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Archive for February, 2008

Soy saves bones

Posted by Richard on February 29, 2008

Two new meta-analyses of soy studies provide strong confirmation that women can improve bone mineral density, inhibit bone resorption, and increase bone formation by supplementing with soy isoflavones. The meta-analyses, one by Chinese and one by Japanese researchers, appear in the February issue of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the journal Clinical Nutrition, respectively. According to Life Extension Foundation (emphasis added):

The first meta-analysis found an average decrease in urinary deoxypyridinoline [bone resorption marker] of 2.08 nanomoles per millimole, and an average increase of 1.48 micrograms per liter of BAP [bone formation marker] in women who received isoflavones compared with those who received a placebo. “Isoflavone intervention significantly inhibits bone resorption and stimulates bone formation,” the authors stated. “These favorable effects occur even if less than 90 milligrams per day of isoflavones are consumed or the intervention lasts less than 12 weeks.”

The second review also found a bone-building benefit for soy. In the clinical trials examined, women who received soy experienced a significant increase of 20.6 milligrams per cubic centimeter in spine bone mineral density compared with those who received a placebo. Bone mineral content also increased, but to a lesser extent. Benefits were greater when more than 90 milligrams per day isoflavones were consumed, or when the trial lasted at least six months. “The results clearly suggested that isoflavones contributed significantly to the increase of spinal bone mineral density, especially in postmenopausal women,” Dr Wang and his coauthors conclude.

… The lower incidence of osteoporosis-related fracture among Asian women who consume 10 to 20 times more soy than Western women may point to a bone-protective effect of soy isoflavones. The authors recommend large randomized clinical trials using graded dosages of isoflavones to measure their long term effects on bone mass as well as fracture risk.

Larger studies would indeed be helpful. But if you're concerned about osteoporosis, you may not want to wait for those. You may want to take soy supplements or add soy milk, edamame, tempeh, or tofu to your diet. The latter, I understand, can be made quite palatable by wrapping it in bacon.  

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Bill Buckley, wordsmith

Posted by Richard on February 28, 2008

On the TECHWR-L mailing list for technical writers, Yves Jeaurond noted the passing of William F. Buckley and pointed out that Buckley's last National Review column (about a Clinton-Obama debate) drew heavily from and profusely praised Henry Fowler's  Modern English Usage, a work much revered by us tech writers. The column, Jeaurond observed, was "a fitting end piece for a fan of the English language, articulate speech and voluptuous prose."

Buckley was a big fan of Fowler:

My reluctance to quote at such length from the great Fowler is mitigated by my serious wish that students of the English language would themselves take the initiative of familiarizing themselves with the profundities and niceties of the points being made by Mr. Fowler.

I wasn't a big fan of Bill Buckley, but did admire his erudition and humor. Here are a couple of quotes I particularly like. The first demonstrates that he wasn't the snobbish elitist he sometimes appeared to be:

I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

The second reminds me of a much longer John Stuart Mill quote ("War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things…"). Buckley's take is marvelously succinct and powerful:

World War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery.

Buckley apparently passed away at his desk, writing — an entirely fitting and proper end for an outstanding wordsmith.

UPDATE: One of the most important things Buckley did for the conservative movement that he helped grow and shape was to insist that there was no room in that movement for racists, anti-Semites, and kooks like the Birchers. And that reminds me of another great Buckley quote. The John Birch Society's Robert Welch accused President Dwight David Eisenhower (among others) of being a communist. Buckley's reaction: "Eisenhower isn't a communist. He's a golfer." 

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Global cooling

Posted by Richard on February 28, 2008

In several previous posts about the global warming issue, I've pointed out that we're due for an ice age and that maybe we should intensify our efforts to warm the globe in order to offset this impending catastrophe. See, for instance, this post (and the wonderful dialog I had with Fred Bortz in the comments) and especially this post, where I pointed to evidence that the cooling may come rapidly:

I knew that the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago, and that we're about due for another. But I didn't know about the correlation between ice ages and CO2 levels:

As for that dreaded greenhouse gas, CO2, atmospheric levels of which now exceed 400 parts per million (ppm), it is important to note that paleological records show that every time CO2 levels have exceeded 300 ppm there has been an ice age. Every time — without exception.

