Blogs for 2006 - Road to the Middle Class

JULY 1, 2006 is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, the Big Push that cost 60,000 casualties on its first day and ground to a halt over four months later. The total British casualties were 360,000, having advanced about 5 miles on a 10 mile front.

Typically in most battles the winning side suffers about 20 percent casualties and the losing side about 30 percent. The British started with about 13 divisions on July 1, say 130,000 men, and suffered nearly 50 percent casualties on the first day.

It is commonplace to say that unfold

Preserving The Trust Network

by Christopher Chantrill

ONE THING IS for sure. Democrats don’t trust Republicans. And conservatives don’t trust liberals. Liberals don’t trust the Pentagon. The Supreme Court doesn’t trust the executive.

That’s all right. It’s just politics. But the problem is that trust has been eroding on the personal level. Women don’t trust their husbands to stick around. And no-fault divorce has made it easy to skip out on a spouse.

That’s a problem, according to conservative writers like Jennifer Roback Morse and Carolyn Graglia, because trust the the bedrock unfold

Why Mexico Has an Emigration Problem

by Christopher Chantrill

THE UNITED States has an immigration problem. Actually, of course, the US has always had an immigration problem, right from the start, as Native Americans will tell you. Sometimes the immigrants take over; sometimes they merely assimilate.

But the flip side of the US immigration problem is other countries’ emigration problem. After all, why should people want to leave the country of their birth for the inevitable struggles of finding home and work in a new and strange country?

Because the economy stinks, that’s why. And unfold

Worse Before It Gets Better

by Christopher Chantrill

TODAY CONSERVATIVES are angry about the New York Times, angry about the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision, and angry about the limp wrist resolutions in the House and the Senate to deplore the Times’ declassification of the terrorist financial tracking program.

So let us step back and think a little.

This war, the War on Terror, World War IV, the war between the West and Islamism, or whatever we want to call it, is not going to be easy. President Bush never said it would. In fact, from the beginning, he said it was unfold

Getting Snobbish in Tuscany

by Christopher Chantrill

SUPPOSE YOU bought a house in Tuscany. Then what? Then the problem would be to move heaven and earth to avoid being taken for an American or a Brit.

Your whole life would revolve around getting people to say “Buongiorno” in the street instead of “Hello.” It’s not easy, as Anna Blundy explains. For instance how do you get people to stop addressing you in English? For a start, you have to dress like an Italian. Guess what that unfold

Rep. King Wants to Shine Light on College Admissions

by Christopher Chantrill

IF YOU SEARCH for: Racial and Ethnic Preference Disclosure Act on the New York Times website you won’t get any hits.

That is odd, because the New York Times has made a point of publicizing the secret anti-terror programs of the United States government on the argument that the release of such information is in the public interest.

But the New York Times doesn’t seem to have much interest in shining the light of knowledge into another notoriously secretive area of American life: the policies of university admissions unfold

Brit Chicks Want More Time With Children

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE US THERE is a swelling movement of women who are wondering if career and children are a sensible combination, indeed whether, as Carolyn Graglia puts it, “market production” has any moral or economic advantage over “domestic production.”

Now British working mothers are beginning to wonder too. Writes Camilla Cavendish: “For me, the desire to be with my children is physical, like an elastic band stretching. I can’t be away for too long.”

And now there’s a unfold

Nicholas Wade's Updated Genesis

by Christopher Chantrill

THIS WEEK I am reading Nicholas Wade’s Before The Dawn. It’s a review of recent developments in archeology, particularly the important contribution that biogenetics is making to our knowledge of our ancient ancestors.

For instance, tracking of the Y chromosome in men indicates that we are all descended from one man. And tracking of mitochondria in women indicates that women are all descended from the same woman. And unfold

If AMLO Wins in Mexico

by Christopher Chantrill

THE REASON that the US has an immigration problem is that Mexico’s economy stinks. One critic wrote years ago that the problem with Mexico is that it has tried everything, everything fashionable to come out of Europe. Everything, that is, except democratic capitalism. That has never been in fashion.

At least since the Mexican wipeout of 1994 (remember that?) Mexico has begun to fix its economy. But the trouble is, according to Robert unfold

Blair's Swansong: Third Way Just Hype

by Christopher Chantrill

CLINTONIAN Third Way politics came to an end in 2000. Now the Third Way politics of Tony Blair is coming to an end. It is time to come to judgment about Third Way politics. Was it really a Third Way between capitalism and socialism? Did it succeed in charting a new way? Or was it all just hype? The answer is pretty clear. It was mostly hype.

