If I Were Education Czar

If someone in the Capitol were to suddenly lose his/her mind and say “Let’s put the ShortWoman in charge of the educational system,” I know what I would do.

My first day, I would call for a great conference to discuss High School Graduation Requirements. Specifically, I would assemble a small committee, maybe a dozen people, recruited to more or less equally represent parents, business leaders, community leaders, and front line teachers. These people would be encouraged to solicit a wish list from their peers before the first actual meeting.

The goal would be to come up with a list of knowledge and skills that most parents, communities, businesses, and teachers can agree every single high school graduate should have. This list would be broken into broad topics, but get very specific. For example, “Ability to read” would be followed by a list of the types of documents that any high school graduate should be able to read and understand (IRS instructions, newspapers, cookbook, etc.). “Broad understanding of Social Studies” would be broken down into specific requirements for History, Geography, Cultures/Customs, Economics, and the like. Some of the requirements will not be things that can be determined on a multiple choice test. Being able to reason through a multi-disciplinary problem can be that way. These requirements would then be compared to the entry requirements for state universities, with the goal of completely eliminating remedial college coursework after implementation.

Some people are coughing and sputtering that such requirements will make it more difficult for students to receive high school diplomas. Yes, yes it will. But at the end, it will be clear that someone who has obtained a high school diploma has accomplished something, and has a practical, minimum level of education which employers and the community can depend upon. Besides which, it turns out that many students want to be challenged and will surely rise to the occasion, given the opportunity. It will also change the meaning of the “dropout rate,” which currently means the percentage of kids who can be pushed through the system minus those who the school can pretend are attending elsewhere.

Once this comprehensive list was compiled, it will be broken down into age appropriate grade level requirements. So, at the beginning of the school year, Little Jimmy may come home with a bit of paper for his parents that says “Your child is in third grade. By the end of this year, as a prerequisite for continuing to the next grade, he will know the following….” Social promotions will stop, because it will be clear when a child arrives at the next grade unprepared. Summer school will continue to be an important piece of the puzzle, both for students catching up and brushing up, and for teachers who are learning valuable teaching methods. Teaching methods, by the way, will be measured against whether or not they actually work.

By way of follow-up, it turns out that Real ID (Good! Fight it in court!) and bus and train safety (Hello! London! Madrid!) are unfunded mandates. Other items to consider: FOIA reveals FBI has thousands of pages on peaceful groups, another opinion on the “shrinking” budget deficit, and two views on biofuels.

Budget Def-Jam 2005

Today, President Bush announced good news for the Federal Budget. It looks as though the budget deficit will be almost $100 thousand million less than expected, because the government is taking in more tax money than expected. Now, keep in mind, they are still going to spend $333 thousand million more than they intend to take in, and add that $333 thousand million to the national debt, which currently stands at $7,843,596,586,237.71. With a population of 296,608,542, that brings your personal share to $29,092.54. If it helps, think of the national debt as representing a nice mid-sized sedan for each and every man, woman, and child in the country. With the magic of compound interest, if we wait much longer to get serious about paying down the debt we will be talking about large luxury sedans.

Mr. Bush cautions that we are on track to reduce the deficit — not the national debt — by half before 2009 but only “so long as Congress holds the line on spending.”

There’s a little problem with that.

No, it isn’t the “Tax and Spend Liberals” in Congress, who to their credit understand that you really ought to have money before you go spending it. Nor, really, is the problem the side order of pork that gets stuffed into the federal budget. Pork costs us a lot of money, but it still accounts for less than a third of the budget, and grumble it does at least get spent in local communities stimulating local economies. I am not saying we shouldn’t demand Congress moderate the pork, but I’m saying there’s a bigger budget buster to consider.

The problem is unfunded mandates, unpaid commitments, and upcoming expenses.

Strictly speaking, an unfunded mandate is when Congress says that state/local governments or private businesses must do something, and then does not put enough/any money in the budget for it. The net effect is that in order to do what must be done, your state or local government must put it in their own budget and raise your taxes accordingly — most states don’t have the option of deficit spending. The deed is done, Congress pats itself on the back for keeping expenses low, and you have a cow when your state income tax, sales tax, and property taxes go up. In the case of a private business, they have no choice but to suck up the costs of compliance and pass the expense on to their customers, resulting in inflation. Wikipedia cites No Child Left Behind, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act as examples.

