More on the new Franco-German Euro-Army
I wrote about the announcement of a Franco-German agreement to form their own military alliance, along with Luxembourg and Belgium. Robert Burnham adds some thoughts:

As NATO fades, and the US repositions and downscales its forces in Europe, this new alliance will give France and Germany together the continental dominance that each has sought individually for hundreds of years, at enormous cost.

Second, this new combined force will be weak compared to even the UK alone at present. Yet this is relatively unimportant since the theater of influence for the combined force isn't global but European.

They don't have to match US or UK military strength; they just have to have enough muscle to matter a great deal locally.

We'll see whether they can actually pull it off. But the concept doesn't look as crazy to me as it does to many others. At the very least it will make France and Germany significantly larger players in any European issues.

And if historical precedents mean anything, this probably means more trouble down the road for the US.

All potentially true, but I don't think that France and Germany actually will achieve what they have announced. This plan is very long term and will be extremely expensive. I do not think that even working together they will be willing to spend the money to make it happen because the political will to do so just won't be there over the long term.

As Robert says, this is a play for European dominance, but I think it will fail. They have no European enemy, and they are not military enemies of any European country.

One thought, however, does chill: inviting Russia to join the new alliance. That would sandwich the former Warsaw Pact nations between politically inimical powers, and the eastern European countries do not trust Russia at all. However, there is probably from the French perspective more downside for sharing power with Russia than upside; it would make the alliance an axis rather than a hub, and being the hub is what France wants.

Richard Heddleson also comments that Germany's will to form the alliance is perhaps doubtful to outlive Schroder's chancellery, an excellent point. Schroder's domestic approval ratings are dismal, and no successor chancellor will want to continue his mistakes, whenever a new chancellor finally takes office.

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 01:51:27 PM. Permalink |   

Music industry spammers to go to jail?
Two interesting stories. One is that the music industry is sending instant messages online to "hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers" warning "that they could be 'easily' identified and face 'legal penalties' for their actions."

About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services received the warning notice on Tuesday and millions more will get notices in coming weeks, said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the music companies.

Sounds like spam - unsolicited email - to me.

Perhaps Mr. Sherman should be advised that spamming can land you in prison in Virginia:

In the toughest move to date against unsolicited commercial e-mail, Virginia enacted a law yesterday imposing harsh felony penalties for sending such messages to computer users through deceptive means.

Of course, the RIAA's instant messaging would have to meet the legal test of deceptiveness to be chargeable, but seeing both news stories released the same day is kind of interesting, I think.


by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 01:36:19 PM. Permalink |   

Morale builder!
Email from yesterday:

Just wanted you to know I've used (and credited) you for some great material for our morning radio show.

My own web site will debut soon. May we set up a link?

Thanks for your thoroughness, perspective and sweet sense of humor.

Larry Ahrens
Morning Host
News Radio 770 KKOB
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Well, thank you Larry!

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 08:55:21 AM. Permalink |   

Blogs fill oldline journalism with dread
Second verse, same as the first

I wrote back in February about the great threat and offense two local radio talk-show hosts felt from my blog. A brief summary of their complaints: I am not a "journalist" and therefore have no rightful business publishing this blog. Furthermore, I am not accountable for what I write, like "real journalists" are. So I wrote a fairly detailed posting about the myth of journalistic accountability and the myth that journalism is a distinctive profession.

Now I learn that that the Hartford Courant newspaper has directed that none of its employees may write a blog for almost exactly the same reasons my blogging was denounced. A reporter named Denis Horgan had a blog. He was ordered to shut it down or lose his job. Horgan's editor, Brian Toolan, told another publication - yes this is a real quote -

"Denis Horgan's entire professional profile is a result of his attachment to the Hartford Courant, yet he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant," Toolan said. 'That makes the paper vulnerable." . . .

The editor added that allowing an employee to set up his own opinion blog was a bad precedent. 'There are 325 other people here who could create similar [Web sites] for themselves,' said Toolan, who called his decision 'common sense.”

As Reid Stott says,

So, a long established newspaper with a staff of hundreds feels vulnerable to one guy with a web site? Aside from such apparent self-confidence issues, we have this incredibly sculpted phrase, “he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant.” Sir Editor, that parallel universe, the world wide web, wasn't “unilaterally created” by Mr. Horgan. . . . And your statement makes it appear that Mr. Horgan's site would be OK, if you just had editorial control. . . .

Yes, hundreds of people, the entire staff, could choose to exercise their individual right to freedom of speech, protected by the Constitution, and be silenced not by the government, but by their employer, whose business right to freedom of speech (and therefore profit) is guaranteed by that same Constitution.

What oldline media find so threatening about blogs is that they empower the average Joe or Joan to be a news and commentary publisher, not just a consumer. Blogstreet, for example, catalogs almost 132,000 blogs and says that there are more than 300,000 potential blogs it is aware of.

The issue for the oldlines is control. They are losing control of reporting on the news and commenting on it. What is most threatening to them, in many cases is that bloggers are even breaking the news first as they establish far-flung contacts - people actually doing newsworthy things - who directly email bloggers they know with information.

Bill Hobbs, who is a bona fide journalist by any definition, has a lot more to say about this topic. Excerpt:

No media tool allows for more accountability and more-rapid correcting of error than weblogs. None. And blog articles - which, incidentally, tend to be commentary rather than straight news - are often better referenced than anything you'll read in your local daily. Bloggers won't just tell you what they think about something - they'll provide you links to the relevant source materials, and even links to other blogs that take a different point of view.

As I once observed, blogging is information capitalism in the marketplace of ideas. And the marketplace is changing.

Update: I should point out that not all news organs are as shortsighted about this as the Courant. Geitner Simmons is a fine journalist with the Omaha World Herald. Geitner has been blogging Regions of Mind for quite some time now, and his paper is cool with that.