For years you couldn’t say that. Blair promised so much, and you wanted to believe him. But now the sands are running out for him. And the Third Way achievement has been to increase unfold

NYT: Put a Sunshade in Orbit

by Christopher Chantrill

LAST WEEK AN Academy of Sciences panel reported on the validity of the “hockey stick,” the global temperature graph for the last 1000 years authored by climatologist Michael Mann.

So what did the panel decide? Well, it kinda punted. Yes, the global temperature is definitely increasing. In fact it is definitely warmer than 400 years ago. But we are uncertain about temperatures in the 900 to 1600 timeframe. And we unfold

Warren Buffett Plans to Dodge the Death Tax

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE IS oo-ing and ah-ing about Warren Buffett’s noble decision to give his wealth away to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But how noble is that?

James Taranto recalls that Buffett is supposed to be opposed to ending the death tax. Yet by giving his money away to the Gates’s foundation he is just as surely dodging the death tax as if the death tax were repealed.

If Warren Buffett is is favor of the death tax then he should just sit there and let the government unfold

All In A Day's Work to Betray Intelligence Assets

by Christopher Chantrill

THE DECLASSIFICATION by the New York Times of the secret US program to monitor terrorist financial transactions seems to be perking along nicely. Hopefully, we are going to find that the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, the newspapers that declassified the secret program, seriously misjudged the national mood.

Hugh Hewitt has a telling point on the two newspapers. The two editors just don’t know much about the world except the lefty elite echo chambers in which they have worked pretty well all their unfold

Horowitz and the True Believer

by Christopher Chantrill

ACTIVIST DAVID Horowitz is in the middle of a campaign to take the universities back from the left-wing radicals. His strategy is the Gandhian approach of challenging the university to live up to its ideals: Academic freedom, open inquiry, full range of views, and no political indoctrination from the front of the class. In this link he engages Peter Steinberger, a political science professor and Dean of Faculty from Reed University. And he gets everything he bargained unfold

Jay Cost: It's Still Hard For Dems to Win in 2006

by Christopher Chantrill

BUDDING POLITICAL scientist Jay Cost takes another look at the 2006 mid-term elections. He reiterates his previous analysis. It is going to be difficult for Democrats to do a 1994 and nationalize the election like Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay did 12 years ago. Here’s why

It is very difficult to beat incumbents. House members are political professionals. They are expert at taking credit for good news, and dodging responsibility for unfold

Liberals Don't Think Laws on Race Apply To Them

by Christopher Chantrill

THE TROUBLE is that you know that nothing good is going to come of this.

Columnist John Leo reports on how liberals believe that they don’t have to obey laws they don’t like. Particularly when the laws say that the government cannot discriminate on the basis of race.

The American Bar Association is pressuring law schools to grant racial preferences in admissions in defiance of the law.
California government at all levels has unfold

Liberals Don't Think Laws on Race Apply To Them

by Christopher Chantrill

THE TROUBLE is that you know that nothing good is going to come of this.

Columnist John Leo reports on how liberals believe that they don’t have to obey laws they don’t like. Particularly when the laws say that the government cannot discriminate on the basis of race.

The American Bar Association is pressuring law schools to grant racial preferences in admissions in defiance of the law.
California government at all levels has unfold

Treating The Kos-ites as Mainstream

by Christopher Chantrill

BACK DURING the Vietnam War the liberal media treated the anti-war movement as mainstream and presented activists like John Kerry as responsible critics of the war.

But they weren’t. The anti-war movement was a left-wing group that, had it been on the right, would have been presented as a bunch of dangerous kooks.

Now we have another war, and now we have another anti-war movement. And nobody can tell to what extent this new movement is aided by the terror masters, just as nobody knew in the Vietnam era whether the John Kerrys were unfold

To The Trans-National Elite the Nation State is a Dirty Word

by Christopher Chantrill

REMEMBER THIS. The folks at the New York Times really don’t buy into all this stuff about nation states and fighting against evil-doers. They belong to the secular trans-national elite that subscribes to a faith that we are beyond atavisms like nationalism. Or at least we soon will be.