Needless to say, nobody outside Congress likes unfunded mandates. In some cases, such as NCLB, there are lawsuits over the unfunded mandate. Opponents reply that it isn’t an unfunded mandate, just a condition of receiving money and if you don’t like it you can leave your federal education dollars on the table and go. Bottom line on that one is that Ted Kennedy was promised full funding for NCLB, and I don’t know of any Congressman who wants to run for re-election in 2006 on the platform of “less money for public schools.” There’s $40 thousand million that might be tacked onto the budget, a bit less than half the reduction of the budget shortfall that Mr. Bush announced today, in one line-item.

On to unpaid commitments, by which I mean money that has been promised that has not made it into the budget. Sure, we could probably continue to blow off these expenses, but we shouldn’t. Things like the $15 thousand million President Bush promised to send as aid to Africa. Or the $1300 million the United States owes the United Nations. Or worse yet, those War on Terror expenses that seem to be shunted off into “supplemental spending” measures.” The last of these measures was $82 thousand billion and a side order of unfunded mandate Real ID, demonstrating that Mr. Bush’s estimate of reducing the budget deficit at all is predicated on no more military spending. It isn’t that Congress isn’t aware that we are “at war,” but rather that funding the war is like having a teenager who asks you for spending money at every opportunity.

And I didn’t even have to mention that the Veteran’s Administration could sure use another $975 million, minimum.

The final problem with “congress holding the line on spending” is the future. We know that there will be certain expenses in the future. We know we will need to spend more on Social Security benefits, and Medicare benefits. This issue is still thrashing around Capitol Hill, but the bottom line is that if the problem is Social Security not having enough money, they will have to cut benefits, increase taxes, or reduce the number of eligible people.

We also know that we will need to spend money upgrading and repairing highways; this is a vital issue to the American economy, since as one friend puts it, “If you’ve got it, a trucker brought it.” You should be aware that highway spending has remained unchanged since 2003, because Congress and the President cannot come to any kind of middle ground. This is despite the fact that our roads are getting older, our highway expenses are getting higher, our population is getting bigger and more dense. The day will come, soon, when we can no longer put off a real highway bill.

Let’s not forget the money that will be needed to overhaul this nation’s newest executive branch department, the Department of Homeland Security. We need better border security, and that will cost money. If an illegal immigrant can find work cleaning highrise office buildings and processing this nation’s food, then so can Al Qaida operatives. Yeah, I’m willing to pay a bit more to know my food has been processed by legal American workers earning a decent wage. We also need better port surveillance, and to do that right will cost millions if not thousands of millions of dollars.

And just think, that’s only the money we know we need to plan on spending. It does not account for disasters, emergencies, future economic difficulties, or any other thing that might come up.

Let’s not count our reduced budget deficit for the year 2009 just yet.

In closing, I bring you Why Costco is Better than Wal-Mart, the fight to renew the Patriot Act, and Molly Ivins points out that regulations were imposed because they were needed.

Return of the Estate Tax!

Once more, the rhetoric has turned to the Estate Tax. When we last checked in on the Estate Tax, opponents were calling it the “Death Tax,” a way of framing the issue which erroneously gives the impression that average Americans are taxed for the act of dying. Back at the beginning of the Bush Administration, a phase-out of the Estate Tax was put into the Tax Cuts For The Wealthy That We Hope Will Trickle Down Act of 2001. The Estate Tax itself will be gone in the year 2010, but because the tax break was “only temporary,” the Estate Tax will be with us again at year 2000 levels unless Congress can pass a bill (and get it signed) to make the tax cut permanent.

This brings us to the present day, when some Senators are being pressured to vote “the Right way” on permanent repeal of Federal Estate Taxes.

The most important thing to remember when we are talking about the Estate Tax is that, at year 2000 levels, the first million dollars is exempt. Your estate consists of a $250,000 house and a five-digit bank account balance? Your estate owes no taxes! None! Be honest, do you have a net worth of over a million dollars? The fact is that 98% of Americans are never effected by this tax.

And as for those of you that do in fact have a million dollar plus estate, there are plenty of ways to see to it that the taxes are paid without undue stress on your widow. If you are worth a million bucks and can’t afford a couple grand for estate planning, you have much bigger problems than what happens after you are dead.

Opponents of the Estate Tax — the sort of people who insist on calling it the Death Tax — say that the real problem with it is that there are “many” small businesses, farms, and ranches that have big assets on paper, but on the death of the owner will have to be sold to pay the taxes. I have three things to say about that. First, a few hundred bucks thrown at a company like The Company Corporation solves that problem by making the company a separate entity. Likewise, an estate planner can put together an insurance package designed to pay the taxes on your estate upon your death — there are two types of people, people who can’t afford an estate planner and people who can’t afford to not have an estate planner.

