land than in the United States are buying cars at the furious rate. Under Communism, the Chinese masses were kept poor; as recently as the 1990s there were only five million cars in China, most held by government officials. Now there are an estimated 25 million cars; at the current rate of expansion in car ownership, around the year 2015 there will be more cars in China than in the United States.

I think he's overlooking something obvious here: the Chinese will probably be more willing, as a group, to drive little bitty stackable cars, thus allowing them to park more cars per square foot than we can, with our urge toward great big roomy double-cam 8-seaters.

Ha! a 46-word sentence!

Thus, culturally, our society is still far more likely to fail than theirs is.

Everyone Gets Some Kind Of Release From Hitting Things

TACOMA - New research reveals there's a hobby out there that can relieve stress, heal your body, and may make you smarter. But those around you will have to wear earplugs if you decide to practice this technique.

If you need to let off a little steam, then pick up a couple of sticks.

'Everyone gets some kind of release from hitting things, and this is a more positive way of getting your aggression out,' says David Levine with the Percussion Marketing Council.

But over the last few years, Levine says researchers are learning more about the therapeutic aspects of drumming, and how banging on a snare can actually heal.

Granted, this guy is from the "percussion marketing council," so no duh he'd automatically equate "hitting things" with "banging on a snare."

Still, I understand it's even better for you if you've been drinking.

Steve

Barking Moonbat brings the Bill of Rights into the 21st Century. (HT: Patrick)

Have we gone insane?

Inmate sues to have sex-change process completed

MILWAUKEE - A male Wisconsin inmate who has received state-paid hormone therapy for the last 5 years to become a woman is suing prison officials for not finishing the sex change process.

Excuse me? We were paying for 5 years of what?

The suit was filed by Scott Konitzer who now uses the name Donna Dawn Konitzer. Konitzer, who has gender identity disorder, is serving 123 years for multiple armed robberies and for stabbing another inmate.

Maybe he can plead PMS.

The suit is pending in federal court in Milwaukee.

The department has been providing Konitzer, 40, with hormone therapy to stimulate female development since 1999 but will not allow genital surgery.

Konitzer claims a prison doctor said the surgery would follow the hormone treatments, and the refusal to follow through violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Konitzer, who looks female because of the hormones, also objects to being housed in male prisons, where male guards do the strip searches and inmates share communal showers. Konitzer is not allowed to wear a bra or women's clothing.

Also violating his Eighth Amendment rights, I suppose.

On the up side, I bet he's popular with the other inmates. Never lacks for something to trade for smokes.

People with the gender identity disorder have a strong and persistent discomfort with their birth gender and wish to live as the other, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a reference book used by mental health practitioners around the country.

The disorder causes people to have trouble functioning in society and can lead to severe depression, genital mutilation and suicide.

Which, at least, would save us some money.

Weird:

New York Post Online Edition: Entertainment"LOS ANGELES (AP) -- ABC's first choice for the infamous 'Monday Night Football' dropped towel episode wasn't Terrell Owens - it was announcer John Madden.

For reasons that are unclear, Madden couldn't find the time to perform for the skit. Owens, the Philadelphia Eagles receiver, filled in for him in the steamy sketch that drew viewer protests and a network apology, said ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson on Sunday.

I've tried to tune in for MNF's pre-show lead-in ever since the early 1990s, when I was tuning in for a game and...there was Bill Clinton, talking about some "important questions facing our nation." I freaked out, paced up and down the living room floor, yelling at the TV, and then Bill catches a football and says The Line - "Are you ready for some football?"

I've been a fan ever since.

That said, I missed the one with whatshername and The Jerk From Philly, so I guess I missed my opportunity to be offended. But I think with Madden, it would have been funnier, and probably wouldn't have offended people nearly as much. If Madded had survived it, that is.

Cable's out all over the county - a car accident took it out sometime this morning. I've been looking at snow all day (the kind on TV - not the stuff outside) while listening to the two most important football games of the season on the radio.

Someone, please tell my why Boomer Esiason still has a job in broadcasting.

Steve

(To be sung in your deepest base)

Sixteen tons and what's the shrift?
You turn to view your work, and see another drift!
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause there ain't no way,
I'm gettin' my car on the street today!

Steve

There's a lot of emotional talk about telemarketers these days. Of course, it is usually with great irritation and methods to avoid them. But generally speaking, I somewhat enjoy them. I like to hear how they try to sell me something that I don't want and try to counter my rejections.