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 08:40:58 AM. Permalink |   

Why do we pay attention to these Bozos?
Andrew Sullivan dissects Norman Mailer's latest exercise in verbal stupidity, and concludes,

Yes, it is offensive, in as much as it is offensively stupid. Mailer also ignores the other obvious facet of the new military: the presence of women. So apart from the fact that the military is a showcase for feminism and racial integration, it's a symbol of white male supremacy? Does no-one even edit this drivel?

My question is, Why is Andrew Sullivan paying the slightest attention to Mailer, or Mailer's colleagues in gold-medal foolishness? Mailer is not a serious man. His pronouncements on war, the Bush administration or American foreign policy have no more gravitas than if they came from Bozo the Clown.

Yet when he or Chomsky or the other nattering nabobs of Leftist foolery write such infantile drivel, Sullivan and other commentators of true stature rush to rebut them. Why on earth do they pay them any mind at all?

Andrew, you just tried to write a serious piece about an unserious person. You are treating kindergarten-level thinking as deserving weighty consideration. But remember, "Never mud wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but only the pig enjoys it."

Those people's opinions don't matter, and it's time to stop treating them as if they do.

Update: Geitner Simmons pretty much reinforces my thesis:

Mailer’s self-congratulatory intellectual posing grew tiresome long ago. The inanities he has spouted about 9/11, and now Iraq, merely reveal the full measure of his intellectual and moral shallowness.

Glenn Reynolds quotes novelist Roger Simon:

Talk about white boys who still need to know they're good at something--how about NM and political analysis? Mailer continues to see everything as sports--fills the article with stale athletic references--as if, unconsciously, he were still in competition with Hemingway. . . . That is also probably part of the reason he personifies the war in Iraq as Bush's affair. There always has to be some kind of human adversary for Norman. Issues are not the point because they are not, never have been, Mailer's forté. [Emphasis added]

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 07:35:51 AM. Permalink |   

Pfc. Lynch's Iraqi rescuer granted asylum in US
I reported earlier that Mohammed Odeh Al Rehaief (I didn't get the full name), was en route to America. His wife and daughter came with him, and they have all been granted asylum here, which will allow them to stay and eventually apply for naturalization. Mohammed "walked several miles through hostile areas of Iraq on numerous occasions to meet with American soldiers and CIA officials and, eventually, to lead them" to the hospital where Pfc. Jessica Lynch was being held captive. She was seriously wounded.


by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 07:25:47 AM. Permalink |   

Another nail in NATO's coffin
The Axis of Weasels have announced that they will form a new combined army with its own command structure and headquarters.

France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg . . . vowed to press ahead with a full-fledged defence union, brushing aside warnings that the move would entrench the European Union's bitter divisions over Iraq and could lead to the break-up of Nato.

Increasingly, we are seeing that American defense interests are more and more alienated from France and Germany. (As for Luxembourg and Belgium, militarily they are irrelevant.) The linchpins of NATO have always been Germany, Britain and the United States. Germany is bailing out of its 50-plus year-old security arrangement with the US and the UK. Meantime, the US and UK find that their common defense interests are at least as strong as ever, and maybe stronger than anytime since World War II.

France and Germany cannot hope to mount a serious competitive challenge to the US alone, much less the US and UK together. In fact, the formation of this new combined army is almost a purely political act, not really a truly defense-oriented one. For one, there is no common enemy that France and Germany face that such an arrangement can defend against. For that matter, France and Germany really face no military threat at all. The USSR is gone and the only other significant land power in Europe in Britain, which is certainly no military threat to the continent.

So who do the weasels intend to defend against? The United States, naturally. Of course, we have no military designs against the continent, either, but the point is that Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder want to form a power pole in opposition to the US. They want to be perceived as major players, not aligned with the US, on the world-power scene.

Fat chance. All four countries of the new alliance together cannot hope to match American military spending or manning, even if they had the will to do so (which they don't). Together they have exactly one aircraft carrier, very little airlift (none of it strategic quality), no heavy bombers and land forces much less resourced and poorly trained compared to the US. Technologically their militaries are at least a generation behind the United States with no hope of catching up.

The entire defense picture in Europe if very confused, though. There is NATO, which is politically stressed as never before. It entire raison d'etre, the USSR and Warsaw Pact, is gone, leaving NATO a defense alliance with no meaningful enemy. Besides,

Nato came close to buckling earlier this year when France, Belgium and Germany refused to sanction delivery of Patriot missiles to Turkey, a fellow member.

Then there is the European Union, which has a military headquarters structure that parallels NATO's. Finally, England and France agreed in February to form a combined aircraft carrier battle group to be permanently available for offensive military action worldwide. However, Tory leaders in England accused the Blair government of agreeing to the scheme to get France to back the then-upcoming Iraq war. France did not back it, and if the Tories are right, the combined carrier group idea may melt away by unspoken but common assent of Blair and Chirac.

My analysis: The United States will continue to prop up NATO with words and money, while in deed disentangling itself from it. A review of American basing in Europe is already underway, but will become quite serious before long. Philip Carter says that not only will the location of US bases in Europe change, so will the nature of the bases themselves.

Moving bases from one part of Europe to another is small potatoes. Instead, I think we're going to see a transformation of the nature of these bases -- from permanent garrisons to "lily pads" from which the American military can leapfrog abroad. Instead of maintaining large units in Europe like we do today, I think we're moving towards a model where we keep all these units in the United States, with their equipment pre-positioned in places like Diego Garcia and Eastern Europe, ready to deploy with them as a package to anyplace in the world. This would substantially lower operating costs, and increase the quality of life for soldiers who would choose to live in the United States (there will still be plenty of overseas opportunities for those who want to go). Moving out of Western Europe, with its gargantuan Cold War-era bases, is one step towards this new vision.

Quite so. At the same time, look for defense ties between the UK and the US to grow even more, with probably a lot more combined exercises in the years ahead. I'll even predict that the Iraq war was Britain's doorway to returning to true Great Power status. (But we won't know for a few years.)

by Donald Sensing, 4/30/2003 06:39:44 AM. Permalink |   

Say what?
Headline from Vanderbilt University news service: "Professor Receives Nuclear Waste Lifetime Achievement Award."

