Thanks but I'll wait ....

img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vH5f59Og-Sc/SlEQ3ANxamI/AAAAAAAAGGw/EG8TCTjA1Rk/s400/coletoon_-__sotomayo(2)20090701085218.jpg"div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-1377569888631316960?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Democracy Now: Vietnam War Architect Robert McNamara Dies at 93: A Look at His Legacy With Howard Zinn, Marilyn Young Jonathan Schell

Zinn, Howard, Marilyn Young and Jonathan Schell. a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/7/vietnam_war_architect_robert_mcnamara_dies""Vietnam War Architect Robert McNamara Dies at 93: A Look at His Legacy With Howard Zinn, Marilyn Young Jonathan Schell."/a span style="font-style:italic;"Democracy Now/span (July 7, 2009)br /br /Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has died at the age of 93. McNamara was one of the key architects of the Vietnam war, which killed at least three million Vietnamese, around one million Cambodians and Laotians, and 58,000 American soldiers. We take a look at McNamara’s legacy with two pre-eminent historians: Howard Zinn and Marilyn Young. We also speak with Jonathan Schell, who covered Vietnam as a reporter in 1967 and met with McNamara in a secret Pentagon meeting.br /br /Howard Zinn, historian and author of many books, including the classic work, “A People’s History of the United States.”br /br /Marilyn Young, Professor of History at NYU and specialist on Vietnamese history. Author of “The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990” and most recently, “Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History.”br /br /Jonathan Schell, Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute. In ’66 and ’67 he reported from South Vietnam for the New Yorker. He is the author of two books on Vietnam: “The Village of Ben Suc” and “The Military Half.”div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-8584874789263283923?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

"Does God Exist?"

I will be preaching both morning messages and the evening message at a href="http://www.gracechapel.org/"Grace Chapel in Englewood, CO /athis Sunday, July 12. The title is, "Does God Exist?" I have never preached on that before, but was asked to do so. I will give three arguments for God's existence and explain why this is important.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-4178349839694902738?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

***damn Green Dam PRC Nannyware Postponed

Our favorite official news agency emXinhua/em reports that the Chinese government is a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-06/30/content_11628335.htm"delaying/a the implementation of its "Green Dam Youth Escort" nannyware:br /blockquoteChina will delay the mandatory installation of the controversial "Green Dam-Youth Escort" filtering software on new computers, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said here Tuesday. The pre-installation was delayed as some computer producers said such massive installation demanded extra time, said the ministry.br /br /All computers produced or sold in China were scheduled to be installed withbr /such software after July 1, according to MIIT's previous announcement. Thebr /ministry would continue to provide a free download of the software and equipbr /school and Internet bar computers with it after July 1, said a spokesman withbr /MIIT. The ministry would also keep on soliciting opinions to perfect thebr /pre-installation plan, he said. The software is designed to block violencebr /and pornographic contents on the Internet to protect minors. It could also helpbr /parents control how much time their children spent online.br //blockquoteI do not think we have heard the last of this nannyware. Dramas abound over it containing a href="http://ipezone.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-industrial-espionage-meets-prc.html"stolen code/a as well as American manufacturers a href="http://ipezone.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-google-and-prc-censorship-of.html"pressing/a the US to kill it off. I believe the Chinese government is using this delay to ensure that (a) whatever it will eventually force manufacturers to install will not contain any hint of pirated code; (b) the software is less intrusive on basic computer operation; and (c) foreign firms are given more time to install future versions.br /br /If and when those objections are removed, it would become a more unobjectionable piece of software even if it is, at heart, a fairly brazen attack on personal privacy.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9031925921218676704-3939383964858493230?l=ipezone.blogspot.com'//div

Telling It Like It Is: That Everything Is Just Fine

I have a piece up at TAP arguing that, despite inevitable gnashing of teeth you'll hear from pundits about how the Supreme Court confirmation process has become too "politicized" and is so uncivil it's making David Broder roll over in his grave, structurally a href="http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=in_defense_of_confirmation_hearings"it actually works pretty well. /a I'm certainly not going to pretend that it's some sort of national crisis if a lot of Republican Senators vote against Sotomayor when she a href="http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/07/sotomayor.php"inevitably/a gets confirmed, unless someone can explain exactly what's wrong with it.br /br /I should also add that my argument shouldn't be read to imply that I expect the hearings to be span style="font-style: italic;"illuminating/span. While it would be preferable for hearing to be more candid, since the incentives for nominees to be vacuous is so strong there's nothing that can be done about it. The a href="http://www.everydaypoliticsblog.com/2009/07/what-kind-of-justice-will-sotomayor-be.html"best guide to what Sotomayor will do on the bench will be her opinions and other aspects of her record/a, which suggest that she'll be a Ginsburg-like moderate liberal.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1491061182489900519?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

