Minor Thoughts from me to you

Adam recommends that the religious conservatives split off and form their own party. He thinks that such a third-party might actually be able to attract -- and keep -- voters. That might provide a wedge for other alternate parties to emerge and gain support.

I'm afraid he might be right. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see legitimate competitors to the Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, that would take an election cycle or two to fully emerge. Until then, the only thing a new party would do is pull votes away from Republicans and towards Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Normally, that wouldn't bother me too much.

But, as The Anchoress reminds us, the next election could have big consequences.

The third-party pipe-dreamers will once again make the Clinton tag team victorious. And with a Supreme Court likely to need three quick replacements in '09, the third party folks will watch as the court becomes a permanent 5-4 liberal majority activist court -- for decades. Decades, folks. The America you think you're going to "preserve" with your third party candidate may become unrecognizable in a very short time. The Roe v Wade you think you're going to reverse with your unelectable third candidate will seem almost quaint when compared with the "compassionate" euthanasia and the "practical, community-serving, environment saving" limitations on life you'll be watching get handed down as law by an activist court determined to see the Constitution as a "living" and flexible document.

She also provides an interesting perspective on the morality of presidential candidates.

It is always interesting to me to reflect that Jesus always went to the sinners to get his work done, to spread his message. He didn't go to the "pure" ones who thought they already knew everything they needed to know, and who would never dare to taint themselves by dealing with the lesser among them. He went to the guys who screwed up, made mistakes and understood that they were not worthy, who knew that they didn't know everything. The guys who would continue to make mistakes but who would grow and would -- most importantly -- never give up.

And all of this will come about because the only person seemingly capable of beating the Clinton's wasn't a good enough Christian for the Christian right. I think it's a mistake, folks. Create a third party in order to give yourselves a "good Christian" to vote for -- one who doesn't offend any of your principals -- and you lose. And life loses, too.

I want to support the "perfect" candidate. But right now, I'll take a candidate who merely promises to appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court.

I spend a lot of time discussing Iraq with a friend. We both agree that the U.S. needs to stabilize Iraq, but we have occasional disagreements about what that will take and what the best plan is. We're both frustrated with the lock of political progress in Iraq. It's great that casualties are down, that civilian deaths are down, that terrorist deaths are up. But it feels like we're running in place without political progress to backup the military progress.

Well, today I read the first explanation that made any sense about why there has been no real political progress: several of the political parties involved in the national government are front groups for the terrorists themselves. Obviously, such parties would have every interest in tying the government up in knots and delaying progress.

So while it is true that Al Qaeda seeks to kill the Shiites, and the Mahdi Army seeks to kill the Sunnis, they need one another to block other political options from emerging from either side's adherence to Sharia.

On the Sunni side, the terror bloc is composed by most of the Tawafuq slate of three fundamentalist parties that include individuals like Khalaf al Ayan who plotted terror attacks from his office inside the green zone, including what Iraqis and Americans suspect was the April suicide bombing of the parliament cafeteria. Mr. al Ayan has denied his guilt. He has also gone on satellite television and declared himself the next Saddam.

On the Shiite side, the saboteurs include the politicians loyal still to Moqtada al Sadr, who remains popular in Iraq, though not as popular as he was in 2005, and whose deputies turned Iraq's health ministry and Baghdad's hospitals into an instrument of ethnic cleansing by refusing to treat the Sunnis freshly wounded by Mr. Sadr's militias.

While General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker did not say this directly last month, it is obvious that they too have given up hope of reaching a meaningful accord within the current government. Hence Mr. Crocker touted some of the de facto cooperation on oil profit sharing in the absence of a petroleum law.

A fruitful approach for now is to mold alternative local Shiite and Sunni parties through the tribal network that could challenge the confessional terror parties in the national elections at the end of 2009. Until those elections come, it would be wise for Mr. Graham to abandon his wish for national reconciliation and be content with the local variety.

According to a newly-published article:

"Some of the nation's most politically influential conservative Christians, alarmed by the prospect of a Republican presidential nominee who supports abortion rights, are considering backing a third-party candidate."

"Some" includes James Dobson, famous founder of Focus on the Family, and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, both of whom attended a Las Vegas meeting with "more than 40 Christian conservatives" to discuss what to do about religious conservatives' "mistress" status in the Republican Party. It may have even included Tim LaHaye, author of the "Left Behind" books and now a mover-and-shaker himself as a founder of the shadowy Council for National Policy.

Should these names be lost on you, the AP's source concerning this event puts it plainly enough: President Bush "would not have been elected in '04 without the people in that room."

These are the people who have finally wizened up to the fact that religious fundamentalists are to Republicans what black people are to Democrats, and according to the source, they're ticked. So they're talking break-up.

Just maybe, that is. Perhaps, you understand.

Hopefully, you know - for oh so many reasons.

And I say that knowing I almost certainly wouldn't even vote for them.

A new article posted on the website of my favorite news magazine, The Economist, wonders whether the International Monetary Fund's new managing director, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, can save the organization from its slide into irrelevancy.

"The organisation’s legitimacy is under increasing attack. Fast-growing emerging economies feel under-represented in an institution where Europe and America still hold sway. Even more worrying, there is a big question-mark over the Fund’s relevance. Its role in rich countries has long been modest. But ten years ago it was at the centre of emerging-market financial crises, acting as the world’s financial fireman. Now that many emerging economies have built up vast stashes of foreign-exchange reserves that role is dramatically diminished. And since the Fund’s income depends on its lending, growing financial irrelevance has also spawned a budget crunch."

What the magazine never bothers to do, however, is ask the more obvious question: If we are coming to live in a world in which there are no fires for the fireman to put out, is it actually a bad thing that the fireman's becoming irrelevant?

