In a former life, I worked in the food industry. One of my favorite clients ran into a little problem that resulted in some jail time for the owner and his eldest son--the boiled ham was being adulterated with kangaroo meet to both meet the USDA's protein content standards, and save money in a very competitive market.

The reason we have a USDA is because of rampant abuses of this type in the early part of the 20th century. Food is a commodity and downward price pressure produces unrelenting temptation to cut corners. I'm not a big fan of government regulation, but my personal experience convinces me that its absolutely necessary where ingestible consumer products are concerned.

With this in mind, I wasn't too surprised to hear about Chinese pet food problems, or more recently poisoned toothpaste.

The toothpaste substituted diethylene glycol for glycerine because its a wee bit cheaper--exactly the kind of temptation you'd expect to see. Fortunately the FDA discovered the problem. China just doesn't have the regulatory regime adequate to make their products safe for Americans to import and buy, but ultimately I have to ask the question....

What's wrong with Crest?

FT
Europe furious at US climate call

A spokesman for Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor and current G8 president, said Germany’s stance that climate talks should take place within the United Nations was “non-negotiable”.

The [Clean Development Mechanism] is one of two global markets which have been set up in the wake of the Kyoto climate summit in 1997. Both finally started work in January 2005. Although both were launched with the claim that they would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, evidence collected by the Guardian suggests that thus far, both markets have earned fortunes for speculators and for some of the companies which produce most greenhouse gases and yet, through a combination of teething troubles and multiple forms of malpractice and possibly fraud, they have delivered little or no benefit for the environment.

While the [Clean Development Mechanism] is run under the umbrella of the UN, the second market is overseen by the European commission.

Kudos to The Grauniad for giving scoffers like me the material to berate their soulmates.

We've reached comedy now. No disinterested observer can keep a straight face listening to the amnesty racketeers. They know it and are floundering, unable to find gravitas.

The President's lost the plot - NYT:

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, welcomed the president’s support for more spending on border security, but said, “There’s no reason why we should be forced to tie amnesty to it.”

Mr. Bush said the $4.4 billion would “come from the fines and penalties that we collect from those who have come to our country illegally” and apply for legal status.

Representative Duncan Hunter of California, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, scorned such linkage.

“The idea that we will have border security only if it’s paid for by illegal immigrants is unacceptable,” Mr. Hunter said.

Trent Lott has lost the plot:

“Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”

At some point, Mr. Lott said, Senate Republican leaders may try to rein in “younger guys who are huffing and puffing against the bill.”

I'm optimistic that this debacle will cause a reconquista in the GOP. The RINOs are charging like, well, mad rhinos and it's obvious that association with them is political death. Let them get a little closer then drop them dead with mockery.

While a lot of attention gets focused on CEO pay, most CEOs actually come in to work on a regular basis.

Former Smithsonian secretary Lawrence M. Small took nearly 10 weeks of vacation a year during seven years running the vast museum complex and was absent from his job 550 workdays while earning $5.7 million on outside work, according to an independent commission report to be released today.

The Smithsonian's second-ranking official, Sheila P. Burke, was absent from her job as deputy secretary for 400 days while earning $10 million over six years on non-museum work.

Moonlighting from a seven figure job? That's pretty damn greedy.

The article caught my eye because my daughter did an internship at the Smithsonian last year and reported very similar abuses at much lower levels--her initial assignment was with a department that had no apparent mission within the institution and had several ghost employees. For her own sanity and not insure that she could actually write a report at the end of her employment, she asked for a transfer and got it.

Frankly, I've never had a conversation with a federal or state employee who didn't relate a similar tale of gross mismanagement and fraud.

Barry Bonds "broke" Hank Aaron's home run record last night.

I did a lot of weight training in my younger days and still get into the gym regularly. What you can't avoid seeing is steroids and their effect. Depending on your body type, you can lift weights for years and scarcely see any increase in muscle size. In my late twenties, it took two years for me to get a somewhat impressive buff look. I would see guys get the same results in a few months while on the juice.

