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The Trunk and I were talking the other day about finding opportunities for live-blogging. Tonight I remembered that the finale of the Miss Universe pageant is televised–inspiration struck!

9:14 — Just in time! They all came out in swimsuits. Hard to pick a favorite at this point.

9:16 — Somehow the swimsuits don’t seem to be as big as they used to be.

9:17 — Miss USA just came out. She’s one of the favorites, but somehow doesn’t quite do it for me.

9:18 — Miss Paraguay is clearly a contender.

9:20 — No offense to our Australian friends, but Miss Australia looks as though she’s hoping to pick up some tips along the runway.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I’ve met some lovely sheilas here and there, but they do often seem to have just a touch of the trailer park, if not the prison ship, about them. While Puerto Rico and Colombia offered some serious competition, I would have voted for Miss Estonia.

TH questions my logic: That’s logic? First, the notion that American doesn’t have to pay blood for oil when it can just print money is daft. Printing money at will by America would only make the dollar worthless. Of course, in Mr. Day’s view, paper money is worthless anyway because America has been taken off the gold standard. This completely misses the point that neither green paper nor gold have any inherent value other than what humans place on them. Sure, gold can be made into pretty things and is difficult to find. That wouldn’t matter if people hadn’t already accepted it as a measure of wealth and currency of exchange. As long as paper money is commonly accepted as legal tender for the payment of goods and services, its value relies on the same laws of supply and demand that govern the ‘price’ of gold. Print money at will, and soon people are carting wheelbarrows of cash to buy their daily bread. It wouldn’t be any different if all exchanges were handled in gold coin and the Himalayas were suddenly discovered to have a solid gold core covered by a thin layer of granite.

First, as the financial expert Firestarter points out: “The vast majority of the cost of foreign oil is paid in US government bonds. Essentially an IOU for billions with a coupon (interest) rate of just 1% p.a. Since these bonds can literally be printed by the US government at no immediate cost beyond the coupon rate, oil can essentially be bought for next to nothing. The long term costs of such a policy are price inflation and/or the deflation of the $US, proportional to the value of money supply “created” by such a policy. We have already seen the devaluation of the US$ by some 35% and the escalation of asset values world-wide as a consequence.”

Following on to this, I note that the Fed created $48 billion last week, which is enough to pay cash for 1.12 billion barrels of oil at $42.50/barrel, significantly more than the 70 million barrels we use every week. Since January 20, 2004, the M3 money stock has increased by 3.3 percent to $9.1 trillion. That’s $300 billion dollars printed in four months.

In other words, the situation is precisely as I described it. Unsurprisingly, TH went on to try arguing that the 10 billion barrels in ANWR will only allow the US to go without importing oil for 2.5 years, of course, he ignores the tiny little fact that the whole point is to allow us to go without importing any ARAB oil, which drilling in ANWR would let us do for around 15 years, 30 if we were content to reduce our Arab imports by half.

So, thank you, TH, for underlining my point about the ignorance of American left-liberals.

DY writes: “Spiting Their Pretty Faces”. I agree with you 100%. Keep up the excellent work. We need more men like you….. I’ve always argued that today’s women are unrealistic in their criteria for men. The problem isn’t a shortage of good men (as Oprah preaches), but today’s women’s failure to recognize good men and give them a shot. Like your article points out, most intelligent men avoid today’s feminist-indoctrinated women like the Black death of the middle ages.

Have you noticed Hollywood’s latest obsession. It’s the older woman/younger man relationship. Case in point, Demi Moore/Aston Kirchner. Talk shows, women’s magazines, and websites flaunt it with the usual in your face so popular with feminists…. Here’s something I’ve noticed more and more as I’m out and about:

1. Older women dressing like kids. They look ridiculous.

2. Older women trying to pick up much younger men. I’ve talked to 20-something guys being hit on by women in their 40s-50s.

3. Mother/daughter tag teams. The 20 something daughter lures men to their table then pawns them of on her middle age mother.

I tend to agree with this, as I’m frequently astonished by the failure of many women to appreciate the countless good qualities of the Perfect Aryan Male, who is a gentleman, wealthy and intelligent to boot. He has told me several times of being aggressively hit on by women 10 to 15 years older, towards whom he has never sent the slightest signal of interest. I think this smacks of a sad desperation, more to be pitied than mocked, except that they are being held out as role models for the 20- and 30-something crowds, some of whom appear to be headed for precisely the same fate.

The first time around, it’s tragedy. The second, it’s just farce.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that a number of the women of my acquaintance who married in their late-20s and early 30s married men of superficially lower quality than the men they were dating, (and in many cases rejecting), in previous years. This isn’t uniformly true, and my memories are too hazy to make a strong assertion in this regard, but that’s the general impression I have.