Telemarketers are seldom successful here. But, I was accosted by one the other day that was more than a match for me. She was young and, by her speech, I assumed had red hair. She sold me 5 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies and very nearly talked me into 13!

I could also infer that she came from a two parent home where the dad wasn't too sharp, but the mom was an ace!

What You'll Wish You'd Known:

"if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

Go read the whole thing.

UPDATE - it's really long.

A nice point made in this column, titled The Road to Fiefdom:

"Because their jobs are on the line in every election, government workers are especially mobilized in politics."

I've often heard and repeated the point that government employee unions represent a monopoly of a monopoly: since there's nowhere else to get law enforcement, or a new driver's license, or a third-grade education (for most, anyway), the government has an effective monopoly over those services. The unions representing those employees effectively have a monopoly on the labor which provides the service over which the government has a monopoly.

Oh, and Old Whig also linked to this guy, KipEsquire, from New York, who has a couple of great posts about Social Security.

Post one: If Only Day

Post two: Social Security: Read it and Weep

UPDATE: found a couple more posts on Social Security on this guy's blog.

Today's Krugman Social Security Lie

and More Americans Cheating Social Security (By Not Dying).

He links to his own related posts at the bottom of each post, so I've found more that I won't link to here. Click away, if you are interested.

Old Whig posted a brief excerpt from Ayn Rand, following up to a couple comments he and I left on one of my past posts. Interesting stuff. I'm not sure I agree, but then it doesn't read like the sort of thing with which one agrees or disagrees - you just read it, file it, think about it some.

More link work done next door. Oh, and yes there's a new column up.

I've been running across some good stuff on Social Security reform the last few days.

First, this post at Townhall.com: three columns by Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, and George Will.

An excerpt from Will's column:

The president says Social Security should be reformed because it is in ``crisis.'' That is an exaggeration. Democrats say it should not be reformed because there is no crisis. That is a non sequitur. Social Security should be reformed not because there is a crisis but because there is an opportunity.

Here's another post on Townhall - excerpts from a David Limbaugh column, but it's the link near the end I find most interesting. A conservative group called Let Freedom Ring has a mathematical model that, they say, can predict the effects of various reform plans on Social Security's cash flow.

Here's the link to the charts of the two plans they've looked at so far (pdf file). Looks like Rep. Paul Ryan's is the way to go.

Speaking of Ryan, I heard him on Charlie Sykes the other day, talking about his plan. According to him, actuaries in D.C. have made some pretty amazing conclusions about it.

Here's an excerpt of something he told Forbes Magazine, which Sykes posted on his website (especially read the second paragraph):

...the official score of the chief actuary shows that ultimately, instead of increasing the payroll tax to over 20%, as would be needed to pay promised benefits under the current system, the tax would be reduced to 4.2%. This would be the largest tax cut in U.S. history.

If this proposal had been adopted in 1983, when the Greenspan Commission recommended tax increases and benefit cuts, Social Security would be expected to go into permanent surplus in 2008, workers would have accumulated over $10 trillion in personal wealth in their accounts – retiring with higher benefits today – and Social Security’s unfounded liability would have been cut roughly in half.

Wow. I want that more than I want tax reform.

I keep telling people - alcohol kills off the weak, sick brain cells first, thus making the whole brain comparatively stronger, like predators picking off the sick, weak wildebeests, thus making the herd stronger.

JS Online: Alcohol may help mind stay sharp

In the largest such study to date, older women who drank moderately had less mental decline than those who abstained.

The study is one of the most comprehensive looks yet at an issue that is gathering urgency as America ages: Are there ways to prevent the cognitive decline that often comes with old age?

Monitoring the drinking histories of 11,102 nurses for nearly 20 years, researchers found that light to moderate drinking of any kind of alcoholic beverage reduced the risk of mental decline by more than 20%, compared with abstinence.

Essentially, their brains were the cognitive equivalent of being 1.5 years younger.

"I recommend moderate drinking," said lead author Meir Stampfer, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

You gonna argue? The guy's a scientist!

Since I've been trying to include more Wisconsin bloggers in my links section, I also started clicking through a few of them, just to have a looksee. Found a new bunch of (probably) liberal links on The Vast Dairy Conspiracy, a blog I linked to a long time ago.

Also found some interesting stuff there. Stacie, the curator, has also done a little writing for Fighting Bob, Ed Garvey's website.

