June 30, 2004

Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man

HobbsOnline wholeheartedly endorses my newest advertiser, the book Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man, by authors David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke. You can buy the book by clicking their ad, the Amazon ad to the right, or via Amazon.com by clicking here. Book description:

Watching Michael Moore in action - passing off manipulating facts in Bowling for Columbine, spinning statistics in Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?, shamelessly grandstanding at the Academy Awards, and epitomizing the hypocrisy he's made a king's fortune railing against - has spurred authors David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke to take action into their own hands. In Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, Hardy and Clarke dish it back hard to the fervent prophet of the far left, turning a careful eye on Moore's use of camera tricks and publicity ploys to present his own version of the truth. Postwar documentarians gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary, and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary.

How, they ask, does Moore pull off a proletarian, "man-of-the-people" image so at odds with his lifestyle as a fabulously wealthy Manhattanite? And how large of an impact do his incendiary, ill-founded polemics have on the growing community that follows him with near-religious devotion? Loaded with well-researched, solidly reasoned arguments, and laced with irreverent wit, Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man fires back at one of the left's biggest targets - politically and literally.

Also don't miss their excellent blog, MooreLies.com, a "weblog, article archive, forum and more - all joined to expose the truth about America's fakest pseudo-muckraker."

Iraq & al Qaeda Linked? 9/11 Commission Says Yes

The media recently hyped a report from the staff of the 9/11 Commission that said there were no links between Iraq and the 9/11 attack, and the media wrongly claimed the Commission staff had said there were no links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda, period. Perhaps they should have more carefully read Staff Statement #15, Overview of the Enemy, especially this brief section from page 3:

With al Qaeda as its foundation, Bin Ladin sought to build a broader Islamic army that also included terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia and Eritrea. Not all groups from these states agreed to join, but at least one from each did. With a multinational council intended to promote common gooals, coordinate targeting and authorize asset sharing for terrorist operations, this Islamic force represented a new level of collaboration among diverse terrorist groups.

He was right. And 9/11 Commission Staff Statement #15 makes that very clear.

MORE: NBC's Tom Brokaw should have read Staff Statement #15 before he interviewed Iraq's new interim prime minister.

Hypocrisy Among Tennessee's Leftists? No! Really?

Tennessee blogger Mark A. Rose has a very good letter-to-the-editor published in The Tennessean yesterday highlighting the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the mis-named left-wing Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, which supports a demonstrably unfair proposed state income tax. Regarding comments from a TFT official in this story in the June 25 Tennessean, Rose wrote:

The hypocrisy coming from Tennesseans for Fair Taxation (TFT) is amusing. TFT opposes a measure currently working its way through Congress that would allow residents of non-income tax states to deduct the sales taxes they pay on federal tax returns.

This is a curious about-face by TFT, because if you visit their Web site and read ''Six Reasons to Support the Tax Relief & Reform Act,'' you will find reason No. 3: ''It will save $580 million now being sent to Washington. By changing from a sales-tax based system to an income-tax based system, Tennessee can take advantage of federal laws that allow taxpayers to deduct state income taxes from their federal returns, saving Tennessee taxpayers millions.''

Federal deductibility is a major selling point of income tax advocates. But since efforts to pass an income tax failed two years ago, TFT apparently opposes expanding the federal deductibility to include sales taxes.

According to TFT's chairman, ''This does nothing to solve the problem of unfair taxes in Tennessee. If anything, it makes matters worse.'' Well, it makes matters worse for TFT, because expanding federal deductibility takes away a battering ram used in years past to sell the income tax.

It is apparent that TFT isn't interested in saving that $580 million being sent to Washington after all. It just wants to stick Tennessee taxpayers with an income tax, and in reality doesn't care one iota about federal deductibility.

Another 250,000 More-Likely To Vote For Bush

Reuters reports:

U.S. employment likely surged again in June, taking gains this year to some 1.4 million jobs and bolstering President George W. Bush's economic record ahead of the November election, analysts said on Wednesday. Economists believe 250,000 jobs were created this month, virtually matching May's jump of 248,000...

Incidentally, that means job creation over the last four months is clicking along at an annualized pace of nearly 3.6 million jobs. John Kerry has promised his economic policies would create 10 million jobs over four years - or more than four million fewer jobs than the current pace of job-growth generated by the Bush Boom.