For these advanced folks, cycles of violence are caused by roots causes such as oppression. In fact, if you look at any conflict in the world, you will discover that at the root of it is the oppression of some marginalized group, whether people of unfold

Education Myths

by Christopher Chantrill

DO YOU BELIEVE in myths? Of course you do. Everyone does. Especially if you define myth the way that Eric Voegelin does, as compact knowledge.

But we are talking here about education myths, which means things you know that ain’t so. And probably you know them because some special interest has made sure you know what isn’t so.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Jay Greene has put together some education myths that we have all been carefully unfold

Are You Boring or Bonkers?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHICH WOULD you rather be? Boring or bonkers? According to Peggy Noonan, the Republican Party honchos think their base is boring. But the Democratic Party leaders think their base is bonkers.

She’s probably right. It is probably true that the Republican leaders think that:

They know the higher wisdom on such issues as immigration... have a more nuanced sense of reality. And as for conservative social issues groups, the politicians resent those unfold

School Choice, Inch by Inch

by Christopher Chantrill

THERE ARE THREE million children in America condemned to attending failed schools. Republicans are trying to do something about it. Sometimes even Democratic governors lend a hand.

In Arizona this year, the legislate is “enacting four new or expanded programs allowing disadvantaged children to attend private schools,” according to Clint Bolick of the Alliance for School Choice.

Bolick presents the Arizona gains as unfold

Brits Look Through "Broken Windows"

by Christopher Chantrill

REMEMBER “BROKEN Windows” policing? That’s the approach to policing introduced into New York City by Police Commissioner Joseph Bratton and Mayor Rudi Giuliani a decade ago.

Do you remember the results? Excellent! Murder down by 76 percent from 2,262 to 540 per year. Rapes down by 44 percent. And so on.

And let us not forget to credit the conservative scribblers and foundations that proposed all this: James Q. Wilson. Myron Magnet. Manhattan Institute. City Journal.

So now, as the crime rate in Britain spirals into the unfold

Republicans and Race

by Christopher Chantrill

OUR NATIONAL schizophrenia about race is never so blatant than when a columnist wonders what Republicans should do to attract African American voters to the “R” column.

For Clarence Page the answer is simple. Republicans should offer race-conscious policy to blacks.

For instance, he commends former Congressman Jack Kemp for an article in Human Events in which he recommends trolling for black votes unfold

World Community Joins US on Missile Defense

by Christopher Chantrill

ALL RIGHT-MINDED people are strongly opposed to rogue states like North Korea and Iran getting nukes, and rightly so.

So all right-thinking people deplore the actions of North Korea in fueling up an intercontinental missile capable of reaching the United States.

But how bad are things, really?

The United States took the opportunity of announcing that it was making operational its ballistic missile interceptors based in Alaska and California, according to Alan W. unfold

Dartmouth Moves the Goal Posts

by Christopher Chantrill

WELL, YOU HAD to expect it. After three dissident candidates got themselves on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees, the Dartmouth Alumni Association is moving the goal-posts. They want to bring in a new constitution that will not allow petition candidates to declare after the official nominees have been announced. How cool is that?

You can read all about it in The New York Times. Diana unfold

The Germans Get To Cheer Again

by Christopher Chantrill

SIXTY YEARS after the devastation of 1945, the Germans are cheering for Germany again. And it is appropriate that they are doing it in the context of the World Cup, that harmless sublimation of national conflict and contest.

The Germans committed, under the malevolent leadership of Adolf Hitler, one of the great crimes in history, the attempt to eliminate the Jews from Europe by putting 6 million of them to death. But they have stepped up to the plate and endured unfold

Why Do They Still Hate Thatcher?

by Christopher Chantrill

BACK IN THE 1980s my British cousin used to sport a sign on her house: “Thatcher the Snatcher,” it said.

Now, as Lady Thatcher reaches the age of 81 the BBC is planning to run a play in which Thatcher is “shown as a bellicose drunk, demolishing whiskies and importuning other guests for refills.”

That’s odd, writes Simon Heffer.

I know Lady Thatcher and see her socially quite regularly. unfold

Everyone Wants Infrastructure, But...

by Christopher Chantrill

WE ALL WANT road and bridges and hospitals, but after a century of the welfare state we don’t see why we should pay for them.

In the old days before the welfare state a lot of infrastructure, schools and hospitals, was built with benevolence. People gave money to build a school. And then there were the turn-pikes: regulated, profit-making enterprises. People hated the gates, and they hated the toll collectors, and they hated to pay the tolls.