A sample: her take on the "controversy" over certification of the election results.

The Vast Dairy State Conspiracy: Certified

"I'm glad Barbara Boxer (who voted for the Patriot Act, remember?) and Stephanie Tubbs Jones challenged the electors. A dialogue about fairness in democracy is long overdue. But even they said the purpose of the challenge wasn't to change the election results, but to get that dialogue started.

Let's keep that dialogue going, OK? Truth is -- barring something extrordinary -- Bush will be President of the United States for the next four years. There's really nothing we can do to change that fact (especially with a Republican Congress -- unless we catch Bush with a dead girl or a live boy, as the saying goes, he's going to be there for awhile). Protest, investigate, campaign against -- all good things. But be realistic about it.

Otherwise, we just look stupid."

I agree that it makes them look stupid. Where she and I disagree is: I think that's a good thing.

Stacie also bemoans the ideological purity, which she believes permeates the left today, and lists some of the reasons she would never be elected.

• I really don't think we need more gun control. The assaut-weapons ban should have been renewed in some form (I don't know enough about the form it was in to know whether it was worth renewing as-was). Beyond that? Eh.
  
• Free Tibet, Free Mumia, Free Leonard -- these are movements in which perhaps 10 percent of the activists are sincere. The other 90 percent put the bumper stickers on their cars to look cool. While a free Tibet would be nice...and honest prosecutions of crimes would be doubly nice...I am not active in any of these movements, nor am I gonna be. Sorry.
  
• Fois gras is tasty. Veal is tasty. A lot of things are cruel but tasty. Tasty's going to win.
  
• I think government should get out of the marriage business altogether...no same-sex marriage, no opposite-sex marriage, no triad marriage, none of that. Leave marriages to the individuals (and perhaps their clergy), create business-type partnerships if you must. (Ask me about this when my divorce is final and I have no more hoops to jump through and I may have something different to say.)
  
• Pornography in the abstract doesn't offend me. Bad pornography, on the other hand...
  
• I'm not really boycotting a whole lot of anything, although I don't go to Wal-Mart unless I have to. I don't "shop blue." I don't jump on the "ooh, the backup singer for Hilary Duff just said something anti-Bush so I need to buy all of her albums and movies" bandwagon. I don't care that Starbucks is good to their employees -- well, that's great for the employees -- but their coffee still sucks. I believe you can be a total bastard but still produce good writing, music, art, whatever. The opposite is also true.
  
• I think Eminem is a gifted songwriter. This includes songs in which he slits his estranged wife's throat.
  
• I do not believe Eminem is going to make young men want to slit their estranged wives' throats.
  
• Poop jokes, dead baby jokes, sexist jokes, racist jokes, Hitler jokes all can be funny in the right context. I've been known to tell a few. I might shock you. But you'll be laughing on your way out, even if you don't want to admit it.
  

All right, I'll stop for now...but I'm sure there's more where that came from. My point is that we all have our differences, and that's one thing the Right gets, well, right -- they tend to not eat their own over a few disagreements. As much as I'd love to see a Religious Right/Neocon -- Moderate/Classic Conservative schism, it's not going to happen.

I'm not saying we on the left have to abandon our principles -- but we do need to respect some diversity of opinion, as long as we have this two-party system and an electoral process set up to keep the two-party system in place. (As for the two-party system itself? That's a subject for another post.)

Actually, I think some of those - the Eminem and pornography points - are more likely to keep her from being elected on the Right, but hey, maybe that's someplace the sides cross paths.

Jib at the Badger Blog Alliance is also trying to compile a comprehensive list, so at some point I may dump all this and just link to them.

Not to be unoriginal, but:

Heh.

"TAMPA - It looks like Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans will have to endure another season of sitting in pink seats when they attend home games at Raymond James Stadium.

The company that made the seats has notified the Tampa Sports Authority that it probably will not be able to live up to a pledge to replace the now-fading red seats by next season.

After months of negotiating the replacement of some 50,000 of the 65,000 seats at Raymond James, Sports Authority members voted unanimously Tuesday to sue the seats' maker, Hussey Seating Co. of North Berwick, Maine."

Thai elephants get potty training

BANGKOK (AFP) - Having taught Thailand's elephants to paint, dance and play musical instruments, their Thai handlers are now toilet-training the beasts, media reported.

Handlers -- known as mahouts -- have installed giant human-style toilets at a camp in the northern city of Chiang Mai to try to rid the tourist attraction of unsightly droppings, according to the Nation newspaper.