Good Questions

Sen. Lamar Alexander made some very insightful remarks on the Senate floor almost two months ago about the two surveys on which the government bases its jobs-growth and unemployment stats each month – and the role of millions of "undocumented" workers (illegal immigrants) play in those surveys' accuracy. I've reprinted them verbatim here, and you can also read them in the Congressional Record starting here under the heading "Calculation of the Employment Rate.

It's worth noting that Alexander believes the government's Household Survey "paints a much clearer picture of employment in the United States" than does the government's Payroll Survey.

Sen. Alexander's complete remarks:

I wish to discuss with my colleagues something of a mystery. I have yet to be able to find an answer to this mystery. I am hoping by addressing it on the Senate floor and by letters I am sending today to Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, their research might help me figure this out.

I asked Chairman Greenspan at our hearing on April 21 of the Joint Economic Committee about the 6 million people, more or less, who are living and working in the United States who our Government is not counting when it makes our monthly projections about who is working and who is unemployed.

Here is what I base that question on: There is a consensus there are 8 to 10 million undocumented aliens or illegal immigrants in the United States today. For example, the Urban Institute estimate says 8 million, and the Center for Immigration Studies says 10 million. The Urban Institute estimates perhaps 6 million or more of those undocumented persons have a job in the United States. I do not think there is much debate about the fact there are 6 million people living in the United States, more or less, who are illegally here who are also working.

My guess is our Government is not counting most of these 6 million undocumented aliens when we announce each month the number of Americans who have jobs. It was 138 million for March and the number who are unemployed, 5.7 percent of the workforce, or 8.4 million people in March.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which makes these announcements each month, gathers their estimates in two different ways. The first is the socalled payroll survey of 400,000 business establishments. Since it is a violation of Federal criminal laws for a company to employ an undocumented alien, I think it is wrong to assume most or even many of the 6 million illegal immigrants who are working here are reported by the payroll survey. Nor do I believe these 6 million illegal immigrants are likely to be included in the other principal data-gathering mechanism of the survey, which we call the household survey.

This is a survey of more than 60,000 persons living in the United States which basically asked in many different ways, do you have a job? Now, this must include a lot of people the payroll service does not, people such as farmers, people working at home, independent contractors, and I suspect a lot of people who are here illegally.

I also believe that it paints a much clearer picture of employment in the United States than the payroll survey. Common sense suggests to me that the household survey also does not include many undocumented aliens. If one is an illegal immigrant and they receive a phone call from the Government asking questions, they are not likely to give many answers, I would not think, especially if the phone call is not in their native language.

So I see no basis to assume these 6 million workers - my guess is in most cases hard workers but undocumented aliens - are being counted or that they are being equally uncounted by the two surveys, which is what Mr. Greenspan suggested might be the case. Our failure to find some way to consider the implications of having what I would judge to be so many undocumented aliens working has a great many policy implications.

Now I am not trying in these remarks to solve the great issues of immigration, whether we should have it, how much we should have, what we should do. That is another debate. I am just trying to understand who is here. If 6 million are here and working, are we counting them? It would be helpful to know the answer to that question, to know whether we are understating the number of people living in America who are employed and stating the rate of people in America who are unemployed.

This is one of the principal debates in our presidential campaign: It is the economy, stupid. It is jobs. Well, how do these 6 million uncounted workers affect the information we put out each month upon which we make all of these debates? Also, if we have 8.4 million unemployed, according to our official statistics, and if 6 million illegal immigrants are working, are these 6 million taking jobs that the 8.4 million want? Also, if these 6 million were not here, would we suddenly have virtually full employment?

Another point might be, if these 6 million were not here and the 8.4 million still remained unemployed, or many of them did, that certainly would tell us something about whether we need more or less unemployment insurance, more or fewer training programs, or more or fewer lessons in English. Or if the 6 million illegal workers are actually employed, that would tell us something about the effectiveness of our immigration laws and would help us make more accurate estimates of the contributions these workers might make to the Social Security and Medicare systems.

