The Iraq Study Group report is finally out.

It's a bit surprising in a few areas. First, it doesn't suggest that the US needs to exit immediately but rather that over the course of the next year the US should transition to a more supporting role of training Iraqi forces. Then, after that, the troops should come home -- ready or not.

It also advocates talks with Iran and Syria.  James Baker makes the case that the US had regular talks with the Soviet Union for 40 years even though their stated objective was to wipe us out.

But the part that really struck me was the analysis of the Iraqi government. They unanimously concluded that the Iraqi government is just incompetent. So incompetent that they have serious concerns of whether it will be capable -- given any amount of time -- to effectively govern the country. They have good intentions but lack the capability to governm.

I have to say I support everything I've read about the report so far.  To me, this 3 year disaster should have ended 2 years ago.  Our goal was to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein. That was accomplished 3 years ago. 

Why are we still there?  It's not our job to make sure Iraq is turned into a Jeffersonian democracy. I get the reaosn they want to. I even support a reasonable effort. But 3 years? If the Iraqis can't get their act together soon, then tough. 

The options for the US aren't merely either a Jeffersonian democracy or a terrorist state. The option isn't even something in between.  We toppled a fairly powerful regime in a matter of weeks with few combat deaths. The US should have a policy of knocking down regimes that support terrorism and represent threats to the United States. It should not be our policy to spend year after year trying to rebuild these countries unless it's demonstratably in our best interest.

This time next year, the troops better start coming home -- or at least out of Iraq.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote an article about the Politics of Labels.

I argued that American politics is really broken down more accurately into 6 categories.  But in most discussions, we end up funneling everything into left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative.  The more simplified you make these labels, the less accurate they are. Yet, it turns out that most people are able to identify themselves into one or the other.

No one is purely a conservative and no one is purely a liberal.  I personally prefer to call myself a Secular Conservative.  But let's face it, once we get into public forums of debate, it doesn't matter what you want to call yourself, you have to deal with the accepted general definitions that are out there lest you get into a pointless semantics debate.

In Europe, liberal and conservative have very different meanings.

So here's my own personal view of what the difference between AMERICAN liberals and AMERICAN conservatives are:

Liberals:

• Believe in social justice.
• Believe in the power of government to produce positive social change.
• Believe that criminals/enemies should be looked at individually but victims should be grouped.
• Believe in a relatively low threshold in which minority rights trump the will of the majority
• Believe in rights being very broad but responsibility being relatively narrow

Conservatives:

• Believe in personal responsibility
• Believe in the power of individuals to produce positive social change
• Believe that victims should be looked at individually but criminals/enemies can be grouped/generalized
• Believe that the will of the majority in almost all cases.
• Believe that the number of absolute rights is relatively small and that each of those rights carries equally important responsibilities.

So there you have it. My own 2 cents on the subject.

I am having some pain on the AI.

You know you see the computer players do something dumb and you instantly think that the AI programmers must not know what they're doing. "Why didn't they think of X".

But normally the thing is, the AI developer DID think of X but the AI still isn't doing it.

I have this marvelous bit of code that the AI intelligently weights how close good planets of other environments are, how far they are, and how close other opponents are to it. It then is supposed to prioritize researching those colonization techs.

Tonight, I saw the AI research barren planet technology. One problem: No barren techs.  The AI shouldn't even try to research the tech. I stare at it with no avail.

Found the cause later tonight but ack, so frustrating.

A long time ago I wrote "the value of working hard".  One of the comments I made is that in my experience, having grown up around genuinely poor people that most of them are poor because, frankly, they're losers. Show me a consistently poor American and I'll show you someone who is either disabled, or more commonly a fool.

Joe Knowledge followed this with an article called "poor people are stpuid" as a response to what I had written arguing that most poor people are poor becaues of circumstance and bad luck and that I lacked compassion.

Most bleeding hearts for the poor, like Joe Knowledge, have never done very much research into the causes of poverty in America.  We have 40 years of research on the subject and time and time again the same statistics show up -- overwhelmingly, people who live in poverty are idiotic. There are exceptions but they are just that -- exceptions.

Once in awhile, someone wants to prove that if a poor person is just given a break, they can be just as successful as someone else.  Remember the moving Trading Places?  Well, in real life, everytme they run such an experiment the same result happens.

There have been numerous social examples of philanthropists giving money to the abject poor to help them only to discover it ends up squandered.

I recently came across a show called "Reversal of Fortune". In it, Showtime gave a homeless man $100,000.  The qualification was that they picked a man without any overt mental illness or drug addiction. The idea was to show that many homeless people are just victims of circumstance and that if given a break will make something of themselves.

Alas, to their surprise the Homeless man soon sqaundered the money and was back on the streets.

Which underscores what many of us have known -- taking property from people who earn it and giving it to people who don't is not just immoral but it is a waste of time.  Overwhelmingly, 1st world citizens who are living in consistent poverty are doing so due to their own faults that can't be remedied by throwing money at the situation.

That doesn't mean every single person living in poverty ended up there due to poor choices. There are disabled people. There are genuinely people who have gotten incredibly bad luck (but they won't stay in poverty). But the reality is, poverty in the United States is not something that can be cured -- not with money anyway.

