My Grandparents just bought this boat today–the Supra Launch 24 SSV. I looked at it in the boat store a couple days ago and I thought it was the coolest boat I

Yesterday I finished A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin. I was a fun read. How fun? I purchased it on the 22nd and I finished all 969 pages on the 30th. I hope the third book in Martin

Yesterday I read The Bad Beginning: Book the First (A Series of Unfortunate Events) by Lemony Snicket. All I can say is that I don’t get what the fuss is about. I like that the books helps kids build their vocabularies and uses fun words to do so. I also like that the book tweaks some overly uptight people because it defines “casing the joint” and “Molotov cocktails” but this is supposed to be comedy and I didn’t find any laughs.

Plus, blame me for being a lawyer, but dilemma of the first books is a legal question and Lemony Snicket mangles the law–or at least British or American law. I get frustrated when authors mangle the law to tell a story, but usually you can see why the storyteller choose to get the law wrong. In this book Lemony Snicket mangles the law, but he [I assume Lemony is male] didn

I’ve always respected Thomas Friedman, but this article is one reason you can’t trust the man. Power Line debunks the article. Here are a couple choice paragraphs:

So, while some of what Friedman says is true, much of it is simply misinformation. But let’s make a more fundamental point: Friedman’s key contention is that America’s priorities are out of whack because we are not spending enough money on education and foreign aid. This claim is absurd. Let’s look at education spending first. Check out the actual data from the Department of Education. The U.S. spends more per capita on secondary education than any country except Switzerland:

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Expenditures for primary and secondary education have doubled since 1990:

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Are there problems with our education system? Sure, but they have nothing to do with “priorities” as Friedman means the term; i.e., budgetary priorities. Our problem stems from the fact that we put the welfare of administrators and teachers’ unions above that of students. But on this topic, Friedman has nothing to say, and his newspaper bitterly opposes the only practical solution on the table, school choice.

Friedman’s second criticism of America’s priorities is that we don’t spend enough on foreign aid. Here, like most liberals, he falls into the trap of equating “spending” with “government spending.” What is unique about America is that most contributions to foreign countries come from individual citizens and churches, not from the federal government.

What pisses me off about this article is that now I have to be skeptical of everything Friedman has written because I won’t have someone to fact check it.

Check out this amazing satellite images before and after the Tsumani.

Tom Shales isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. In this Washington Post article reviewing the year the year in TV he careens off course and attacks conservatives. Some of the ridicule is deserved, such as some of the FCC’s fines, but the following paragraph shows that either the man doesn’t think, or he is trying to rewrite history. Shales writes:

Tireless press critics during war or peacetime, the conservatives were handed a valuable new weapon when CBS News fumbled a report detailing the president’s shoddy record as a member of the National Guard back in Texas. The report was attacked virtually the moment it aired on “60 Minutes”; documents used to bolster the allegations were condemned by conservative critics as phony and forged, though no forging has yet been proved.

Tom, if you think that the Killian Memo wasn’t forged, then you also probably think that OJ was innocent. Shales paragraph contains 13 errors according to the blog Scylla & Charybdis. I’m not sure that I’d call each problem an error, but either Shales is a trying to re-write history or he’s pretty dumb. If if anyone reading this has any doubts as to whether the report is a forgery, then read this.

Writers like Tom Shales make me skeptical of liberals. I would listen to liberals more if they actually thought about the world instead of living in cocoons.

This Washington Post article ticks me off. Here’s the second paragraph:

Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums — as well as Bush’s decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy — showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia.

First, I don’t care what the U.N. thinks. Second, what is Bush supposed to do? Get in front of a camera and show that he cares. That’s not caring. Is he supposed to jump on Air Force One and flying back to DC? Why? There’s nothing the President can do. And then there’s this:

Still, the United Nations’ Egeland complained on Monday that each of the richest nations gives less than 1 percent of its gross national product for foreign assistance, and many give 0.1 percent. “It is beyond me why we are so stingy, really,” he told reporters.

Among the world’s two dozen wealthiest countries, the United States often is among the lowest in donors per capita for official development assistance worldwide, even though the totals are larger. According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of 30 wealthy nations, the United States gives the least — at 0.14 percent of its gross national product, compared with Norway, which gives the most at 0.92 percent.

Well Mr. Egeland, how much of your money do you give to help the poor? And may people, including me, think that the money we give to to the U.N. does more harm than good. Money is not the problem in third world countries–governments are and until the U.N. starts making governments better, they won’t make the third world better.

Many of us read last week that 44 % of American say that they would curtail the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Here’s the summary from the AP:

Nearly half of all Americans surveyed said they think the US government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.
. . .
The survey indicated that 44 percent of those surveyed said they favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted.

While this is disturbing, it isn’t nearly as disturbing if you read the actual questions that the pollsters asked:

1) Muslim civic and volunteer organizations should be infiltrated by undercover law enforcement agents to keep watch on their activities and fundraising.
2) U.S. government agencies should profile citizens as potential threats based on being Muslim or having Middle Eastern heritage.
3) Mosques should be closely monitored and surveilled by U.S. law enforcement agencies.
4) All Muslim Americans should be required to register their whereabouts with the federal government.

Here’s Law Prof. Orin Kerr for more thoughts about the survey and the media spin.

Much like The Hunt for Red October, I think there is a lot of truth disguised as fiction in Red Rabbit. In fact, my friend tells me that she took a class in grad school from the character that Tom Clancy calls Ed Foley in Red Rabbit. The professor said that there were too many similarities between the Ed Foley character and him for it not to be him, but that Clancy never talked to him.

The book was decent, and not great. I give it two out of five stars. Clancy spent too much time delving into his character

Elmer Kelton is my favorite western writer. His characters have much more depth and truth to them than the cardboard cutouts of Louis L’Amour novels. This is not to say that I don