I also didn't know that the current interglacial warm period might end quite suddenly:

In 1979, Genevieve Woillard, a pollen specialist in France, concluded from detailed studies that the shift from a warm, interglacial climate to ice age conditions at the beginning of the last ice age, some 100,000 years ago, took "less than 20 years."  …

As I noted in a comment to the first post linked above, "A hundred years from now, as the ice sheets begin edging southward, people living north of the Mason-Dixon line may wish we'd cranked out more carbon dioxide." Now, there is preliminary evidence that we may not even have to wait a hundred years.

The Earth actually stopped warming around the turn of the century. And now, the people tracking global temperatures all agree that the Earth has cooled dramatically in the past year (emphasis added):

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Check out the fine commentary by Mike at Monkey Tennis Centre and by Doug Ross, who offered a slightly snarky speculation:

And I wonder how long Al Gore's carbon-offset bunko scam is going to last when penguins start freezing to death.

BTW, speaking of anecdotal evidence: Those of you inclined toward skiing and snowboarding might want to know that the anecdotal evidence in Colorado is pretty interesting, too. Most of the major ski resorts are at or near record snowfall levels, ranging from 25 to 41 feet. Don't miss it, book your spring ski trip now — just in case I'm wrong, the new data's wrong, Gore's right, and it never happens again. 😉

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Radicalism widespread in U.S. mosques

Posted by Richard on February 27, 2008

An undercover investigation of American mosques and Islamic schools by the Center for Security Policy has released some disturbing — but not surprising to those of us who've been paying attention — preliminary findings. Among the first 100 mosques and schools the project examined, more than three-quarters are "hotbeds of anti-Western extremism," according to WorldNetDaily:

Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says the results of the survey have not yet been published. But he confirmed that "the vast majority" are inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature, videos and textbooks.

The project, headed by David Yerushalmi, a lawyer and expert on sharia law, has finished collecting data from the first cohort of 102 mosques and schools. Preliminary findings indicate that almost 80 percent of the group exhibit a high level of sharia-compliance and jihadi threat, including:

  • Ultra-orthodox worship in which women are separated from men in the prayer hall and must enter the mosque from a separate, usually back, entrance; and are required to wear hijabs.
  • Sermons that preach women are inferior to men and can be beaten for disobedience; that non-Muslims, particularly Jews, are infidels and inferior to Muslims; that jihad or support of jihad is not only a Muslim's duty but the noblest way, and suicide bombers and other so-called "martyrs" are worthy of the highest praise; and that an Islamic caliphate should one day encompass the U.S.
  • Solicitation of financial support for jihad.
  • Bookstores that sell books, CDs and DVDs promoting jihad and glorifying martyrdom.

The Mapping Shari'a in America Project is in the early stages of these undercover investigations. Considering how many of America's estimated 2,300 mosques, madrassas, and Islamic centers are financed and directed or influenced by Saudi Wahabbis or the Muslim Brotherhood, I suspect the percentage found to be promoting jihad, a global caliphate, and radical extremist beliefs is likely to remain alarmingly high. 

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Obama’s agenda

Posted by Richard on February 25, 2008

One of the chief criticisms of Barack Obama is that he mouths empty platitudes about hope and change and the future, but doesn't actually say anything specific or concrete about his agenda. That may be true of his speeches (and, hey, they make women faint, so empty platitudes are obviously working for him). But his campaign website is actually chock-full of information about his agenda. Some of the proposals are not all that specific and concrete, but there's certainly no shortage of them.

To save us the effort of wading through many, many pages of Obama's website, an Obama supporter at Democratic Underground has compiled a list. I checked it a bit against the Obama website, and it appears to be accurate, but not complete — it's limited to those proposals and positions that have reasonably clear one-line titles or summaries. 

To spare you the trip to Democratic Underground (I know some of you try to avoid that kind of neighborhood), I'm reproducing the entire list here. If you can make it more than a third of the way through without gagging, you have a stronger stomach than I do — or you're a True Believer. Here it is:

Opposed the Iraq war from the start.
Voted to end the war in Iraq.
Supports capturing and killing Osama Bin Laden.
Favors a $1000 tax cut for every working American family.