So if we are going to rely on these monthly estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, my point is, if one is going to say to us we have 138 million people at work in the United States, what about the 6 million who are here who probably are not counted, who are illegally here? They are real people. They are working in real jobs. What about them? Or if we are talking about the 8.4 million people who are unemployed in the United States, what is the effect of having 6 million illegal people on that rate of unemployment? It is information I think we ought to know.

At the end of his answer to my question, Mr. Greenspan said that having better information about the number of undocumented aliens living and working in the United States is a subject that has "bedeviled statisticians."

I believe it is also a problem we ought to try harder to figure out the answer to. In fact, I believe it is inexcusable that we would base so much of our public debate about unemployment on surveys that likely exclude several million employed workers in the United States, many of them doing jobs that most Americans consider to be valuable jobs.

This failure to report accurate information may be leading us into a number of erroneous, ineffective, and expensive policy decisions. I have asked Mr. Greenspan and his excellent staff and I have asked the Bureau of Labor Statistics if they could examine this question in-depth and give me and perhaps other Members of the Joint Economic Committee, if Chairman Bennett finds the subject interesting, an opportunity to talk with them about their conclusion.

It seems odd that we would continue to base so much of our national debate upon information that may be flawed, and if it is not flawed, then we need someone with reasonable authority to say that each month we are counting the 5, 6 or 7 million people who have jobs in the United States and who are illegally here so that this cannot be an issue. If they cannot say that, then we need to work harder to find out the answer. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my letter to Chairman Alan Greenspan be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows…

Go Crazy

I predict the Left will make this book a bestseller.

Dancing Saddam

Iraq is going to do just fine. And I very much want one of these for myself. Some Iraqi blogger probably could make a fortune buying and reselling them via his blog.

Texpayers Get Wamped

The Family Budget Protection Act was one of the few bills to come along in Congress that would actually do something concrete to curb runaway federal spending. It failed to pass last Friday in the House of Representatives by a vote of 146-268.

You won't be surprised to know that virtually every single Democrat in the House who was present for the vote against it. If you're a Tennessee voter in the district of U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, a Republican, you might be surprised to learn that Wamp - who campaigns as a fiscal conservative - voted against it. Wamp, who represents the 3rd District, which includes the Chattanooga area, Oak Ridge, and a chunk of the west half of eastern Tennessee, was the only Tennessee Republican congressman to vote against it (joining 71 "Republican" congresspeople from other states who also forsook their fiscal conservative base on this issue.)

All of Tennessee's Democrat congressmen voted against it (except Bart Gordon, who was absent).

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, a faux conservative Democrat - he talks like a conservative far more often that he votes like one - voted against the Family Budget Protection Act. Keep that in mind, voters in Tennessee's Fourth District, when you go to the polls. Davis likes to pretend he's a fiscal conservative, but when he had the chance to show it on a significant piece of legislation, he voted to protect Congress's out-of-control spending habits at your expense.

So, what would the Family Budget Protection Act do?

Zach Wamp and Lincoln Davis both thought that was a bad idea.

UPDATE: While I'm slamming Wamp, lefty Knoxville blogger South Knox Bubba is praising him on another matter (and rightly so). VRWC-member blogger slams Republican, Loony-Left wingnut blogger praises Republican. Just another day in the blogosphere...

It's Alive!

It's almost noon and I haven't posted since last night. Sorry. Been busy. Don't fret and don't send out the search dogs: I am alive and will be posting new stuff soon...

June 29, 2004

From the Grassroots

Here's an independently-produced Internet ad for the re-election of George W. Bush.

"Now We've Got Dead Silence"

Blake Wylie provides the chilling transcript of a 911 call and writes:

Did you know that law enforcement encourages you to dial 911 instead of attempting to defend yourself? This is what happens when you dial 911 and wait.

The Real Iraq: Not from the WaPo

Many bloggers are linking to this piece from Eric M. Johnson, a Marine Corps reservist and veteran of the Iraq war, and deservedly so. Johnson flays the Washington Post's "relentlessly negative" coverage from Baghdad by going right to the source of the stream of negative and inaccurate coverage - the WaPo's inexperienced but biased Baghdad bureau chief.

Johnson explains from first-hand experience how the negativity is agenda-driven and why it is not credible.

Iraq veterans often say they are confused by American news coverage, because their experience differs so greatly from what journalists report. Soldiers and Marines point to the slow, steady progress in almost all areas of Iraqi life and wonder why they don’t get much notice – or in many cases, any notice at all.