Second, some of the Senators in question support a bill that would exempt $100 million on the estate of “small” businesses and farms. Sheesh, that’s $100,000,000. I’d like to be that sort of small business owner!

And lastly, if there are so many family businesses, farms, and ranches being put out of business, how come President Bush can’t find one to put in the balcony of the House and talk about in the State of the Union when he talks about “why we need to repeal the Death Tax permanently”? Because they are very, very rare. They would have better luck trying to find a Unicorn breeder to put in the balcony.

The other “argument” against the “death tax” is that it is “double taxation.” The reasoning is that Granddad paid income tax on that money when he earned it, and that makes it wrong to tax it again when he dies and Junior gets the money. If we applied this standard broadly enough, no taxes would ever be paid on anything. The nice folks at Tom the Dancing Bug drew a nice picture to explain how many times the same dollar gets taxed. His point was regarding dividends, but the same logic applies here. You earn money and pay taxes. You buy something and pay more taxes with already taxed money. The store owner pays taxes on his profits from selling you stuff. The guy that wholesaled the stuff pays taxes on his profits. The employees of the store, the wholesaler, the manufacturer, the shipping company all get paid and all pay taxes on their income. Rinse, repeat. This whole double taxation thing makes a good soundbite, but is empty noise.

So why exactly should your Senator support repealing a tax that few people pay, and that there are many ways to get around paying it anyway?

In closing, I bring you some light reading for the weekend: “Who’s Watching the Watch List,” How exactly does one lose track of $8800 million dollars and — literal light reading — Congress is talking about making it legal for electricity to be controlled by a small group of companies. It’s as if they forgot Standard Oil and why trustbusting happened.

Postcards from Africa

Today, I bring you two articles by prominent Africans that basically say:

Dear G8 nations,

Please stop sending us aid! Not that we aren’t grateful for what you’ve given over the years, but we are starting to think that we are coming out on the short end of the stick.

For example, subsidized food is great — that is, when it actually gets to the people who need it instead of being hijacked by greedy dictators or sitting on a dock rotting or being withheld for favors — but our farmers can’t compete with “almost free.” Famine relief is driving them out of business!

And AIDS. It turns out that when you actually run tests, it isn’t anywhere near as prevalent as we thought. We have discovered the hard way what you learned over a decade ago, you can’t tell whether someone has AIDS from looking at them and hearing them cough. It turns out that Malaria is a much bigger problem.

You know what you can do? Get more nations in on debt relief. And don’t erect artificial barriers to African immigrants in your countries that want to send money home to their families. And help us get our education infrastructure in order so we can make the best of our resources and tell when our government is the problem.

Thanks!
Africa

The Profits that Ate the Economy

How many horror flicks have you sat through where some problem started out small, but by the middle of the film grew to terrifying proportions?

A little business news story from the Associated Press was released this morning — a Saturday morning on a holiday weekend — letting us know that profit growth at America’s largest companies is just not going to be as big as expected. Guess what, there’s only so many quarters that a company let alone a group of companies can deliver 12-20% year-over-year increases in earnings. That’s only about three to five times the growth of our entire Gross Domestic Product. Now please keep in mind, nobody is talking about these huge companies losing money, nobody’s even talking about them making less money than last year. We are talking about the fact that they maybe only grow profits by 7-8% over last year. That’s a little less than twice GDP growth.

Now, how can these companies grow so much faster than the economy in general for so long? Accounting regulations have firmed up enough that we can — crossing our fingers of course — assume no Enronian fraud in the numbers. And these are not tiny startups that have relatively small, easily increased profits. These are huge corporations, 500 of the largest businesses and employers in the nation. The money certainly isn’t coming from overseas trade, since we yet again have a record trade deficit: more American money is being spent on foreign goods than foreign money is being spent on American goods. I believe CAFTA will not improve this situation.

But wait a minute, maybe the profits of these companies are bringing the GDP up. Maybe the high-lfying profits are the only thing keeping “Supertanker America” afloat. If that is the case, the rest of the economy really stinks.

Where is the money coming from and where is it going?

The short answer that it is coming from us and going to them.