Will implement tax form simplification to reduce filing time.
Provide tax credit for all middle class homeowners.
Provide a tax cut for all families making less than $75,000 a year.
Amend NAFTA to protect American workers.
Amend NAFTA to strengthen environmental protections.
Providing Flex Ed training accounts for workers.
Extending Trade Adjustment assistance to service workers.
Supported Patriot Employer Act of 2007 that gives tax credits to large companies that keep workers here in America.
Double funds for basic federal research.
Implement a long term research and development tax credit.
Invest in green technologies.
Reduce carbon emission gases.
Tackle the challenges of global warming.
Create an energy focused youth jobs program.
Create Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Extend the Production Tax Credit.
Expand Broadband into every community.
Keep the Internet tax free.
Expand high speed internet access in rural areas.
Fight for passage of Employee Free Choice Act.
Ensure freedom to unionize.
Would overturn "Kentucky River" classifications of Bush's NLRB
Protect rights of striking workers.
Increase the mininum wage to index it to inflation.
Crack down on predatory lenders.
Provide a universal mortgage tax credit for homeowners who don't itemize.
Sign the Stop Fraud Act to prevent lending fraud.
Mandate accurate loan disclosure.
Create a fund to protect people from foreclosures.
Close the bankruptcy loophole for mortgage companies.
Establish a credit card rating to improve disclosure.
Ban utilateral credit card charges.
Apply interest rate only to future debt.
Prohibit credit card interest on fees.
Prohibit Universal defaults.
Require prompt and fair crediting of cardholder payments.
Protect working people from unfair bankruptcy laws.
Ban executive bonuses for bankruptcy companies.
REquire disclosure of pension investments.
Cap outlandandish interest rates on payday loans.
Implement legislation to drive unscrupulous lenders out of business
Create a bankruptcy exemption for people that went broke because of medical bills.
Double funding for after school programs.
Extend Family and Medical Leave Act.
Encourage states to adopt Paid leave.
Expand the Child Care Tax Credit
Supports ratification of UN Convention Rights of Persons With Disabilities.
Supports independent, community based living for people with disabilities.
Expand educational opportunites for people with disabilities.
Expand job opportunities for people with disabilities.
Strengthen civil rights enforcement.
Sign into law the Fair Pay Act.
Sign law reversing recent SCOTUS rulings that permitted discrimination against women.
Sign law reversing recent SCOTUS rulings that permitted discrimination against racial minorities.
Strengthen federal hate crimes legislation.
Eliminate the sentence disparities regarding crack cocaines.
Establish drug courts for first time, non violent offenders.
Create a prison to work incentive for those transitioning back into society.
Passed a law to prohibit the practice of racial profiling.
Supported reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act.
Opposes all discriminatory barriers to voting.
Helped reform death penalty system in Illinois to protect innocent people on death row.
Voted to ban cluster bombs.
Provide high quality affordable child care to families.
Will quadrulple Early Head Start funding.
Will increase Head Start funding.
Creates early learning challenge grants.
Abolish overly rigid teach to the test curriculum in schools.
Improve accountability in public schools.
Invest in intervention strategies to reduce dropout rates in schools.
Increase funding for afterschool programs.
Supports Step Up program to increase summer learning opportunities.
Support English language learner programs.
Expand college outreach programs.
Create teacher service scholarships.
Requires all public schools to be accredited.
Create teacher residency programs.
Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit for higher education.
Streamline financial aid application.
Introduced legislation to increase Pell Grant to $5,100.
Reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.
Confront deforestation.
Promote carbon sequestration.
Accelerate commercialization of plug in hybrids.
Promote development of commercial scale renewable energy.
Invest in low emission coal plants.
Transition to new electric digit grid.
Double science funding for clean energy products.
Create Green Jobs Corps.
Invest in programs to help manufacturers make transition to green products.
Create clean technologies venture capital fund.
Deploy cellulosic ethanol.
Expand locally owned biofuel refineries.
Increase renewable fuel standards.
Establish national low carbon fuel standard.
Increase fuel economy standards.
Invest in solar energy.
Invest in wind energy.
Establish a centralized database to track lobbyist activities.
Appoint an independent watchdog group to oversee congressional ethic violations.
Favors campaign finance reform.
Sunshine on legislation proposal.
End abuse of no bid contracts.
Release presidential records in a more timely fashion.
Prevent political appointees from working as lobbyists within two years after employment has ended.
Reform political appointment process.
Sign ethics legislation that he proposed as a Senator with Russ Feingold.
Obama sponsored a bi-partisan bill allowing regular people to track federal grants.
Take leadership in the global fight against AIDS.
Provide tax cuts to small businesses.
Provide income tax cuts for all senior citizens making $50,000 a year or less.
Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Protect workers from caregiver discrimination.
Increase mentoring programs for beginner teachers.
Provide universal health care for all Americans within 4 years.
Combat fraudulent subprime loans.
Expand Nurse Family Partnership.
Provide automatic workplace pensions for workers.
Expand savings credit for retirement accounts.
Reinstate pay as you go budget rules.
Repeal Bush tax cuts for top 1% which led to lower middle class standard of living.
Slash earmarks to pre 2001 levels.
Abolish obsolete wasteful government programs.
Voted against raising the minimum debt in 2006.
Supports wiping out Al Qaeda wherever they may be.
Opposed Kyl Lieberman.
Supports tough attempts at diplomacy with Iran to protect America's interests.
Will work to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Restrengthen NATO.
Passed a bipartisan law with Senator Lugar to prevent smuggling of WMDs.
Introduced a bill with Senator Hagel to reduce nuclear arsenals around the globe.