Some seven elephants at the privately run camp beside Chiang Mai Zoo are being trained to sit like a human on the giant white toilets, which can be flushed by pulling on a rope with a gentle tug of the trunk, said the daily.

It showed a picture of a five-year-old elephant named Diew testing out one of the oversized concrete toilets, which has been fitted with equally jumbo-sized plumbing.

The elephants were reportedly rescued from the streets of Bangkok where people were using them to collect money from tourists.

I know what I want for my birthday!



Darth Tater - it's a Darth Vader Mr. Potato Head.

My birthday is in July, in case you didn't know. What? I'll be 36. Why?

Found an article in the L.A. Times (online), by a guy named Reihan Salam: a blogger, who contributes to a site called The American Scene. The blog itself looks pretty good. The column, I had some problems with. So I wrote about it next door.

Click all links.

Steve

The Discerning Texan has a most excellent post concerning Dr. Martin Luther King.

Steve

Often our personal choices and attitudes have far reaching effects that may not be foreseen or intended. Others that may hear one's speech or observe one's actions are swayed in their own thought life or actions. In effect, personal choices can provide an adequate substrate for a general change in the spirit, or zeitgeist, of the times. I've often heard it claimed that what one generation does in moderation, the subsequent generation takes to excess.

Such is the case with legalized abortion. In the United States, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that set aside state laws and denied the right of the people sent an official message, not only that a woman had a legal personal choice about the life of her baby, but also that they could arbitrarily choose who was to be considered human. In essence the Court stated that the weakest among us-- those with no voice-- could be destroyed at the whim of the mother. The initial decision certainly did not state it in this manner, but the ball was rolling to the degree that today a viable child can be killed through partial birth abortion and far beyond.

It is often argued that a woman has the right to control over her own body. If referring to abortion this assertion is biologically incorrect. The woman's uterus, cervix, and vagina form a structurally complex invagination. It is technically to be considered outside of the woman's body just as the inside of the gastrointestinal tract is biologically outside the actual body. The baby, with its own personal DNA and blood supply, is within the mother's personal sphere, but altogether another human entity.

The subsequent cultural zeitgeist has naturally evolved to a great degree in areas that I'm sure were neither intended nor foreseen. Even a child of modest life experience can understand that abortion is killing a baby. Although perhaps not easily verbalized, even a thoughtful youngster instinctively knows that the officially sanctified argument 'the right to control over my own body' should more accurately be translated 'the right to control over my own personal sphere'. From this paradigm the extent of one's personal sphere is subject to a wide range of interpretation. One's spouse and children are within one's personal sphere and are therefore subject to one's right to control. Bullying classmates have injected themselves to one's personal sphere so are subject to 'choice'. A despot's personal sphere may extend to all matters, public or private, within the borders of his country. The parameters of choice within the personal sphere are limited only by one's desire to play god.

Legalized abortion and its natural offshoots are a greater danger to the health, safety, and continued life of this country then all the terrorists, Iranians, North Koreans, and tsumanis combined. Our official 'constitutional' proclamation to reject God in favor of our own self-deification places us directly in line with an ancient nation called Moab. "And Moab will be destroyed from being a people because he has become arrogant toward the Lord." (Jeremiah 48:42) "They [Israel] even sacrificed their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the demons, and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with the blood. Thus they became unclean in their practices, and played the harlot in their deeds." (Psalm 106: 37- 39) Moab was obliterated and both divisions of Israel suffered for generations because of their rejection of God.

Steve

John Leo has written an interesting article in Jewish World Review concerning his take on liberal thought forms.

Charlie Sykes recently devoted some time on his radio show to Wisconsin-based weblogs. I just happened to check his blog that day, and saw some names I hadn't seen before.

Thus, I realized it was time to update my links next door.

Lots of new blogs added on - all but one on the conservative side. The one liberal blog is Brian's Study Breaks, By a PhD candidate at UW - studying medeival Middle Eastern history - Brian Ulrich (von Lichtenstein. No, not really, and I'm probably the only one who understands what I just wrote).

Looking through his blog, I don't really see anything that tags him as a liberal, but he was listed that way on somebody else's blogroll, so I'll leave it like that until further notice.

Another key addition: the Badger Blog Alliance, which is populated by several other Wisconsin bloggers: Jiblog, Brainpost, Darn Floor, Wild Wisconsin, and Scofflaw's Subsidy.