It's a little surprising that a news magazine willing to make the brave yet sensical suggestion that Belgium really needs to just go ahead and split into two separate countries lacks the proper perspective on such an issue as this. The main points of the article, to a sane reader, all combine to form a cause for celebration, not a call to action. The IMF was established as a lender to countries in need of money. Fewer countries now need money. The IMF is shrinking as a result. Good.

A better question than "How will the IMF save itself?" would be: should the day come when the IMF is simply not needed, will its administration have the character to kill itself?

Such a day is unfortunately far into the future, but it's a question The Economist, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, and others of their ilk probably should start rolling around their heads now. It would give them a better sense of place, and remind them that organizations are not values in and of themselves.

Even the King is under the law. That's one of the fundamental ideas behind the British and American system of government. No one in power -- not the king, not the president, not the judges -- is allowed to break the law.

That idea has a strong corollary: those who enforce the law are also under the law. After all, who is the king if not the chief enforcer of the law? And if the king is under the law, shouldn't those who work for him also be under the law?

That's why I reacted with anger and outrage when I saw this site. Cops Writing Cops - Where's the Professional Courtesy? Law Enforcement and Police Officers help each other.

This is a site for officers getting traffic tickets that ANY normal civilian could get a warning on, verbal or written. This is a site for cops, about cops, and designed by cops. Needless to say, we are fed up with hearing about this and think something should be done. There's always another ticket down the street. We are all family and maybe someday you may need one of us to get out of our car and save your sorry ass. But odds are you're the cop that doesn't do anything to begin with.

If you are a police officer, trooper, court officer, correction officer, telecommunicator, highway patrol, federal agent, or any other type of police (peace) officer either full-time, part-time or retired that has been disrespected or insulted by another police agency (officer) by not receiving some sort of professional courtesy, please email staff (at) copswritingcops.com with the information.

They have all kinds of nifty features like "DICKS OF THE MONTH", dedicated to exposing cops who have the absolute gall to actually write up another cop for breaking the law. Personally, I think that feature should be renamed "HEROS OF THE MONTH".

The entire idea that cops -- by virtue of their job -- should be immune from "minor" tickets is utterly offensive. They shouldn't be granted special privileges just because their job has a certain element of danger. Despite what they seem to think, they are civilians just like the rest of us. They are no more or no less under the law as a result of enforcing the law.

Many people believe we live in a Christian society. Well, the Bible had some pretty specific things to say about treating everyone justly.

[esvbible reference="Deuteronomy 16:19" header="on" format="block"]Deuteronomy 16:19[/esvbible]

These officers aren't accepting bribes, but they sure are showing partiality. That never works out well for society.

[esvbible reference="Proverbs 11:1" header="on" format="block"]Proverbs 11:1[/esvbible]

A false balance: sometimes traders would have one scale to measure goods and money for friends and another (false) scale to measure goods and money for people they didn't know. What better way to cheat somebody? These officers are cheating society by using one standard for "brothers" and another, harsher, standard for everyone else.

[esvbible reference="Proverbs 20:10" header="on" format="block"]Proverbs 20:10[/esvbible]

I don't like that kind of a double standard. And neither does God. Non-Christian officers aren't expected to follow God's standards -- they're not His, after all. But Christian officers had better beware if this is the standard of justice that they're using.

The truth is, I really enjoy saying "I told you so". So I read this article with great pleasure and much chuckling.

A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in [Riverside, NJ, a] faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.

Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.

The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.

With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.

Here's the town's former mayor, on the law:

"The business district is fairly vacant now, but it's not the legitimate businesses that are gone," he said. "It's all the ones that were supporting the illegal immigrants, or, as I like to call them, the criminal aliens."

Or, as I like to call them, taxpayers and the backbone of the local economy.

State Children's Health Insurance Program. It's a program created by Congress to provide health insurance for children whose parents are too poor for private insurance, but too rich for Medicaid. It's set to expire at the end of this month and Congress is fighting with President Bush over the terms of its renewal.

The House wants to double funding from $5 billion a year to $10 billion a year and cover about 3.4 million more children. The President wants to increase funding by only 20%, to $6 billion a year, and only cover children whose parents earn less than $34,340 -- twice the poverty line.

Bloomberg reported a heartwarming story from New Jersey about a family that uses SCHIP to pay for private school and basic cable.

If SCHIP weren't available, Carlie's parents could cover only the teenager through a $230-a-month policy with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, according to the Web site ehealthinsurance.com.

What are the Siravo's spending their money on instead?

There's also $352 a month on a home-equity loan the Siravos took out to send Carlie to a private Catholic high school. Tuition is $9,000 a year.

The family's monthly bills consume most of their take-home income. Pulling out her checkbook, Lori said there's the mortgage ($1,500), utilities ($743), phones and Internet service ($200), car insurance and gasoline ($205), property taxes ($230), basic cable television ($48), food ($600) and credit- card payments ($325) on an outstanding $11,000 balance. That's $46,212 a year, not including clothes, school books and extra- curricular activities for Carlie.

New Jersery better be expensive. Between Vonage, DSL, and a two-line family plan, we only pay a little over $100 for phones and Internet service. We also don't spend anywhere near $600 a month for groceries. I'll grant that our daughter is only 7 months and Carlie is 16, but I'd be shocked if our grocery spending really quadruples over the next 15 years.

The Siravo's have every right to spend their money as they wish. But they don't have every right to take tax-payer subsidies for healthcare, then turn around and spend their savings on luxury goods. Private school, cable, and gourmet food? Give me a break.

I've been reading more good news from Iraq. Here's a brief roundup.