“Ted Sampley, a former Green Beret who served two full tours in Vietnam, spotted Kerry and his Secret Service detail at about 9 a.m. Monday morning at the Wall. Sampley walked up to Kerry, extended his hand and said, ‘Senator, I am Ted Sampley, the head of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, and I am here to escort you away from the Wall because you do not belong here.’ “At that point, a Secret Service officer told Sampley to back away from Kerry. Sampley moved about 6 feet away and opened his jacket to reveal a HANOI JOHN T-shirt,” NewsMax reported. “Kerry then began talking to a group of schoolchildren. Sampley then showed the T-shirt to the children and said, ‘Kerry does not belong at the Wall because he betrayed the brave soldiers who fought in Vietnam.’ “Just then, Kerry — in front of the schoolchildren, other visitors and Secret Service agents — brazenly ‘flashed the bird’ at Sampley….

Sure, the networks would have spiked it, but you can’t tell me that wouldn’t have led on Drudge. The more I see of Kerry, the more I am convinced that he’s an unlikeable jerk. I wonder if they’ll even let him speak at the Democratic convention.

Eclipsed by the furor over foreign policy, Congress’ debate over the federal budget has slipped quietly into an impasse that is no garden-variety partisan standoff. It is a battle among Republicans over what their party stands for, analysts say. At issue is whether this year’s budget should put the brakes on the tax-cut drive that has been a hallmark of the Bush presidency, and instead put more muscle behind an old GOP orthodoxy: reducing the deficit.

The dispute has kept Congress from completing one of its most basic annual functions: writing a budget to guide the year’s tax and spending decisions. And it has opened an unusually bitter and personal dispute among prominent Republicans. A small but powerful faction of Senate Republicans is insisting that the fiscal 2005 budget include rules that require any future tax cuts to be offset so their effect on the deficit would be neutralized; that would mean either cutting spending or raising taxes in other areas. The proposal would strike at the core of President Bush’s domestic agenda if he is reelected by making it much more difficult to cut taxes.

But House Republican leaders have vehemently opposed the pay-as-you-go requirement as an affront to their party’s credo that, when it comes to taxes, the lower the better. They have kept the requirement out of the budget resolution passed by the House — and have openly questioned the loyalty of Republicans who disagree. “It is a fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party: Is it a party about deficit reduction or a party about tax cuts?” said Stanley Collender, a budget expert at Financial Dynamics, a business communications firm in Washington.

Let’s see… cut taxes or reduce the deficit. Gee, why not simply cut spending and do both?

A pizza deliveryman won’t face charges for fatally shooting a would-be robber several times when he was approached in a high-crime area, but his employer, Pizza Hut, has fired him for violating a company policy against carrying firearms. Ronald B. Honeycutt, 38, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, says he’s been delivering pizzas for 20 years and has always packed heat on the job. “It’s a clear case of self-defense,” Deputy Prosecutor Barb Crawford said. “He did what the law allows him to do to protect himself.”Jerome Brown-Dancler approached Honeycutt at around 11 p.m. on May 17 just after he had made a pizza delivery in Indianapolis. According to the report, Brown-Dancler pointed a 9 mm handgun at the Pizza Hut employee as he was entering his van.

Brown-Dancler’s gun carried a loaded 14-round clip but had no bullet in the chamber, Crawford told the Star. When confronted, Honeycutt pulled his own 9 mm from the back of his pants and fired until it was empty. He says he fired 15 times in about eight seconds. An autopsy revealed Brown-Dancler was hit at least 10 times.

If Pizza Hut will not recognize the single most important American right, I suggest that Americans refuse to patronize their pizza. I’m quite happy to make do with Domino’s.

I’m not planning on doing a daily Vox Tox or anything – once a week is most likely – but I didn’t think the Libertarian nomination should pass without comment. I also had some interesting email that called for addressing and I wanted to see if using a different recording method might help a bit.

For those who are interested, I’m using an Open Source recording program called Audacity. I record with that, run the Amplify effect on my voice, then paste the music into the beginning, middle and end. I then export it as an MP3. Unfortunately, the program gives me no control over whether the MP3 is exported at 128, 96 or 64. I did try exporting it as an .OGG, but that reduced the size of the 17 meg file by less than one meg.

Anyhow, let me know if you think the quality is better or worse than last time. I also had an idea… there’s a number of different bloggers out there audioblogging, and someone with more time to devote to this than me could pull them together, do a little mixing and stream them using Pirate Radio.

In a debate on May 29 at the Libertarian Party’s national convention in Atlanta, the top three candidates for the party’s presidential nomination squared off in front of more than 800 delegates, striving one last time to earn votes before the Sunday election. The contestants — constitutional scholar Michael Badnarik, longtime radio host Gary Nolan and movie producer Aaron Russo — delivered few barbs at each other in the debate, choosing instead to target the Republicans and Democrats. After being beaten in the polls and primaries by the other two leading candidates, apparent underdog Badnarik used the debate to regain the attention of many delegates who had been apt to overlook him, one Russo supporter said later that night, asking not to be identified.

