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Res Ispa puckers up:

How about timing your blog to post a thread about the Monday article at 12 eastern when WND updates to the Monday edition? Being in the mountain-time zone I generally read the Monday WND before going to bed Sunday night. I would love to have the opportunity to make acclamation, glorify and pay homage to your superior abilities as a wordsmith and ingratiate myself to the genius that you are.

It is my sincere desire to osculate your gluteus maximus until you achieve a Limbaugh-sized ego and you obtain your own radio show challenging him for superiority of all things conservative. This is a two part strategy:

1. establish the Vox Day pundit groupie fan club

2. get a guy with a Minnesotan accent nationally syndicated

Hey if they’ll put Don Cherry on the air why not you?

That last bit would have been more meaningful to me if I had any idea who Don Cherry is. Anyhow, that’s not a problem, assuming that I don’t forget. So, we’ll see. As I’ve repeatedly stated, I have no desire for a radio show – those little MP3 experiments taught me that – although I might be interested in some sort of Internet broadcast thing once that technology becomes feasible.

I don’t really have any more to say about immigration at the moment, but in case anyone is interested in harping on today’s column or slapping my wrist with a “bad libertarian, bad!” this would be the place.

A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation’s current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE.

“People ask me if I’m really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that’s a great thing to do for future generations of Americans,” Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book, to be released on Wednesday.

“Pushing reform legislation will be difficult. Change of any sort seldom comes easy. But these changes are critical to our economic vitality and our economic security abroad,” Hastert declares in SPEAKER: LESSONS FROM FORTY YEARS IN COACHING AND POLITICS…. “By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing the economy. You could double the economy over the next fifteen years. All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won’t be so daunting anymore. The answer is to grow the economy, and the key to doing that is making sure we have a tax system that attracts capital and builds incentives to keep it here instead of forcing it out to other nations.”

It would be delightful to see the income tax fraud shut down and the IRS banned, except that few government agencies are ever closed, and in any case, some agency will be assigned to see that businesses are collecting the sales tax. Still, that would be far less intrusive than the current system of enforced financial nudity. However, this theoretical second-term policy will be opposed by Republican and Democratic state leaderships alike, as it would play havoc on many state revenue systems that piggyback off the Federal income tax.

The fact that this is coming from a Republican leader with a book to sell in an election year makes it more than a little dubious. Sure, it’s remotely possible that someone in the Republican leadership has looked into the issue and been convinced that the present tax system is wholly indefensible in both legal and Constitutional terms – I think there’s now six former IRS agents, (who know a lot more about the realities of the situation than the pro-tax idiots on the Internet), who have switched sides and joined the tax honesty movement – but this would hardly mark the first time that Republicans have pulled a bait-and-switch on the public.

Since the IRS is an executive branch agency, the President could shut it down tomorrow with an executive order. It’s his call. As for the income tax, the law doesn’t require filing it anyhow, it requires nothing more than “voluntary compliance”. (Granted, the IRS will try to steal your bank account and garnish your wages if you don’t comply voluntarily, but that doesn’t mean their actions are legal. Quite the opposite.) If the President does something in that vein, I’ll take this seriously, otherwise, it should be taken no more seriously than that old vow to shut down the Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts. Having failed to deliver time and time again, Republican promises no longer bear serious consideration.

Rainer gets it backwards:

I agree with you on this, [the mistake of nation building] and I think that it is going to be very difficult to establish a democracy here. However, I don’t think that it is a matter to be thrown away. Just because some terrorists don’t want it doesn’t mean that nobody should get it.

The problem isn’t that the terrorists and their allies don’t want democracy, it’s the US administration and their appointed puppet Allawi that don’t want democracy. A free and open vote in Iraq would likely elect the more radical Islamic elements which are currently allied with the foreign al Qaeda fighters. In fact, Debka is reporting that the US administration is now in secret negotiations to bring the Ba’ath back into government, along with the Sunni leaders, in order to split them from the foreign jihadists:

Since the first week of July, the Bush administration has been immersed in a secret, high-wire diplomatic exercise aimed at bringing down the level of Iraqi insurgent attacks on US troops, or perhaps halting the violence altogether, by coming to terms with the enemy. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report exclusively that the initiative is being carried forward by a prominent non-Iraq Arab figure as intermediary on behalf of the highest White House echelons. His identity is top secret for reasons of security. (Our editors have his name but promised to preserve his anonymity in return for this exclusive).