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 11:11:13 PM. Permalink |   

ATTN: Vanderbilt alumni Iraq war vets
Email from Vanderbilt Alumni affairs: "We would love to hear from any Vanderbilt alumni serving in the armed services during Operation Iraqi Freedom. E-mail your name, rank and any special experiences on the ground in Iraq or aboard ships and planes supporting the land campaign to [email protected]."

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 11:09:26 PM. Permalink |   

The French Army knife . . .
Has made its debut. Really.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 10:31:29 PM. Permalink |   

This is sad
Really sad. Now you know why kidz kant rite.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 04:38:43 PM. Permalink |   

Green Berets inside Iraq for past 8 months?
Bill Hobbs reports that a news release by US Central Command contains the tidbit that members of the US Army's 5th Special Forces Group "have been working with the townspeople [of the Iraqi town of Abu Ghurayb] for over eight months" and recently played a major role in the free election of a city council there. No military office would comment further on the duration of the Special Forces soldiers work with the town.

Eight months, eh? Nothing to add, huh? I'll bet the Green Berets have been there at least that long, and that the mention of "eight months" in the news release was not supposed to be there.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 03:53:43 PM. Permalink |   

"It's all about the oooiiiiiilllll!"
Greedy American imperialists have showed their hand in their plan to control Arab oil fields by securing their military presence in the oil-rich Arab countries. Not content with occupying Iraq, which is swimming in oil, the American military has new designs regarding its basing of soldiers in Saudi Arabia:

The United States said on Tuesday it was ending military operations in Saudi Arabia and removing virtually all of its forces from the kingdom by mutual agreement after the Iraq war.

This proves that the American infidels are seeking to cement their hegemony and control of oil . . . uh, er, um, . . . wait . . . oh, never mind.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 03:43:28 PM. Permalink |   

More on Hillary's book
I predicted this morning that Hillary Clinton's book, Living History, set for June 9 release, will wind up in the remainder bins at bookstores by the end of June. I had a long conversation with a book-industry insider today, one whom I have known very well for most of my life. Here are some nuggets he gave me about the book biz.

Take the announcement of a first-run printing of one million copies with a huge grain of salt. In the book business, a first run of 100,000 is considered the benchmark for a large run. It is common for the number of first-run books actually printed to be very much smaller than the hype-ridden number first announced.

It's also common for the list price of major-hype books to be inflated so that they can immediately be discounted by retailers, with the result that the actual sale price is what the publisher wants to charge to begin with. Example: J. K. Rowling's next Harry Potter book, due out June 21, lists at $29.99; Amazon is pre-selling it for $17.99. Amazon does not list Living History, but Barnesandnoble.com does, list price given as $28, preselling for $19.60.

Unlike music sales, there is no industry-wide way to capture retail book sales. Borders knows what it sells, Barnes and Noble knows what it sells, Amazon knows what Amazon sells, but there is no independent or third-party entity that tracks all sales. A system called Bookscan is being put into place to do that, but it is not fully embedded yet and is not yet well integrated electronically.

When a publisher says it sold X number of copies, this is open to very wide interpretation. It often means the number of copies they sold and shipped to distributors and to the large chains, but not the number of copies retailers sold. Publishers do keep track of retail sales through the major sellers (who sell the publishers the information), but generally hold the information rather than release it. Publishers always "spin" sales numbers for marketing advantage since there is no independent way to verify figures.

Publishers have been known to finance retail sales to pump up sales volume, especially for stores that report sales to the New York Times bestseller list, but this is uncommon for the major publishing houses.

Take Hillary's $8 million advance with a grain of salt. Advance contracts are riddled with escape clauses for publishers. The $8 million figure is the total amount payable under the contract, but does not necessarily mean that Hillary will ever see that amount.

Advances are prepayments of sales royalties to the author. Payments of advances are almost always "benchmarked" to certain sales figures after the initial advance payment is made. Large advances can sometimes take years to pay, depending on how the contract is structured.
It's not unusual for authors actually to have to refund part of advances paid because sales didn't meet projections. However, my source said that Hillary is probably protected against paying back.

The risk to the publisher for this book might be really huge if it did already pay Hillary a very large advance (likely because of her celebrity status). Retailers and wholesalers will return unsold books for refund or credit.

Update: Steve Zeitchick, an editor of "Publishers Weekly," just said on the Cavuto show that the book will be a hard sell to catch on with retail buyers.

Update 2: My source read this posting and offered some comments. He emailed:

I don't disagree with the spirit of your prediction, but I think the end of June timeframe is aggressive [for the book to start being remaindered]. BTW, in regard to first print runs, of course for a Harry Potter, or John Grisham, where the publisher doesn't need to hype, you can take those initial printrun numbers literally.

FWIW!


by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 03:21:09 PM. Permalink |   

Could SARS in China bring a Marxist revolution?
I have just finished rereading Lee Harris' outstanding article from last December, "The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing," which I commend to you strongly.

In it, Harris traces the evolution of Marxist theory from what Marx developed to its post-modern manifestation. But the pertinent part for now is the way Harris explains why the proletariat would finally, inevitably revolt against the capitalist, ruling class: the proletariat would become increasingly "immiserized."

Schematically the scenario went something like this:

The capitalists would begin to suffer from a falling rate of profit.

The workers would therefore be "immiserized"; they would become poorer as the capitalists struggled to keep their own heads above water.

The poverty of the workers would drive them to overthrow the capitalist system - their poverty, not their ideals.

Hence, for Marx, the revolution would spring from economic causes, but its effects would necessarily be political. Therefore, said he, the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class was based on economics, but it was really a political struggle.