We are spending the money that results in these companies having earnings, and frankly a lot of us are borrowing money to do so. There are signs this may be slowing down. In any event, it’s a dangerous game to keep running up debt in a nation where rules for getting out of debt are tightening and the number of debtors may be shrinking. (For the record, I think that Band of America buying MBNA is a bad idea and shouldn’t be allowed to go through. I also thought this about B of A buying FleetBoston, the Chase/J.P. Morgan deal, and the Citibank/Traveller’s deal. My opinion clearly carries no weight over at the Federal Trade Commission.) This is an even bigger deal if there is anything to yesterday’s news item that 15 states representing 35% of the American economy are vulnerable to a housing “correction.”

This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the money these companies were earning went on to be paid to employees, or spent with other companies (that have employees) that in turn would stimulate the economy. However, if this were the case, the money in question would be an expense, not part of the profit. Accounting wonks will note that if money is spent on capital expenses — big ticket items like manufacturing equipment that helps a company make money in the future — has to be depreciated; only a portion of the expense can be claimed each year the equipment is in place. That still doesn’t account for the long term profit growth in question.

Since dividends — money a company pays to it’s shareholders — can only be paid from profits, it is reasonable to expect that some of this money will be paid out as dividends. Needless to say, this only benefits people who own shares of companies that pay dividends. Since on the whole, rich people own more stock than middle and lower class people, any dividends paid will mostly benefit rich people, who by the way are getting a tax break on the deal too.

And to top it all off, a lot of these companies are laying people off. Remember, it isn’t that these companies are losing money, it’s that they are not earning as much more money than last year as they thought. Companies that provide “good jobs with benefits” like Ford, GM, Lear HP, IBM and others. Even “new economy” Silicon Valley feels the crunch of businesses getting bigger, but few additional jobs being created.

So now you see why the economy looks great from Wall Street and kind of anemic from Main Street.

In closing, I don’t want to say much about the esteemed Ms. O’Connor’s resignation, but she has been a pretty decent Supreme Court Justice, and I would hate to see her replaced by someone like, oh, Pricilla Owen. I recommend reading and acting upon this list of suggestions from Daily Kos. As Ms. Marcotte at Pandagon points out, “Women are 50% of the population. People who know women are 100% of the population. Women’s rights are not a minority issue.” We need a Supreme Court nominee who will apply the Constitution, the Law, and his/her Conscience, in that order.

Sincerely, Concerned Citizen

If you are the sort of person who gets their news from the television, or from mainline news sources, this may come as a shocking story. However, if you spend much of your time online, you may have heard about the rumor that Vice President Dick Cheney has been in the hospital. Now there’s a funny thing right there; this is one of the 50 most talked about things on the internet right now according to the resources that measure these things on a daily basis. Yet you won’t catch so much as an “unsubstantiated report” story on any of the major news outlets, including the ones that have to fill 24 hours a day with newsspeak, including the ones that manage to make “missing white girl of the week” or anything done/said by Michael Jackson or Paris Hilton into news. This is the Vice-President of the United States of America we are talking about. This is potentially news.

The Administration doesn’t want to so as much “confirm or deny.” The hospital can’t really say much of anything because of privacy laws.

Even if Mr. Cheney was hospitalized for, um, heart related troubles, his timing could not be better. It could be announced that due to the recent recall of implantable defibrillators, doctors wanted to act with an abundance of caution and make sure Mr. Cheney’s unit was in good operating condition. That is a believable story, regardless of it’s veracity.

This is arguably the second most important man in the most important nation on earth. Silence only allows rumors to fester. Let’s have some straight talk about what is really happening.

In closing: Just Say No to Chinese interests buying American oil company Unocal. It’s bad for security, inasmuch as oil is a strategic resource. It’s bad for our economy and the economy of the world. I could probably have beefed that out, but the succinct version says it all.

Parallelogram

Last night, I was listening to the late-night guy on Air America when he took at call from a lady who began by saying “I still have the ID card the Nazis gave me” when they over-ran Austria. The caller was very concerned that she saw distinct parallels between what happened to her homeland as a child, and what was happening in America today. She did not elaborate in detail, but a good history book can fill in the blanks.

Under skillful questioning by Mr. Malloy, she described having to present her card at every checkpoint she passed in the city. These checkpoints were fortified with machine-gun turrets. Finally, she was asked to describe the cards. She said they had her name, picture, address, thumbprint, the name of her school, and physical description, including distinguishing marks. This sounds to me like it’s a Social Security Number short of the Real ID requirements. If you haven’t written your Congresscritters and State officials, do that now, mmkay?

