Category: Uncategorized

Robert Novak reports: The Bush administration is bracing for the first hostile book written by a former official in January when Paul O’Neill publishes an account of his two years as secretary of the treasury. Pittsburgh industrialist O’Neill left Washington angrily after being fired Dec. 6, 2002, and began work on a book. The White House fears the worst from his insider’s account.

They have something to fear. This economic boomlet of the last six months has the same cause as most modern booms – expansion of the money supply, which is also known as inflation. According to the Fed, M1 is up 7.2 percent in 2003 and M3 is up 4.6 percent, while the economy grew 2.9 percent in the last year. There’s all of your GDP “growth” right there, and then some, the literally unbelievable Q3 jump notwithstanding. Cliff Droke writes: The dominant theme in 2003, especially the last nine months of the year, was inflation. Not inflation in the economic sense but inflation in the sense of rising prices across-the-board for equities, commodities, and real estate due to massive injections of liquidity into the U.S. financial system.

It’s strange, considering the championing of this so-called “inflation free” boom, that cattle prices have risen 36% in the last 12 months, scrap steel is up 42 percent and gold is up from $278 to $416 in only two years.

I’ll be checking out O’Neill’s book. I suspect he knows what the inevitable consequences of this insane monetary policy is, even if Larry Kudlow doesn’t. Consider this: after two years of bear action followed by an almost unprecedented bull run, the NASDAQ is up 1.3 percent. But the dollar is down 40 percent in that same period. It may not matter to the US investor, but I don’t think a lot of foreign investors are excited with that performance. Richard Russell suggests that the US economy will be continued to be propped up as China buys time by continuing to purchase dollars until its infrastructure is in place to replace the USA as the global economic center.

This is a credible scenario – it mirrors one that I’d separately developed for a novel I’m currently writing – far more so than those who worry about competition from a moribund and dying Europe or believe that the current financial regime can be sustained indefinitely. What is ominous is that China is starting to permit and encourage both individual gold accumulation and entrepeneurialism – someone’s been reading the Austrians, I suspect. Once you begin to hear noises about an official abjuring of the Communist creed, be prepared for fireworks of several kinds. Empires, financial and otherwise, don’t tend to go peacefully into the gentle night of history.

NRO’s Andrew Stuttaford points out: The new European arrest warrant came into force yesterday, allowing British citizens to be extradited under a fast-track process even if their actions do not constitute an offence in Britain.

I find it interesting that all those who mock my insistence that the UN poses a grave threat to humanity and US national sovereignty are now strangely silent about the example set by the European Union. They always used to insist that the Common Market was nothing but a trade federation too. It’s now very clear to everyone that they were completely wrong about the nature of the budding European state, and I guarantee that they’ll be proven to have been hopelessly naive about the nature of the United Nations as well.

TZ writes: The two myths I detest most by revisionist historians are 1. Our founding fathers were all deists or unitarians, and 2. The “civil war” (or whatever you want to call it) wasn’t about slavery.

I agree with TZ on the deist thing, which is obviously not true given even a small amount of research. But is it reasonable to suggest that the Union would have permitted states to leave peacefully if the Southern states had wished to secede over tariffs, or anything else? I think the notion is absurd.

Slavery was why the Southern states wished to secede. The war was fought, however, over whether states had the right to secede or not. In other words, whether national sovereignty lay with the states or with the Federal government. War is usually about power, not the justifications given.

Does anyone seriously suggest that the North would have invaded the South had the Southern states chosen to keep slaves and stay within the Union? It had not done so for 87 years, after all. Is the war in Chechnya fought over slavery? Was the Eritrean war fought over slavery? Despite the omnipresence of slavery throughout history, there has not been a single war fought over it anywhere in the world that I recall, but many, many wars fought by people who wish to secede and a government that does not wish to permit them to do so.

TZ’s position, however mainstream, appears almost bizarre when seen from the perspective of military history. The Civil War was by no means unique.