Comes now this posting by Jeff Jarvis, quoting a Hong Kong blogger, writing of the classes in China and how the SARS epidemic there shows the truth about the economic repression of the Chinese masses:

The ruling class accumulates capital by brutally squeezing peasants. The rich live in obscene luxury while peasants are impoverished. SARS has erupted as a result of the unhygienic conditions the impoverished class face. The ruling class live separately from these conditions, but they have a moral duty and must help shoulder the responsibility to establish a fair foundation for all people in society. The price of the rich living extravagantly is the disorder of the lower classes and a disease like SARS.

Jeff notes that rioting in at least one Chinese city has already occurred because of SARS, then asks, "Could disease bring revolution?"

Would it not be delicious irony if the first-ever genuine Marxist revolution took place in a nominally Marxist state?

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 11:25:57 AM. Permalink |   

Hillary's book: 1 million first printing
Hillary Clinton's novel factual account, Living History, of her years in the White House is scheduled for a first-run printing of one million copies, and will be released on June 9.

"Only a small handful of books have a 1-million-copy first printing, and I cannot think of another nonfiction book in recent history that has had that large a first printing," Robert Barnett, Clinton's lawyer, said Sunday.

The first lady-turned senator was paid an $8 million advance by Simon & Schuster.

Look for Living History in your bookstore's remainder bin by the end of June. Simon & Schuster will take a major bath on this one and the departure of its managers who laid out the money will soon follow.

The book is not yet listed on Amazon.com

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 08:06:51 AM. Permalink |   

Saddam bought and sold media
Saddam Hussein once said that reporters are better than tanks - they are cheaper and he got more for his money. And no one bought and sold westerns news reporters like Saddam did. Read the whole sickening story.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 07:50:20 AM. Permalink |   

Justified homicide by clergy
My post on the lethal shootings of two intruders by an Alaskan pastor, and my explication of putting myself in his shoes, drew a lot of commentary. In it I said that I would not shoot someone to protect my church's property (the circumstances of the Alaska killings), I would use lethal force if necessary to protect the lives of others, and would probably use force if necessary to protect only myself, "but if the other person did die, I do not think I could continue in the ministry."

Why, some folks wondered, would I resign my office if I justifiably took a life? (I mean "justifiably" in the legal sense.) Charles Austin emailed me that resignation struck him as odd:

Isn't forgiveness of your sins a central tenet of your faith? Or is this a matter of something other than sin? We all fall short. If you committed a serious crime, could you not admit your guilt, taking full responsibility and accepting the penalty -- and yet, still minister to others afterwards?

I disagree with another commenter in that I do believe we have the right to use force to protect our property. If you find an intruder in your home it can be problematical to ask whether he intends you any harm, or is he just interested in your property?

When I lived in northern Virginia the Washington Post Magazine carried a long cover story one Sunday about a DC clergyman who was a convicted murderer, second degree, as I recall. He had killed a man with a bow and arrow and was sentenced accordingly to a long prison term. While in prison he converted to Christian faith. When he was released from prison he came to believe he was being called to the ministry. His church's leaders (Presbyterian or Episcopalian, I can't recall which) became convinced he was sincere, agreed his call was genuine, and supported his candidacy for ordination precisely because of what Charles says: repentance must be followed by forgiveness, and that through the grace of Christ, though our sins be red as scarlet they will be washed white as snow, as Isaiah put it.

So for me the issue is not one of sin because Charles is correct: forgiveness of sins is a central tenet of Christian faith. My point is this: the act of giving of the Eucharist is fundamentally and completely incompatible with the taking of life. It is a question, really, of purity codes, the term of art used to describe incompatibilities between what people do (even what they must do) and the ideals of their religious faith. All religions have such codes, more or less explicitly. In Jesus' day a Jewish lay movement called the Pharisees emphasized purity codes very strongly, and this emphasis was one which Jesus argued and practiced against. I explained in some detail here.

I don't wish to get into a long discussion of how Christians managed to discard one set of purity codes, the Pharisees', for another (pick a denomination; they all have purity codes but often don't realize it). My point is that within my own conscience, I believe that to take a human life, even in the most obviously justifiable circumstances, crosses the line between the ideal of ordained ministry and the practice of it.

It is impossible to separate the minister from the office. What a minister is, is what he or she does; what he does is what he is.

The UMC, my denomination, has an appointment category for ministers called, "Leave of Absence." Because ordination is for life, we technically resign from pastoral service rather than the ordination itself. (However, a UMC minister can renounce his orders if he wishes, and the bishop can revoke orders for just cause as well; I have seen this done in Tennessee. The pastor concerned was having an affair with a married woman in his congregation, so I was told. So the bishop un-ordained him, as he should have.)

Leave of absence means a minister declines to accept pastoral appointment. It need not be permanent; some ministers on LOA do return. So that is what I mean - I would request leave of absence and try to work through the issues with the bishop and other pastors whom I trust.

I I would not use deadly force to defend my church building. A home intrusion is another thing because it involves other lives, namely those of my family.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 07:46:44 AM. Permalink |   

Genocide
Dean Esmay takes a detailed look at genocide of the 20th century. He starts with Stalin's desire to kill all the Cossacks in the USSR. Stalin invented the concentration camp, where prisoners were literally worked and starved to death at the same time.

The Soviet government printed up signs in the affected parts of the Soviet Union, letting citizens know that eating their own children was an act of barbarism. They also did their best to crack down on the practice of cannibalizing corpses stolen from mass graves and hospitals by people who otherwise had nothing at all to eat. (The New York Times was on hand to report but, unfortunately, their correspondent was friendly to Stalin's regime.)

But this genocide was not at all the first of the century, and would soon be overshadowed by more notorious acts. Read it all.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 06:48:30 AM. Permalink |   

Joke Break
Job Interview:
"Where did you receive your training?"
"Yale."
"Good, and what's your name?"
"Yim Yohnson."


by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 06:08:28 AM. Permalink |   

Debt and the Boomers
There was a story in yesterday's Tennessean (my local paper) about how the Baby Boomer generation (mine) has turned a corner and decided to be debt-free when they retire.