Officials: Shiites Interested in Alliance With American Troops

American commanders in southern Iraq say Shiite sheiks are showing interest in joining forces with the U.S. military against extremists, in much the same way that Sunni clansmen in the western part of the country have worked with American forces against Al Qaeda.

Standing up the Concerned Citizens in southern Baghdad - The Long War Journal. This is critical because southern Baghdad is far more complex -- politically, ethnically, and religiously -- than Anbar is. And yet:

The impact of the Concerned Citizens on security in regions where these units have been established is unmistakable. In Haswa, IED attacks have dropped by 80 percent. Casualty causing IED attacks have dropped by 60 percent throughout Multinational Division Central’s battlespace. Markets are beginning to reopen and reconstruction projects are moving forward.

Empty wards in Baghdad hospital offer hope

A row of beds lies empty in the emergency ward of Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital. The morgue, which once overflowed with corpses, is barely a quarter full.

Doctors at the hospital, a barometer of bloodshed in the Iraqi capital, say there has been a sharp fall in victims of violence admitted during a seven-month security campaign.

Last month the fall was particularly dramatic, with 70 percent fewer bodies and half the number of wounded brought in compared to July, hospital director Haqi Ismail said.

"The major incidents, like explosions and car bombs, sometimes reached six or seven a day. Now it's more like one or two a week," he told Reuters.

All three of these articles sound like reason for optimism about Iraq. We'll have to see if it holds up -- especially once General Petraeus starts withdrawing troops -- but I can't help but feel that we and the Iraqi people are slowly turning a corner.

Lately, the dollar has been sinking lower and lower. Indeed, Nixon was President the last time the dollar was this low. A lot of people are really upset about that. I'm having trouble understanding why. Take this commenter for instance:

The dollar, as predicted is being crushed. We are now at Par with the Canadian Dollar, the Loonie as it is called. This was all so predictable. You cannot run an 800 billion dollar trade deficit and have your currency in demand. We have a lot farther to fall. Within 5 years from 2008 we should see the Canadian Dollar worth 25 % more than the U.S. dollar. The Euro at 1.40 now, should move to near 2.50, as China buys more and more of the Euro. The pound at 2.04 as I write this will be near 3.00. Be ready for CHINA. When they finally let their currency float it will appreciate 70% over a 36 month period. The US trade deficit will be cut in half and then some by 2020.

He starts out by blaming everything on our trade deficit (which is pretty much an illusion to begin with). He finishes by saying that the disastrous result of a falling dollar will be ... a smaller trade deficit. Isn't that exactly what a lot of people (not me!) have been saying that we need? Where's the problem?

A high dollar is worth more compared to foreign currencies. Consequently, imports are cheap and the country imports a lot of stuff. On the downside, our exports are more expensive and we sell less stuff overseas. A low dollar is worth less compared to foreign currencies. Consequently, imports are expensive, but our exports are cheap. We export a little and import a little.

Right now, it appears that our exports may be picking up. People living on our northern border are used to seeing Americans going to Canada to buy things cheaply. Now, the trend is reversing. Canadians are crossing the border to buy cheaper goods.

On either side of the border, a buck is now a buck, or as Canadians call it on their side, a loonie. Coupled with high prices and high taxes for many things in Canada, the strength of the Canadian dollar is driving Canadians into the United States to shop for shoes, school supplies, gasoline, used cars and second homes.

In Vermont, Buzz Roy, owner of Brown's Drugstore in Derby Line, said of his Canadian customers: "They don't buy anything in particular, but everything in general. We've seen a gradual increase over the summer, and we've seen a bigger increase this week."

Mr. Roy said more customers would make trips if it were easier to cross the border, "but they're still coming in droves."

In North Dakota, Crystal Schlecht, who works for the City of Cavalier, said the arts and crafts show in town last weekend had a surprisingly international feel in spite of the slow-go at the border crossing.

"I'd say 60 percent of the people the whole weekend were from Canada," she said. "And we've never really had that before."

Why does it matter that people choose to buy things in Euros or Loonies instead of dollars? Why does it matter that import may slow down and exports may pick up? How does that foretell that nation's doom?

You don't own your car unless the government allows you to. If I were you, I'd avoid driving through Rockford, Illinois anytime soon.

TheAgitator.com: Turn It Up, Lose Your Car: Comments

A new Rockford, Illinois law allows police to seize the automobiles of owners who play their stereos too loud. But it gets worse:

There is no requirement that a police officer responding to a complaint objectively measure sound levels with electronic equipment or even personally witness an alleged offense. Instead, the ordinance states that "hearsay evidence shall be admissible" and that property will be seized upon the assertion of probable cause.

The only way to protest the seizure is to prove you weren't driving your car at the time virtually anyone could have lodged a complaint against you. But look at what you have to go through to get it back:

If a motorist believes his car has been unlawfully towed on a Friday after 5pm, he may challenge the taking by "depositing a written request for a hearing in the silver drop box located behind city hall," according to the ordinance. The city must then respond by the following Wednesday. If the registered owner was not driving at the time the car was taken, he will be mailed a letter within ten days. After this time he is given less than fifteen days to request a hearing. The city may then wait another 45 days to schedule a hearing while storage fees accumulate up to $1100.

A hearing officer designated by Rockford will decide under a preponderance of evidence standard whether it is likely the motorist is guilty, in which case the hearing officer's employers will collect the fine and fee revenue from the motorist. If the vehicle's owner does not receive the mailed notice or cannot pay the fees within 30 days, the city will confiscate the vehicle permanently.

