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Labels: Idaho politics Labels: telescopes Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged. The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane. "Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport. In a Chicago holding cell early one evening in February 2006, five guards piled on top of a 49-year-old man who was angry he was going back to Ecuador, according to a nurse's account in his deportation file. As they pinned him down so the nurse could punch a needle through his coveralls into his right buttock, one officer stood over him menacingly and taunted, "Nighty-night." Labels: immigration Labels: 2008 presidential candidates There were, however, no claims of responsibility. India, though largely peaceful, is home to a number of militant groups, from Maoist rebels to secessionists in its northeast. But most analysts say Islamic terrorists were behind the bombs. Some point out that India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, is due to visit Islamabad shortly to review the peace process between Pakistan and India, his first visit since a civilian government took over in Pakistan earlier this year. They also note that the blasts occurred just days after gun battles erupted between the Indian Army and Islamic militants in the disputed region of Kashmir. Several analysts said intelligence surrounding earlier blasts made the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islami, a Bangladeshi group known as the Huji, a strong suspect. Last August, three bomb blasts, which killed 38 people in Hyderabad, were widely blamed on the Huji. "They want Islamic extremism to take root in India," says Ashok Behuria, a fellow at Delhi's Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, referring to Islamic terrorist groups from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and elsewhere. "These people are slowly but surely beginning to penetrate India." Labels: Islamofascism, terrorism WASHINGTON — The House overwhelmingly approved a $300 billion farm bill on Wednesday afternoon, making it probable that the measure will become law despite President Bush’s anticipated veto. The 318-to-106 vote, far over the two-thirds needed to override a veto, sends the bill to the Senate, where the measure is also expected to have veto-proof support. Although predictions can be dicey in political Washington, the measure’s strength in the Senate has been seen as even more robust than in the House. Labels: farm price supports Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: cars Labels: telescopes Labels: humor I’ve been stumped by this communal aversion to firearms ever since I was a 6 year old, back in 1947. While flipping through old Life magazines one day in my grandparents’ living room in the Bronx, I came across photographs taken at the liberation of concentration camps. I saw the pictures of bodies stacked like cordwood, and was stunned. “Mommy, why are all those people dead?” I asked. My mother, a brilliant and subtle woman, thought for a moment and said, “The bad Germans called Nazis killed them.” To which, of course, I asked, “Why did the Nazis kill them?” “They killed them because they were Jews,” she replied. Although I was only 6 and not yet sure of my identity or its meaning, I asked, “We’re Jews, aren’t we?” “Yes,” answered my mother. “Mommy,” I asked, without missing a beat, “do you and Daddy have a gun so we can protect ourselves if the Nazis come for us?” “This is America,” my mother reassured me. “That can’t happen here.” All across America little Jewish boys and girls got the same answer, and pretty much all of them accepted it. That answer, though, didn’t satisfy me — and to this day I wonder how it is that Jews in America, despite no small amount of antisemitism, have so strongly devoted themselves to the belief that “it” couldn’t happen here. A great many American Jews had great-grandparents who originally came from shtetls or ghettos in Europe. One of the major hazards of living in another people’s country was that occasionally a few Cossacks would get drunk, ride over to the nearest shtetl, rape a few women, maybe murder a man who protested rather than begging for his life, and then ride off into the sunset. It had to be inescapably clear to these Jews that dozens of able-bodied and sober men would surely have been a match for eight or 10 drunk Cossacks. It would have been easy, even for Jews not trained in arms, to kill the Cossacks and bury them someplace. It is obvious, though, why they did not: Had they had done so, swarms of Cossacks would have massacred every Jew in every shtetl within 100 versts. Defense was just not an option. The women raped and the men murdered were seen as the price Jews paid for surviving as a people. Since no Jew likely considered the possibility that without some major provocation the Cossacks would someday try to kill them all, it seemed like a reasonable, if awful, compromise. Such a compromise must have taken a devastating and horrific psychological toll on the people forced to make it. In order to maintain self-respect, people in such a condition had to explain it as the result of something that made them better than their oppressors. This was the notion that they voluntarily — rather than of necessity, as was actually the case — eschewed the use of weapons because they understood that violence was evil, while their tormentors did not. It was the key to survival, and to self-respect. I intend no offense, but I must say, unequivocally, that Mr. King has missed the point entirely. Jewish antipathy toward firearms has nothing to do with the shtetl, and everything to do with liberalism. The essence of liberal philosophy is that the liberal feels that he is smarter, more sophisticated, more knowledgeable, better informed, and generally wiser than the great majority of his fellow citizens. From this he infers the right to tell others what to do. He considers himself to be like a parent, with us as the children, who are loved, but since immature must be controlled. And just as one would not give a firearm to a 7-year-old, the liberal wants guns taken away from us untrustworthy commoners. Labels: gun rights, history Labels: economics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: welcome to Idaho
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Amitai Etzioni's Blog
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Michael Williams -- Master of None
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A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
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A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
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Scenic Boise County
I was out this morning placing campaign signs across the more scenic parts of Boise County. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, so you will have to trust me on this. The road through Garden Valley is quite similar to California 4 through the Sierras--Alpine meadows; white water rivers; snow-capped mountains; pine forests; lots of exposed granite.