Supports securing loose nuke arsenals from the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.
Strengthen Non Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.
Expand size of Army by 65,000.
Expand size of Marines by 27,000.
Provide our troops with new equipment and the tools they need.
Provide National Service troops with adequate leave time.
Will insulate the Director of National Intelligence from partisan politics.
Guarantee that health care can never be denied because of a pre-existing condition.
Introduce a health care plan similar to the one members of Congress have and give all Americans access to this plan.
Simplify the paperwork in health care costs.
Make premiums and co pays affordable.
Require mandatory coverage of all children for health care.
Expand SCHIP.
Expand Medicaid.
Reduce costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and employees.
Support disease management programs.
Require hospitals and providers to have full transparency over costs.
Promote patient safety by requiring providers to report medical errors.
Establish an independent institute to guide reviews + research on comparative effectiveness in health care.
Strengthen anti trust laws to prevent insurance companies from gouging medical providers.
Lower medical costs by having electronic health info systems.
Increase competition in prescription drug markets.
Advance biomedical research field.
Improve mental care coverage.
Reduce mercury deposits to help prevent miscarriages.
Increase funding for autism research.
Cosponsored Healthy Kids Act of 2007.
Cosponsored reauthorization of SCHIP in 2007.
Obama introduced legislation to establish guidelines to monitor fuels from nuclear power plants.
Sponsored a bill with Senator Lautenberg to protect chemical plants from possible terrorist attacks.
Introduced legislation to upgrade monitoring of water supplies.
Introduced legislation to protect localities from radioactive leaks.
Create secure borders with additional personnel and infrastructure.
Remove incentives for people to enter this country illegally.
Crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants.
Invest in transitional jobs.
Improve transportation access to jobs.
Fully fund community block grants.
Create an affordable housing trust fund.
Establish a program called 20 Promise Neighborhoods.
Invest in rural areas, especially small businesses, schools, and doctors.
Implement a payment limitation program to help small farmers.
Protect family farms from anti-competitive monopolies.
Implement tough fines for CAFO violations.
Establish country of origin labeling for all products.
Support regional food systems.
Encourage organic farming.
Provide tax credits for young farmers.
Increase capital for small farmers.
Modify FCC so all rural residents have access to modern communications.
Upgrade rural infrastructure.
Supported legislation to reverse 2 billion dollars of agriculture cuts under Bush.
Cosponsored Emergency Farm Relief Act of 2006.
Sponsored a bill to combat the scourge of methamphetamines.
Expand Americorps.
Double the Peacecorps in 8 years.
Expand Service learning in all our schools.
Offer an opportunity tax credit for college students in exchange for 100 hours of community service.
Promote college work study programs with public service.
Expand on the YouthBuild program.
Create a Social Investment Fund Network.
Create a non profit entrepreneur agency.
Protect Social Security.
Reform corporate bankruptcy laws.
Strengthen laws protecting against age discrimination in the workplace.
Ensure heating assistance for senior citizens.
Protect the openness of the Internet.
Encourage diversity in media ownership.
Protect children from Internet predators with strict law enforcement.
Support transition of the internet into the digital world.
Preserve artistic expression.
Keep inappropriate advertising away from programs for children.
Enhance safety standards for toys imported into this country.
Protect the right of privacy of every law abiding American.
Update surveillance laws under the rule of law.
Higher salaries for teachers.
Work with the FTC to cut down on cyber crimes.
Eliminate teach to the test curriculum and restore true learning to the classroom.
Open up government to citizens by providing transparency.
Provide all our schools with broadband technology.
Modernize public safety networks.
Make the research and development tax credit permanent.
Protect intellectual property at home and abroad.
Reform the patent system to encourage innovation.
Allow all veterans back into the VA.
Strengthen VA care for all veterans.
Fight veterans employment discrimination.
Fix the benefits bureaucracy to help veterans.
Expand vet centers across the country.
Obama passed legilsation to slash red tape to help wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.
Introduced legislation to direct the VA and Pentagon to fix its veterans record systems.
Introduced legislation to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Rebuild the roads and bridges that need to be rebuilt.
Will end the genocide in Darfur.
Will restore habeas corpus to America.
Reject torture.
Close down Gitmo.
Pledges to obey the Constitution of the United States.
Will fully implement and enforce the Equal Pay Act.
End tax breaks for US companies sending jobs overseas.
Voted to reinstate 1.15 billion to the COPS program to reduce crime.
Wants to keep drinking age at 21.
Supports grants to local educational agencies.
Voted to protect ANWR.
Voted to protect the Great Lakes from polluters.
Favors labor and trade standards with trade with China.
Opposed CAFTA which hurts American workers.
Voting to give the District of Columbia its proper vote in Congress.
Voted to expand enrollment period for Medicare Part D.
Favors repealing the discriminatory don't ask don't tell policy.
Provide first responders with the health care and equipment they need.
Voted to implement the 9/11 commission recommendations.
Voted to restore money to ports and first responders.
Voted to establish a Guest Worker program.
Voted to increase the minimum wage.
Voted against anti-Constitution radicals Alito and Roberts.
Voted against the repeal of the estate tax that only applies to 1% of the wealthiest of estates.
Supports the first amendment freedom of religion clauses and establishment clauses.
Introduced a bill requiring public companies to give shareholders an annual nonbinding vote on executive compensation.
Protects our schools by opposing voucher schemes.
Introduced Biofuels Security Act in 2007.
Favors closing corporate tax loopholes.
Understands that global warming is a real problem that must be addressed.
Supports civil unions for LGBT couples.