Aside from the extremely rapid muscle development, you could always tell who was juicing because their heads would get bigger, they had a puffy look and acne would get out of control.

There are no "head exercises" you can do to get this effect--its a sure sign of steroid use.

While news stories invariably mention steroid use in conjunction with his name and record chase, we are still playing a kind of public game of denial. Bonds runs the bases to thunderous applause celebrating his "accomplishment", raises his arms in a victory salute, and the jumbotron announces that the record has been broken. Who are we kidding?

Baseball is harmless diversion, but the cultural forces that equivocate between real accomplishment and cheating pervade every corner of our society. From grade school onwards, people will cheat at everything and expect to be rewarded as if they had actually accomplished something in honest fashion.

At some point, we've lost the satisfaction of simply doing something for its own sake. Now everything is a means to an end, with the ultimate goal being fame and wealth.

Take the word "celebrity" for example. It used to be that you were celebrated for having done something or demonstrating unusual skill. Now the word me has been divorced from any meaningful accomplishment--the Paris Hilton effect.

The problem with this can be illustrated by a weed local to the Colorado plateau called appropriately enough--cheat grass. Cheat grass is an annual plant from Eurasia that was inadvertantly introduced in the early 20th century. Its life cycle is opposite the native grasses, which means that it has spouted and established a root system before the native plants get started. As a result, cheat grass displaces native grasses.

So what? Grass is grass, right?

Well, no. Livestock and native foragers like deer and elk can't digest cheat grass, which consequently overbrowse the remaining native species. You get more cheat grass and less of everything else.

Its depressing to realize that we are far less likely to get anymore Beatles, Picassos or Hank Aarons, and a lot more Paris Hilton and Barry Bonds.

My young nephew is a freshman in college and we discussed buying a used laptop. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but it falls with my comfort level, having already performed a lot of delicate work on a lot of laptops to date.

I was interested in a Dell Inspiron D600, because my wife has one and its a pretty nice all-around machine. Oddly enough, there were dozens listed, all by the same eBay Powerseller and all going for suspiciously high prices. I followed about three of the auctions this evening and noticed that the bidding was rather suspicious--dozens of bids by hidden identities with little or no buy-sell activity (which eBay notes besides each identity).

Shill-bidders? It sure looks like it.

Ebay's support system is a dysfunctional maze. I tried to flag them about the problem, but couldn't send the message without including the valid identities of the offending shill bidders--only one problem--the IDs were hidden, thus invalid and so eBay in its wisdom decides that eBayers can't send a complaint with incomplete information.

I don't know how widespead the problem is among Powersellers, but its to the point where I won't do business with them.

The Democrats have hit on a scheme to introduce national health care by stealth--expand existing programs dramatically.

The SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) is a case in point--help for kids. Designed to help the poor pay insurance premiums to cover children, the Democrats have decided to vastly extend its reach to have the government "help" pay insurance premiums for the two-SUV family.

The whole "child" angle is just a gimmick of course--Democrats don't give a damn about children or they wouldn't be so anxious to abort them--no, this is an issue more dear to their hearts--the expansion of government and bureaucracy.

To dramatize the point, the Democrats exploit a child to give their Saturday radio address. Graeme Frost is a seventh grader and his parents, while not poor, make a pittance and are raising 4 children on it--they can't afford adequate health care for their children.

Boo hoo.

Also to dramatize the point, the Crats are lying and have been nailed by a Freeper with somewhat more curiosity that the incompetent mainstream media.

Graeme attends a private school requiring $20,000 in tuition per year. So does his sister. The nearly indigent Frost family spend nearly their entire income on private school tuition--or do they?

"Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work."

Hmmm..not so much.

What the article does not mention is that Halsey Frost has owned his own company "Frostworks",since this marriage announcement in the NY Times in 1992 so he chooses to not give himself insurance. He also employed his wife as "bookkeeper and operations management" prior to her recent 2007 hire at the "medical publishing firm". As her employer, he apparently denied her health insurance as well.