And that delegate was not alone in his new-found regard for Badnarik: Many were surprised by his presence and composure, as well his responses during the debate. A random sampling of delegates following the event indicated that an overwhelming majority considered Badnarik the winner. One delegate noted: “Russo has passion. Nolan is very polished. But I really think Badnarik was the big winner tonight. The man’s intellect is remarkable, and tonight he really rallied. “I don’t think anyone expected the audience reaction to Badnarik’s comments, myself included. If we could have the intellect of Badnarik, the polish of Nolan and the fire of Russo, we’d have the perfect candidate.”

Apparently Michael Badnarik’s performance at the debate was solid enough to make a real impact on the delegates, as he won the Libertarian nomination when Gary Nolan endorsed him after several rounds of voting split three ways. Kudos to CSPAN for staying with the party’s nomination process, even preempting programming when the voting went into extra time.

I’ll be interviewing both Michael Badnarik as well as Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party in the coming weeks. I’ll be supporting Badnarik, but if the Libertarians are too much for you, I’d recommend a close look at Peroutka. Here’s hoping both men can get into the national debates; I have little doubt that Badnarik would easily crush the tongue-tied George Delano as well as the unpredictable junior senator from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, Monsieur Flip-Flop himself.

An interesting point for libertarian-friendly Republicans to keep in mind is that the Libertarian Party has nominated an openly pro-life presidential candidate. After first correctly noting that abortion is properly a state matter, his statement on the issue concludes: Michael used to be “pro-choice” based on the presumption that a woman owns her own body. Neither government agents nor he has any authority to mandate what she does or does not do with her body. More recently Michael came to the logical conclusion that the baby must eventually claim ownership of ITS own body, as well. The abortion debate exists because of a disagreement about precisely when that happens. At this point in time, because there is no scientific consensus, Michael chooses to error in favor of the baby, and now holds that abortion is a violation of the baby’s right to life.

I disagree with Badnarik’s position on homogamy, but this is tempered by my belief that he would have no problem whatsoever with getting the state and federal government out of the marriage business altogether. If the federal government is going to be involved, then there is no intellectually coherent reason to prevent same-sex or plural relationships from being recognized by it. Since marriage is the bedrock of society, this is all the more reason to keep government out of it. I must also note that his position on prisons is a little strange.

Current [Illinois] law requires the Illinois Board of Elections to certify the names that will appear on the general election ballot 67 days before the election. This year that deadline is Aug. 27. But Bush will not be nominated until Sept. 1, when the GOP holds its national convention in New York City. Therefore, his name cannot legally appear on the ballot as a Republican unless the law is changed….

The proper solution, he [the executive director of the IL Libertarian Party] says, is for the board to insist that Bush’s name appear as an independent — as the law allows — or to ease ballot access for all political parties, not just the Republicans. Instead Republicans and Democrats are collaborating to enact a new law that would carve out an exception only for Bush, which is “nothing less than favoritism and a mockery of the principles of democracy,” Trigg said. On March 25, the state Senate unanimously approved SB 2123, which would allow only Republicans and Democrats to be nominated after the deadline, while leaving the requirements the same for all other candidates.

Republicans and Democrats colluding? Republicans ignoring the principle of equality before the law? Will wonders never cease? People, we will never, ever get Constitutional government by supporting individuals who are willing to commit these sort of shenanigans in the pursuit of political power. Watch their actions before you give credence to their words. One party with two factions is still a one-party system.

In the early ’30s when that episode started, there were a lot of bank failures that wiped out a lot of money and I don’t know what the Fed could’ve done under those institutional arrangements but it, certainly, wasn’t in there pumping out new money like we would be doing today. Today, every time we have a major emergency, you know, the first thing we do is get on the microphone and open up – you open up a spigot. I mean look at what happened in 9/11. I mean on 9/11, we just flooded the markets with liquidity because of all the damage in New York, you know, all these New York banks and investment banks, they’re receiving billions in payments every day and they’re making billions in payments and you know, if they don’t receive it they can’t make it and so, just a hitch or two in that system can bring the thing down.

Well, we just pumped enormous amounts of liquidity in there through open market operations and our check clearing system, which the Houston branch is very involved in, we decided to give credit for checks deposited with us, on the next day when it would normally be done, even though all the planes were on the ground. We couldn’t collect the checks but we pretended we were collecting the checks and we gave credit for those checks, created enormous amount of float, which by law, we’re supposed to treat as a real cost, to us, but since we’re more a public institution than a private institution, we decided not to put our cost situation ahead of the public good, anyway – I’m getting too far off. We know how to handle those things better now, not well enough but not bad. – Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Bob McTeer at the Houston World Affairs Council

It must be nice to be considered an essential cog in the smooth operations of the financial lifeblood of the economy, worthy of receiving “enormous amounts of liquidity” (otherwise known as cash), whenever there is a perceived problem. Let’s just say that this isn’t the only pretense going on in our financial system of fictional money.