Of course, your Representatives in the House have been too busy to repeal Real ID. Fixing Social Security? Finding money for unfunded Federal mandates? Getting the Federal Budget ready for fiscal year 2006? Figuring out how to get Iraq stable enough that we can bring our soldiers home? No, nothing like that. They’ve been working on a Constitutional Amendment that would allow Congress to prohibit “Flag Desecration.”

Now then, unless my grasp of symbolism is totally astray, in which case the wine falling off the wagons at the beginning of “A Tale of Two Cities” is nothing more than wine and “A Separate Peace” was actually a good book, the Flag is a symbol. Once we start venerating symbols, we veer into a realm of idolatry. The reasoning is that by “Desecrating” a flag you are harming the country. Countless times I have heard veterans speak of how they fought for their flag. Personally, I’d like to think they fought for their country, represented by the flag, rather than killing other human beings over a bit of fabric.

Now think about this for a minute. Which would you rather a group of protesters did, burn a flag, or burn a courthouse? Those are two different things, right?

Dictators have known for decades that once you regulate what one can say and do regarding a symbol, you can regulate what one can say and do regarding what that symbol represents. The whole thing seems silly, until people start getting punished.

As if this stuff wasn’t scary enough all by itself, the Supreme Court has now ruled that municipalities can now seize any land they chose to allow “economic development.” The case in question concerns a middle-class residential community on the river. Such land is just too valuable to let mere single-family homes stand. Although I imagine this case would never have gotten to the Supreme Court if multi-million dollar homes were involved. This case should scare the pants off residents of mobile homes in metropolitan areas. For that matter, anyone who owns property now stands to lose it at the whim of some city council that receives sufficient bribes — excuse me, I meant to say incentives — from some developer.

Yet when I read this, it sounded strangely familiar. Ah yes, here it is. In Zimbabwe, the government has ordered poor areas of town bulldozed for economic development. Of course the United States has officially proclaimed that “bad.” I guess American companies aren’t making any money off the deal.

Controlling Interest

Today I was reading an article about a PBS documentary called “The Education of Shelby Knox.” The show, to air tonight, documents the transformation of Miss Knox, Bible-Believing, chastity pledge taking girl, into a remarkably wise young woman who — while still a devout Christian — believes in tolerance and comprehensive reproductive education.*

Comprehensive reproductive education, as contrasted with “abstinence only” reproductive education, teaches about contraception and disease prevention, along with basic biological facts about human reproduction. Abstinence only programs are the only kind for which a school can get Federal funding, meaning our tax dollars pay for a semester of “just say no.” Furthermore, in Texas and some other states, abstinence only is the only thing schools are allowed to teach. Miss Knox began to see the problems with abstinence only programs when she found that her school district had very high rates of teen pregnancy and STDs. Make no mistake, abstinence is a very effective form of disease and pregnancy prevention, but only if you do it — um, don’t do it — every time.

I support comprehensive reproductive education too, but for different reasons than many people. I find the philosophy of “they are going to do it anyway; they should at least have protection” to be unsatisfying. If that is our yardstick, then we should take down speed limit signs, since most people exceed the speed limit anyway. Instead, I begin with one basic premise: adults have a right to medically accurate information about contraception. Notice that I am speaking of adults. If you cannot agree with me on this statement, then we truly have no middle ground to start on. Enjoy your theocratic utopia.

Now then. Adults have a right to this information. Indeed, in 1965 the Supreme Court ruled that adults have a right to more than information: they have a right to contraceptives. Is it realistic to expect every adult of childbearing age to make an appointment to consult their doctor about contraceptives? In this age of managed care, in a country where 15% of the population has no medical insurance? No.

Alright, so we have a right to medical information and we aren’t getting it from our doctors. Nor is it reasonable to expect every citizen to go to college and find out about it there. And since at least 99% of the population has genitals of one flavor or another, this is hardly a special interest topic that concerned parties should look up online.

Now, in this nation, a young person legally becomes an adult when they turn 18 for most purposes. Most high school graduates are 18, making them legally adults. Not only are most high school seniors adults with the moral and legal right to this information, but high school is the last realistic place where such information can be mass-distributed, with professionals on hand to answer questions as they arise.