Part of the explanation is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post. He spent most of his career on the metro and technology beats, and has only four years of foreign reporting, two of which are in Iraq. The 31-year-old now runs a news operation that can literally change the world, heading a bureau that is the source for much of the news out of Iraq.

... Since I saw Rajiv Chandrasekaran's integrity up close, I haven't believed a word he writes, or any story coming out of the bureau he runs. You shouldn't, either.

Ad Sale

Just a reminder: Ad space is on sale at HobbsOnline through July 4. But space is filling fast - I'll accept one more ad in any of the three Blogads ad spaces, two to the left, one to the right.

The Fire Inside

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Bob Ford has written a really excellent profile of Lance Armstrong on the eve of Lance's attempt to win a record sixth straight Tour de France.

Armstrong rides hardest when he is mad, when he is challenged. It is acknowledged among those who know him best that he would not have climbed the finish to Luz-Ardiden so well had he not fallen.

"When he got off the tarmac, the first thing I did was say, 'Now the race is over. I know this guy. The race is over. He's going to destroy people,' " said Bobby Julich, a former teammate of Armstrong's who was watching on television.

... "It is because he isn't afraid to lose that makes him so successful," Chris Carmichael, Armstrong's personal coach, told Cycling News. "Lance is willing to risk losing in order to win. True greatness only comes with real risks."

Aid and Comfort

Yet another great cartoon from the geniuses Cox & Forkum.

We're Getting Better At This

Chuck Simmins compares post-war Iraq with post-WW2 Germany and finds that we're making progress faster in Iraq than we did in Germany. Imagine that.

Economic Foot Soldiers

In response to a column by Russell Sheldon, senior economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns in Toronto,which I wrote about yesterday, Jeff Cornwall says America's entrepreneurs are the economic foot soldiers of the War on Terror.

The current expansion has seen an unusually slow employment recovery. Why? In large part it is because we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Entrepreneurs remember that after the 9/11 attack, those businesses that were already running lean and tight were the most likely to survive the dramatic shock on the economy that followed. There is a general, yet usually unspoken fear that there will be another “event”. So they are being very cautious. They don’t want to be caught with large inventories and bloated payrolls if the terrorists strike again. Entrepreneurs have a general sense of confidence in the economy, but they just don't trust that events will allow it to continue.

... Things are no longer as predictable and simple as they once were. The attacks of 9/11 were aimed directly at our economic system. And they got a direct hit. We are at war. The war has come to our shores, and the enemy intends on attacking the very foundations of free enterprise and our way of life. In many ways, entrepreneurs are the economic foot soldiers of this part of the war.

The alternative, a tax-raising cut-and-run appeaser, is simply unthinkable, unless you enjoy thinking about America dealing with return of Carterism - a stagnant economy and a dispirited foreign policy that leaves America at the mercy of Islamofascist hostage-takers and killers.

For the soldiers at the combat front of the War on Terror to the business entrepreneurs at the economic front, to you and me at the political front, pray we don't lose nerve now. The future of America, the civilized world, and half a billion people in the Middle East who would prefer to live in freedom and prosperity and peace rather than in fear and tyranny and terror, depends on it.

French Dressing Down

London Calling blogger (and HobbsOnline London correspondent) George Miller explains how French President Jacques Chirac just provided the world with an object lesson in "How to insult your friends and influence nobody".

Yesterday, the French President, Jacques Chirac, told President Bush to get his nose out of European business. Bush had told Turkish leaders that the United States is supportive of Turkey’s application to join the European Union.

... Chirac's reaction to Bush's statement is revealing of the French assumption that the Continent is its private sphere of influence. Someone really ought to tell the free nations of Europe that this is how the French see them. On second thought, there's no need for anyone to tell them. The French President is doing a very good job of telling them himself.

Chirac has become a master of insulting the free nations of Europe. But this outburst, like the one last year in which he told those European nations who supported the Allied invasion of Iraq to "shut up," reveals France's growing weakness in the enlarged Europe.

How Reaganomics Hurt Black America

Joe Perkins says: "The reality is, the 1980s, with a conservative, free-market Republican in the White House, were a boom time for black America."