When the NFL Channel counts down “The Top 500 Toughest Regular-Season Losses” this summer, the Vikes probably clinched the No. 1 spot with that Arizona loss. Seriously, what was worse? Minutes away from a playoff berth, they gave up a touchdown, onside kick, wacky pass interference penalty, then a pseudo-Hail Mary on the final play … and they lost to a team with a rookie QB and a lame-duck coach, a team that was one more incompletion away from drafting first in April. And it was a bogus call to boot — really, does anyone think Poole would have gotten that second foot in?

Throw in their tragic history — Nate Wright, Gary Anderson, Darrin Nelson, four Super Bowl losses and everything else, and, yes, I’m well aware of this stuff since the best friend is a die-hard Vikes fan — and this was a Second-Degree Stomach Punch Game for the poor Minnesota fans

The Sports Guy is right. It wasn’t a Third-Degree deal. Our expectations were way too low this season Like Big Chilly said, there was no way we were going to do anything in the playoffs anyhow. It’s technically worthy of a Stomach Punch because of how it all came about but it felt more like the 2001 NFC championship game when we were destroyed by the Giants 41-0; we were just surprised the team was in the hunt at all. I would argue that the Dallas game was a That Game, however. I’m still upset about it. I’m more upset about that then I am about the stupid Arizona game. I’m upset right now. The Darrin Nelson drop against the Redskins was up there too. I don’t know. Go away. I can’t talk about it right now.

More importantly, that was the fourth Stomach Punch game for the Vikes in less than 30 years. Even the Sox didn’t have that many over that same span. And yet you would never see a documentary about Vikings fans, a passionate group who have to rank among the most tortured fans in sports. Apparently media-related curses and sweeping self-importance is much more interesting on a national level.

Vikings fans are great fans, if not in the same league as Green Bay fans, who we love to hate, except we really don’t. Of course, we actually have other options besides ice fishing and counting up all the different kinds of cheese we’ve eaten. (Relax – Space Bunny’s mom is a Packers owner.) The gang knows all the words to two of the Vikings three fight songs – the one Denny wrote is hopelessly cheesy, so no point. We sing it after every touchdown, in bars, at football parties, on trans-Atlantic phone calls together. The White Buffalo once taught an entire bar in Denver to sing “Vikings… the men of football fame” during a Monday Night football game against the 49ers, then called us so we hear it. The sports media suck. TV may revolve around New York City and Los Angeles, but the world of sports most emphatically does not.

I’m having a third whack at that little referrer script. This time I’ve posted it at the very bottom of the main section. We’ll see if that works.

By the way, you do realize that Global Citizen is a joke, right? I’m not chipping anything, not even my dog.

I’m considering taking sides. The question is, do I join The Alliance of Free Blogs, The Axis of Naughty or The Blogdom of God? I’d consider The League of Liberals but I rather doubt they’d have me.

Not much is at stake. ONLY THE FATE OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT!

If you hear a noise, that would be the sound of the gravitas-meter dropping. Va bene. I’d be bored out of my skull if I had to take myself seriously all the time.

GH wants to bet: I bet you a case of beer your blog gets over a million hits this year

I’m hardly going to bet against myself now, am I? According to Sitemeter – which is totally inaccurate, but it serves – I’m on pace for about 295,000 right now. So, it is possible, I guess.

The Blogger King, Instapundit, does around 26 million per year. Surpassing him is my ultimate goal for Vox Popoli, despite my great admiration for a man who joins the conspiracy against himself.

GH also mentions the Simkanin injustice as one that perhaps should have made WND’s most spiked list. I don’t think so, because the media seldom covers this sort of case before the trial. At this point, it’s nothing but dog-bites-man to say that the IRS-Federal Court cabal is wrongly persecuting someone who has violated no law. If he wins – as he should – and the story is still ignored, that will make it a spiked story for 2004.