Parallel to this topic, I would like to repeat that pharmacists who refuse to dispense prescription contraceptives and “morning after pills” for moral reasons are skating on thin ice indeed. Not only will these same people gladly fill prescriptions for male performance and lifestyle drugs, they forget that prescription contraceptives have other medical uses. Furthermore, just like when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that any judge who was against the death penalty should resign, any pharmacist who is against dispensing legal, medically indicated prescriptions should resign. To do less is to follow their morals only when they inconvenience others.

Gosh, it feels good to use a conservative argument against conservatives.

* In order to not be flagged as a naughty-naughty site by various filters, I am specifically not using “the S word.” I don’t have to spell it out, do I?

Shorties Too

Follow up:

“But for [talks] to happen, the DPRK (North Korea) must do its part by returning to the table without preconditions and abandoning its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” said Chris Ford, a senior U.S. official and member of the U.S. delegation to the IAEA.

Translation: “We can talk about disarming after you’ve disarmed.”

Anti-Terror Follies: The best commentary about current House of Representatives action to make the FBI get a good old fashioned search warrant before browbeating your local librarian, contrasted with wanting to make your ISP keep records on everything that all their clients do on the off chance there may be an investigation someday — and I guess your ISP will pay for the additional storage space by raising your rates. If that isn’t enough, the Homeland Security Privacy Czar (I bet you didn’t know there was one) is trying to find out if the TSA is expanding the scope of Secure Flight (CAPPS III, if you prefer) and amending documentation after the fact.

Missing Persons: It turns out even the news media has started to notice that cute white girls vanishing get lots of press, but tough luck if a missing person is male or black, as the majority of missing persons happen to be. Of course the very sources covering this could fix the problem by changing their coverage and quitting the “missing white girl of the week club.”

Follow up on the housing bubble: even the New York Times admits that just maybe people are overextending to buy houses, using products like adjustable rate mortgages and interest only mortgages that have the potential to put home”owners” seriously behind the 8 ball a few years from now.

A wise man points out the heretical reality that more education does not translate into higher pay, and until such time as we all have household robots, there will always be a lot of unskilled labor needed in our economy.

A millionaire asks Why is Hollywood paying big money for something that doesn’t work?

And finally, how can it not be a top story plastered across the front page of every newspaper and dominating every newscast that a half-dozen Congressmen — backed by over a hundred more — hand carried a letter with a half million signatories to the White House asking Bush to explain himself regarding the Downing Street Memo?

The Sabre Rattles

By way of disclaimer, I am not an expert on Far East cultures, history, and politics. Nor am I an expert in Korean affairs, despite the fact that in any given week I converse (in English!) with several native Korean speakers. When all is said and done, I plan to run this post past my friend Plunge, who is an expert (and a humanitarian, but that’s another issue).

United States policy on North Korea has been called “incoherent” and “a comic opera” by people who are in a position to know. But that was before it became clear that there were real live nukes involved — not that evidence of possible nuclear based research stuff that was all we could ever prove about Saddam Hussein. To say this is straining regional relationships is an understatement. Knowing that your next door neighbor is in a position to blow stuff up will make anybody nervous.

The United States, mostly in the person of a Mr. Christopher Hill, is trying to add fuel to the fire by saying stuff like there are “‘increasing doubts’ that President Kim Jong Il’s government was ready to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for security guarantees and economic incentives,” and China isn’t putting enough pressure on North Korea but far be it from us to tell China it’s business and my favorite line, North Korea will give up it’s nuclear weapons “one way or another.” Now, where I come from, those are fighting words.

This kind of rhetoric leads some Democratic Senators to question our current policies and flat out say what Hill implies: Are we looking for “regime change”? Because it sure sounds that way. Why don’t you guys figure out what you are going to do before you go threatening sovereign nations, mmkay?

The United States military already has substantial forces committed in Afghanistan and Iraq for the foreseeable future. And Mr. Hill sounds like he wants to start war on a third front. We already have serious problems recruiting for the military, meaning that news sources around the world are reporting that we may need to reinstate the draft. And let’s not forget that unlike Iraq, North Korea actually has nuclear weapons and more mouths than they can feed. Losing a few citizens might not be such a bad deal to North Korea. They also have a “Dear Leader” who has been described as “obsessed” and a “megalomaniac.”

Yeah, let’s go ahead and stick our hand in that hornet’s next. Where would you like that mushroom cloud?

In closing, I bring you common sense on identity theft, coming to our senses about what we can require of foreign passports, and “follow the money” on potential Presidential hopefuls. From the lighter side, an eagle delivers dinner, something for those of you without air conditioning, and brilliant satire on Big Media News.