His company, Frostworks, is located at 3701 E BALTIMORE ST. A building that was purchased for $160,000 in 1999. The buildings owner is listed as DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIAL DESIGN CENTER, LLC whose mailing address is listed as 104 S Collington Ave which is the Frost's home. The commercial property he owns is also listed as the business address for another company called Reillys Designs which leads to the question of whether rental income is included in the above mentioned salary total

The current market value of their improved 3,040 SF home at 104 S Collington Ave is unknown but 113 S COLLINGTON AVE, also an end unit, sold for $485,000 this past March and it was only 2,060 SF. A photo taken in the family's kitchen shows what appears to be a recent remodeling job with granite counter tops and glass front cabinets

One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business... maybe money can be found for other things...maybe Dad should drop his woodworking hobby and get a real job that offers health insurance rather than making people like me (also with 4 kids in a 600sf smaller house and tuition $16,000 less per kid and no commercial property ownership) pay for it in my taxes.

A neighbor mine had her kitchen redone with granite counters--$15,000.00

Mark Steyn quotes Insureblog for the scoop on what health insurance would really cost the Frosts.

A check of a quote engine for zip code 21250 (Baltimore) finds a plan for $641 with a $0 deductible and $20 doc copays.

Adding a deductible of $750 (does not apply to doc visits) drops the premium to $452. That's almost a third of the price quoted in the article. Doesn't anyone bother to check the facts?

Granite counter tops or 2 years of health insurance premiums?

You can learn a lot from this little deception. Most importantly? The rich don't pay--you pay.

The Randi Rhodes mugging controversy continues as its beginning to smell like a coverup.

Rhodes reported to her employer that she would not be in to work the next day because "she'd been mugged". That report send the left's paranoia into overdrive as her colleagues reported the "attack" to have been an intimidation tactic by conservative goons.

That has since been modified by Rhodes herself to having been "pushed", or as her lawyer put it, "propelled" to the ground.

On the other hand:

An anonymous contributor to Gawker.com said Rhodes fell after drinking 14 Bloody Mary's at a Midtown Irish pub.

Gaulin said, "I have no response to that. We have not discussed it."

A canvass of half a dozen Irish bars in the area turned up nothing.

Lots of complaints about this because we all know how much the left hates anonymous contributors.

Nevertheless, its damn strange that someone could push you down and knock all your teeth out. If I come up suddenly from behind and push you hard, what would your first instinct be?

Right. Throw out your hands. Its instinct, pure and simple. Try it yourself.

Joe Gandelman reports that he heard Rhodes offer the "I was pushed" explanation herself on her radio show, so there is no weaseling out of it at this point.

Rhodes appears too young to be suffering from neuropathy, and it she had been knocked unconscious, she certainly would have had the marks from it. On the other hand, consuming lot of alcohol and then hitting the fresh air has been known to put more that a few people down on their bellies.

Its not the kind of thing you want to use as an excuse for skipping work, hence the mugging story.

The faithful will of course never challenge her story--don't ask, don't tell.

Looking for the next Jack Abramoff the City of South Jordan, Utah, released this solicitation for "professional consultation services for the purpose of obtaining Federal Earmark Funds."

It's just another federal program, right?

What they need is a Murtha Mystery. I won't even charge them for the consult.

The NYT blog "The Caucus" seems a little miffed that Moveon.org helped stack the deck in an on-line poll to select a question for an MTV Q&A forum for Senator Obama:

But, TechPresident, which produces 10Questions, says MoveOn sent an e-mail to 60,000 members urging them to vote for Mr. Niederberger’s video question, “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate net neutrality as the law of the land?” Within a day, usage on the 10Questions site surged, and Mr. Niederberger’s entry won with about 5,300 votes. The second-place question about medicinal marijuana got only 2,600 votes.