All that can be said at this time is that the intermediary is not based in Iraq; he goes over for delicate negotiating sessions in the Bush administration’s name with Baath guerrilla leaders, militia commanders and heads of the great Sunni Muslim tribes and clans. At all times, he is in direct communication with the White House.

The only three Americans in Iraq privy to this negotiating track are Robert Blackwill, the president’s senior adviser on Iraq, US ambassador John Negroponte who is not personally involved, and the commander of American forces in Iraq, General David Casey, who is in charge of security arrangements and any changes on the ground arising from progress in the talks. The only two Iraqis kept informed are prime minister Iyad Allawi and deputy prime minister for security Salih Barham.

DEBKAfile adds: the negotiating track began with a preliminary condition: Baath and Sunni leaders must undertake to disengage from al Qaeda and other foreign Arab fighters.

Still think that we’re on the side of freedom and democracy in Iraq? I don’t think so. I’m not sure precisely what model George Bush and company are hoping to construct but they’re not even pretending to create a constitutional representative democracy, much less a true government by, of and for the people over there.

This, again, brought to you by the Coalition of the Willing and the Law of Unintended Consequences:

BAGHDAD, Aug. 1 — Car bombs exploded outside at least five Christian churches in two Iraqi cities during Sunday evening services in coordinated attacks that sent terrified and bleeding worshipers fleeing into the streets as stained-glass windows shattered and flames engulfed the buildings. More than a dozen people were killed and scores injured in the assaults, the first mass violence against minority Christians who have long coexisted peacefully with Iraqi Muslims.

See, there’s a small problem when you bring freedom to people who want to kill lots of other people. As every great philosopher of liberty has pointed out, freedom and liberty require a certain something – Tocqueville called it goodness – in order to prevent them from being abused to harm others. Freedom is self-limiting in this regard, as those who wish to run amok will soon find themselves clamped down upon in one way or another.

The notion that democracy is possible, much less desirable, in Arabic Islamic culture was always ridiculous. Sure, a barely recognizable form of it works, at the point of a whole lot of guns, in Turkey, but the very protest proves the point. After eighteen months, this nation-building is looking more viable by the day. Of course, the administration’s cheerleaders will no doubt point out that these latest bombings only shows how desperate the terrorists have become, although I have to say it is getting is harder and harder to distinguish between the many examples of their supposed desperation.

The Dread Lord spots me floating around the Internet.

Isn’t it interesting that no matter what wrongdoing or incompetence is exposed, government employees never experience the consequences of their actions. In Alabama, an IT employee responsible for confirming and documenting the misuse of government computers was fired after he installed spyware on his supervisor’s computer which demonstrated that the supervisor spent 70 percent of his time playing solitaire and another 20 percent surfing the stock market.

(Actually, this supervisor sounds pretty harmless. If all government employees would confine themselves to similar activities, we’d be in good shape.)

The IT guy installed the spyware only after first submitting several complaints about the supervisor’s activity. Of course, government being government, the supervisor received a reprimand while the IT guy was terminated. After all, they can hardly keep people around who insist on letting the taxpayers know on what their tax dollars are being spent, can they?

If you don’t mind a bit of a tangent, I’m reminded of Carroll Quigley’s prediction that technology will eventually even out the playing field between individual and state. There is hope, always. In twenty, fifty or one hundred years, when a single individual will be able to hold the mightiest national government hostage with a pocket nuclear device or nanotech weapon, even the most die-hard central statists may be forced to admit that a voluntary system of government is the only viable option. Perhaps that will be the silver lining in the dark cloud of fifth-generation warfare.

For who will want to seize the reins of power if that is equivalent to painting a big red glowing target on your forehead. Or, as is more likely to be the case, on your DNA.