College Enrollment Rate Suggests Kerry Wrong

I was thinking about yesterday's story in USA Today about how college has become more affordable for the middle class in the last few years - despite John Kerry's now provably false claim otherwise - and my memory kept telling me I ought to check college enrollment stats. If John Kerry is right, then college enrollment would be down. But if USA Today is right, then college enrollment would be up or at least steady.

Here's what I found: "The college enrollment rate of recent high school graduates was little changed over the year and remains near historically high rates," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in a news release dated April 27, 2004. According to the BLS, almost sixty-four percent of high school graduates from the class of 2003 were enrolled in colleges or universities in the fall.

Now, how can that be? John Kerry says college has become simply unaffordable for the middle class, yet college enrollment "remains near historically high rates." Huh. I guess John Kerry must be wrong. Or lying - and unaware of the existence of the Internet and Google so his claims and assertions can be fact-checked.

Oh Canada

Nathan Moore says the election returns in Canada are good news for the future of American-Canadian relations.

A Little of This...

Matt White is on a roll, taking on Democrats in the Tennessee legislature, lazy journalist, and the future of NATO. Hey, it's the blogosphere. We write about what interests us, hoping you'll find it interesting too. Just click here and read and scroll - and add him to your bookmarks or blogroll.

Iraqi Bloggers React to Sovreignty

The Dallas Morning News provides a round-up of Iraqi bloggers' reaction to the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government. The reaction is mostly positive. They certainly seem happier than Democrats.

June 28, 2004

Shock Wave: An Economic Sonic Boom

Is the U.S. economy suddenly facing a "supply shock"? Russell Sheldon, senior economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns in Toronto, thinks so:

In a neat 360-degree turn, the basic theme in the U.S. economy has swung from excess capacity to shortages. The shortage situation is extreme by any standards. Inventories at all stages of production plunged relative to sales in the initial months of this year. All three levels - manufacturing, wholesalers and retailers - are very short on inventories. ... Viewing the "moon shot" economic numbers for ISM and construction, I think the shortages story is lighting a fire under the economy that will last a while.

Ad Sale

HobbsOnline is having its best month ever in terms of readership, with nearly 30,000 different people having read this blog in the last month, and an additional unknown number of readers accessing HobbsOnline via my RSS or RDF feeds some 26,500 times. Additionally, this is the first month HobbsOnline has topped the 1-million mark in number of pages read, and the number of other blogs linking to HobbsOnline has jumped more than 25 percent in June.

To celebrate, I've reduced prices for the prime ad space on HobbsOnline to just $25 for one month for any ad placed through July 4. Happy Independence Day!

Bush Boom: More Good Economic News

More very good economic news. I blame the Bush tax cuts. Does John Kerry still think we're in the middle of the Great Depression?

Boston Paper: Kerry, Democrats Wrong on Outsourcing

"Outsourcing" is the Left's latest economic bugaboo, the trend they hail as proof of the failure of President Bush's economic policies, or even of the evils of globalization. And so it warrants a closer look. The Boston Business Journal, in John Kerry's hometown, took a closer look - and says Kerry is wrong about "outsourcing." (free reg. req.)

The United States is on the winning side of outsourcing, gaining far more jobs from the process than it loses. A McKinsey study says the money saved from the lowered costs of outsourcing and redeployed labor produces a net gain in the United States. ... The Democratic national leadership is advancing a plan to repeal tax breaks to U.S. companies that deploy foreign outsourcing as a way to protect jobs. But such reactionary economic policy seems to ignore the facts and may induce the aura of temporary protection at the risk of forfeiting genuine growth opportunities.

Larry Wright, district representative for the Performance Metalformers Association, says his views of outsourcing and free trade haev evolved over the last decade.

"If you had asked me five years ago, my opinion would have been different," he says. Now, Wright firmly believes the globalization of the marketplace has boosted the U.S. economy and manufacturing in particular.

Ignorance on Parade

James Lileks today:

"Well, it's a philosophical difference," she sniffed. She had pegged me as a form of life last seen clicking the leash off a dog at Abu Ghraib. "I think the money should have gone straight to those people instead of trickling down." Those last two words were said with an edge.

"But then I wouldn't have hired them," I said. "I wouldn't have new steps. And they wouldn't have done anything to get the money."