This is news? That’s what happens with internet polls. Never begin to take them seriously. One of the funniest instances of “smart-mobbing” was a decade ago when Mustafa Ataturk, Turkey’s “George Washington”, was voted a “better singer than Elvis” in the top entertainer category of a series of top 100 lists. Ironically the poll was sponsored by the New York Times. Turns out the Greeks, who have a strong dislike for Turks, were stuffing the ballots in the entertainer category in response to the Turks ballot stuffing in the top leader category.

Meanwhile, 10Questions.com certainly wasn't bothered:

By today, TechPresident’s Micah Sifry reported: “Participation on 10Questions.com has surged, with the total number of voters topping 15,000 (that’s up about 9,000 from Friday), the total number of votes hitting 46,000 (up 19,000) and the total unique visits for the weekend at 17,000, more than 10 times Friday’s traffic.”

I just wonder what Moveon thought was so important about their question.

h/t Hugh Hewitt

Wikipedia on the face of things, seemed the perfect implementation of a knowledge-sharing social network--democratic, balanced and transparent.

Not so much.

Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia's core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site's top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.

Many suspected that such a list was in use, as the Wikipedia "ruling clique" grew increasingly concerned with banning editors for the most petty of reasons. But now that the list's existence is confirmed, the rank and file are on the verge of revolt.

Revealed after an uber-admin called "Durova" used it in an attempt to enforce the quixotic ban of a longtime contributor, this secret mailing list seems to undermine the site's famously egalitarian ethos. At the very least, the list allows the ruling clique to push its agenda without scrutiny from the community at large. But clearly, it has also been used to silence the voice of at least one person who was merely trying to improve the encyclopedia's content.

"I've never seen the Wikipedia community as angry as they are with this one," says Charles Ainsworth, a Japan-based editor who's contributed more feature articles to the site than all but six other writers. "I think there was more hidden anger and frustration with the 'ruling clique' than I thought and Durova's heavy-handed action and arrogant refusal to take sufficient accountability for it has released all of it into the open."

More locally, in fact within sight of my house, one thousand homes and the entire overstock.com domain has been banned from editing wiki articles because Wiki wants to silence one man.

"We aren't democratic." That's how Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales described his famously-collaborative online encyclopedia in a recent puff piece from The New York Times Magazine. "The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable," he said, "and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn't be writing."

This is true. Despite its popular reputation as a Web 2.0 wonderland, Wikipedia is not a democracy. But the totalitarian attitudes of the site's ruling clique go much further than Jimbo cares to acknowledge.

In early September, the Wikipedia inner circle banned edits from 1,000 homes and one massive online retailer in an attempt to suppress the voice of one man.

His name is Judd Bagley, and when the ban came down, he hadn't edited Wikipedia in over a year. He was merely writing about the site, from his own domain. The Wikipedia elite blacklisted Judd Bagley because he accused them of using their powers to hijack reality.

Talk of Wikipedia admins trying to seize "the truth" may sound familiar. Famously, comedian Stephen Colbert has poked more than a few holes in the site's commitment to democratic consensus, making fun of its efforts to clamp down on edits deemed less than factual. And the web is still abuzz over the secret mailing list used by top administrators to silence inconvenient voices.

Pretty grim stuff and a good enough reason for me not to use Wikipedia anymore...

While experience with the alternatives has only deepened my respect for the American system of government, politics seems to attract sociopaths like buffets attract fat people.

If you recall, a British medical journal published an American study estimating the number of civilian deaths in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq as greater than half-a-million. The study has been discredited by numerous others which elicited only a fraction of that number, but I was always amazed at the audacity of the estimate and a little perplexed at the risks taken to try to foist it on the American public.

Today I found a clue as to why.

Gateway Pundit unearths a video nugget from the 1990s in which Madeline Albright defends the deaths of over half a million Iraqi children under UN sanctions as "worth it". The original YouTube uploader notes that Albright made no attempt to refute the estimate.

Now it all makes sense. The Bush doctrine, which sadly Bush himself seems to have repudiated, was an exasperated shout of "enough!" with the traditional liberal-Democrat approach to foreign policy which paradoxically used to be the conservative view of the world (which we now call paleo-conservatism, or pre-Buckley). The contrast of outcomes, particularly in Iraq, threatens to destroy and discredit on of the main legs of socialism--remove the necessity of a strong military so more money can be spent to create entitlement slaves and enhance the power of liberal-left politicians.