My question is, why wait so long? Most boomers have well over 20 years to go before retirement, some close to 30.

So I was all set to write up a post about killing The Great Satan Debt when Glenn Reynolds linked to Clayton Cramer's multi-part series on doing exactly that. So read it and come back here because I have a condensed version of the bottom line to raising your bottom line. I posted it last year on my anti-lottery site. But here it is again:

The absolute cardinal rule: You must live on less money than you make. If you are not willing to take this step, you will never become wealthy. Even if you hit a gazillion-to-one odds and won a lottery jackpot, if you live above your means you will go broke, no matter how much money you start out with.

Never borrow money. If you are borrow money for any reason, you break rule number 1. The primary way Americans borrow money is by using credit cards and buying cars. So -- destroy your credit cards, close the accounts pay them off and get on a cash basis. I did this years ago and the relief and feeling of freedom was enormous. Still is! The only exception is to borrow money to buy a home to live in. That's because homes increase in value over time.

Invest 10 -15 percent of each month's income into mutual funds. Yeah, I know the market stinks right now. So what. This is for the long term. (Bad idea to put money into a mutual fund for less than five years; the risk is too high.) Do this only after you have saved up 4 - 6 months expenses in a savings account. Average-performing funds have returned 10-12 percent per year for decades. Investing only $200 per month from age 23-60 will give you more than $1,500,000. If you increase the $200 per month by only 3% per year, you'll have $2,000,000.

A special word about cars:

Never, never, never lease a car for any reason whatsoever. Never. Don't give me bunk about tax savings, paying only for the time you use the car, blah, blah, blah. It's all blah-blah-blah. Leasing a car is the most expensive way to drive a car. Period.

Do not buy a new car unless you are so filthy, stinking rich you can pay cash from the petty cash drawer. In which case you don't need to be reading my advice or Clayton Cramer's either. New cars plummet in value from the moment you drive it off the dealer's lot. They are more expensive to insure. The average car payment in America today is about $370. If you buy a $25,000 car and finance $19,100 for five years, my calculator says your payment is $370. But at the end of the five years, your car will typically be worth about $10,000. You haven't paid $370 per month, you've paid $620! Best bet: get a good three-year-old vehicle. The biggest chunk of depreciation has passed and some will still be under factory warranty. Then drive it forever.

Finally, listen to this guy on the radio or webcast for four weeks.

by Donald Sensing, 4/29/2003 06:07:08 AM. Permalink |   

The Religious Left will never repent of its sins
The Left-wing clergy of America should be just as embarrassed about their prewar pronouncements as the Left-wing celebrities should be. But neither are, of course. Joseph Loconte documents some of the outrageous falsehoods propagated by the Religious Left, including members of my own denomination, the United Methodist Church. They willfully ignored or denied the plain, verified facts of the truth about Saddam Hussein, his regime, and what was happening to the Iraqi people.

Antiwar clerics remained silent about these facts, apparently in order to keep the faith about containing the Butcher of Baghdad: He had no serious interest, they said, in weapons of mass destruction. Seeing little evidence that Saddam was rearming, editors at the Christian Century rejected arguments for war as "extreme and unfounded." Jim Winkler, of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, complained of "an astonishing lack of evidence" to justify military intervention.

I await confessions of error at the minimum from the UMC's Bishops Peter Storey and Melvin Talbert; it is too much to expect that either will own up to their active role in urging that the Iraqi people be left to murder, torture, oppression and poverty under Saddam (and so urging in the name of Christ!). Storey wrote in February that the US military would kill more than 200,000 Iraqi citizens, he was off by a factor of about 100.

It seems clear to me that, as I have written before, the oldline American Protestant churches are dominated by people who are primarily political, not primarily theological in their world view. They seem perhaps evenly divided between the two main camps that I discussed here. Having predetermined their political identity, they pile on religious language to back it up.

The neo-Marxist politicization of Western Christian theology is not total, but it's very deep. These are men and women who have allowed themselves to be propagandized by postmodern dialectics and see no redeeming virtues in Western civilization, especially America. They have no theology, not really, they have only left-wing political philosophy (and not even a well-done philosophy) that they have dressed up in God talk and called theology.

They should be ashamed, but they aren't. And they never will be.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 12:57:53 PM. Permalink |   

Are you as smart as an NFL football player?
The NFL gives an IQ test called the Wonderlic Test to its players. Believe it or not, offensive tackles as a group score higher than quarterbacks. "A score of 50 is perfect, 20 is about average, 10 means you need help tying your shoes."

You can take a sample of the Wonderlic test. My score was 93.3 percent, or 46.6 on the NFL's 50-point scale.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 09:15:39 AM. Permalink |   

Academic blog research project needs blogger input
Rebecca Reynolds is in the Media Studies master's degree program at Newhouse School of Public Communications. She is conducting a blog research project and would like bloggers to give her some raw data inputs. Please email her if you would like to participate.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 08:54:07 AM. Permalink |   

The Louisiana Purchase cemented American democracy
This week marks the bicentennial of the purchase by the United States of 556 million acres of land from Napoleon, emperor of France. What the Jefferson administration was really trying to do was gain unfettered access up the Mississippi river from New Orleans, but Napoleon, eager to raise cash for conquering Europe, threw in a expanse of land so vast that it's purchase doubled the size of the United States, literally overnight. The purchase was a huge cash cow for the US government. The purchase cost the US treasury three cents per acre, but federal land was then being sold to the American public for $2 per acre. Sale of federal land to the general public was a unique American practice.

Under Spain and France, the province had been a near-feudal domain, ruled by appointees from Europe, with the land sold only to those approved by the governor. In the United States, however, land could be owned by whoever could afford it. Since 1785, all federal land west of the Appalachians had, at Jefferson's urging, been measured out in one-mile-square sections for sale as real estate, and this grid of squares now extended into the Louisiana Purchase.