I'll point out Wild Wisconsin, in particular, written by some young guy named Lucas Pillman, because he's also reserved KohlvTommy.blogspot.com, just in case Tommy Thompson decides to run for the U.S. Senate in 2006. You have to like the pluck.

Another blog, Tom McMahon, has the best slogan this side of Mr. Pterodactyl: "The stategy of bingo, the excitement of chess." Humility, I think. I'm not too familiar with it.

I've also added links to CRG Network and Wisconsin Conservative Digest, which aren't exactly blogs, but close enough. I put those a little apart from the others, along with Bellings and Lasee's Notes, which aren't actually blogs, either.

I'm feeling a little guilty about not including more liberal sites, but I just don't have any. I think Dean once told me about some others, but I never put them up. Dean? Are you out there?

I'm not exactly clear on my criteria for including a site in my links: do they just have to be from Wisconsin, have ties to Wisconsin, or actually write about Wisconsin subjects? I guess I'll err toward the liberal, and have very low standards - as long as there's some tie, I'll include it. Maybe in the future I'll re-organize them all somehow.

Blogging in Wisconsin is pretty healthy right now - just over the last few days, there has been a great deal of blogging about alleged voter fraud in Milwaukee - seems several thousand same-day registration cards have been found to be illegible. Owen at Boots and Sabers (one day to be known as the granddaddy of Wisconsin blogging) has a three post round-up: one, two, three.

Steve linked to this in a comment over at Mr. Pterodactyl's, but I thought it was worth reprinting here. It's by a blogger called "The Sundries Shack," of whom I have, heretofore, never heard.

Hold Your Breath and Turn Blue Day!

In light of this and this I’d like to propose another way that those fine Americans who don’t like the President can protest that…well…that more than half of America actually does.

I’d like to propose a little something I call “Hold Your Breath and Turn Blue for Blue States".

Here’s how it works. On the day of the inauguration, find the nearest person to you who voted for the President. Once you get their attention, start holding your breath until you turn blue and pass out.

See, that’ll reinforce your “blue” image while showing them that you possess the sort of political maturity it takes to stage a protest that gets results!

And when the paramedics get there to check on you, you can tell them just how horrible things are for them since Bush isn’t giving them any Homeland Security money. They’ll appreciate that.

Here's the permalink: The Sundries Shack

Steve, maybe you ought to give us a rundown of how you find these things. Do you just randomly pick people's blogs to look at?

Steve

Lance, I've changed my mind about more tax money for schools. Wisconsin needs more educational speakers like this! Then we will catch up to all those foreign students' achievements.

Steve

Scrappleface' post concerning the Cobb County textbook sticker ACLU case is just too good!

I lived in Cobb County (Marietta, GA) for a couple of years before moving to Texas. It's just beautiful down there. We were close to the historic Kennesaw Battlefield Park of the Civil War-- They called it 'the War of Northern Aggression'-- and the beautiful Kennesaw Mountain. Atlanta was just down the road as well.

Next door, everything you ever wanted to know about perspective - for example, the Hardee's Thickburger. A heart attack waiting to happen. Three days worth of saturated fats. More meat than you get at Thanksgiving dinner. It's almost insane - why would anybody create that? One blogger (Dan Drezner) calls it "food porn."

Why would anybody create it? Perspective. Sure, you'll clog your arteries just by thinking about one, but, boy, those Whoppers and Big Macs almost look healthy in comparison, don't they?

Steve

Speaking of dead bodies... Rock County is almost starting to look as bad as Sauk County.

Steve

The Hardee's Monster Thick Burger segues perfectly to my next set of incoherent thoughts-- dead bodies.

One of my favorite television dramas is the original CSI. I also watch documentaries like Forensic Files, Cold Case Files, The System, etc. CSI adds a little Hollywood drama and personality to the criminal investigation scenarios. The scientific advancements are truly remarkable. After sitting in the evidence room for 27 years, the match stick and flatulence residue found in the maple leaf's pallisade parenchymal layer are now proof positive that Professor OldWhig killed Colonel Pterodactyl in Grandpa John's parlor with a Lance. (A slick defense lawyer and a 'feeling' jury exonerated him from the murder, but he was still sentenced to life in prison for being politically incorrect.)

One quirk in CSI's set up has always bothered me, though. The investigators always find the body in its 'pristine' deceased condition. It is still floating in the pool, in its position as posed by the sociopath, or face down in its own pool of blood. My problem is this: Doesn't any regular citizen who ever finds a body either know or use CPR?