"Well, what did you do?" she snapped.

"What do you mean?"

"Why should the government have given you the money in the first place?"

"They didn't give it to me. They just took less of my money."

That was the last straw. Now she was angry. And the truth came out:

"Well, why is it your money? I think it should be their money."

Then she left.

Is Michael Moore Bigger than Jesus?

The media is touting the success of Michael Moore's slanderpic, Fahrenheit 9/11, calling it the first documentary to open at the top the box office chart. But is it really that big?

F9/11 took in $21.8 million in its opening weekend, a record for a "documentary," but small change, really - especially considering that it opened in the summer. Compare it to The Passion of The Christ, which grossed $76 million in its opening weekend (Friday-Sunday) - almost four times the Moore flick. And the film had actually opened three days earlier, on a Wednesday, and grossed $41.5 million in its first two days of release.

And, here's the kicker. The Passion of the Christ actually IS a documentary that portrays TRUTH.

Fired Up

Thinking of seeing Michael Moore's lie-fest, Fahrenheit 9/11, but don't like the thought of putting money into Moore's rather large pockets (and from there, no doubt, into Moveon.org or some other organization allied with the Kerry presidential campaign)? Here's a suggestion: Buy a ticket to a different movie, and see Fahrenheit 9/11 instead.

It's (Another Lie) For the Children

Some politicians and special-interest groups are telling you we need to do something about the rising cost of college tuition. Presidential wannabe John Kerry, for example, says you should vote for him so he can fix the problem of rising college tuition. On his campaign website (economy issues link), Kerry claims that, "Over the past two years, the cost to attend a public four-year college has increased by 10 percent, and the cost to attend a public two-year college has increased by 8 percent." Er. Um. That's not true!

What students pay on average for tuition at public universities has fallen by nearly one-third since 1998, thanks to new federal tax breaks and a massive increase in state and federal grants to most students and their families. Contrary to the widespread perception that tuition is soaring out of control, a USA TODAY analysis found that what students actually pay in tuition and fees - rather than the published tuition price - has declined for a vast majority of students attending four-year public universities. In fact, today's students have enjoyed the greatest improvement in college affordability since the GI bill provided benefits for returning World War II veterans.

What made the difference: a $22 billion annual increase in grants and tax breaks since 1998.

That 80% jump in financial aid - targeting middle-class families earning $40,000 to $100,000 a year - has more than offset dramatic increases in tuition prices.

"College still takes a big chunk out of most families' income. But the average student is much better off today than headlines would have you believe," says Sandy Baum, an economist who co-authors an annual report on college costs for the College Board, which oversees college entrance exams.

USA TODAY analyzed what students paid for tuition and fees after grants, discounts, tax credits and deductions. Other studies focus on the listed price of tuition. But listed college tuition is like the sticker price on a new car: Few people actually pay it. In 2003, students paid an average of just 27% of the official tuition price at four-year public universities when grants and tax breaks are counted. Students at private universities paid an average of 57%.

16 More Words

Remember how President Bush got in trouble over 16 words in a State of the Union address about British intelligence reports that Iraq tried to buy uranium (for nukes) from Africa? Turns out there is more and more evidence that the intel was true after all, and that the African country of Niger was possibly at the epicenter of an illicit international trade in the stuff that makes nuclear bombs go BOOM. Belgravia Dispatch has long excerpts from The Financial Times of London, which is breaking the story.

Blog: Professor Possibly Plagiarized Conspiracy-Theorist's Work

Did a professor at a high-brow Catholic university in Memphis commit plagiarizism in writing an article for the local county Democratic Party newsletter? Mike Hollihan has the extensively researched details on the article, which predicts a military draft if President Bush is re-elected, and his encounters with the alleged plagiarizer. (Ed. Note: Hollihan's Blogspot permalinks don't seem to be working - imagine that - so if this direct link doesn't work, just go to http://halfbakered.blogspot.com and look for the items posted June 27, titled "A Carefully Constructed Lie," and "A Carefully Constructed Sloppily "Borrowed" Lie."

UPDATE: I have edited the above post to delete a reference to an anti-semitic website. Hollihan emailed to say he didn't believe the professor got the email from that website, only that the anti-semitic website was one of many websites that have previously published the email that the professor is suspected of plagiarizing. Hollihan: "I have no clue where the professor found the email. He claims never seeing it at all."

