Vox Popoli

BAGHDAD – It was 10.30 in the morning, almost four months ago, and the children were getting ready for church.

Aziz Raad Azzo, five, was drinking his milk; his 14-year-old sister Raneen was putting on her new clothes. When they heard a car pull up, Raneen, thinking her father was home, ran to the window and flung open the shutters. Four men shot her and her little brother in the head, scattering their blood and bones across the family’s living room.

The children’s crime: Their father, a Christian storekeeper, had sold alcohol.

Before the murders, the family had received a photocopied death threat. ‘We are warning you, the enemies of God and Islam, from selling alcohol again, and unless you stop we will kill you and send you to hell where a worse fate awaits you,’ read the warning signed by Harakat Ansar al-Islam, the Partisans of Islam Movement.

These murders made possible in part by the freedom-fighting, nation-building forces of the Coalition against the Axis of Evil. I can’t wait until free elections are held, I’m sure the Iraqi people, with their centuries of tolerant and democratic culture, couldn’t possibly elect anyone like the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front.

Athenian Democracy

185 years (507-322)

Roman Republic

402 years (509-107)

Royal England (Common Law)

427 years (1215-1642)

Imperial Parliamentary United Kingdom

259 years (1688-1947)

First French Republic

7 years (1792-1799)

Second French Republic

4 years (1848-1852)

Weimar Republic

14 years (1919-1933)

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

72 years (1917-1989)

United States of America (voluntary)

73 years (1789-1861)

United States of America (involuntary)

139+ years (1865-2004)

I’m not saying that the world will come to an end when the US system of government changes and/or collapses. My best guess is that it will become an integral part of an North-Central American superstate in the mode of the European Union, which will eventually be a state in the federal world government. And, as in many of these previous cases, most people may not even notice the change; indeed, future historians may well decide that the Constitutional USA ended long before 2004, perhaps as early as 1865 when the Union ceased to be voluntary. (I don’t want another Civil War discussion; causes aside, the result is not debatable.)

Modern England is a decent place to live, after all, but it’s not the center of world power it once was under the Imperial Parliament. And one could even argue that for the average sybarite, Imperial Rome was a more entertaining place to live than its Republican predecessor. But then, there’s always a few crazy Old Republicans who have no desire to live under the rule of Augustus Caesar.

Mass-market publishers are not certain the used-book phenomenon is a problem worth addressing, but others in the industry have already made up their minds. “We think it’s not good for the industry and it has an effect, but we can’t measure it,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, a trade group. “There has always been used-book sales, but it’s always been a background noise sort of thing. Now it’s right there next to the new book on Amazon.”

Lorraine Shanley, a principal at Market Partners International, a publishing consultant, said that the industry was just starting to appreciate the dimensions of the problem. “Used books are to consumer books as Napster was to the music industry,” she said. “The question becomes, ‘How does the book industry address its used-book problem?’ There aren’t any easy answers, especially as no one is breaking any laws here.”

Anyone else doubt that if someone invents a technology that will allow someone to read a book once before it sets itself on fire and burns to ashes, the publishers of the world will beat a path to their door? William Gibson was just ahead of his time with Agrippa.

While I have a very amicable relationship with my publisher, in general I have little sympathy for them. Copyright was originally conceived as a way to protect authors from publishers, now it’s devolved into de facto protection for the publishers.

Bob Novak writes of John Kerry:

After disappointing organized labor by picking Sen. John Edwards as his running mate, Sen. Kerry has pleased union leaders in coming out in opposition to secret ballots by workers in deciding whether to accept union representation. Organized labor wants to do away with secret balloting and instead use the “card check,” in which a union gains accreditation as a company’s bargaining agent by soliciting union cards from members. Critics say that method results in coercion of workers by union organizers.

Both Kerry and Edwards have joined Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in urging the National Labor Relations Board to adopt card check instead of secret ballots.

I wonder if America’s First Gay Couple will also call for a card check instead of secret ballots in the national elections. Let’s face it, John Kerry is every bit as gay as Bill Clinton was black.

In the national survey of more than 75 percent of the Democratic delegates, two out of three of those expressing a position on gay marriages said they favored them. But among the delegates from a dozen Southeastern states, a slight majority was opposed.

No other issue reveals that wide of a regional divide among the party’s delegates. On another major social issue – abortion, 92 percent of the Southern delegates said they supported abortion rights, identical to the national average.

“They’re reflecting the views of Southern Democrats,” said Emory University political scientist Merle Black. “Most Southern Democrats would be in favor of choice on the abortion issue but most would be against gay marriage, especially in the rural and small-town South.” Most Southern Democrats opposed to abortion rights have already left the party, but there’s a “different distribution” when it comes to gay marriage, he said.

Edwards delegate Robert Sanders, an attorney from Covington, Ky., says he “couldn’t care if you marry a fireplug.” Others, such as Mary Brown, an environmental administrator from Vicksburg, Miss., used strong language to express their opposition to the concept of abortion but said they still favor the right. “I am for a woman’s right to murder her child if she wants to,” Brown said.

When Massachusetts’ Supreme Court first dictated homogamy, I thought the election was in Bush’s bag. Unfortunately for the Republicans, Bush proved himself to be as inept at political strategery as he is at military strategy. When your opponent hands you a club, BEAT HIM OVER THE HEAD WITH IT! This is rocket science?