If I had found such a body, it would be CSI's biggest nightmare. I would touch the body! I'd check for breathing and pulse! I'd roll the victim over, blow in his mouth, rip open his shirt and mash his ribcage into mush if need be (being careful to avoid hepatic laceration via the xyphoid!). Then, after the victim was pronounced 'dead', CSI could have him. After they separated out all my finger and footprints, sweat, saliva, mucus of various consistencies, hair, clothing fibers, and presumably, vomit, then they would be left with the remaining evidence to solve the crime. So, let's see how good you are now, hotshots.

For your information, my record for CPR (without a defibrillator) is 0-2.

Due to the popularity of CSI and its two spawnings, Miami and NY, along with the political climate of these times, I would expect another series that bases upon CSI to spring forth; CSI-PETA.

As the Democrats have lost political clout in both the executive and legislative branches, their members on the left of Michael Moore (We seldom see them 'cause Moore's girth blocks our view of them from the right.) emerge with even greater fury. 'The earthquakes, tsumanis, and mudslides are good, America is bad.' They even have been known to eat their own, i.e. Apple Computer and Steve Jobs. However, above and beyond all this and whatever else that may grit their gallbladders, here comes Hardee's and its MTB. Oh, my! Oh, my! Multioligopolyoffensiveness. Hardee's and its customers are committing egregious crimes against Mother Nature and Mother Earth. This conspicuous consumption and opulence of these capitalists is offensive to all. There are people starving in Somalia as well as the peoples struck by the tsumanis. (One MTB could feed a family of six for a full week!) They have murdered innocent cattle and hogs. They have stolen milk from the mouths of defenseless calves. They have not obeyed the instruction of their erudite betters concerning physical health and rejected tofu and bulgar wheat meals. And perhaps the worst crime committed is that the beef in the burger is not only Angus beef, but Black Angus beef, subjecting it to hate crime legislation.

The new CSI-PETA series, with stars like Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, Al Franken, and many of the election emigrants returning from Canada would heroically investigate this horrendous criminal conspiracy and convict all involved. The Earth's streets (or bicycle paths) would be safe again for all sentient life. The American capitalists would all be re-educated to walk in the worthy way. The Earth again is in harmony. We are saved! Hallelujah! The series' themesong would be, "I'd like to teach the World to sing... In perfect harmony. I'd like to prove the U.S. a joke... now under the U.N.'s army."

Mmmm! A Hardee's Monster Thickburger sounds pretty good about now! I'll enjoy the crime and will do the time.

From the colon cancer file: The Hardee's Thickburger. 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat, and that's without the fries.

"You got all four major food groups. You got beef, pork, mayonnaise and butter."

I need one of these.

Read the link: Daniel Drezner's site - not one of my regular reads, but Instapundit linked to it.

danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: A very important post about... food porn

Social Security Reform, George Will style.

MSNBC - Tell That to Your Children

The age cohort that is least receptive to reform that enlarges individual choice is the elderly�a cohort composed of people who, all their lives, when they wanted coffee they ordered a cup of ... coffee. The cohort most receptive to reform, those ages 18 to 29, is composed of people who, when they want coffee, take a deep breath and order something like this: a venti decaf nonfat extra-hot no foam with whip [whipped cream] three-pump vanilla [three shots of vanilla syrup] latte.

Colon cancer, here I come.

JS Online: High consumption of red meat tied to colon cancer

For the study, researchers followed 148,610 people, aged 50 to 74, for nearly 10 years - a so-called prospective study. The meat-eating habits of the participants were noted at the time the study began and 10 years earlier.

Those who ate the most red meat at both points in time had a 29% greater chance of developing cancer in the lower colon than those who ate the least meat. High red meat consumption was at least 3 ounces (a typical single, fast-food burger) a day for men and 2 ounces for women.

High intake of processed meat, which included products such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs and lunch meat, increased the risk to 50%, compared with those who ate the least amount of processed meat. High processed meat intake was at least 5 to 6 ounces a week for men and 2 to 3 ounces for women each week. A piece of bologna weighs one ounce, and two slices of cooked bacon weigh just over a half-ounce.

New column up. Not bad, if you can get through a couple of boring paragraphs at the beginning.