Okay, then.

June 25, 2004

Break

Light blogging now through Monday morning, unless truly major news breaks. Hope you have an enjoyable weekend.

New Tennessee Blog

HobbsOnline reader and friend Matt White has started a blog on Tennessee, politics, baseball and other stuff. It's called South End Grounds, it's a very good-looking and well-written new blog, and I recommend you put it on your list if Tennessee, politics, baseball and other stuff interests you. My guess is Matt, a political consultant and policy guy for various Republicans over the years, will cover a broader spectrum of Tennessee policy issues and political news than my more narrow focus on Tennessee's tax and budget wars. He'll also be writing about national issues - and already has some good stuff up on that front.

If you link to conservative blogs, link to South End Grounds today. Why is his blog called South End Grounds? I'll let Matt explain.

Nails?

We installed one of these over the knobs on the cabinet under the kitchen sink where all the poisonous things are stored - detergents, bug killers and such - to keep Bennett, who is now 21 months old, from getting into them. That was last night. This morning, he fiddled with it for about two minutes, undid it, and walked around holding it up like a trophy.

Suggestions?

Good Stuff at Hoystory Today

Matthew Hoy's blog is rockin' today. Just go here and read and scroll and read and scroll....

Success in the Balance

Victor Davis Hanson tells how it is really going in the War on Terror:

But if the pulse of the strategic, tactical, and ideological theaters suggests we can win this war, the home front is not so bright. The few hundred American lunatics who tried to explain away 9/11 (or apologize for it) turned into thousands a few weeks later who swore we either would or should lose in Afghanistan. Now they are millions who see our ongoing struggle in Iraq as either immoral or inept. George Bush did not create this cascading antiwar movement. It was rather fueled by the blood and treasure spent to eliminate the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, together with a has-been '60s generation that felt there was still one more creaky return to the barricades left in them.

Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong. In fact, they did just that.

Blog Data

HobbsOnline is having its best month ever for readership, links, traffic, etc... Since Monday, the site is averaging more than 3,800 unique visitors per day, and the number of blogs and other sites linking to HobbsOnline has risen by about 25 percent in the last three weeks. At current trends, HobbsOnline will have been read by more than 32,000 different people in June when the month's total traffic is tallied. So far this month, my readers have viewed more than 951,000 pages of content here. Just a few bits of data in case you were considering placing an ad on HobbsOnline...

Meet the Family

Jeff Cornwall has some very interesting information about the economic impact of family-owned businesses in America, businesses which accounted for 89 percent of total annual U.S. tax return filings last year, generated 64 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, and employ 62 percent of the nation's workforce. There's much more over at Cornwall's excellent blog, The Entrepreneurial Mind.

GMail - Want One?

Are you wanting a GMail email account from Google, with its free 1 gigabyte of storage? Currently, you can get one by invitation only from a GMail account owner. I have three GMail invites left. People have actually auctioned GMail invites on eBay for serious money, though the price has come down as the number of available invites has risen. Supply and demand. Still, they're worth something. Make me an offer!

UPDATE: Two are gone - one to a blogger who is going to give three of the six GMail account invites GMail gives him to the GMail4Troops.com project, another to a co-worker.

The Gates of Blog

Bill Gates, author of Business @ the Speed of Thought, is going to start a blog, only a few years after other people thought of it first.

Amazing

Online retailer Overstock.com, based in Salt Lake City, is now the largest source of private employment ... in Afghanistan. Wired.com has the amazing story of globalization's positive impact on the impoverished nation. Who knew that you could point-click-purchase and help America help Afghanistan win the War on Terror? And it's not just Afghanistan - Wired finds a trend.

Links

New York Times admits: Saddam reached out to al Qaeda. Now let's think about this for a moment. Saddam: hated America, worked on developing weapons of mass destruction, used WMD against the Kurds. Al Qaeda: hated America, used whatever weapons it could get to attack America, actively and openly desired WMD.

And Saddam reached out to al Qaeda.

And some people still think it was stupid to remove Saddam before he developed more WMD and passed them on to al Qaeda. In times past, the enemies of America called such people "useful idiots."