Spot is underwhelmed with WND’s science correspondent:

Also, it usually takes 9-12 months for papers to be published in specialized journals, and new ideas are always subjected to rigorous peer review processes. WND’s assertion that this demonstrates hostility on the part of dogmatic scientists is just silly.

I am not qualified to address Spot’s points with regards to the possible ramifications of the theory of a non-constant speed of light, so I shall leave that to the more scientifically interested. I have no reason to doubt that he’s correct, except for what appears to be his poor reading comprehension. First, Chris Bennett makes the assertion, not WND, and if WND has a “science correspondent” it would be Dr. Kelly Hollowell, who is a scientist, PhD and weekend columnist. Chris Bennett would appear to be an engineer at a technology firm in California, he is not a WND correspondent, columnist or even regular contributor as far as I am aware.

Second, Bennett clearly states that the peer review treatment of these particular scientists was both unusual and hostile. He writes: “Setterfield, Dr. Tifft, Dr. Paul Davis, Dr. John Barrow and others have been subjected to peer review which borders on ridicule.” Here, the phrase “which borders on ridicule” modifies the preceding noun “peer review”. It is not so much the assertion which is silly, but Spot’s attempt to dismiss it.

WND is by no means perfect. Dark Window, among others, rightly flogs it for its tendency to link to National Enquiresque “interest” stories such as the cringe-inducing Iranian frog-birth story. But then, it’s hard to argue with results that have a) produced nationally syndicated columnists and national radio shows, b) a monthly readership that blows away better-known names like Slate and Salon, and c) allows almost complete editorial freedom. Can you imagine the Atlanta Journal Constitution letting its headline columnists translate the Fascist manifesto or waste precious column space on Tolstoy and weird trend theories? WND is dedicated to freedom of all kinds, and intellectual freedom not only permits but downright requires the possibility, even the likelihood, of occasionally making a complete ass of yourself.

I thought this review was particularly timely, coming as it does on top of the WND article discussing the intriguing possibility that the speed of light is declining and the recent discussion here on the Anthropic Principle, (which, as always, devolved into a discussion of evolution). Then, too, the gratuitous slams on Canada bear mention. Dave’s review strikes me as overgenerous on the points considering his description, as the characterizations sounded a lot more like a 2/5 instead of 4/5, but then, I haven’t read the book.

Keep in mind that it is better if one does not describe the plot in a review. This review structure provides adequate information for someone to determine if they’re interested in the book or not without being walked through the events of the story. I’m interested in reviews, not synopses. There is a difference.

Calculating God

Robert J. Sawyer

Rating: 8.5 of 10

Review by: Dave Munger

The theological science fiction novel “Calculating God” could easily get lost in the recent bumper crop of grandiose eschatological epics with authors who have been compared to Arthur C. Clarke and protagonists dying of cancer. You know, that whole Greggory Benford, Steven Baxter sub-genre that one now finds filling the SF book racks in grocery stores, between authorized biographies of Chewbacca and “The Eco-Feminist Elves Of Shanana”. This would be a shame, since Robert J. Sawyer has written a book much more worthy of your time than most SF available at grocery stores (that’s where I bought it).

“Calculating God” has much to recommend it. I was personally charmed by an extraterrestrial character with religious views superficially similar to my own (God created the universe and life; People do not have immortal souls). This alien, named Hollus, speaks something like the magnificent Dr. Hugh Ross, although the Bible is not taken at all seriously by anyone in this book. There are enough pop-culture references to thoroughly satisfy whatever perverse appetite it is that makes people find this enjoyable, without being gratuitous or grating. Each belongs where it is placed, and furthers the story. Although the phrase “a novel of ideas” is quickly becoming the SF version of the cinematic designation “psychological thriller”, here it is quite fitting.

There are problems though, oh are there problems. For one thing, “Calculating God” is unremittingly Canadian throughout, which lends a slightly queasy “For Better or Worse” quality to the whole, and leads to several particularly sickening scenes. The stomach-churningly Episcopalian ethics of our chicken-boiling brethren are trotted out once in awhile and called “morality” (I’m not accusing Canadians of being Episcopalian, it’s just that they both sicken me similarly). The hero’s physician is incredibly smug about the cheap drugs Canadians have access to as a result of attaching their system lamprey-like to ours and letting our terrible Capitalistic health-care machine absorb all the R&D costs.