I know I have been quiet lately. Busy at work, believe it or not, and then by the time I get home, have dinner, clean up, help with homework, get the kids ready for bed, teeth brushed, lizards fed, stories read, songs sung, drinks of water brought, and lights turned out, my wife is exhausted. No time for blogging then.

So, in lieu of the sometimes-daily blogging of the past, I offer...

ABC News: Beer Losing Ground in Beverage Market

"We believe there is an overall image crisis with beer," Smith Barney Citicorp analyst Bonnie Herzog said.

First of all, I'm ashamed of us all. Second of all, if beer has an image problem, maybe it's because the major brewers have been trying to market their beers as a health food. Low-calorie beers, low-carb beers? What's next, a fat free beer?

Everybody get this, because I'm only going to say this once (today, anyway): Beer Is Not Good For You. And it's not supposed to be. It's BEER.

Steve (Link corrected)

Pat in North Carolina often writes or passes along interesting posts. Here's another clever one. She's a retired nurse and nursing instructor so probably is a tough old bird.

Steve

Thomas Sowell's commentary on December 10, 2004, dovetails well with Lance's posting on January 7, 2005.

Educational priorities seem to have long ago gone astray.

As I have related before, in the ten years that I taught in a private school, we used a standardized test with 1962 norms that compared our students to a much higher standard than that which was the norm in the 1980's. The standards had plummeted to such a degree in just two decades that we couldn't justify using the newer ones. We wouldn't have learned too much about our students' progress had they been scoring at a 12.9 grade level while only in the 6th grade.

As it is now, I would consider great increases in public school funding as requested by the 'professionals' as the Texas Oilman's saying, 'Money down a dry hole.' There's not much profit in a barrel of dust. The lack of money is not the problem, the lack of educational content and technique are.

What we could have done with $9,000 per student. (Oh, yeah, we had plenty of lower income, single parent home, and minority students, too.)

In another article, Sowell recommends a book by Daniel J. Flynn entitled, Intellectual Morons. I just might find and read that one.

Steve

My efforts to induce Grandpa John out of his winter blogernation is mild compared to what some others have done to entice their older brothers out of their caves. Try this or its more hip (or is it hep?) upgrade and just replace 'Starsplash' with 'Grandpa John', 'Al Erkkila's dictum...' with 'Steve's' (D'oh), 'Ron' with 'John', '4 1/2 years older' with '6 years older', and 'Tae Kwon Do' with 'Liberalism' and you have posts from identical templates.

Steve

Rumors of varying ilks have been flying around this neck of the woods concerning the infamous Grandpa John and his disappearance from his own blog. Most say that he is intimidated by the sheer intellects of Lance and Steve. Some say that Bucky ate his computer or that Spanky spoke to him and told him to mourn the election for 90 days in sackcloth and ashes. Others that he has been besieged by Jehovah's Witnesses. I posit, however, that Grandpa John is just old and forgot his password so therefore cannot post or comment. (No, I don't think that Kirstin broke his fingers, although she might have given him one.)

Steve

Anybody seen Grandpa John lately?

"POLL: IN MATCH-UP BETWEEN HILLARY AND KERRY, MOST DEMOCRATS WOULD CHOOSE SUICIDE Survey Spells Trouble for Dems, Pollster Says A new survey of Democratic voters indicates that in a hypothetical match-up between Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and former presidential nominee John Kerry, most Democrats would choose suicide over either candidate.

The poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, shows Mr. Kerry drawing 21%, Sen. Clinton 18%, and various forms of suicide 61%.

“Throwing yourself in front of a speeding city bus” was the most popular means of suicide at 22%, with “jumping off the roof of a really tall building or bridge” coming in second at 17%.

According to pollster Rockwell Pritchard, the surging popularity of suicide bodes ill for both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Kerry as potential presidential candidates in 2008.

“It’s still very early, but even at this stage of the game the prospect of one of those two being nominated shouldn’t be making Democrats want to kill themselves in these numbers,” Mr. Pritchard said.

Reached at his home in Massachusetts, Sen. Kerry pointed out that while he did not do as well as suicide, he still polled higher than Sen. Clinton, adding, “That’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.”

But Mr. Pritchard was quick to throw cold water on Mr. Kerry’s upbeat assessment: “In a head-to-head match-up, a sharp stick in the eye beats Sen. Kerry by a two-to-one margin.”

Elsewhere, at his confirmation hearings yesterday, Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales said, “You call this an interrogation? Where the heck are the hoods?”"