June 24, 2004

Political Entrepreneurialism

HobbsOnline is proud to announce its newest advertiser, Bush Country Ketchup from Conservative Condiments.

Bush Country Ketchup injects some partisan humor into the presidential campaign by playing on the connection between John Kerry’s wealth and Heinz ketchup, offering conservatives an alternative ketchup product via which they can both express their support for President Bush and make their hamburgers taste good. Bush Country Ketchup's colorful label is a good-humored political cartoon with the pun “Don’t let Kerry Ketchup to Dubya!”

The company was founded by former college roommates Chris Cylke and Patrick Spero, who graduated from James Madison University in 2000. Cylke, who majored in poli-sci, works in a staff position on the House Judiciary Committee, while Spero, who majored in American history, is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. They secured a $5,000 loan to start the company in March, and began marketing the ketchup in late April. In the first six weeks, the company sold more than 1,400 bottles via word-of-mouth advertising.

Bush Country Ketchup is sold to individuals via their web site and to restaurants and political organizations through direct marketing. Several state level Republican organizations are distributing the product as a fund raising tool.

Media Bias: Fox and Drudge Are the Centrists

Researchers in the Department of Political Science at UCLA, the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago have proven that Fox News and the Drudge Report are the two most centrist news media, ideologically, with no other major media to the right. Read the report here.

Fringe Elements

When you get a chance, check out FringeBlog.

When The Mullahs Get The Bomb

David Warren explores the near-term future as Iran moves closer to having nuclear weapons... and says President Bush ought to "sacrifice his presidency" by going to war now against Iran, before they get The Bomb.

I think he's right, and wrong.

Bush should confront Iran, even militarily, and promise immediate U.S. help to democratic revolutionaires within Iran to depose the mad mullahs who run the country. But I don't think it would cost him the presidency. I think it would guarantee his re-election.

Even Americans too young to remember how Iranian Islamofascist terrorists held 52 Americans hostage for the final 444 days of Jimmy Carter's weak, impotent presidency know that the Iranian regime today is the nexus of Islamofascist terror and we won't win the War on Terror as long as they remain in power. Afghanistan and Iraq were merely opening skirmishes in World War 4 (WW3 being the Cold War). How - and when - America deals with Iran will determine if the main battles are fought conventionally, or with nukes.

For background, also read Warren's recent column, The Oil Bomb.

Torture at Guantanamo? I've Got Proof

Responding to my post yesterday expressing the view that the interrogation methods approved by the military for use on suspected terrorists do not amount to "torture," a source deep within the Pentagon has sent me the previously classified transcript of a secret video tape of an actual interrogation session involving both men and women. The partial transcript is unclear as to time, date and full identities of all those involved.

This is a HobbsOnline exclusive as this information HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED TO THE MAINSTREAM PRESS.

You can see the actual transcript here in a PDF file. I also have received a shocking photo, which you can see by clicking here.

WARNING: Both the photo and the transcript are horrifying and you may not wish to read or see them. Certainly, no one under 18 should be allowed to see them.

But if this information is true it paints a portrait of torture of a kind not seen since the Spanish Inquisition.

[Hat tip: Commenter "IB Bill" at Dean Esmay's blog.]

Whither P.J.?

I absolutely love Michelle Malkin's new blog, and did even before she indirectly linked to me and sort-of mentioned my name. She has a very interesting piece today about talk radio which also mentions P.J. O'Rourke. I am a huge P.J. O'Rourke fan. Or was, before 9/11. The last book of his I read, Eat the Rich, is one of the best economics books you'll ever read and ought to be required reading in high school or college.

But I don't recall reading a single column or article of his since 9/11 that was worth reading, nor recall seeing his latest columns batted about the blogosphere. His new book, Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism, was published April 1. Have you heard a thing about it? Me neither.

O'Rourke is pre-9/11. You want a post-9/11 O'Rourke? Try Mark Steyn.

June 23, 2004

Hi. I'm from Kerry's campaign, and I'm here to victimize you.

Michael Dukakis' presidential hopes were dashed in part because, as governor, he released a vicious murderer on a weekend pass, and the guy went and killed again. Now, a group with strong ties to John Kerry's presidential campaign is doing something worse: It is sending criminals, including sexual predators, door to door to gather personal information from unsuspecting people.