Earlier this week 6 Islamic Imams were taken off a US Airways flight after what was deemed "suspicious behavior".

The mainstream media, naturally, tried to report it as "racial profiling" in action. But as more information becomes available, it has become clear that there was something up.

The Imams not only were not sitting in their own seats but had spread out in groups of 2 in every section of the plane (like the 9/11 hijackers). At least one had asked for seat-belt extenders that were simply placed on the floor (these could be used as weapons) and were very loudly (in Arabic) praising Bin Laden and condemning the United States.

This is just a list of some of the things they were doing that would almost certainly raise some suspicion.

Sounds to me that they were either up to something or they were intentionally trying to  get kicked off in an effort to put pressure on US airlines to weaken security.

While left of center regularly call me "intolerant" because I don't agree with their views (even as I provide a free blog for them to speak out), the left continues its consistent display of intolerenance by physically assaulting those who don't agree with them.

This week's example is here in Michigan at MSU.

To disagree with the left used to be just a matter of being ignorant and unenlightened. Nowadays, you're not only ignorant and unenlightened but too repulsive to allow to have your words heard lest the "Sheeple" start getting crazy right-wing ideas.  Hence, we have conservative speaker after conservative speaker attacked on American campuses.

It's the beginning of December 2006.

What are the big news items today? I mean REAL news?

Using Google News as a source which is based on consensus it would seem to be:

• Radiation detected in body of Italian KGB expert. This radiation poisoning of former KGB spy is pretty interesting and pretty newsowrthy.
• Phillipine typhoon may have killed more than 450 people.  Definitely newsworthy. That's a huge storm.
• Iraq Study Group latest leaks.  This is an interesting story too as it may affect what's happening in Iraq.
• Obama speaks on faith, sexuality.  Obama may be a Presidential candidate. Certainly legitate.

Now, let's look at the NEW YORK TIMES today:

This is in order of what they focus on and their titles:

1. Afghan District Makes Dela with the Taliban.  This anti-US article is bizarre both in its obscurity (this is front page news) and it's irrelevancy. So some tiny area of AFghanistan made a deal with the Taliban. That might be worthy of an international news backpage but as the top story?
2. Next Chairman for Intelligence Opposed War.  This is such a biased headline as to be ridiculous. A Democrat is going to be the chairman of intelligence and statistically, yea, nearly all of them oppose war. So why this news headline?
3. Families Torn by POlice Shots, reunite in grief.  This is an anti-cop story (nice that the New York Times can take time from its busy anti-US schedule to slam the police).

Other articles on the New York Times front page:

• Article about Chavez "coasting" to victory.
• Bush to meet with head of Shitte party.

The front page of the New York Times reads like a propganda piece. It's disgusting not because they have written such partisan pieces but that they write such partisan pieces while trying to claim to be the "newpaper of record". 

It's slowly losing its influence on the media because it has gone so far away from being relevant. Certainly, every item they list is news. The question is whether these are the top stories. The weird Taliban one being the lead story was the one that really struck me. That's the biggest news story in the world today? Good god is that transparent.

The left is dominated by pseudo-intellectuals who typically know enough on a given subject to be obnoxious but not enough to discuss the issue with any depth.

The right has a significant number of social conservatives who are content to let you think what you want but quietly think you're going to burn for it.

I find both pretty obnoxious but it is the left that tends to be more overtly arrogant in its pronouncements.

The typical left-wing tactic boils down to this:

IF you disagree with them then it is only because you're ignorant. If only you were as enlightened as they are you would certainly reach the same conclusion on the topic they have. It often never occurs to a left of center debater that there may be other conclusions someone can legitimately reach. 

My advice: If you find yourself calling someone ignorant for no other reason than that they don't share your opinion, it's time to re-evaluate your position.

This past week's 20/20 explores some of the myths of who gives and who doesn't in America and in the world.  It was a fascinating look at the giving habits of different segments of society.

A few points that were brought up:

• The working poor give the most (as a % of income)
• The non-working poor (welfare people) give the least, even as a %)
• Rich people give more (as a %) than middle class people.
• Conservatives give a lot more than liberals
• Americans give 7 times more to charity than Germans
• Americans give 14 times more to charity than Italians
• The US government gives less as a % of its income than other countries but more when considering the size of the US government as a % of GDP (in other words, its citizens do the giving instead).
• Americans gave away nearly $300 billion last year
• Giving to charity and helping others improves the health of the giver according to studies
• 28 of the 29 most charitable states as a % of income are red states.

One of the most interesting experiments they ran was a Salvation Army charity drop in front of the busiest places in town in San Francisco CA  vs. Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  In San Fran, it was in front of the Macy's. In Sioux Falls it was in front of the Walmart.

At the end of the experiment, the Salvation Army had collected twice as much from their location in Sioux Falls than the one in San Francisco despite the per capita income in San Fran being twice as much and the number of people who were near the Salvation Army spot significantly higher as well.

Other interesting research included a survey that showed that the more socialist the responder to the survey, they less they tended to give voluntarily. The people who want higher taxes tended to give less themselves.

It was a really fascinating episode.  The results weren't terribly surprising over all.

A black professor (on CSPAN) today suggested that the only solution for African Americans is to exterminate all the white people on Earth.  Not in jest.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction is.