I was pleased to see campaign signs already up in a number of places that I haven't been in a couple of years; the troops have been at work. But I also found a few places that screamed to have my sign--usually the places where a "Corder for Senate" sign was already there.
I also stopped at the Garden Valley Rifle Range, since I saw a number of people shooting there. The crowd was fathers with their kids, mostly shooting .22 LR--but unfortunately, all of them were from Ada County, which is out of my district. It was still very gratifying to see fathers demonstrating to their sons appropriate behavior with a firearm, which is something of a corrective to the media portrayal of firearms.
Big Bertha 2.0: Yes, It Works
A few tweaks required:
1. I couldn't buy any blackout cloth at the Joann Fabrics on Fairview last night--they were all out. And in the early evening, there was still enough ambient lighting that it was a problem. As darkness fell, the image quality improved quite a bit.
2. Because the mirror is better supported, it does seem that Big Bertha 2.0 does have a somewhat better image than before.
3. There is still a turned edge on the main mirror--but it is much easier to get in and add a mask to cover that over now.
4. I probably need to slot the holes where the upper cage is held to the rails, so that I can turn the focuser--otherwise you get some rather awkward positions.
5. I still need to attach the finder--there's little hope of finding anything except the Moon otherwise.
6. It is still a little creaky--lots of discomforting noises as I move it around, but it seems pretty stiff.
Overapplying a Principle, I Think
I tend to write rather wordy campaign literature. I would say because I am a thinker. Others would say that I am a blowhard. Whatever. I do realize that successful, professional campaign literature tends to be rather minimal. The first professional flyer from my campaign is going out tomorrow, and it is definitely short on words compared to my natural tendencies.
Today I received the first piece of campaign literature from the incumbent, and I would have to say, it appears that someone may have overapplied the principle of minimalism. Here's the two sides of it.
Either that, or he's appealing to the marginally literate voter demographic.
UPDATE: Perhaps the politician thing is beginning to stick. "Not to imply that there any marginally literate voters in my district, of course. And if you are reading this blog, you are obviously a lot more than marginally literate!"
Is Idaho Subsidizing Liquor Sales?
Am I missing something here? Idaho has a number of state liquor stores. This is a state monopoly on sales of distilled alcohol, as near as I can tell--but since I don't buy distilled alcohol, and barely drink wine, this is an assumption on my part.
In looking at the Fiscal Year 2009 budget, I see that the state liquor stores are forecast to provide $11,574,000 in revenue from sales. But the State Liquor Dispensary's FY2009 budget recommendation from the governor is $19,205,100. Unless I'm missing something--or the state liquor stores are returning almost as much profit from non-liquor as they do from liquor--Idaho would appear to be subsidizing liquor sales.
If you can enlighten me on this subject, I would be obliged.
UPDATE: IdaBlue has details about other budgets; we aren't subsidizing liquor sales.
Handcuffing Them Is Probably Cheaper
This May 14, 2008 Washington Post article is disturbing, because it describes the widespread use of drugs to sedate those being deported:
I'm serious. Handcuff those who are a problem. It's cheaper, and less dangerous. I'm not impressed with someone's sense of appropriate response.
Obama's Continuing Deceptions
This guy is almost Clintonian. This March 27, 2008 Chicago Tribune article quotes Obama as saying:Obama called his mother "the dominant figure in my formative years. . . . The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."
So what were her values? Obama describes her as a Midwestern girl of faith. But this Chicago Tribune article presents a very different picture--a girl who spent 8th grade through 12th grade growing up on Mercer Island near Seattle:Obama frequently describes the story of his mother, who died of cancer in 1995, as a tale of the Heartland. She's the white woman from the flatlands of Kansas and the only daughter of parents who grew up in the "dab-smack, landlocked center of the country," in towns "too small to warrant boldface on a roadmap."