I think the primary difference between Democrats and Republicans now is that Democrats want to actively depopulate the nation, while Republicans would prefer to see it collapse into chaos. Perhaps that’s not what they ideally want, but it sure appears to be the logical extension of their policies.

It’s not that I’m pessimistic, it’s just that it’s amazing to look at the historical lifespan of societies and then watch as the same pattern of decline plays out in your own society. It’s truly astounding, especially listening to others explain why these changes are positive developments. Nothing lasts forever, and we’ve already witnessed the collapse of one global superpower. I don’t understand how it’s possible for anyone to deny at least the possibility of the USA’s following suit.

Eight years after Microsoft launched an online magazine in a groundbreaking attempt at cyber-hipness, Slate may be sold. More than half a dozen media companies have expressed interest in buying the Internet publication, and the leading contenders are the New York Times and The Washington Post, a source familiar with the discussions said today….

Slate drew 4.6 million unique visitors last month, in part because it is part of the Microsoft Network, and the computer company would like to keep it there, even under a new owner, as a draw.

WorldNetDaily reportedly has something like 5 million unique visitors a month, without the benefit of being pushed by Microsoft on MSN and MSNBC, yet doesn’t get anywhere near the media attention that Slate normally does. I suppose this is the Internet equivalent of how Chicago, Dallas and Houston rate merely a modicum of the attention given to New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

As with the equity markets, gold is looking unhealthy. The difference being that gold’s downdraft should be countertrend, while I have little doubt that the long term trend for the equity markets is down. Fundamentals are always deceiving, as the dollarr will ultimately go the way of all paper, but markets never move in straight lines.

Using the same logic as before, if Wave 1 was 433 down to 370 in 86 trading days, Wave 2 looks to have peaked at 411, a 65 percent retracement in 46 days. The next buying opportunity should be somewhere in the vicinity of 348, perhaps somewhat lower, if Wave 3 is bigger than Wave 1, presumably sometime in November if the pattern holds. (These waves are an order of magnitude lower than the equity market waves I previously discussed, hence the shorter time frames.)

This is of no concern at all if you’re holding long-term bullion, but last week probably would have been a good time to move out of your trading positions preparatory to picking it up. You still might want to consider doing so if the price drops below 389 next week, as chances are that you’ll be able to buy at a 12 percent discount in the near future.

I’m still not completely sold on Elliott Waves, especially on the timing calls, but if they’re correct on the dollar hitting the high 90’s, well, that will be truly impressive indeed. I can’t think of one economist or financial analyst who thinks the fundamentals call for anything but a dropping dollar. But markets never move in a straight line, and if you think about it, plunging equity markets would move a lot of people into cash….

One thing that was bothering me about my previous democide/homicide calculation is that it didn’t account for the changing world population over the century, which went from 1.65 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000. Also, one or two people objected to my assertion that the USA has one of the highest homicide rates in the world – it seldom leaps to the very top, as South Africa has replaced Colombia, but it is always in the top 5-10.

First, I used a spreadsheet to work out that the average world population over the course of the 20th century was 3.82 billion. This is an estimate, of course, but much closer than assuming it was always 6 billion. As to the global homicide rate, what worked out to 1.6/100k did seem too low, so I decided on a different method.

Taking the most four populous “countries” – China, India, the USA and the EU – (using France, Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy for the EU) – provided homicide rates of 1.3, 3.74, 5.64, and 1.79 respectively, resulting in an average 3.12 murders per 100,000. 3.82 billion divided by 100,000 and multiplied by 3.12 gives 119,184 annual homicides. (This means that with 4.83 percent of the global population, the US accounts for 7.84 percent of the global murders, which sounds about right.)

Over the course of the century, that’s 11.9 million murders by individual criminals, which is horrific, but still only 6.43 percent of the 185 million bodycount racked up by governments the world over from 1900 to 2000. This method of calculation thus concludes that government is 15.55 times more lethal than crime.

Just when you think he can’t possibly top himself – after the combination of his comments on Miss Spears and the vengeance story – he produces this:

Feh…you people. When it’s inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it. You don’t hear the frog whining, now do ya?

Perfect. If I was going to rename this blog, I think I’d call it Whining Frog.

The assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services responds to Jonah Goldberg:

All good conservatives want smaller government. To achieve that end, we need a plan. Merely wishing it were so is not a plan. The fact is that children (and adults) living in healthy and stable marriages are less in need of government services. By offering marriage-education services — on a purely voluntary basis — to interested couples whereby they can develop the knowledge and skills necessary to form and sustain healthy marriages, we will help reduce the need for more intrusive government interventions later on.

Granted, this is new work. Nobody knows for sure whether it will succeed. But one thing is certain: Unless we can reverse the decline of marriage, demand for an ever-expanding welfare state will continue. The president’s Healthy Marriage Initiative is no panacea, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Here’s a safe prediction: no matter how much money is spent on the Healthy Marriage Initiative, marriage will continue to decline and the welfare state will continue to expand. This initiative is rampant idiocy. Rampant, I tell you! Rampant! You can’t cure cancer with cancer, you don’t treat a patient with a bullet wound by shooting him in the head, and you can’t solve government-created problems with more government!