Trouble is, when you don’t have the infrastructure, you can’t have prosperity. And in a unfold

The Impact of Genetic Science

by Christopher Chantrill

HOW WILL THE great welfare state power structure come crashing down? Conservatives like to think that the change will come from our unceasing effort to discredit and replace the liberal hegemony with good common-sense conservative ideas and policies.

But maybe the impetus will come from an unexpected direction, from the belly of the beast. That is what John Derbyshire suggests in his review of New York Times science journalist unfold

Episcopal Schism Ahead

by Christopher Chantrill

NATURALLY EVERYONE is worried about the prospect for schism in the Anglican Communion. The very liberal faction of the American Episcopal Church just elected liberal bishop Rt Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori as presiding bishop of the American church.

Here is Jonathan Petrie reporting that a conservative Texas diocese is already planning to split from the overal American church.

But really, they should get on unfold

Raise Minimum Wage, but Cut Corporate Taxes

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT KIND OF election is shaping up this November? Larry Kudlow, eternal optimist, thinks that things are not shaping up too well for the Democrats. The door has been wide open, but the Democrats “haven’t been able to walk through it.”

And now President Bush seems to be regaining his stride with good news on the War and the federal budget. And the Democrats seem to be positioning themselves as the party of fear while the president is able to unfold

Conservatives and Progressivism

by Christopher Chantrill

TWO CONSERVATIVE writers this past week addressed what I consider to be conservativism’s Big Problem: How to advance conservatives ideas in a progressive world.

In National Review Jonah Goldberg writes about how for the last century

conservatives have been fighting progressive assumptions about the role of the state, the nature of justice, and the relevance, if any, of the transcendent to public life. With few exceptions, unfold

Jews' 350 Years In Britain

by Christopher Chantrill

IT WAS EDWARD I who expelled the Jews from Britain in 1290. And it was in 1656 that Oliver Cromwell permitted 300 to return. Today British academics are voting to boycott Isreali universities, as reported by Al Jazeera.

So even though British Prime Minister Tony Blair told an audience at the 300-year-old Bevis Marks Synagogue that “it was impossible to imagine the modern United Kingdom without the Jewish community,” the fact is that plenty of unfold

Let The Palestinians Show Their Stuff

by Christopher Chantrill

A LOT OF PEOPLE are worried about Israel’s “retreat” from Gaza and now, presumably, from the West Bank. They think that it shows weakness and just encourages the Palestinians to be militant and put off making peace with Israel.

But that ignores the significant downside of the West Bank occupation. It allowed a disempowered Palestinian people to act like angry adolescents, blowing themselves up in militarily insignificant but publicity powerful acts of terrorism.

Israel would really benefit if it faces a united Palestinian people with unfold

Why Are the Childless So Angry?

by Christopher Chantrill

ARE YOU WORRIED about the epidemic of childlessness among the educated elites of Europe and North America? Do you cudgel your brain wondering why your liberal friends are so often childless, or as we might say, exhibiting advanced symptoms of Child Deficit Disorder?

Clearly, one of the accompanying syndromes is Unprovoked Liberal Outrage.

Why else would the childless respond with such rage to an advice column by Slate’s Dear Prudence, Emily Yoffe. After all, what is so exceptional unfold

Sneaking School Choice into New Orleans

by Christopher Chantrill

WHILE OUR SOLDIERS battle away on the frontiers of freedom in Iraq, it is easy to forget about another titanic struggle, one that is taking place here at home. It is the epochal effort to wrest the education of the nation’s children away from the clutches of the unions and the bureaucrats.

It’s an immense task because the entrenched special interests are so powerful. But every now and again a power vacuum occurs and the intrepid reformers can leap into the gap.

That is happening right now in New Orleans as educational entrepreneurs unfold

The Whole Foods Guy on Business, Freedom, and Life

by Christopher Chantrill

A COUPLE OF years ago the founder of Whole Foods gave a speech at FreedomFest in Las Vegas. Now John Mackey has revised and extended his remarks in Liberty.

Mackey started out in the Sixties as the classic hippie/commune type. He “studied eastern philosophy and religion,” lived in a commune, and believed “that business and corporations were essentially evil because they selfishly sought profits.”