In a recent entry (Sunday's "Alan Greenspan's life is for sale. We don't know where.") I noted that Mr. Greenspan's autobiography The Age of Turbulence, now on sale, has received rather odd publicity: some newspapers are running whole articles about the book's declaration that the U.S. is mainly in Iraq due to oil-related reasons, but somehow failing to -... er, well, mention the name of the book in said articles (one again, that's The Age of Turbulence, Folks!).

I suggested that this was because Democrat-filled newsrooms are in a bit of a pickle: on the one hand, Alan Greenspan - the (Perceived) Bush-Lover and Elder Statesman of Finance - dissing Mr. Bush is too tempting a tale for them to resist reporting. On the other hand, Alan Greenspan's opinions are not the kind to which they'd prefer drawing a lot of attention.

How little did I know.

Mr. Greenspan has since clarified his book's comments to the world, and in a surprising twist, yes, Mr. Greenspan says, he (rightly) rips Mr. Bush to pieces concerning a lot of the president's fiscal policies - but, his tome's analysis of Desert Storm II as primarily oil-driven wasn't one of the negative bits. Actually, Mr. Greenspan thinks insuring the world's continued access to Iraqi oil is a dandy reason to have invaded.

Got that? Mr. Greenspan is not - repeat, not! - accusing President Bush of invading Iraq in order to secure access to Iraq's oil. He is just saying that nobody in power is willing to admit that securing access to that oil is a great benefit of the invasion, much less that killing Hussein for such reason alone probably would've been perfectly justifiable.

I mean, why not, right? He wasn't the elected leader of a people or anything; he was the man with his boot on an entire people's neck. And the homicidal nutcase was in control of one of the world's largest oil reserves. If anyone's whack-worthy in our national interest, why not him?

Now I disagree with that viewpoint, but it's certainly more interesting than what every news story about his book has entirely (and suspiciously) focused on: the news that one more creditable guy technically disagrees with President Bush.

What a bunch of dishonest people these journalists are. At least I can justify the glaring errors in my news stories; I'm just an amateur blogger.

Delays are caused by flight volumes that the FAA Administrator's ineptly-managed Air Traffic Control system cannot handle. The skies are full, not because there's no more room in the air, but because the flight controllers can't keep up with any more flights.

What's Congress's solution to this problem? Why, funding a Peace Garden instead of updating air-traffic control towers.

Want to know what had to be cut from the bill in order to get the North Dakota Peace Garden? Oh, just a silly little project that would have updated technology in air-traffic control towers. But the Peace Garden wasn't the only beneficiary of freeing up funds from making air travel safer. California will also get a "mule and packer museum". Perhaps Americans can start traveling by donkey instead.

Senator Tom Coburn attempted to stop the pork party, to no avail. He offered an amendment that would have forbidden earmarks on transportation bills until all deficient bridges had been properly updated. That just barely failed -- by a vote of 82 to 14. Eighty-two Senators voted to prioritize pork over infrastructure maintenance.

In fact, the pork comes to one out of every eight dollars spent on transportation now. In the past eleven years, earmarks have increased a whopping 1150%, while the dollar value of the pork has increased over 300% in the same period. Ninety-nine percent of these earmarks bypassed planning agencies, meaning that the monies got no review for prioritization. How many bridges could have been repaired with that money over the last decade?

Still believe that Congress should manage a multi-trillion dollar budget? Still believe that government is more interested in your safety and well-being than a private company would be? Private companies would be embarrassed to run the air-traffic control system that the FAA runs. Private companies would be embarrassed to have roads and bridges as well-maintained as the governments.

Don't put your faith in government spending. It's the worst "investment" you could possibly make.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Do you think that still applies? I don't. Not when a family can have their car seized and held by the police, before anyone was even convicted of a crime.

Take this story, for example.

The Chicago Sun-Times tells the story of Erasmo Palacios, who, after dropping off his six-year-old daughter at school, was with his wife Rocio and their 22-year-old daughter, all on their way to breakfast when they saw a woman waving her arms. Thinking she was in distress, they approached her in the car, at which point...

...the woman approached their car, parked outside Manolo’s restaurant, leaned in to the passenger side where Rocio was sitting and asked Erasmo if he wanted oral sex for $20 or sex for $25.

The couple laughed, realizing this wasn't a woman in distress after all.

But within seconds, Chicago police swarmed the family car, hauling Erasmo Palacios out in handcuffs. He was charged with solicitation of a prostitute.

His daughter, who had just run in to exchange her coffee for a hot chocolate, screamed, while his wife cried in fear.

Eight hours later, Palacios, who has no criminal record, was released from custody. And weeks later, charges against him were dropped.

The police report improbably charged that Palacios solicited sex from the undercover officer, even as his wife sat in the passenger seat, and his daughter was on her way out from getting a beverage. Makes you wonder how many men have been wrongfully arrested for solicitation who didn't have their wives and daughters nearby to vouch for them. Also makes those websites cities put up posting mugshots of suspected (not convicted) johns all the more invidious.

The punchline: Though the charges were dropped, the city seized the family's car under laws allowing the forfeiture of automobiles used in the solicitation of prostitutes. The city won't return the car until the Palacios pay $4,700 in towing and storage fees.

Here's another example of how we're making progress in Iraq. Operation Alljah: The Swarm

Commenced on May 29 and ending last week, Operation Alljah was the latest and most successful bid to achieve security in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, marrying projection of force with aggressive civil affairs outreach. During the operation, the city was subdivided into 10 neighborhoods in efforts dubbed "the swarm," a coordinated series of counterinsurgency components: US troops and Iraqi Security Forces rolled into a neighborhood and established security, cordoned it off with concrete barrier checkpoints, created a local police precinct, recruited a neighborhood watch, provided employment for day laborers, conducted an information campaign to inform the citizenry of the operation, arbitrated any claims against Iraqi or US forces, distributed food and began meetings with neighborhood leaders to address infrastructure concerns.