Now, I don't hold Obama responsible for his mother's view. But I do expect when Obama makes factual statements about his mother that they be accurate. If, as he says, the values she taught him continue to be "my touchstone," then he's not playing straight with us when he claims to be a Christian.
...
"She touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she'd read about and could argue," said Maxine Box, who was Dunham's best friend in high school. "She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn't."
Remember: They Only Hate Us Because of Israel
So what explains this? From the May 15, 2008 Christian Science Monitor:New Delhi - Seven synchronized bombs exploded in the picturesque city of Jaipur Tuesday evening, killing more than 80 people and wounding more than 200. The bombs, the deadliest such attacks in India in nearly two years, appear to fit into an emerging pattern in India, in which bomb explosions occur every few months and are attributed to Islamic terrorists.
...
Congress To Help Out Poor People
You know, the ones with adjusted gross incomes of $1.5 million. From the May 15, 2008 New York Times:
I've never found the arguments for farm price supports even slightly persuasive. If these programs were targeting farmers who were struggling to feed their kids, I would find the program foolish but at least built on concern for the poor. But look at who gets the government's help:A big sticking point is how much money would go to wealthy farmers. Married farmers with joint incomes of up to $1.5 million a year and individuals who make more than $750,000 could qualify for some crop subsidies. The Bush administration has called for much lower limits that would deny subsidies to anyone with an average adjusted gross income above $200,000 a year.
This is an outrage. Oh yes, one of the apologists for this bill explains:But Representative Kenny Hulshof, a Republican who is a farmer in Missouri, defended the bill, asserting that the costs of farming are up as well as incomes. “If farming were easy, Congressmen would do it,” he said.
Someone whose income is $1.5 million a year almost certainly has a farm worth many millions of dollars. (And if not, that means that that their farm has 50% or better annualized return on investment--which would make farming "easy.") Why are the rest of us subsidizing multimillionaires?
These are the times that I get so angry that I can't see straight. This is one of the costs of our current tremendously corrupt system--redistributing wealth from people who make $50,000 a year to people who make $1.5 million a year.
Even worse: farm prices are going up so fast that they are outpacing inflation, as this May 14, 2008 Idaho Statesman article points out.
And any Democrat who tries to tell me that their party wouldn't do this is a liar. The Democrats control this Congress:Only 15 Democrats opposed the bill, as did 91 Republicans.
This is the sort of socialist redistribution of wealth upward that can drive otherwise sensible people to anarchism.
He Really Is George McGovern
Here's a clip of Obama explaining his defense strategy. Assuming that this isn't a fraud, this guy is George McGovern for the modern age--such a serious threat to the national security of the United States that it almost guarantees that we will end up in a war not in Iraq, but in the streets of America. It is essentially an invitation for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and use them against us--because we won't have any capability to respond.
Wanted: Honest Auto Electrician in Portland
My son's 2005 Pontiac Sunfire has decided to give up on the turn signals and brake lights (although the third brake light still works--probably on a different circuit). It isn't the fuse. If I were in Portland--or he was here--I could make a serious effort at figuring out where the problem is. (My guess is that there's a loose connector somewhere.)
Can anyone in the Portland area recommend an honest and competent auto electrician in the Portland area? Unfortunately, honest isn't enough; someone who doesn't know what they are doing can easily burn through 15 or 20 hours trying to figure out why something has stopped working.
Mounting Big Bertha 2.0
Okay, finally have it up on the equatorial mount.
You will notice that the CI-700 equatorial mount head is on a 10.5" tall aluminum tube. It wasn't pretty, but I managed to turn the interior to the required 5.54" inside diameter by putting an end mill in the drill press, and slowly turning the pipe so that the end mill got all parts. Yes, this isn't exactly how you are supposed to use a drill press. But it worked.
The lower elevation relative to the standard CI-700 (or even G-11) tripod means that it was a lot easier for my wife and I to pick the scope up and get it into the dovetail--and I won't need to be standing tippy-toe on a stepladder to get to the eyepiece, either. At the zenith, the eyepiece is 75 inches from the ground.