Letting "the wogs kill each other" was working pretty well too until it all spilled over into our western societies. What Albright was really saying is that half-a-million deaths was an acceptable price to keep things peaceful in the better neighbors of North America and Europe.

Think about it for a minute--the colossal immorality of the liberal-left view that suggests that half a million child deaths are acceptable as long as no Americans are inconvenienced. The reality for Albright, the Clintons and the rest of the left is that billions of deaths would be acceptable if it meant they could be left to their own devices--advancing their political power.

What's really ironic about this comes to light with Samantha Power's disassociation from the Obama campaign. Power wrote a book a number of years ago which had a profound effect on me--"A Problem from Hell"--which dealth with 20th centuries genocides, including the Iraqi genocide (not the sanctions, which weren't mentioned, but Saddam Hussein's pogrom against the Kurds...) Its a deeply affecting book, as one contemplates the millions of lives extinguished while the western world hid their eyes. I've often marveled at how the author managed to write a book like this and still oppose the liberation of Iraq.

Its quite simple really.

That was then, this is now. Assuming the high moral ground when you are in no danger of having to actually make moral choices is easy, and in Power's case, profitable as well. Yet power beaconed to Power, and she quite easily jettisoned her own arguments for a chance at improving her personal situation. It appears to not bother her at all, that if her candidate became the president, new genocides would be inevitable, making her an accomplice.

I try to take the view that "we are all sinners", and not to judge the faults of others too harshly, but frankly this is well beyond my tolerance level.

This makes me sick.

Miss Power is the self proclaimed "genocide chick", who won the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting from Bosnia.

She plays basketball with George Clooney and is the inspiration for the latest David Hare play.

This auburn haired Irish journalist is a professor at Harvard, the founder of a human rights think tank and was cited by Men's Vogue as one of the most beautiful women in the world.

She is also one of Mr Obama's most trusted advisers on foreign policy.

The would-be President of the United States texts her with, "It's Obama, call me" in the middle of the night. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British Ambassador to Washington has already called on her three times.

Miss Power met the Senator in 2005, when he called her to discuss her genocide book.

I recently heard someone describe the distinction between a comic and a comedian in the following terms: A comedian says funny things. A comic says things funny.

Progressives are clearly in the latter category and usually unwittingly so. The Daily Mail piece was suppose to lionize Ms. Power, as liberals are wont to do with each other because someone has to tell them what to think. Yet consider the above photograph and ask yourself the obvious question.

One of the most beautiful women in the world?

The overreach only begins.

I find myself experiencing considerable cognitive dissonance when I think about Power or the fact that Obama was impressed enough with "A Problem From Hell", that he called to discuss it. I read the book when it first came out, and it had a profound effect on me--a very different effect than it had on Obama, or on Powers, who both opposed the invasion of Iraq.

If you've read the book, you know what I mean--its essentially an extensive and profound argument for the Bush doctrine, born out of Power's frustration with the genocide in Bosnia and Srebrenica and the rather typical apathy of the great powers to the wholesale destruction of an entire ethnicities.

How did Barack Obama read this book and come to the conclusion that we shouldn't put a stop to the Iraqi genocide? How does Powers justify her remarkable about face?

I've posted on this just recently, but its come around again because its such a clear indication of how intellectually bankrupt the liberal-progressive-left-Marxist-communist or whatever they want to call themselves today so you won't exactly know who they are and what they represent.

This is the realm of the psychopath--an amorality that is both amazing and chilling, linked to a comic vanity.

The people need to be institutionalized--and not in the White House.

Its fascinating to observe how often the political popular position is also the completely wrong position. I've seen it so often that I've begun to reflexively distrust any popular position. Not being one to develop opinions from mere reflex, I usually wait until I can dig into the details, or until they come to me.

The refueling tanker controversy has been on of those issues.