Is there any group he hasn't pandered to? Is there any aspect of our daily lives he doesn't want to control? I can see why he's ranked as the most leftist member of Congress, even further left than Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Senator from Vermont.

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SNL: CNN is “in the tank” for Obama

Posted by Richard on February 24, 2008

If you missed the Feb. 23 return of Saturday Night Live, you missed one of the best opening sketches they've had in years. It parodied the latest CNN debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In the SNL version, the CNN personnel made it abundantly clear that they're "totally in the tank" for Obama, and it was hilarious. The first question posed to Obama was, "Is there anything we can get you?" The follow-up question was, "Are you sure?"

NBC is stupidly forcing YouTube to pull all posts of the video as copyright violations. Have these people never heard of viral marketing?? The broad dissemination of this 9-minute sketch would do more to build SNL's audience than all their on-air promos. What morons.

Anyway, here's the last 2:51, courtesy of the NBC's SNL video page:

UPDATE: For some bizarre reason, audio seems to work only in Internet Explorer (at least for me) — sorry. Take it up with NBC


 

If you know of a source for the whole thing or a transcript of it, please post it in the comments. 

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Unpersuasive

Posted by Richard on February 19, 2008

Former President George "Read My Lips" H.W. Bush endorsed Sen. John McCain and said McCain can carry "our conservative values" to the White House. Yeah, that's the same George H.W. Bush who scoffed at "that vision thing," abandoned his "no new taxes" pledge, and squandered the Reagan legacy he inherited.

<snark>I'm sure all the economic conservative / libertarian Republicans will rally around McCain now that he has George H.W. Bush's blessing.</snark>

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Quote for today

Posted by Richard on February 16, 2008

Here's a quote to ponder, from the late author of the marvelous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series creator of Dilbert (obviously, I shouldn't post late at night after adult beverages):

Ask a deeply religious Christian if he’d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don’t seem so bad lately.
    — Scott Adams

BTW, my Christian friends, I'm an atheist and I can help you set up your wireless network. Now, what are we going to do about that jihadist wacko with the C-4 vest?

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225 years of jihad against the U.S.

Posted by Richard on February 15, 2008

Practically since 9/12/01, people ranging from libertarians to moderate liberals to barking moonbats have argued that some Muslims wish to harm us because of our 50 years of interventionism in the Middle East. Anyone who actually bothered to learn about al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations soon realized that was nonsense. Nonetheless, this "grievance" theory remains quite popular.

An outstanding article by Melvin E. Lee in the latest Middle East Quarterly not only affirmed my thinking on this subject, but provided a wealth of historical infomation (heavily footnoted) that was new to me.

