Make sure you stick around for when they pour concrete in the colony to what it looks like excavated.

The details:

A powerful winter storm that unleashed a thick blanket of mountain snow, heavy rain and at least one tornado pounded Southern California for a fifth straight day Friday.

Odd that the reporter did not seek an expert on this possibly being caused by global warming. Why do some news related items have reporters seeking experts and others not so much?

I often wondered why Saddam didn’t just come clean on not have weapons of mass destruction.

Saddam Hussein initially didn’t think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen.

Somehow I managed to forget about Iran. Its seems so obvious now.

From Bidinotto blog:

But what of Ron Paul? He is arguably the most philosophical of all the candidates except Kucinich, and thus he must be judged not by his various specific positions and votes, taken in isolation, but by his overall guiding philosophy. That is what he has put at issue, front and center; so that is what I therefore believe we must assess.

And that philosophy is a complete mess. In principle, it weds the following: the economics of laissez-faire capitalism (which I emphatically endorse); a religious-based conception of individual rights that leads him to appalling positions on the separation of Church and State, abortion, immigration, and certain other social issues; and, most dangerous of all, a platonic, utopian notion of “noninterventionism” in foreign policy: a view derived directly from his philosophical misunderstanding of the implications of individual rights, which would render America completely vulnerable to its enemies, destroy the security infrastructure at the foundation of international trade, and thus impoverish the nation.

This last bit is really what I mean by crazy.

From the standpoint of personal character, Ron Paul is an unusually principled man, who boasts of his unwillingness to compromise. That is an admirable trait in a leader when he is right — but ominous in a leader when he is wrong. Precisely because he is unwilling to bend or change direction, Ron Paul is the kind of man who — facing the prospect of imminent disaster or altering course — would fanatically drive the nation right over some cliff, in the name of “principle.” That his irrational conglomeration of half-digested principles would aim the nation toward the cliff, I have absolutely no doubt.

This kind of reminds me when I was taking a class on existentialism and we were reading about the philosophy on Jean Paul Satre. Satre seemed to be arguing that each person must take responsibility for the entire world. Upon realizing he meant it, I laughed out loud, because the first thing I thought was how I used to believe that when I was eighteen. At the time I would tell people how to live their lives, and oftentimes they would tell me problems in their life that was stopping them from doing what I was telling them to do. As a consequence, I adopted the principle that you must assume responsibility for everything in the world such that you can no longer use that as an excuse for why you are not doing the the things you should be doing.

I realized not much longer afterwards that such a silly position was hard to maintain because there really are many things in the world that one can not be responsible for, and to expect otherwise, was simply unrealistic. In a way, I became wiser realizing that some outcomes you assume responsibility for and others you just roll with knowing there was not much you can do. But to read this extremly ‘intelligent’ fifty year old philosopher espousing a philosophy, that I, as a 22 year old, knew was impossible to obtain made me laugh. How does a fifty year old lover of wisdom lack the extremly basic wisdom that there are some events in a person’s life that you simply are not responsible for?. Satre was lacking a very basic wisdom that signals to me that he was a man not meant to be taken seriously.

This is precisely the signal Ron Paul sends me. When he speaks it does not feel like he sees the wisdom of capitalism but like a child, rigidly sticks to the principle of free markets. You never read it on this blog, but there are times when the free markets must be constrained and regulated. I look to leaders who actually understand the power of free markets but also have the wisdom to know that at times the markets must be constrained and regulated. Ron Paul clearly lacks that wisdom and, was sagely pointed out, a Ron Paul presidency could ride us off the cliff just for his cursed principles.

Principles are magnificent things but they must be tempered by wisdom.

Club for growth has done a fine job throughly analyzing Ron Paul’s voting record and gives a fine summary judgment.

When it comes to limited government, there are few champions as steadfast and principled as Representative Ron Paul. In the House of Representatives, he plays a very useful role constantly challenging the status quo and reminding his colleagues, despite their frequent indifference, that our Constitution was meant to limit the power of government. On taxes, regulation, and political free speech his record is outstanding. While his recent pork votes are troubling, the vast majority of his anti-spending votes reflect a longstanding desire to cut government down to size.

But Ron Paul is a purist, too often at the cost of real accomplishments on free trade, school choice, entitlement reform, and tort reform. It is perfectly legitimate, and in fact vital, that think tanks, free-market groups, and individual members of congress develop and propose idealized solutions. But presidents have the responsibility of making progress, and often, Ron Paul opposes progress because, in his mind, the progress is not perfect. In these cases, although for very different reasons, Ron Paul is practically often aligned with the most left-wing Democrats, voting against important, albeit imperfect, pro-growth legislation.

Ron Paul is, undoubtedly, ideologically committed to pro-growth limited government policies. But his insistence on opposing all but the perfect means that under a Ron Paul presidency we might never get a chance to pursue the good too.