Then in 1978 he and his girl-friend started “a natural foods unfold

The End of the World is Not Yet

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERY RELIGION has its story of the end times, and accommodates the human need for existential terror about the end of the world. For Christians, it’s in the Bible. For liberals and environmentalists it is provided in the fear of global warming and the end of oil. The current theological term is Peak Oil, meaning that the peak in oil production is near and from then on it will be all down hill.

Here’s a status report on the oil situation. Oil reserves are increasing in relation to oil production and consumption, writes unfold

Progressives in Trouble on Terror

by Christopher Chantrill

THE PROGRESSIVES of the world are united in their opposition to the war in Iraq, which they say is a distraction that deflects from the War on Terror. Given that a war is needed at all.

They are right about the distraction. Whatever happens in Iraq, the fate of Canada and Europe is more important. And the big news about the War on Terror is that it puts the whole progressive project in jeopardy. A couple of articles in the last week show why. Not surprisingly, both of them rely for support on Melanic Phillips’ new book unfold

President Bush Flips the Bird

by Christopher Chantrill

THE PROBLEM that all we pajama-clad commentators share is simple. We don’t have a clue what is going on. Are we winning or losing in Iraq? We just don’t know.

President Bush emphasized that on Tuesday when he flipped the bird at everyone: at the MSM, at his critics, and at Iraq.

He told the mainstream media what he thought about them by embarking them on a bus to Camp David and then telling them that he, Bush, wasn’t going to be there. He flipped the bird to his critics by staying the course. And he flipped the bird to the Iraqis unfold

E.J. Wants a New New Deal

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU CAN RELY on columnist E.J. Dionne for the straight up-and-down liberal view of things. And we mean that in the best way, that he is an honest liberal who just wants government to solve everything. Like jobs.

Things aren’t going too well on the jobs front, he worries, for the job creation since the last recession is “the slowest in any recovery since the Kennedy administration.” And, of course, they aren’t the “good” jobs of the golden unfold

Leave Wal-Mart Alone, Says Poll

by Christopher Chantrill

STOP BASHING Wal-Mart, Democrats, if you want to win elections. That’s the message from a poll conducted by Democratic pollster Thomas Riehle.

By a 3-to-1 margin, 62% disapprove and only 21% approve of "Democratic candidates making Wal-Mart an issue in November's elections," in the RT Strategies poll conducted June 1-5 with a representative sample of 1,209 adults nationwide. The margin of error is + 2.7.

Here at Road to the unfold

How to Play "Wheel of Fortune"

by Christopher Chantrill

NO ONE CAN doubt that, at the center of the astonishing economy of the United States is the vital economic cog of the syndicated TV program Wheel of Fortune. The luscious blonde wheel turner Vanna White was sui generis. And the host of the program, Pat Sajak, has toiled away in the vineyard of Fortune seemly forever, still the bright, cheery emcee that the program demands. To top it off, Pat is a conservative.

And now Pat has offered to give us the unfold

Eclipse 500 VLJ Nears Certification

by Christopher Chantrill

GET READY FOR jet air taxis. Eclipse Aviation is getting close to FAA certification for its Eclipse 500 4-seat VLJ, very light jet. They’ve got 2,500 on order and air taxi operations are getting ready to shuttle you around at a cost similar to first class. Tom Ramstack has the details.

It’s been a long road for Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn. Originally the Eclipse 500 was going to be powered by a cheapo engine from Williams International Ltd., but when Williams unfold

Democratic Message Out This Week

by Christopher Chantrill

DEMOCRATS ARE presenting their national message for the fall elections this week, according to Marc Sandalow, confident of the opoportunity to pick up seats, “yet divided over how much an agenda will matter.”

The Democratic program will consist of bread-and-butter priorities: increasing the minimum wage, cutting costs of prescription drugs, reducing interest rates on student loans, rolling back subsidies for oil companies, and unfold

"The Fact Is, It Is Tax"

by Christopher Chantrill

YEARS AGO, back in the 1960s, veteran British journalist William Rees-Mogg had lunch with a young Irish businessman, Tony O’Reilly.