On the face of it, it just seems wrong to accord a military contract of this magnitude to a European consortium. That's always my first clue--the argument is based on emotional considerations like jobs going overseas to those damn subsided Europeans. Then I find out that John McCain was for it. My knee just flies up at the mention of John McCain who is wrong about everything, dontchaknow. Wow, two emotional reactions on the same issue--a five alarm signal to dive into the specifics.

Infidels Are Cool uncovers some obscure reporting identifying Jeremiah Wright as a former Muslim.

After many lectures like this, Obama decided to take a second look at Wright’s church. Older pastors warned him that Trinity was for “Buppies”–black urban professionals–and didn’t have enough street cred. But Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”–included a “Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.’”

I have long had the sense that the millionaire left-wingers don't really mean what they say. They talk socialism but live and make deals like capitalists. Socialism for others, free-enterprise for them.

The notoriously radical-chic Vanity Fair is iconic of this phenomenon. They talk a good game, but if there is a buck to be made, they jump on it--even if it involves pimping out a 15 year old girl.

Barack Obama has quietly garaged his Chrysler 300C and bought a Ford Escape Hybrid.

Senator Barack Obama has tossed aside the keys to his Chrysler 300C in favor of a new Ford Escape Hybrid. According to the Detroit Free Press, the senator from Illinois was lambasted for driving the a V8 300C after chastising Detroit in a May 7 speech for failing to anticipate rising oil prices that have changed consumers' buying habits.

John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Chris Dodds and Bill Richardson all scrambled for automotive cover and bought politically-correct vehicles. Now that most of these politicos are out of the race, it would be interesting to surveil their daily rides. The real irony is that Clinton and Obama are travelling the country in private jets and being ferried to events in limousines.

Michael Yon literally risks his life to take photos in Iraq and tell the story of Iraq in a way that the mainstream media can't or won't.

So its pretty egregious that Michael Moore would filch a Yon photo to use on his website for propaganda that accuses American soldiers of atrocities.

When someone’s grandmother disseminates the photo of Major Beiger cradling a dying girl in his arms, I allow the usage because I feel she is trying to share the human tragedy. When Michael Moore puts that same photo on his web site, alongside images of George Bush, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, the clear implication is that Farah’s death is their fault. That is a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground, as well as the story of the photo. Farah was killed by a suicide car bomb in Mosul on May 2, 2005. Major Bieger and other soldiers literally risked their own lives to save many children and adults that day, but Farah didn’t make it. Michael Moore apparently does not understand – or refuses to acknowledge – the moral distinction between a man who would murder innocent people, and a man who would sacrifice himself to save them. The photo, as I took it, is the truth, but Moore uses it – illegally – to convey falsehoods. His mind is that of a political propagandist who sees Farah’s death not as a human tragedy, but a tool.

The left likes to pretend that they are moral paragons, but we always seem to catch them red-handed doing dirty deeds dirt cheap.

After being outed for using energy equivilent to that used by 20 average homes, Al Gore allegedly put in solar panels, installed energy-efficient windows and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Things are under control, right?

Not so much.

...the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, which revealed Gore's energy bills last year, reports that since he made those green-friendly changes to his Tennessee mansion, his energy use has surged more than 10 percent.

The center says that in the past year, Gore's home has burned through more than 213,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. That is enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

Anyone looked at his mortgage rates?

Based on a true story, "Good Morning, Vietnam" starred Robin Williams as Adrian Cronauer, an anti-war funny man, disk jockey who regaled the soldiers with his amusing rants against the establishment and how ugly Lyndon Johnson's daughters were while playing classic rock and roll.

Welcome to the liberal-left reality show, where "based on a true story" means it may vaguely--very vaguely resemble the truth.

In real life, Adrian Cronauer served his term out in Vietnam, played some rock music, became a lawyer and chaired the Bush-Cheney reelection committee. Hardly anti-war, Cronauer has been a life-long Republican.

Jeff Kelly documents seven Hollywood films that are complete bull. Worth the read.