More and more Fallujans are signing up to become members of the Iraqi Police or of the local neighbor watch teams.

When asked about how security had changed so drastically, what they think of Americans and IPs, and why so many Fallujans had formerly backed the insurgency, one volunteer had this to say: "I want to be neighborhood watch to protect the city and 150 dinars is good pay, and I want to {become an] IP. And when I become an IP, I'll have 750 dinar. Like you said, four, five, seven months ago, the city was not good. But the reason the city is now good is because of us, we protect the city, because we're from this city; we know who's the good guy, we know who's the bad guy. So, the bad guy? To jail or get out [of] my city. The good guy? You're welcome, you can stay here."

What turned this situation around? Well, the locals realized how evil Al-Qaeda was and the Army smartened up.

Asked why it took so long for Fallujans to switch sides or rise up against the insurgency, another volunteer said, "Before, we had the terrorists, they controlled the city, so they had the power to do what they wanted to do. But you can say we woke up right now, we were asleep. We woke up to move the bad guy, to push him out, to kill him or to put him in jail. We were waiting for help from the government."

Several volunteers expressed that the key to building security momentum was the empowerment of the Iraqi Police with cover from Marine firepower. Their opinion of US troops has changed:

"At first, Americans were not doing a good job, because if they were attacked, they would kill [civilians] in the surrounding area, but now they are good to the people and trying to help. They are going out sooner or later, and it is a good gesture of them to try to help us before they leave."

Iraq has been a disaster for many years. But it'd be a mistake to write off the country now when we've finally learned how to fight and -- more importantly -- how to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi citizens.

Read the whole thing. My excerpts don't do it justice.

The situation in Iraq is changing so rapidly, it can be hard to keep up with. For instance:

Thomas Ricks' Fiasco is one of the most influential books about the war in Iraq. It was published just over a year ago, to considerable acclaim. It was only a few days ago, however, that I began to read the book.

One of the first things is noticed is a map that precedes the title page. The map is entitled "The Sunni 'Triangle': Heart of the Insurgency". That title speaks volumes about the dramatic changes in Iraq over the past six months.

A year ago, when Fiasco was published, it seemed delusional to hope that the US and its Iraqi allies could ever take back the Sunni provinces of Western Iraq. We understood the war in Iraq as essentially a civil war between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Since we had taken the side of the Shi'ites after the fall of Saddam, it seemed perfectly logical to assume that the most heavily Sunni parts of Iraq were the natural home of the insurgency.

Gen. Petraeus has up-ended that logic and shown that we can turn many of Iraq's Sunnis into our most effective allies -- more effective than most Shi'ites. This strategy has its perils, but those perils are almost infinitely preferable to the status quo of July 2006.

A 75% reducation in attacks in what was once the heartland of the insurgency. Is there any hope of extending that progress to the rest of Iraq? There are good reasons to say 'no'. Whereas Anbar is all-Sunni, Baghdad is a mixed metropolis with vicious Sunni-Shi'ite violence. How can any US strategy succeed on such dangerous terrain?

A year ago, we were asking the same question about Anbar.

In "The Music Man", con-man "Professor" Harold Hill was nearly run out of town on a rail for trying to sell the town members on a non-existent boys band. He was saved by a good singing voice, the love of a librarian, and the unexpected appearance of a real boys band -- put together by someone other than Hill.

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle is trying to accomplish the same feat. Instead of a boys band, Governor Doyle is attempting to sell a non-existent college scholarship program. I'm not kidding about the non-existent part. The Wisconsin Covenant program exists only in Governor Doyle's fevered imagination -- it hasn't even been introduced as a bill in the state legislature. Sadly, the governor has conned nearly 10,000 high school students into signing up for this pretend program.

With just days left before the Friday sign-up deadline, nearly 10,000 ninth-graders have committed to the proposed Wisconsin Covenant, which promises a route to college if they fulfill a pledge.

A spokesman for Gov. Jim Doyle's office said the Democratic governor's new program is succeeding in getting thousands of students to start thinking early about college. But Republican lawmakers point out that thousands of students have now signed up for a supposed guarantee that hasn't been approved by, or even introduced in, the Legislature.

"Thousands of students across the state now have a clear road map for what they need to do to go to college, and in addition, the state has committed to ensure there's a place for these students in higher education," Doyle spokesman Matt Canter said of the program, which Doyle hopes will boost the number of low-income students in college.

Doyle and first lady Jessica Doyle have been crisscrossing the state in recent days touting the covenant program and urging students to participate.

Doyle first proposed a year ago that the state guarantee a place in a college and adequate financial aid to any eighth-grader who pledges to do well in school and keep out of trouble. The first class of students started making the pledge last spring. Those eighth-graders are now ninth-graders and the program would apply to their first year in college in 2011, Canter said.

It's like something out of a farce. Only, sadly, true.

I've surely got be the world's worst blogger, to have yet written nothing here on Minor Thoughts about the recent kidnapping (and release) of twenty-three Korean missionaries in Afghanistan.

After all, not only have Joe and I always given over the majority of our attention here to politics, economics, and that portion of God's kingdom which extends onto this Earth, the Church, but (a) I personally am living in South Korea right now and (b) have relatives of my own living in Afghanistan. Throw in my own associations with a number of missionaries and one might justly suspect, considering I am that obnoxious kind of people perfectly willing to offer his unsolicited opinion on just about anything, that the hostage situation would receive at least a mention.