The worst flaw in the novel (if one does not consider the title and premise to be heinous blasphemies, that is), is a crappy, bigoted, unnecessary subplot. Ironically, it is the utter irrelevance of this part of the book that keeps it from ruining the whole. It is as if the main body of the story is an entirely separate book, like a beautiful young woman shacked up with a toothless, misogynistic, ass-fiend. You could edit it out yourself with a black magic marker, and significantly improve the storyline.

“Calculating God” has something in it for anyone who enjoyed “A Brief History Of Time” or any science fiction stories. In a period and a field in which Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a novel as a short story padded seems particularly apropos, Sawyer has written a novel that could only have been presented in this form. You are expected to purchase it, read it, and discuss it amongst yourselves.

Story: 3.5 of 5. The rating in this category would be much closer to five if it weren’t for The Bad Part. The protagonist does make a fairly wild surmise about the nature of life in the universe, which turns out, incredibly, to be right. It’s quickly accepted as fact, without even being modified. This is probably necessary though, as the novel could have otherwise gone off on an overly realistic tangent, like the first five or so chapters of any novel written by an astronomer, and ended up a third longer. The story really delivers though, especially after the cardboard villains die, and all life in this part of the galaxy is nearly wiped out.

Style: 4.5 of 5. Oddly realistic. Interstellar travel is subject to the constraints of General Relativity, and no laws of physics are bent beyond credulity. The fifth force introduced by the Forhilnors sounds a lot like Einstein’s cosmological constant, or for that matter, something I saw seriously postulated in a popular science magazine other than Popular Science a few months ago. This reader does not know his multiplication tables, and at no place did the science loose me. A much quicker read that the subject matter would seem to indicate.

Characters: 4 of 5. If you like Spock you will like Hollus. If you do not like Spock, you are probably way too picky about characterization of extraterrestrials. If you like any other Star Trek characters, you are obligated to like all fictional characters, period. If you can stand Canadians, you will be able to stand Tom Jericho. There is some question in my mind as to whether or not the most poorly written characters should even count, as they are confined to the part of the book that I have wished into the cornfield. Other than them, there was no one in this book that I wanted to see killed, even though many of them do belong to groups which I’m afraid I will have to have liquidated when I come to power. This indicates that this reader was reached on some real human level that most authors fail to reach me at.

Creativity: 5 of 5. I was tempted to get cute here and give it seven out of five, or something like that. You will never forget this book. You will not ever confuse it with some other novel. You may very well find yourself paraphrasing it in philosophical discussions a decade after you read it. One could easily be moved to wax Levar Burton about how books like this are magical spaceships of imagination that transport you over astonishing rainbows of delight. I am totally unable to describe this book as a cross between two previous books. That’s becoming a rare distinction.

Text sample:

I shook my head in wonder. “I can’t think of any reason why evolutionary history should be similar on multiple worlds.”

“One reason is obvious,” said Hollus. He moved sideways a few steps; perhaps he was getting tired of supporting his own weight, although I couldn’t imagine what sort of chair he might use. “It could be that way because God wished it to be so.”

For some reason, I was surprised to hear the alien talking like that. Most of the scientists I know are either atheists or keep their religion to themselves — and Hollus had indeed said he was a scientist.

“That’s one explanation,” I said quietly.

“It is the most sensible. Do humans not subscribe to a principle that says the simplest explanation is the most preferable?”

I nodded. “We call it Occam’s razor.”

“The explanation that it was God’s will posits one cause for all the mass extinctions; that makes it preferable.”

“Well, I suppose, if . . .” — dammitall, I know I should have just been polite, just nodded and smiled, the way I do when the occasional religious nut accosts me in the Dinosaur Gallery and demands to know how Noah’s flood fits in, but I felt I had to speak up — “… if you believe in God.”

