This interactive site uses poverty statistics to show how billions of people have been pulled out of poverty. What interesting to note is that most of the poor people came from Aisan countries, which coincided with free markets policies. Unsurprising once again that without the good intentions of bureaucrats trying to solve poverty free markets reduce it without even trying.

Capitalism. Is there anything it can’t do?

Its not fair that private companies are allowed to do what they want their product. What about consumers that don’t want the product to change. What we need is some federal regulation telling the company what it should do with it’s products. After all, the federal government knows best.

Could these scientists be more liberal?

Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb and other books on dilemmas facing contemporary human society, said he does not understand why more effort is not going into urgently needed solutions. “What we don’t know, and need to learn, is how cultures change and how we can ethically influence that process,” he said.

Deborah S. Rogers, a research fellow at Stanford, said their findings demonstrate that “some cultural choices work while others clearly do not.”

“Unfortunately, people have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term,” she said. “We need to begin aligning our culture with the powerful forces of nature and natural selection instead of against them.”

Scary stuff to hear if you are a classic liberal.

Culture can changes thanks to ‘natural selection’. What we need is to ‘naturally select’ against capitalism democracy and freedom.

What the hell does natural selection mean in this case? Is anyone else sick and tired of evolution being applied to everything in the entire universe? Hell last time Dennet spoke at Duke he even applied natural selection to heaven and hell. Sigh, evolution has really turned into the holy scriptures of science. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Via Instapundit.

But I hate it when the US interferes other nations business. It really boils my blood.

The United States officially recognized Kosovo — the Balkan state which split from Serbia on Sunday — as an independent nation on Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a written statement.

Several of my readers have whined incessantly about the expanded powers of our intelligence agencies. They will be happy to know that they have a lobbyist that prevented the passing a law to expand FISA powers.

Pelosi could have exercised leadership prerogatives and called up the FISA bill to pass with unanimous Republican support. Instead, she refused to bring to the floor a bill approved overwhelmingly by the Senate. House Democratic opposition included left-wing members typified by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, but they were only a small faction of those opposed. The true reason for blocking the bill was Senate-passed retroactive immunity to protect from lawsuits private telecommunications firms asked to eavesdrop by the government. The nation’s torts bar, vigorously pursuing such suits, has spent months lobbying hard against immunity.

Look forward to strong denunciations of these lobbyists preventing the passage of expanding FISA even though this legislation enjoyed a large majority in the both houses.

I oppose this legislation:

There are signs that the “concealed carry” group was making headway even before the tragedy at Northern Illinois. Earlier this month the South Dakota House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to force state universities to allow students to carry weapons on campus, according to GOP state Rep. Tom Brunner. The bill, which Brunner sponsored, recently died in the state senate, but Brunner said he intends to bring it back as soon as he can. “It’s not an issue that’s going to go away,” Brunner said. “We feel pretty passionate [that] students and teachers should have a right to defend themselves, and weapons on campus should be a part of the plan.”

The state has no business interfering with a private entities rules and regulations. I would be more amenable to the state saying that if you don’t follow this legislation then we will pull state funding from the school. You know, give Universities incentive to behave in a fashion the state deems appropriate.

Here are somethings that war has brought about.

Gerecht bases his argument on two observations. The first is the apparently tiny number of jihadist radicals now entering Iraq from neighboring countries, especially when compared to the large number of fighters who traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets.

I guess were not making as many terrorists are Ron Paul would like us to believe. Shocker there.

It’s important to note that, whatever the raw numbers of jihadis in Iraq, they have been by far the most lethal aspect of the so-called “insurgency”; their aim all along was to foment a sectarian civil war among Iraqis, especially by slaughtering as many innocent Shiite men, women, and children as possible.

Wait. Most of the people killing civilians, I mean revolting in Iraq, were not even Iraqis? You don’t say.

Gerecht’s second point is that the jihadis who have entered the country have not been embraced by the Iraqis. As he puts it, “the arrival of foreign holy warriors is deradicalizing the local population — the exact opposite of what happened in Afghanistan.”

According to Gerecht, the result is that “Sunni extremism is now in retreat. More important, the gruesome anti-Shiite tactics of extremist groups, combined with the much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world.”

Gerecht’s argument about the state of Sunni extremism is consistent with polls released last year by Pew, which found that “large and growing numbers of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere rejecting Islamic extremism.”

According to Pew, “The percentage of Muslims saying that suicide bombing is justified in the defense of Islam has declined dramatically over the past five years in five of eight countries where trends are available. In Lebanon, for example, just 34% of Muslims say suicide bombings in the defense of Islam are often or sometimes justified; in 2002, 74% expressed this view.” In that survey, Al Qaeda’s reputation in the Muslim world had plummeted. To use Bin Laden’s own imagery, he had become the “weak horse” in his battle with the U.S.

Wait a minute. So going into Iraq and giving the extremist an opportunity to butcher fellow muslims has reduced support for Muslim extremism in the Middle East? This outcomes is shocking. I was told countless times by countless people that going into Iraq would create way more terrorists. However it seems that by going in Iraq we have helped people in that region see what kind barbarian the extremists use and the whole region is starting to turn against them.

Maybe establishing a democracy in the Middle East was not such a bad idea after all.

Over at Asymetrical Information, Megan writes:

The Washington Times on the fate of Virginia’s “Tax me more” fund:

RICHMOND — State lawmakers can rule out Virginian’s offering up more of their hard-earned money to fix the $1.4 billion budget shortfall Gov. Tim Kaine announced this week.

At least that is what a peek at the so-called “Tax Me More Fund” suggests.

Since its inception in 2002, the fund has collected a total of $10,217.04.

This is what economists call “revealed preference”. What most of us are really in favor of is higher taxes on other people. If we wanted higher taxes on ourselves, we’d give the money to charity.

Its a nice reminder that taxation is absolutely a form of coercion no matter how good the liberal’s intentions are when they take the rich people’s money away from them.

Someone explain to me why this is not a reasonable extension of the multiculturalism argument.

For five days now, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been chorusing: how do you solve a problem like Sharia? Ever since he suggested it is “unavoidable” – and desirable – for Britain to have Islamic courts ruling on Muslim family affairs, bashing the bishop has become a national sport. But this row shouldn’t be just about the pitiful contortions of the head of a dying Church. Rowan Williams has shown us why the doctrine of multiculturalism needs to abandoned.

If you really believe that Britain is comprised of a smorgasbord of “cultures” that need to be preserved, promoted and respected as an end in itself, then this proposal is perfectly logical. Different cultures should have different courts, and rules, and schools.