I still need to add the finderscope to the telescope. I'm a little torn as to whether to add it at the balance point, near the eyepiece, or closer to the mirror. Traditionally, finderscopes are near the eyepiece so that you can quickly move from finderscope to eyepiece. Adding it there would add a pound or two to the light end of the scope, requiring me to move the scope down slightly in the saddle--and I'm already on the edge of scraping the board to which the tube is mounted.
I knew that I was going to need to put a light shroud on the scope--but in spite of that, it works surprisingly well in daylight. Mirror collimation was a bit of a struggle--it is still possible that the tube structures that I am using don't provide enough stiffness. I don't like some of the creaking noises as I move the scope from position to position. We'll find out the next time the clouds clear out at night.
This is still a work in process; I'm learning a lot along the way.
Post-Nuclear War Mutant Salt Shakers
For Mother's Day, I took my wife out to Sad Wa Dee, an unpretentious little Thai restaurant in Meridian. The proprietor went around giving salt and pepper shakers to all the mothers in the restaurant. But looking at these salt and pepper shakers was....disturbing:
Click to enlarge
Why do I find myself thinking of props from a low-budget film about post-nuclear war mutants?
Jews and Guns
The March 20, 2008 Jewish Daily Forward has a very thoughtful article by Eric King that asks the question, "Why Are American Jews So Anti-Gun?"
Some years back, I had two co-workers. One of them was the child of an Englishman and an Austrian woman. His mother's family were aristocrats who fled the Nazis after the Anschluss--losing the family castle in the process. He was a gun owner, and knew fell well where a disarmed society can lead.
The other co-worker was Jewish, and insisted that there was no need for an armed population: something like the Holocaust could never happen in America. "Americans are different," he insisted. While a comforting belief, I really don't find it plausible that Americans are so fundamentally different from Germans, Rwandans, Cambodians, Turks, and all the other nations that have, at one time or another, decided to slaughter their neighbors.
King's argument for why anti-gun sentiment is so strong among American Jews is an idea that I have seen before:
I think this is correct; it conforms to what I have read elsewhere. It is also similar to the reasons why various quietist sects of Christianity came through the trauma of the Thirty Years Wars with a strong commitment to pacifism--and then migrated to America, where they only had to deal with Indians, not with professional armies raping their women, and torturing their men. It is difficult to tell most people, "Don't fight back--this only makes it worse." If you can put a pragmatic need on a higher moral standing, it is easier for some people to accept.
Some of the comments on King's article take issue with his explanation, and argue that the anti-gun sentiment of American Jews is based on liberalism:
Government Research vs. Subsidy
One of the recurring concerns that I have about Democratic approaches to energy policy is that they emphasize a complex system of taxation to get the "right" results on how we produce energy, and how we save it. Unfortunately, the net effect is to produce situations like the current corn ethanol situation, because it is almost impossible to distinguish subsidies that make sense for the society as a whole from subsidies that make sense for business interests.
There is nothing surprising about this. Those who benefit from the subsidies probably represent a fraction of one percent of the population. Something that puts billions of dollars of tax benefits into the pockets of a hundred thousand people creates a powerful financial incentive to lobby. At the same time, the society as a whole has far less incentive. The billions of dollars are spread out over 300 million people--so the injury per person for any particular subsidy is trivial.
With respect to purely research activities, my sympathies with respect to alternative energy are a little stronger. (Of course, "alternative energy" includes nuclear power.) While some serious boondoggles definitely come out of such research projects, there is no question that some of the government promoted R&D has created some useful results. If we could get fusion power plants operating, petroleum would become just an interesting source of plastics--and oil exporting countries that have little to offer the world but overblown thuggish leaders would go back to the fourteenth century. No loss.
That said, I think it is important to distinguish true R&D from actual production. Figuring out a way to efficiently produce ethanol from corn is an R&D activity; tax exemptions are not. Figuring out a way to produce photovoltaic cells at $1 per watt is an R&D activity; using tax exemptions to sell $5/watt cells for $1/watt may just hide that we're wasting energy making the cells.
There is a pretty long history of government directly funding basic and applied research. The research that I did for my book Armed America (but which had to be cut out to get it down to a publishable size) uncovered the extent to which the federal government in the 1790-1820 period strongly and unashamedly subsidized research into new methods of mass production by the manner in which it contracted for muskets--and we all benefit from the methods that some of the contractors invented.
Such government funded research might be wasteful, but as long as the research isn't being done by corporations that have an economic interest in lobbying to keep the project going, this doesn't seem too dangerous from the economic distortion standpoint. Yes, government researchers might lobby to keep the gravy train going because they are intellectually interested in the work, or just are afraid of losing their jobs, but this seems like a minor risk compared to the lobbying potential of a major corporation.