Hollus’s eyestalks moved to what seemed to be their maximal extent, as if he was regarding me from both sides simultaneously. “Are you the most senior paleontologist at this institution?” he asked.

“I’m the department head, yes.”

“There is no paleontologist with more experience?”

I frowned. “Well, there’s Jonesy, the senior invertebrate curator. He’s damn near as old as some of his specimens.”

“Perhaps I should speak with him.”

“If you like. But what’s wrong?”

“I know from your television that there is much ambivalence about God in this part of your planet, at least among the general public, but I am surprised to hear that someone in your position is not personally convinced of the existence of the creator.”

“Well, then, Jonesy’s not your man; he’s on the board of CSICOP.”

“Sky cop?”

“The Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. He definitely doesn’t believe in God.”

“I am stunned,” said Hollus, and his eyes turned away from me, examining the posters on my office wall — a Gurche, a Czerkas, and two Kishes.

“We tend to consider religion a personal matter,” I said gently. “The very nature of faith is that one cannot be factually sure about it.”

“I do not speak of matters of faith,” said Hollus, turning his eyes back toward me. “Rather, I speak of verifiable scientific fact. That we live in a created universe is apparent to anyone with sufficient intelligence and information.”

I wasn’t really offended, but I was surprised; previously, I’d only heard similar comments from so-called creation scientists. “You’ll find many religious people here at the ROM,” I said. “Raghubir, whom you met down in the lobby, for instance. But even he wouldn’t say that the existence of God is a scientific fact.”

“Then it will fall to me to educate you in this,” said Hollus.

Oh, joy. “If you think it’s necessary.”

“It is if you are to help me in my work. My opinion is not a minority one; the existence of God is a fundamental part of the science of both Beta Hydri and Delta Pavonis.”

“Many humans believe that such questions are outside the scope of science.”

Hollus regarded me again, as if I were failing some test. “Nothing is outside the scope of science,” he said firmly — a position I did not, in fact, disagree with. But we rapidly parted company again: “The primary goal of modern science,” he continued, “is to discover why God has behaved as he has and to determine his methods. We do not believe — what is the term you use? — we do not believe that he simply waves his hands and wishes things into existence. We live in a universe of physics, and he must have used quantifiable physical processes to accomplish his ends. If he has indeed been guiding the broad strokes of evolution on at least three worlds, then we must ask how? And why? What is he trying to accomplish?”

From Capital Hill Blue:

President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned. The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters’ questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay. “Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Bush’s mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the President’s wide mood swings and obscene outbursts.

This sounds rather like a piece from The Onion, doesn’t it? Even so, I will say that if it is true that the President is on anti-depressants, no one in their right mind should vote for him. As far-fetched as this report sounds, it might explain why the President is waging such a feeble and haphazard reelection campaign. Kerry lobs him one softball after another, and yet he repeatedly fails to swing.

The Red Star waxes feverish:

For an hour Thursday night, Sen. John Kerry got to speak directly to the American people, unfiltered by the carping punditocracy, the Republican smear machine and Fox News. From this perspective, what the American people saw was a smart, serious and compassionate man. Kerry came across as a real human being — a man of integrity who believes deeply in the promise of America and seeks to steer the nation to a more secure, more prosperous future.

But the American people saw something else as well Thursday evening: This is not just about John Kerry; this is about an entire Democratic Party that refuses to be marginalized, refuses to cede the American flag, religious faith and the badge of patriotism to Republicans. They made it clear: They care about this nation, and they intend that their voices be heard and heeded in setting a new American course.

I have the impression that the Star and Sickle’s editorial board watched the Democratic Convention with their collective pants down around their ankles. The very idea that the “real human being” is going to be exposed in the fraudulent charade of spin and image-construction that is a political convention is nonsensical; it’s utterly absurd.

The only religions that Democrats respect are secular humanism and Islam, they’d rather burn the flag than salute it, and they’re far more patriotic about the United Nations than they are about the United States. That new American course they want to set? The nation as a subordinate member state in a sovereign global government.

The bigger problem, of course, is that the Republican leadership has signed onto the same program.