The "Tortured" Prosecution

Today's Washington Post has this story.br /br /br /br /br /br /blockquotepAttorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is leaning toward appointing a criminal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA personnel tortured terrorism suspects after Sept. 11, 2001, setting the stage for a conflict with administration officials who would prefer the issues remain in the past, according to three sources familiar with his thinking.br /br /Naming a prosecutor to probe alleged abuses during the darkest period in the Bush era would run counter to President Obama's oft-repeated desire to be "looking forward and not backwards." Top political aides have expressed concern that such an investigation might spawn partisan debates that could overtake Obama's ambitious legislative agenda.br /br /The White House successfully resisted efforts by congressional Democrats to establish a "truth and reconciliation" panel. But fresh disclosures have continued to emerge about detainee mistreatment, including a secret CIA watchdog report, recently reviewed by Holder, highlighting several episodes that could be likened to torture. /pp.../ppAny criminal inquiry could face challenges, including potent legal defenses by CIA employees who could argue that attorneys in the Bush Justice Department authorized a wide range of harsh conduct. But the sources said an inquiry would apply only to activities by interrogators, working in bad faith, that fell outside the "four corners" of the legal memos. Some incidents that might go beyond interrogation techniques that were permitted involve detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are described in the secret 2004 CIA inspector general report, set for release Aug. 31.br //p/blockquotebr /br /br /br /Now, I have no doubt that conservatives will work themselves up into a lather over this. a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGNhOWJlNTE2YmM3NzViM2RkNzBjNGMyNGY4OTk0MjA="Some already have. /aThere may still be plenty of reason to be upset. That said, the WAPO article makes clear that the investigation is only going after "rogue" CIA agents that stepped outside of the guidelines set up justice department lawyers. The article goes on to state that no lawyers would be targeted and that all CIA employees that followed guidelines would NOT be targeted.br /br /For all those that believe that the CIA agents were just trying to get valuable information out of terrorists that have no rights anyway, you may be right. However, we should all keep this in mind. If these charges are true, then those that committed these acts disregarded a direct order that ultimately came from the Commander in Chief himself. If that sort of a chain of command is NOT followed, then we have no functioning military and intelligence apparatus.br /br /Most of these alleged incidents are four years old or more. That raises several perplexing and troubling questions. If "rogue" CIA agents stepped out of bounds, why weren't these incidents fully investigated before? Either prior Justice Departments overlooked interrogations that clearly stepped out of bounds, or Holder's justice department is nothing into something. If it's the first, the Bush administration's Justice Department overlooked criminality in the CIA. If it's the second, Holder's Justice Department is attempting a backhanded political attack on the previous administration.br /br /We'll only know after all the evidence here is collected.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-5258913912814067837?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

TARP for Small Businesses: Theory Vs. Reality

The government is now floating the idea of giving small businesses money from the a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/07/11/obama-considers-bailout-funds-small-businesses/"Troubled Asset Relief Program./abr /br /blockquoteThe Obama administration is working on a plan that would make available funds from the $700 billion banking-system bailout package to millions of small businesses struggling to survive the recession, FOX News has confirmed.br /br /Gene Sperling, a top adviser to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, developed the idea of using funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to help small businesses as part of a department-wide push to generate ideas to pump life into this ailing part of the economy. The concept is to use TARP funds to increase Small Business Administration loans that are obtained when the government backs 90 percent of a bank loan.br /br /It is unclear how much TARP money might be involved. Of the $700 billion appropriated, roughly $127 billion remains. The SBA has authority this year to provide $17.5 billion in loans to small businesses. According to agency records, the SBA provided $6 billion in loans through June.br //blockquotebr /Now, small businesses are a sort of third rail in our society. No politician wants to be against helping small business owners. So, it's likely this policy idea will be met with little resistence, at least while it's still in concept. The problem is that while this sounds good in theory, in reality this is a total mess. There's about a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/whack-mole-on-taxes-and-health-care.html"27 million small businesses in the U.S. /a if you consider a small business as having less than 500 employees.br /br /So, how do you figure out who gets what? If you give each small business $1000, that's $30 billion. Ten Thousand for each business is $300 billion. So, we simply don't have enough to give everyone money.br /br /Now, we get into reality. If the government gave money based on need, then the government would be rewarding failure. It would subsidize the weak and make things difficult on the stronger small businesses. If the government did in other random ways, that would lead to favoritism. (just see a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/ppip-and-my-favorite-latin-phrase.html"the PPIP pro/agram for that) If you gave everyone the same amount, that would mean that the smallest of small businesses would get the better part of it.br /br /There's another problem. This is the Troubled Asset Relief Program. It's not the Troubled Small Business Relief Program. By giving money to the automakers the government already moved money to things they weren't meant for. In fact, the program was supposed to buy "toxic assets" from banks. It has never been used as it was passed. We are, after all, a nation of laws. This law wasn't intended to bail out small businesses. It wasn't even intended to bailout banks. It was supposed to buy "toxic assets" from the banks. The more time passes, the more it does nothing it was intended. If the president wants to provide a bailout for small businesses, then have him go to Congress and pass another law. TARP is not that law. br /br /If the president really wants to give small businesses relief, then he needs to demand an across the board tax cut. That would put more money into the pockets of small business owners themselves, and into the pockets of the consumers that frequent them.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-3428282540493135246?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div