For the first time in history, land, the primary source of wealth production, could be owned by anyone: speculators, settlers, even squatters. "Power," said John Adams, with ice-cold accuracy, "always follows property." In the Old World property was distributed in a hierarchical manner with the powerful few owning most; but as America spread westward, more than one billion acres of public land, including most of the Louisiana Purchase, would pass into private hands. Power still followed property, but now it was spread democratically, and the nation it created possessed innate stability, because each property-owning citizen had a vested interest in a law-abiding society.

Private property rights are an essential precursor of democracy.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 08:50:19 AM. Permalink |   

Some notes from the mailbag
Another legend falls to science?
Could Goliath (killed by the future King David) have attained his height by suffering from acromegaly? It is an oversupply of growth hormone in the body. That's what Rob ponders over at One Name Left.

The Hollywood homosexual agenda
Reader Mary in Oregon emails,

My husband just brought home "Far from Heaven" for us to watch, and he told me it was "a best picture about family values, etc." There was nothing to indicate it was about a homosexual relationship the husband in the movie was having. We both refused to watch any further when the true message was revealed. This kind of thing really steams me. I usually check out reviews on Christian movie review sites, but I didn't on this one. To me, it is really dishonest to write up reviews on the cover of a video that don't portray the real issues of the film. Do you think I'm being too judgmental?

The IMDB review of the movie is here. I have not seen the movie, so won't comment on it directly. Is there a social movement to get the American mainstream public to accept homosexuality as normal, or at least non-objectionable? Of course. Do some motion pictures support that effort? Seems so (although based on a viewer review of Far From Heaven, the gay husband is portrayed as a pretty contemptible character).

If you believe you were deceived by the marketing, then I don't think you are being judgmental. But I have not written very much about social issues such as this on my blog, since I have focused on political-military affairs, international relations and how theology can inform the affairs of state (or not, as the case may be). While I understand that the perceived "gay agenda" is a subject of debate in many circles. it is not a subject that attracts me for blogging.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 08:25:02 AM. Permalink |   

Another reason the United Nations is really a joke
Not long ago the UN censured North Korea and Cuba for violating human rights. Now the UN wants them to join the UN Human Rights Comission, now chaired by Libya, a dictatorship with a dismal rights record.

Other nominees with dismal human rights records include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have denounced the way the commission's members are selected.

The UN is now a bad parody of itself. America's interests are not served there, and neither are the interests of billions of people who live under the repressive regimes who sit on commissions such as these. The UN has become an instrument abetting repression and dictatorship. It is hostile to freedom and the dignity of humankind. It is also beyond reform. (via Braden Files)

Update: Anne Bayefsky, adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School and professor of political science at York University, Toronto, and a member of the governing board of UN Watch, writes today,

The sad fact is that the U.N. is not only a failed leader in the protection of human rights, but is itself a substrate of xenophobia and aggression. The U.S. pays 22% of the U.N.'s regular budget. Yet today's U.N. operates in fundamental opposition to the values of the U.S.--and to its own universal human-rights foundations.

The reason I said the UN is beyond reform is because the only people who can reform it are the ones who are most benefiting from the status quo. The UN has become a thugocracy clearing house. The UN is thoroughly corrupt, and it is being run by the corrupt. You may as well expect a Mafia family to lead the charge for law and order.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 07:59:39 AM. Permalink |   

Toronto Blue Jays offer $1 tickets to buck SARS
When the box office for the Blue Jays opens Tuesday for the team's gamer with the Texas Rangers, all unsold tickets will be sold for one thin dollar. Everyone who already bought a ticket for face value will receive a voucher good for a $1 ticket later in the season. The American ambassador to Canada was invited to the game and has accepted. Said Jays president Paul Godfrey, "There's no quarantine sign hanging on Toronto."

Meanwhile the World Health Organization says that the worst of the SARS outbreak is over in Canada, as well as Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam, but appears still to be spreading inside China.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 07:45:51 AM. Permalink |   

"Harry Potter" creator richer than Queen Elizabeth
British author J. K. Rowling literally went from rags to riches when she conceived of and wrote the Harry Potter books. Now she is worth 30 million pounds more than Queen Elizabeth.

he latest edition of The Sunday Times Rich List estimates J.K.Rowling's fortune at £280m - a full £30m ahead of the personal wealth of the Queen. With the fifth episode of her seven-book series due in June, Ms Rowling's income looks set to keep on growing. The 37-year-old author comes in at number 122, the ninth-richest woman in the list and the highest-placed female not to amass her wealth by marriage or inheritance.

I have seen both the Potter movies made so far - the third is being made now - and consider the second to be very superior to the first. But I have not read any of the books. My kids have read them all, natch, so the educated me on the basic Potter-series vocabulary, a necessity to understand the movies.

by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 07:41:40 AM. Permalink |   

Gen. Tommy Franks to be indicted for war crimes?
A Belgian lawyer says that he has found 10 Baghdadis who will testify that American forces committed atrocities in the Iraq War. The lawyer says a Belgian court might indict Gen. Tommy Franks as a result.

The complaint will state that coalition forces are responsible for the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians, the bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad, the shooting of an ambulance, and failure to prevent the mass looting of hospitals, said Jan Fermon, a Brussels-based lawyer. He is representing about 10 Iraqis who say they were victims of or eyewitnesses to atrocities committed during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Mr. Fermon said the complaint will ask an investigative magistrate to look into whether indictments should be issued against Gen. Franks. If an indictment is filed against the general and other U.S. officials, they could be convicted and sentenced by a Belgian court.

The Bush administration warned, "there will be diplomatic consequences for Belgium" if the complaint is taken up. In 1993, Beligium passed a domestic (not treaty-based law) that they claim gives Belgium the authority to "to judge war crimes committed by noncitizens anywhere in the world."