But during such crises, there's very little one lone lil' blogger can say that isn't being said everywhere else. The very point of the blog-o-sphere (that's still what the kids are calling it these days, right? I told you I'm out of touch) is, after all, the opportunity it presents to receive alternative perspectives generally unavailable from the mass media - that is, we no longer need to be told by news corporations what your typical man on the street thinks, because the man on the street is basically running his own newspaper, and what he thinks is sometimes far more interesting than previously reported, even if his presentation is inferior. Republican radio shows in the U.S. became popular for the same reason.

The aftermath of the Korean hostage situation suggests far more interesting questions.

That's 'cause, as Reuters has recently noted, the nineteen Korean missionaries recently released by Afghani terrorists haven't exactly received a hero's welcome home. Oh, the Korean people are glad their brothers and sisters are safe, sure, but they still have a bone to pick; their complaint is that twenty-two people foolishly put themselves in an extremely dangerous situation and as a result, Korea itself (and the Afghani reconstruction effort) paid the price - being forced (a debatable term, yes) to deal with terrorists to insure their recovery.

"This crisis [has] raised grave questions about the divide between the country's responsibility and the responsibility of individuals," JoongAng Ilbo, a large Korean newspaper, has grimly muttered.

Indeed it has - but they're questions with fairly obvious answers. As countries all over the world have embraced populism and rejected (if only rhetorically, in many cases) the concept of absolute rule by the few, the notion has naturally evolved that any citizen - and not just royal and government officials - who gets in trouble overseas deserves rescue by his or her government.

On any sensible review, however, that's a ridiculous premise. First of all, making all men equal, one must remember, does not always mean elevating every man to the level of importance once accorded kings; often it means simply knocking the kings themselves down a few pegs, to a lower level on par with their brothers and sisters. Nation-states of old paid high ransoms for captured kings and the like because the citizens of those nation-states believed those people were divinely chosen to rule, or simply were gods themselves. If someone captures a god, it's important to the whole country to get him or her back. The disappearance of one man who knowingly left the safety of his country for private reasons is far less worth negotiations with extremists, especially when those negotations may have real consequences for every other citizen of his country (Koreans are now banned from entering Afghanistan; all of them have lost their freedom to travel there on any business).

Of course, any government employee sent into a foreign country by his or her superiors should rightfully expect as much assistance as possible, should trouble come; such officials are their fellow citizens' official representatives, speaking (or killing, or whatever) in their name. But missionaries arrive at their destinations as representatives only of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Let men and women such as the captured Koreans go forth and spread the Gospel, then, but let them not burden their brothers and sisters - who asked for no part in the holy mission - with the fallout from their actions. From a pragmatic standpoint, there is no compelling reason today why the kidnapping of any citizen should lead to negotiations with the kidnappers. No person is worth it.

Nor can the government - and by extension, every citizen in a country - afford to clean up after the missteps of those who voluntarily risk themselves for religious, political, or personal reasons. Logically, the adoption of that unfair weight should not even be a consideration; it's a mismatch with any government's purpose, which is to supervise the specific, limited geographic area in which its citizens reside.

This brings us to a second point, which is an answer to the obvious moral appeal: "But isn't any life worth saving, even if it's costly, and even if the person brought it on himself or herself? What, should a government just leave someone to die?"

Well, leaving aside the evident fact that many lives would probably not be in such danger if their governments didn't keep negotiating with kidnappers, the harsh but just responses are "no" and "Why should that be the government's job?". We make decisions concerning how much a life is worth every day; if we lowered every speed limit in America to 5MPH, we'd have a lot less traffic-related death, but nobody suggests it would be worth it. And why should the government, charged with representing the interests of all, allow its policies for all to be swerved because of an unnecessary risk knowingly taken on by one of its citizens?

Korea's caving in to terrorist demands was a mistake, as are the preventative measures it's introduced in hopes of never seeing the situation repeated.

The line between personal and national responsibility should be clear: it's the border line.

Several weeks ago, journalist Michael Yon posted a series of dispatches from Iraq, entitled "The Ghosts of Anbar". I recently read through them and was struck by several passages. I'm offering them here as a teaser and as an advertisement for the full series.

Michael uses lots of pictures set the mood throughout the series. His captions are more than merely descriptive. They offer a wealth of information in their own right. He also intersperses quotes from the Army's counterinsurgency manual. These quotes illustrate the model that the Army and Marines strive daily to implement.

The overall tone of the series is both reflective and hopeful. Michael offers the tantalizing vision of a strong, free Iraq as a friend of the United States -- if only we will learn the lessons of Anbar. He paints a picture of an Iraq that wants to be free -- but desperately needs us to model both the military and civil side of a functional democracy.

Here's Michael.

Michael Yon : The Ghosts of Anbar, Part I of IV

Better Business Partners

Anbar was the special provenance for al Qaeda, the one place in Iraq they could establish and maintain a robust and largely unchallenged dominance. To achieve this, al Qaeda had used the stick of terrorism and the carrot of promises to gain allies. A lot of carrots, actually, in the form of promises that they would cast out the Americans, and reward the people of Anbar with ministries in the new government.

Ironically, in Anbar al Qaeda has become our best ally for killing al Qaeda. They've managed to do this directly, just by being al Qaeda. Despite the promised carrots, what al Qaeda consistently delivered here was mostly stick, and with a special kind of hypocritical contempt that no sensible person would believe possible. (Not unlike the notion of baking the children of resistant parents or ordering shepherds to diaper the corrupting genitals of goats.)

Al Qaeda has a management style--doing drugs, laying up sloppy drunk, raping women and boys, and cutting off heads, all while imposing strict morality laws on the locals--that makes it clear that they have one set of principles for themselves, and another for everyone else.