While Ron Paul supporters will deny it, Ron comes off as an isolationist to me, both in foreign affairs and free trade. Besides, for whatever reasons, I don’t feel like Paul really understands free markets completely enough to convince me he supports them on a very basic level. It seems like he is pro free markets because for him, its the thing to do, and not because he realizes and see the transforming power free markets has on any group that allows them to do their work. Both Guilani and Romney have done better at convincing me that they truly appreciate the power of markets then Paul has.

Its interesting to note also that my voting choices are not completely dictated by fiscal policy. I really dislike Paul’s foreign affairs policy and that in of itself is a deal breaker for me.

Oh yeah and also Ron Paul is crazy. That does not help either.

Over at Instapundit I think Glen Reynolds gets it right:

MILITARY VETERANS AND MURDER: Fact-checking the New York Times.

If you published a similarly anecdotal and unfounded piece about black people and murder, the NYT would call you a racist.

Here is an audio dispatch of a woman reporting a stalker breaker into her house. Prior to this evening there had been many incident with this stalker which she had reported to law enforcement. Several days before she accepted a pistol from a friend because she didn’t feel safe. At this point I ask you to listen to the radio dispatch.

This woman shot the man three times as he attempted to strangle her. Please note that had she relied solely on the ‘protection’ of the police like Darwin has advocated for she would be dead.

Those that want to ban firearms want to make what this woman did illegal. They would rather put this one woman in jail rather than give her the freedom to arm herself with a weapon. Its bear repeating. Those in favor of banning guns want to put this woman in jail for acquiring a firearm w

Nice reminder that you must trust the state while you get to choose to trust a corporation.

In my mind, there is no doubt that when some of the ordinances used to harass this restaurant were passed at the time for good reasons. Now many years since then they are being used by the state to force these entrepreneurs to do the bidding of those trying to take them down.

This is an excellent example of why one should be very antagonistic towards laws and regulations. What seems reasonable today may not be reasonable tomorrow. Same should be said about banning guns. What seems reasonable about banning guns ownership today may seems outright fascist tomorrow.

A documentary arguing against global warming. Its an hour long but I highly recommend you take a look at it.

Link: sevenload.com

For a while many on the left argue that criticizing the war does not mean they don’t support the troops. I would be the first to agree that dissenting opinion on war decisions does not mean you don’t support the actual soldiers carrying out those decisions. However, war supporters rarely point to examples where a war critic simply gives a dissenting opinion. Most often the war critic commits a egregious error which basis indicates a lack of support for the troops.

Recently the NYTimes posted a massive front page article about how there have been 121 homicides caused by soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The inference was to indicated the wars are causing war veterans to be more violent because of their service. So shoddy was their analysis that one must draw the conclusion that those involved in the article do not, in fact support our troops. For you see, if they actually did support our troops, that concern for our troops would of translated into motivation to do some very basic statistical analysis just to insure validity. Since they failed to do so, one must conclude they lacked the motivation of getting it right because they ultimately do not support the troops. For the purpose of the story, the tragedy that these murderous soldiers is yet another liberal tool to show that war is wrong. When you are using soldiers as tools to advance your political agenda critics are right to say you don’t support the troops.

Pajamas Meidia has more details:

The Times found, “121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.”

Bruce Kesler of the Democracy Project was among the first to note that despite finding the time to pen 6,253 words in this first article of the series, “the New York Times could not find words to put the 121 cases of physical violence by vets in full perspective,” by providing the context of how these deaths measure up against the number of deaths attributed to similar civilian demographics.

In an article in the Weekly Standard, John J. DiIulio Jr. offered the much-needed context that the Times failed to provide.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and other veterans’ advocacy groups are absolutely correct that not merely “many” but the vast majority of veterans not only remain completely law-abiding but go on to lead stable and productive personal, professional, and civic lives. Assuming 121 homicide cases in relation to 749,932 total discharges through 2007, 99.98 percent of all discharged Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have not committed or been charged with homicide.

And assuming 121 cases and 749,932 total discharges, the homicide offending rate for the discharged veterans would be 16.1 per 100,000. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has demographic data aplenty on homicide offending rates. For instance, in 2005, for white males aged 18-24, the rate was about 20 per 100,000. The Times opined that 121 was the “minimum” number, even as it counted veterans charged but not convicted with veterans tried and found guilty. Doubling the number to 242 would double the rate to 32.2 per 100,000.

Far from being an indictment against veterans, the actual homicide rate among civilians is higher in similar demographic groups.

On some level its no surprise to discover that the NYTimes, or at least the staffers that wrote this piece, don’t support the troops. This after all is the organization that published extensive details about a secret intelligence program used to track money being moved among terrorists organizations. A program that nobody anywhere thought was illegal.