Update: Steven Den Beste has more, including a suggestion that we move "NATO HQ out of the hostile enemy-occupied city of Brussels, to a city in a nation whose government is actually allied with us. Like Warsaw."



by Donald Sensing, 4/28/2003 06:56:58 AM. Permalink |   

The arms races are over
All of them. So says Gregg Easterbrook. The naval arms race - over. The aerial arms race - over. The land power race - basically over, also. Space? Over. Battlespace information processing and technology? Over.

The United States has won all of them. Combat experience? The US has it is spades compared to other militaries of the world.

Which means: the global arms race is over, with the United States the undisputed heavyweight champion. Other nations are not even trying to match American armed force, because they are so far behind they have no chance of catching up. The great-powers arms race, in progress for centuries, has ended with the rest of the world conceding triumph to the United States.

In what is a very good summary of the world military condition, Gregg makes one glaring error, though. He writes,

. . . experience has shown that military power can solve only military problems, not political ones.

In fact, all military problems are political problems (but not all political problems are military, of course). That is why, while military power can solve military problems, military power alone really cannot completely solve any problem in full. Political problems are multifaceted, and the military component thereof (if there is one) is only one facet. It can be a pretty important facet, even pre-eminent at times. But it is still only one facet. The other issues of complex political problems are affected, but not actually solved, by resolving the military part.

by Donald Sensing, 4/27/2003 07:25:20 PM. Permalink |   

Bumping into a Sveedish Princess
Dave Francis literally did. At an art exhibit.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 09:49:22 PM. Permalink |   

China talks about Korea a "debacle"
Force China to reassess its support for North Korea

The boast by North Korea at this week's tripartite talks in Beijing that it possessed atomic weapons came as a "shock" to China, according to a Chinese foreign policy analyst in Beijing. The talks between the US, North Korea and China were intended by the Chinese to cement their position as a major player in Korean affairs and an obstacle to American policy.

The talks in Beijing this week, which the Chinese had actively sought, "turned into a debacle for them," said a senior administration official. "The problem of nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula is more concrete than they thought before."

In Beijing, where Chinese diplomats earlier this week had been congratulating themselves on their country's new activism in bringing the United States and North Korea together, there was little disagreement with the U.S. analysis. "This is a shock," said Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert in Beijing. "China will never allow a nuclear weapon in North Korea."

In many ways, China has been hoisted on its own petard. China provides enormous quantities of fuel and food to North Korea, without which the North would simply collapse.

But the North Koreans are starving to barely subsisting. If China withdraws substantial material support and aid, it faces the certainty that huge numbers of North Koreans becoming refugee on China's side of the Yalu river, bordering North Korea. If China does not rein in North Korea's regime, which the Chinese increasingly see as illogical and unpredictable, a nuclear-armed North Korea poses a threat to regional peace that China cannot accept.

Unlike 1951, when China massively intervened in the Korean War on the North's behalf, there is no "upside" to China for North Korea to start a war with South Korea. In fact, South Korea is more important to China's future than the North. But a military defeat of the North by America, South Korea and other allies (which is certain should the North make war) would be a huge propaganda defeat for China in a region where "face" is still critical.

But the good news from the Beijing talks farce is that the Chinese are starting to see more clearly that they have to veer toward America's position to protect their own interests. China is not actually more likely to support US initiatives in the future Instead of blocking them, but they are more likely to decline from working against them.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 09:30:03 PM. Permalink |   

Documents prove Saddam - bin Laden direct link
The UK Telegraph is reporting that documents found in the former headquarters of Saddam's intelligence service prove conclusively that there was a direct tie between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. The Telegraph says that found Iraqi papers document in detail the 1998 visit of an al Qaeda representative to Baghdad.

The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.

Handwritten notes on the documents show that the visit and followup was coordinated with such senior Iraqi intelligence officials that there is no chance Saddam himself was not personally involved in the affair.

Bin Laden is a Saudi native, of course, but the House of Saud stripped him of his citizenship several years ago. Bin Laden has said several times that the House of Saud is illegitimate and should be destroyed because it invited American infidel troops to be stationed on the holy soil of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the native land of Mohammed.

Update: Richard Heddleson emails that the document trove also showed that the French government was providing Saddam with regular summaries of its official conversations with the Bush administration. Wonders Richard, ""Think that will be enough to scuttle NATO?"

Well, it does NATO no good, but NATO, like the UN, has been gasping its last for some time now.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 08:49:06 PM. Permalink |   

Pastor kills two burglars
The pastor of a very small church in Alaska shot and killed two men Thursday who were breaking into his church. Police said the shootings culminated a long period of break-ins and vandalism. Local residents interviewed cheered the shootings, with some saying it was "God's wrath."

One of the men died at the church. The other, mortally wounded, drove to his girlfriend's house and died there.

Kim du Toit wrote this up and observed, "Sorry, Donald, but this man definitely has The Right Stuff." I assume I am the Donald he refers to. Now I know that Kim knows that trap shooting is my favorite pastime and that I compete in it every chance I get. In fact, I had scheduled myself to shoot in a tournament today, but weather got in the way.

But Kim's post and the news story call renew the debate about the use of force, especially lethal force, by observant Christians and especially by clergy. The story does not say whether the intruders were armed or whether they threatened the pastor, armed or not. An investigation is underway by the district attorney's office. So let us not concern ourselves here and now with the legal question; in fact, let me assume for argument's sake that the DA finds the shootings legally justifiable.

The moral-ethical question has two parts: Is the use of such force by an observant Christian justifiable with a Christian ethic, and if so, is there a higher standard for clergy?

The question is not merely academic, as the controversy shows over the active use of weapons by an Army chaplain in a fierce battle in Baghdad. Within the law and ethic of the US Army, the rules are different for chaplains than for soldiers. They are strictly forbidden by policy to use weapons "under any circumstances," as a chaplain instructor told me (see the post).