Todd, Lance, it may be time for an intervention!? And take away all sharp objects. (Except Kirstin's sharp tongue.)

Ben Bromley, a Baraboo-area columnist with whom I play church-league softball, has a great column today.

WiscNews.com : Baraboo News Republic

My first ever sports column, next door.

Hmmm. Maybe I better stick to politics.

Steve

The World Magazine Blog cites a situation in Janesville:

Good news about the faith-based initiative
After its very rocky start, two good things are happening with President Bush's faith-based initiative.

First, the use of vouchers is growing: "In the coming year, a $100 million drug treatment program that allows addicts to use their government money to seek treatment from religious groups will also get started.... Called Access to Recovery, it gives drug users vouchers to take to any organization they choose -- including those that rely on a religious conversion to break the addiction. Because the program uses vouchers, it can legally fund explicitly religious activity."

Second, the White House is fighting harder discrimination against religious groups. Jim Towey, who heads the faith-based initiative, "cited a case last fall in which the city council in Janesville, Wis., was urged by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a group that opposes Bush's initiative, not to give the Salvation Army $250,000 to buy a building for a homeless shelter because worship activities would also take place inside. Towey's office told city officials that federal regulations allowed the grant to go forward. 'When it's brought to our attention that a group's being discriminated against, the federal government's going to weigh in,' he said."

Posted by Olasky at CST 07:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Steve

From The Council on Aging file:

I'm getting old enough now that; a.) everyone looks familiar, and b.) I can't remember any of their names.

Steve

Ah, yes, Grandpa John's, the Blog dedicated to fairness; dedicated to the honest airing of all sides of an issue. It does appear, however, that the air has been cleared of much of its polluting blogosmog. The cream has definitely risen to the top after the dross has been removed and the dregs have been decanted. The most intelligent and well written ideas and opinions seem to have choked out the dogmatic and demagogic tares from the midst of our fruitful garden. And then there were two-- the result of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, apparently. (No, I'm not forgetting the regular sophisticated and erudite contributions by Al, nor the occasional Kiwi sheep dipping by!)

Yes, yes... one day some blogoarcheologist will be carefully cyberdusting off the newly discovered G.J.'s archives and prove that there actually once was a Grandpa John and a Mr. Pterodactyl in ancient times. It will be heralded as a great discovery of the times and shatter the notion that G.J. and M.Pt. were just something of superstitious myths believed in only by children and foolish old women. Of course, they will be shown to be inferior precursors, the mere stepping stones to the higher which was to come; the unseemly underbellys of life that were eventually overcome and supplanted by the more intellectually and morally evolved Lance and Steve.

The missing links may be gone, but never forgotten. Perhaps we can keep their memories alive by writing eulogies and songs in their honor, extolling their virtues-- er, well, maybe just stories and songs about them somehow.

Lance, perhaps you could help me with some lyrics...

"Grandpa John, he started a blog,
But could never quite master his fog.
A son and a brother dominated the scene,
G.J. couldn't keep up, 'cause he was such a ween(ie)."
(Ok, ok, it's just a rough draft!)

"Then there was Mr. Pterodactyl,
Something, and yet something still,
Mares eat oats, and does eat oats,
Fa-la-la, tra-la-la, and Kumbaya, folks"
(Yeesh, that one will be a lot tougher!)

(P.S. Al, don't get used to comments like the one above!)

Steve

From the 'Computer Model' file:

Former Badger QB, Jim Sorgi, that titan of the passing game, is playing for the Colts against the Broncos today. Constructing a computer model that reflects his first half stats, we project that he would have passed for 64 touchdowns if allowed to play for the full season. They should get rid of that Manning puke.

I was cheering for Carolina and St. Louis for most of the afternoon, because both of them winning would have meant Minnesota missing the playoffs entirely.

I changed my mind, though, when somebody on TV mentioned the Viqueens might have to come to Green Bay. What an opportunity, to beat the Vikes three times in a year.

First ever sports column, coming up on Tuesday, unless something else important catches my attention between now and then.

Steve

Even though Lance gets all the 'centennials', it seems as though I'm going to get the first post of the new year. That, of course, is a much greater honor than a silly centennial posting! I am really surprized that Lance hasn't gone back and counted them by hand to obtain an ersatz honor and juvenile bragging rights. (I, being dignified, would never stoop to such a thing. ...285, 286, 287...) I'll just remain the more mature and bigger man.

Happy New Year... and Go Badgers.