In that kind of scheme, it didn't take long before people in Anbar realized that any benefits from al Qaeda having control would not be distributed equally. Once that realization spread, the tribal sheiks--almost all Sunni--had to consider the alternatives.

The sheiks of Anbar turned against al Qaeda because the sheiks are businessmen, and al Qaeda is bad for business. But they didn't suddenly trust Americans just because they no longer trusted al Qaeda. They are not suddenly blood allies. This is business, and that's fine, because if there is one thing America is good at, it's business.

Reframed thus from a position of strength, this stage of the Anbar-war is more a sort of business transaction, where alliances beneficial to all sides--except al Qaeda--are formed. From this perspective, there is now a moment of genuine ground-floor opportunity in Anbar, if the people here can see that by doing business with the Coalition, everyone benefits--except al Qaeda, an exclusion that most can live with.

Michael Yon : The Ghosts of Anbar, Part II of IV

Media -- The Key to Victory

Many people know the old adage about restaurant kitchens: to know if the kitchen is clean, check the bathroom. The same holds true for Soldiers, only it calls for checking windows. If you are going on a combat mission and Soldiers have not cleaned all their windows to a sparkle (during times when it is possible to do so), do not go with them. Soldiers with dirty windows are not watching for tiny wires in the road, nor are they scanning rooftops. They are talking about women, football, and the car they will buy when they get home. I will not go into combat with Soldiers with dirty windows.

On the command level, there are other indicators. In counterinsurgency, as our Vietnam veterans will vouch, press has both strategic and tactical influence. Commanders who are afraid of the press or who cannot handle it cannot win this fight. They are often the same people who alienate Iraqis. I remember one captain who had allowed his men to ransack an Iraqi home, much later shouting in my face while his lip quivered with anger, "You are a piece of shit!" He could not handle having press around, and resented the very air they breathed, and he made sure they knew it. Of course anyone whose idea of winning is to bully Iraqis would not want media around. I watched him for months as a study in how not to do certain things. Tactically, he was competent and knew how to win the gun battles, but he was incompetent and inadequate for counterinsurgency.

Dealing with the press is just a reality, like the weather. We would never put a commander in the field who refused to make plans for fighting in the cold or heat. Although it's just a reality, cold weather, for example, could destroy a unit overnight if they had not prepared for it. As with the weather, the press also influences the enemy. Cold weather freezes everyone's toes; bad press stalls progress. In either instance, he who is better-suited and more adaptable has a supreme advantage. There was a time when many of our enemies in Iraq were beating us in the press, both their press and ours, but now that is changing.

Changing Enemies into Allies

In mid-May, 2007, days before I arrived, the Iraqi Army and Police had conducted a "Combined Medical Exercise" in the village of Falahat, wherein Iraqi doctors saw about 200 villagers. About two days after that, the Iraqi Police opened a police station at the Falahat train station. That was just about the same time I was driving out to stay with a small team of Marines who were assigned as "MiTT 8" (Military Training Team 8)

The men of MiTT 8 are living along with their Iraqi protégées in filthy shipping containers on a highway. Several months ago they were attacked by a car bomb. But at about 0900, while I was traveling to their location with Marines in a Humvee (with sparkling glass) some Falahat villagers went to the new police station to report the presence of a culprit they knew to emplace bombs on the road.

It happened that quickly.

Within mere days of opening the station, people spoke up. The Iraqi Police (some of whom freely admitted to having been recent insurgents) called the tip into the Iraqi Army who were living with the Marines of MiTT 8. The Iraqi Army in turn told Marine Captain Koury, whose Command Operations Center is conjoined with the Iraqi Army unit there. Finally, CPT Koury told Staff Sergeant Rakene Lee to take care of the developing situation.

Michael Yon : Ghosts of Anbar Part III of IV

Respecting Justice

Iraqis respond to a sense of justice. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated, and it is this sense of justice on an international scale that gets undermined when people are held in prisons without being charged with any crimes.

To many of the Iraqis I've spoken with, terrorists are fair game. Kill them. But if we kill justice while doing so, we will create terrorists out of farmers. Here the Marines are creating farmers, police officers, shepherds, and entrepreneurs out of insurgents. To do that, they have to be seen as men who respect and honor legitimate systems of government and justice.

The Value of Character

Iraqis in every province I have traveled all respond to strong leadership. It's a cultural touchstone. A man like SSG Rakene Lee is not someone they would overlook. Physically, the man is amazingly strong. But what is most amazing is the strength of his moral fiber. Whatever the man talked, he walked. After all of al Qaeda's false promises, the people here have learned a hard lesson about the true value of character.

Over the next several days, I saw how much the Iraqis respected Rakene Lee and the other Marines who were all courageous, tactically competent, measured, and collectively and constantly telling even the Iraqis to go easy on the Iraqis. It's people like Rakene Lee who are winning the moral high ground in Iraq. It is people like this who are devastating al Qaeda just by being themselves. Over those same several days, I would also see the Iraqi Lieutenant Hamid treat prisoners with respect and going out of his way to treat other Iraqis the way he saw Americans treating them. Lieutenant Hamid, in his young twenties, seemed to watch every move of the Marines and try to emulate them.

The Character of Our Enemy

In August, when people were groping for answers as to why about 400 Yazidis were murdered with bombs during an attack in Nineveh, the BBC and others asked me why I thought the Yazidis had been targeted.

Al Qaeda and related groups do not need reasons. They buy press with blood.