As you may know, I do not mind being criticized. I believe that constant criticism sharpens your mind, and has the long-term effect of strengthening your arguments. Big Chilly, who has been my best friend since our days on Big Wheels together, has always taken a perverse pleasure in playing devil’s advocate, and one of the reasons I don’t intellectually fear anyone is that thanks to him I have had a genius-level IQ slashing away at my every assertion for more than two decades. Being stripped down to the bone on occasion is a good thing for any would-be intellectual.

I also believe that one of the great weaknesses of the Left is its total ignorance of the philosophy of the Right due to its ironically anti-intellectual tendencies as well as its fear of being exposed. So, as I have become aware of a site or two that appear to show some degree of interest in following my columns and attempting – rather unsuccessfully from what I’ve seen thus far – to lampoon them, I was wondering if regular readers might have an interest in my adding a special blogroll for such sites as they spring into existence during my slow, but inevitable march towards universal acknowledgment as the One True Heir of William F. Buckley and George Will?

There’s one in particular that amused me, not so much for what it had written about me, but about the delightful Miss Coulter. Anyhow, let me know what you think, as I’m still undecided. It seems strange to contemplate what will probably amount to tripling the traffic of one’s self-appointed enemies, but on the other hand, it might make for interesting and amusing reading at times. As for me, well, no one who competes in an all-male fantasy football league can possibly be afraid of being called a few names.

“Oh, I almost forgot about revenge upon my enemies! May they die like pigs in Hell!” – Steve Martin, A Christmas Wish

So, you’re really confident that you owe those federal income taxes? That the law requires your employer to withhold them from your paycheck? Then it might trouble you to know that Texas businessman Dick Simkanin has been indicted four separate times by grand juries that have not heard ANY testimony from him, he’s had one jury vote 11-1 not guilty, and he’s STILL in jail after seven months of being convicted of nothing. You can rape a woman and get less time. Somebody is worried….

In that trial, an IRS legal expert had to recant his prior testimony regarding the definition of the critical legal term “employee” and the judge refused, after a specific request by the jurors, to provide them with a copy of the law that required Simkanin to withhold.

This week, Judge McBryde granted a DOJ motion to deny Dick the ability to present any of the evidentiary exhibits upon which he relied to form his beliefs about the tax code. This ruling by Judge McBryde effectively denies Dick the ability to defend against one of the separate, foundational elements of the alleged crimes, i.e., “willfulness.”

McBryde also granted a DOJ motion regarding “Jury Security” in effect, keeping the jury in complete isolation from the public during (and before) jury selection and during Simkanin’s trial. The order included provisions to conduct the jury selection process in private, with no public witnesses. Potential jurors are being directed to meet at a “secret location” and will then be bussed to the federal courthouse in downtown Fort Worth, and ushered inside for the proceedings. According to the order, jurors will not even be able to use the same hallways or bathrooms used by the general public during the trial.

Here’s a pretty simple question. If the government’s case is so strong, so obvious, why are they forced to resort to such monstrous and unjust shenanigans? Apply Occam’s Razor and the answer is clear. The law is not what you think it is, nor what the government pretends it to be. Our forefathers didn’t stand for such injustice, and certainly neither can we.

Considering the deception, violations of the Constitution and federal rules of court procedure, a railroaded guilty verdict won’t change my opinion in the least. But the vindication of a not guilty verdict in the face of a stacked deck should make a real difference to the average American.

From the Mises Institute: With regard to war, Hobbes asserted three principal causes, “First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; the third, for reputation.”

Hmmm, I don’t see much related to religion there. Obviously that Hobbes guy had no idea what he was talking about. If only he’d heard of the Crusades, the Thirty Years War and the Spanish Inquisition, I’m sure he would have had a much different list of principal causes.

I do think the Mises Institute has it wrong with regards to the current war. They see it as a war for reputation, I think it is primarily number two, a war for safety. It may be as much in protection of the imperial dollar as it is of the American people – their physical safety if not their liberty – but it doesn’t strike me as a glorious enterprise.