There is also a pretty long history of government encouraging innovation by the granting of prizes. The Longitude Prize, offered by the British government in 1714 for a chronometer accurate enough to determine longitude, caused a number of significant inventions that indeed led to such a chronometer. The X-Prize Foundation does something similar in a number of technology areas today. The free market itself does something similar--but generally, it does this better where the technology already exists, and needs to be made more efficient.
The Videoconferenced Legislature
I mentioned one of the Boise County commissioner candidates who wanted to see live video feeds of commission meetings to more involve the voters and save gasoline. While there is, I think, a problem with this because of how few voters in this county have a broadband connection, I think there's some merit to the idea of using videoconferencing in another governmental arena: the state legislature.
For the roughly 1/4 of the legislators who live within fifty miles of the statehouse, the drive isn't a big problem. It costs some money, and takes some time--but for legislators who represent Twin Falls, or Moscow, they need to spend four to ten hours driving to and from Boise or flying. Then they have to stay in a hotel at least weeknights.
What's wrong with this?
1. It costs a pile of money. The IRS has just raised the mileage rate to 50.5 cents per mile. For a legislator who lives in Twin Falls, that's $129 each week (assuming that he goes home on the weekends). For Tom Trail, who represents Moscow in the lower house, that would be $302 for each round trip. (I presume he flies.)
2. It is bad for the environment. Look, I'm no ecocrazy, but whether you drive or fly, there's a lot of gasoline or jet fuel burned by this much travel.
3. It wastes time--lots of time. For many legislators, it wastes five to eight hours a week going back and forth. Even for those who live nearby and who go home every night, this can be an hour to two hours wasted every day.
4. The more time you spend in Boise (especially for those who spend weeknights in town), the less in touch you are with your district. I don't know how big a role this plays in causing adulterous affairs, but I would be surprised indeed if being away from your spouse too much doesn't play a part in the well-known problems that politicians everywhere have with this.
5. For some legislators, telecommuting means that they have a chance to keep an eye on whatever their full-time business is. (Remember that Idaho legislators are part-time--and many of them have regular jobs or own businesses.) This means that some people who might otherwise find it impractical to run for legislature could now seriously consider it.
There are jobs where it just isn't practical to use videoconferencing as a substitute for being there. But being a legislator is about as close to being the perfect application of videoconferencing as I can imagine.
1. A legislator doesn't have to physically hold or touch anything. (And much of the time that they do so, they end up in trouble because of it!)
2. A legislator's primary tool of trade is words. He is writing or reading laws and regulations--stuff that is especially well suited to transport as a stream of disembodied electrons.
3. Legislators hear public comment and expert testimony in committee hearings--but this can also be done by videoconferencing. At worst, the public will be at the statehouse speaking before a camera to a room that consists of video screens showing the legislators. (I suppose that some legislators might prefer to be there in person.)
4. The actual cost of videoconferencing equipment these days isn't all that high. The only really significant expense would be expanding the broadband services to some of the more remote parts of the state where legislators live. This is one of those examples of how the state government, by guaranteeing demand for broadband services for a legitimate governmental purpose, has the potential to create the telecommunications infrastructure required to bring global business opportunities to many of the beautiful but remote parts of this state. Communications infrastructure, like canals, railroads, and highways, has the potential to substantially improve the economic vitality of what are otherwise remote places.
The Beauty of Idaho
The snow has not completely melted yet--we're having an unusually cool spring. Here's the last remaining patches of snow a few hundred feet above us, on the north facing slopes:
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And here is the ski resort--a couple thousand feet higher at the base:
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While it is still quite cool at night, there's enough sunlight and warmth in the day to get the wild flowers well under way:
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My wife knows the name of the intensely bright yellow flowers, but she's not here right now. Here you can see some of them closeup, and a hillside in the distance that is so covered with them that you can only see the integrated result:
Click to enlarge
Every once in a while I start feeling sorry for myself that I still have to work for a living, unlike lots of other people--and then I think about it and realize that I am really quite fortunate to be able to live and work in a place this beautiful.
Yesterday after church, my wife and I drove through the back country of Boise County, placing campaign signs. The roads are just terrible back there--but it is astonishingly beautiful. Much of it is Alpine meadows and granite. It looks much like the high country of Yosemite.