Michael Yon : Ghosts of Anbar, Part IV of IV

The Importance of Learning Lessons

Fortunately, everyone had gone in easy and not blown doors off with explosives. Those mistakes also happen sometimes. Sometimes our own guys blow down doors to the wrong homes. Back in the early days of the war, this might have seemed like an innocent "Oh well that's war" type mistake, but after spending all this time with Iraqis I now see that it was in part actions like that which also blew open the door in Iraq for al Qaeda to come in.

Counterinsurgency is all about perception. Perception is how reality gets interpreted by people. It can be shaped, cajoled, hardened or distorted by innumerable influences

Differences Between Americans and Iraqis

At one of the houses, Iraqi Soldiers said that there had been a lot of shooting on a recent night. What had all the shooting been about? Were insurgents trying to take over? No, the old man said, it was just a couple of brothers having a shootout over a small land dispute. "Okay," the Iraqi Soldiers shrugged it off. It was just a shootout between brothers. Nothing more to ask about.

There are many similarities between Iraq and home, but at the end of the day, a Cain and Abel shootout is not even something that warrants paperwork. Tribal law. This is not Kansas. Some things are very different.

Toy manufacturers want to regulate toys coming into the United States, looking for dangerous materials like lead paint. But what's the real cause of dangerous toys?

Design flaws, not Chinese manufacturing problems, are the cause of the vast majority of American toy recalls over the last two decades, according to a new study by two Canadian professors.

The study, which looked at toy-recall data going back to 1988, showed that some 76 percent of the recalls in that period involved design flaws that could result in hazards like choking or swallowing small parts, while 10 percent were caused by manufacturing flaws, like excessive levels of lead paint.

The study, written by Hari Bapuji, a professor at the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba and Paul W. Beamish, from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, suggests that while China's manufacturing troubles were a serious problem, toy companies needed to take more responsibility for the growing number of recalls.

"I'm not saying there is no problem with Chinese manufacturing," Professor Bapuji said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I'm just saying there is a bigger problem with designs."

Sounds like regulation wouldn't help nearly as much as the big companies want you to think it would. But it would still hurt their competitors plenty.

Needless to say, I'm still opposed to the idea.

The New York Times published a long story last week on the sub-prime mortgage "crisis". Can the Mortgage Crisis Swallow a Town? - New York Times. As I read through it, there were a few points that jumped out at me.

One of those loans belonged to Audrey Sweet, a Maple Heights resident and a first-time home buyer who borrowed $118,000 from Countrywide in late 2004 without putting any money down. Because of Mrs. Sweet's poor credit history and lack of assets, the adjustable loan's rate was 10.25 percent, but she says she was told that if the couple "just proved themselves," they could quickly refinance at a lower rate.

Mrs. Sweet says Countrywide advised her that the monthly property tax bill would be $100, but it turned out to be $230 and the Sweets quickly fell behind. Countrywide stepped in and paid $3,493 in back taxes in March 2007, and the next month raised the Sweets' monthly mortgage bill to $1,713 from $1,055.

That was far beyond the budget of the couple, so ... working with a local lender, Third Federal Savings and Loan, the Sweets managed to refinance the loan at a fixed rate of 7.2 percent, and the original $1,055 monthly payment now covers the property taxes the Sweets couldn't afford before.

Notice the main points of this little sob story. The Sweets did not put any money down on their house. In effect, they were on a rent-to-own plan with their house. Even if they had defaulted on the mortgage, they would not have lost any money -- they never put any down in the first place. They were only making monthly payments, no different from paying monthly rent.

Note also that the couple had a poor credit history and no assets. Countrywide took a big risk in loaning money to them. For this, Countrywide is demonized throughout the article. (What a great way to encourage companies to take risks!)

It is also clear that the Sweets bear some responsibility for their predicament. "I do blame myself a little bit," Mrs. Sweet acknowledges. "I feel dumb." She explains that she was focused on the monthly payment when she borrowed from Countrywide, not the interest rate or taxes due. "Once we got the loan documents at the closing, I just came home and stuck them in a drawer."

Wow. Just ... wow. I just took out a mortgage recently. I know for a fact that you have to sign a stack of documents that state in very plain language exactly what your monthly payment covers and exactly what the terms of the loan are. The Sweets don't just bear "some responsibility" for their predicament. They bear all of it. They signed the paperwork, the saw the terms, they chose to ignore the terms. End of story.

They had a lender give them a chance, even though previous evidence (and this story!) shows that Countrywide was taking a huge risk. They very nearly threw that chance away.

[Mr. Stefanski, CEO of Third Federal Savings and Loan] never offered no-money-down loans, piggyback mortgages, exploding adjustable-rate mortgages or the other financial exotica that ultimately tripped up the Sweets and millions like them.

[Mr. Stefanski] does not hide his feelings about just what went wrong in places like Maple Heights. "The whole system was based on raping the public," he says, matter-of-factly. "Not everyone should own a home -- just those who can afford it."

Mr. Stefanski is just dead wrong. The system was not out to "rape the public". Indeed, I find it hard to see how someone can "rape" another person by giving them free money and risking not getting any of it back. How, exactly, does the lender make out in that situation? If any "raping" is going on, it seems to be that the borrower is raping the lender.

Secondly, Mr. Stefanski's attitude is 100% discriminatory. He only favors giving loans (and taking chances) on borrowers who are supremely well qualified and well-off. In other words, existing middle-class Americans. If everyone had the attitude he did, no one would ever move up from the low-income ranks to the middle-income ranks.

I'm grateful that lenders across the country chose to take risks on low-income, high-risk borrowers. Many people proved unable to handle those loans. Many other people were able to get ahead, thanks to those loans. I'd rather focus on the people that got ahead instead of shutting down lenders because of the people that didn't. Wouldn't you?