In my post about the chaplain controversy, I explained the theological basis for chaplains should not use arms when Christian laity are theologically "clear" to do so. Basically, it is because clergy are especially called to consecrate and offer the Eucharistic elements, the body and blood of Christ. As Prof. Darrell Cole explains (see my posting),

Second [according to Aquinas], it is "unbecoming" for those who give the Eucharist to shed blood, even if they do so without sin (i.e., in a just war). Unlike Calvin, then, Aquinas finds the duties of clergy to be more meritorious than the duties of soldiers. However, this does not mean that, in Aquinas' view, the soldier's duties have no merit. Rather, he employs an analogy to make quite the opposite point: it is meritorious to marry but better still to remain a virgin and thus dedicate yourself wholly to spiritual concerns. Likewise, it is meritorious to fight just wars and restrain evil as a soldier, but more meritorious still to serve as a bishop who provides the Eucharist to the faithful.

One may argue that in the civilian arena, the Alaska incident for example, that such concerns do not apply. But I do not dismiss them so easily even though I am now a civilian. In my own mind and faith, I do see a certain incongruity, at the least, between using deadly force and the office of my ordination.

So what would I do if I were to find myself in my Alaskan colleague's shoes?

I would not kill anyone simply to protect my church's property. If I can find any justification for lethal force, within the context of my faith, it can only be to protect life, not property.

In 1999, Larry Gene Ashbrook, armed with two guns, killed seven people and wounded seven at a youth rally at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. No one in the church was armed. Ashbrook killed himself when police arrived.

Suppose that an off-duty, armed policeman had been attending the rally. Would he have been justified in shooting Ashbrook to stop the killings? There is no doubt that Ashbrook went to the church to kill people and started doing so almost immediately upon arrival. I assume that everyone reading this post agrees that an off-duty policeman would have been justified in drawing his weapon and shooting Ashbrook to stop him from shooting the youth.

Suppose that there was no police officer, but there was an armed adult there who possessed a gun-carry permit. (Texas law did not exclude churches from places arms could be legally carried.) Would that adult have been justified in shooting Ashbrook? I say yes.

Suppose the pastor there knew one of his members was a police officer, and suppose the cop was the first to fall. Would the pastor be justified in picking up the fallen cop's gun and shooting the killer? I say yes.

A different scenario: is a pastor justified to use lethal force purely in self defense, when no other lives are at stake? Historically, the Church has often answered, "No." In fact, one motto of missionaries in times past was, "Die if necessary, but never kill."

For me, to permit myself to be murdered would leave my wife a widow and our three children fatherless, with all that entails. Would I have the right, as a Christian, to permit that to happen to my family when its cause is a lawless person? Pacifism says yes, that is what I would have to do. And while I have no real religious compunctions about using lethal force if necessary to defend the lives of innocent others, I admit I am somewhat repelled by the prospect of killing to preserve merely my own life.

I think I would use lethal force if necessary to defend myself from potentially lethal attack, but if the other person did die, I do not think I could continue in the ministry.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 03:41:57 PM. Permalink |   

Thriving arms trade in Iraq
Baghdad's bazaars now openly offer for sale almost any military small arms weapon up to and including RPGs.

From all around the plaza in the Baghdad al Jadidah district came the metal-on-metal sounds of men locking and loading -- jamming banana-shaped bullet clips into AK-47 assault rifles and working the bolts -- then firing bursts into the air.

The weapons are ones abandoned by Iraq's armed forces which have made their way into the underground economy. Regular gun dealers are unhappy:

Yassin Khodaier [said] from behind the counter of his licensed family business, the Target Gun Shop. "They are thieves! They stole all these guns and are selling them over there at cheap prices. . . . Good people are sitting at home crying about this situation. It is because of America that we are in this condition."

The arms are everywhere because there was no surrender of Iraqi units to allied forces. Iraqi soldiers either died or just abandoned the battlefield and went home. There was no occasion for Iraqi units to stack arms before the victors.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 06:45:32 AM. Permalink |   

Muslim editor defends Pipes nominaton
The Washington Post has gone of record opposing the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The Post' said it opposed the nomination because Muslims see Pipes as a destroyer of "cultural bridges to the Muslim world."

Tashbih Sayyed, editor in chief of the US-based paper Pakistan Today, informs the Post,

At best, your editorial confuses Pipes's opposition to militant Islam with opposition to Islam as a whole. At worst, it reduces all Muslim opinion to an enthusiasm for a totalitarian form of the religion. Fortunately, a broader spectrum of Muslim opinion exists. Unfortunately, many anti-militant Muslims do not speak out, fearful of retribution even in the United States. . . .

The premise of the U.S. government over the past decade has been that political activism on behalf of Islam is or can be made moderate. Sept. 11 should have made clear the falsehood of this assumption. Had the true nature of militant Islam been better recognized, thousands of lives might have been saved; worse, we now jeopardize more lives by not shaking off lazy attitudes, especially in such critical areas as immigration policy and law enforcement.

I, for one, appreciate what Daniel Pipes is doing because I fled my homeland of Pakistan to escape militant Islam. The Senate should confirm his nomination to the U.S. Institute of Peace.

The Post, unsurprisingly, is guilty of group-identity politics. But all that does is attribute to everyone in the group the same extremist views of the most strident among them.

by Donald Sensing, 4/26/2003 06:45:02 AM. Permalink |   

More on potential for Iraqi democracy
Patrick Basham of The Cato Institute examines the potential for democracy in Iraq, quoting Bernard Lewis, "In Europe, they are afraid it won't be possible. In the Middle East, they are afraid it will be possible." Says Basham,

The building blocks of a modern democratic political culture aren't institutional (elections, parties, legislatures, and constitutions) in nature. Rather, they are found in apt economic conditions (rising living standards and a large, thriving middle class) and supportive cultural values (political trust, political participation, tolerance of minorities, and gender equality). . . .

The economic and cultural conditions prevalent in Iraqi society fall far short of what is found in all established democracies. Like many of its Arab neighbors, Iraq has failed to come to terms w