I studied U.S. history before most of the factual content was removed from the texts, so I knew a bit about the acts of piracy that began in the 1780s and eventually led to the Barbary Wars. But I had no idea that these "pirates" were actually the first jihadis to attack the United States, and that they made their goals as clear then as their successors do today: 

What Americans and Europeans saw as piracy, Barbary leaders justified as legitimate jihad. Jefferson related a conversation he had in Paris with Ambassador Abdrahaman of Tripoli who told him that all Christians are sinners in the context of the Qur'an and that it was a Muslim's "right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners."[11] Islam gave great incentive to fighting infidels, Abdrahaman explained, because the Qur'an promised that making war against infidels ensured a Muslim paradise after death.[12] Richard O'Brien, the imprisoned captain of the Philadelphia merchantman Dauphin and later the U.S. consul to Algiers, related similar conversations with ‘Ali Hasan, the ruler of Algiers.[13] Ottoman leaders used the same rationale to justify the enslavement and trading of captives from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Ukraine.[14]

The role that jihadi ideology played in the Barbary wars is documented with explicit references to jihad and holy war in the treaties that U.S. officials entered into with Muslim rulers. Tunis and Algiers, as the western outposts of the Ottoman Empire, even described themselves to American envoys as the "frontier posts of jihad against European Christianity."[15]

Even back then, Americans wouldn't take the Muslim rulers at their word, and tried hard to promote the Rodney King philosophy: "Can't we all just get along?"  

U.S. officials took a conciliatory attitude. Realizing that the North Africans were hypersensitive to the historic conflict between Islam and European Christianity, especially in the context of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, U.S. officials bent over backwards to deny the religious and ideological nature of the conflict, especially to the Muslims themselves. They realized that religious conflict might jeopardize the commerce that the United States still hoped to find in the Mediterranean. In 1821, President John Quincy Adams was barely able to resist assisting the Greeks in their war of independence when both the American and European publics urged war with the Ottoman Empire.[16] The founders possessed a deep conviction for religious tolerance and proudly explained in the short-lived 1797 treaty with Tripoli that the U.S. was not a Christian state at all but rather one which had no official religion and maintained laws forbidding the prohibition of religion.[17] Perhaps their denial of the religious and ideological nature of the conflict foreshadowed the attitude many Washington policymakers adopt today. Then as now, it has become the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding of the root of the conflict.

From these 18th- and early-19th-century roots, Lee traces the history of relations between the U.S. and the Muslim Middle East to the present day. This essay is an eye-opener and simply a must read for anyone who wishes to think or talk intelligently about this issue. Highly recommended. 

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Exxon’s obscene taxes

Posted by Richard on February 13, 2008

When Exxon Mobil announced a record $70 billion profit in 2007, every leftist and populist demagogue on the planet screamed in outrage that it was "obscene." But if you're an Exxon shareholder (and almost everyone with a pension plan, 401k, or IRA is, at least indirectly through an equity mutual fund), you might think that it's Exxon's taxes that are obscene. According to Mark J. Perry, Exxon paid $30 billion in taxes in 2007 — a tax rate of more than 40%!

In fact, for the past three years Exxon Mobil's tax bill has averaged over $27 billion a year. And here's the jaw-dropper: according to 2004 IRS data (the latest available), $27 billion is about what the bottom 50% of individual taxpayers pay. Their tax rate, by the way, is about 3% of adjusted gross income. 

Clearly, tax cuts will always "favor" the rich. If by "favor," you mean "bleed less deeply."

Note: The Seeking Alpha article linked above is an expansion of a post from Perry's blog, Carpe Diem. If you're at all interested in economics and business, visit Carpe Diem regularly. Perry is a fount of fascinating facts. Just today, for instance, he honors the death ten years ago of Julian Simon most appropriately

Perry has a knack for simple, striking graphs and charts that drive his point home. For instance, look at yesterday's post showing that we're in the most economically stable period in U.S. history. Or this graphic illustration of what's behind those CEO pay increases. 

UPDATE: This IBD editorial about oil company profits and taxes also noted Perry's numbers and added another interesting stat: 

And it's not just Exxon Mobil that's paying the freight. From 1977 to 2004, according to Tax Foundation data, U.S. oil companies cleared $630 billion after taxes while paying $518 billion in federal and state corporate taxes at an average rate of 45%.

So for the past 27 years, the investors who financed all the exploration, drilling, processing, refining, and distribution (and the concomitant job creation) have had to settle for just over half the profit that their risk-taking created and made possible — and then they had to pay personal income taxes on that.

To the economically illiterate (and the envy-driven), profits are obscene. To me, 40+% taxes are obscene.

UPDATE (10/31/08): The saga continues — Exxon's profits grew to a new record last quarter and its taxes grew even faster. 

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