The young lad was selling Irish butter at the time and he managed to persuade the cranky journalist that Ireland made the finest butter in the world

coming fresh from cows that had personally kissed the Blarney stone, that Ireland had just entered on an economic renaissance that would spread far beyond the dairy industry, unfold

GOP Not Dead Yet

by Christopher Chantrill

THIS WEEKEND Matthew Parris is wishing for British Conservative leader David Cameron to win, but not too soon. New Labour, he writes, needs a few more years to crash and burn completely before Cameron should face the people in a decisive election. Just like in the US, where the forward foreign policy of

neoconservatism [has] to be given its head, and crash, and burn, before a new president could persuade the nation to turn its back on the idea.

Of unfold

Cal Voters Don't Want More Programs

by Christopher Chantrill

NEVER MIND about Cal-50, the special election that Republicans won in California last Tuesday. Look at what California Democrats voted down on the rest of the ballot, writes liberal pundit E.J. Dionne.

There were 500,000 more Democratic votes than Republicans in the election because the main event was a contested Democratic primary for Governor, and yet good solid liberal issues went down to defeat.

California voters voted against Rob unfold

Strategery After Zarqawi

by Christopher Chantrill

WITH ZARQAWI dead the pundits are all looking ahead, divining the future from the ruins of the terrorist’s hideout.

Our lefty friends are not impressed. According to Ben Johnson they see his death as

A “transparent psychological operations campaign run out of the Pentagon”; “a double tragedy”; “part of a larger and tragic story of miscalculation”; a possible fraud; a conspiracy; not “moral”; an “obscene spectacle”; no “big deal”; and good cause to unfold

Cry God for England, Harry, and St. George!

by Christopher Chantrill

THE RESULT of giving the Scots and the Welsh their own assemblies is that the English are feeling left out. So they have responded by flying the red cross flag of St. George to show their English, rather than British, patriotism.

The Labour government and their many minions in the vast British state sector disapprove of this mild rebelliousness. They look down upon nation states and patriotism. Just like our liberals in the US.

And anyway, flying the flag of St. George instead of the Union Jack is considered, well, sort of a “chav” unfold

Senate Fails to Kill Death Tax

by Christopher Chantrill

ON A PROCEDURAL vote today the United States Senate failed to repeal the federal estate tax. There were 41 voting against repeal, according to Reuters, three votes short of the number needed to head off a filibuster.

The estate tax is intended to be a tax on the rich, but as Wall Street Journal edit page unfold

Zarqawi Dead, Fight Goes On

by Christopher Chantrill

ABU MUSAB AL-ZARQAWI was killed today in a precision F-16 strike. The coup was, as it must be, executed on the tip of an informant.

So the man whose strategy was to foment religious war between Sunni and Shia in Iraq is dead. Someone else from Lee Harris’s “eternal gang of ruthless men” must step forward to continue the fight against civilization, that is, to destroy the realm of trust and exchange and performance of promises in the city. For that is the power agenda of the gang of ruthless men who harass the city from their redoubts unfold

It's India Week

by Christopher Chantrill

BOTH THE LONDON Times and the Economist (sub) have done features on India this week as it comes off three years in a row of 8 percent GDP growth. Is it for real, they ask? Yes, but. Writes David Aaronovitch:

Isn’t IT India a little like Bollywood India — lots of glitz but as substantial a representation of reality as the Ice Cool man and his fleck-free hair? This week the unfold

When Laws Hurt The Ones They Help

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT A LANDMARK that Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was. Passed in 1990 when Bush I was president it empowered disabled people and let them come out of the shadows into the mainstream of life for the first time in history. Or something like that.

Only it didn’t. According to John Stossel it made employers shy away from hiring the disabled. Why was that?

One poll found that since the ADA was passed, the percentage of disabled men who were employed unfold

The Day After 50

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE SPECIAL election held yesterday to fill the seat in the House of Representatives vacated by the disgraced Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the Republican won by 50 percent to 45 percent. According to Robert Tanner:

With 90 percent of precincts reporting, [Republican] Bilbray had 56,130 votes, or 50 percent. [Democrat] Busby trailed with 51,292 votes, or 45 percent.

It’s not a famous victory but it is good enough that the Today Show did not feel the unfold

Horrors! Organic Has Been Kidnapped by Wal-Mart!

by Christopher Chantrill

OVER THE LAST century many upper-class Americans have agitated for the classification of certain areas of the nation as wilderness, that is, areas that should remain unaffected by humans.

Starting about half a century ago many upper-class Americans have agitated for the replacement of conventional farming techniques by “organic” techniques, that is, as defined by Wikipedia, farming that “excludes the use of synthetic inputs, such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and unfold

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