Marines in Fallujah

Today I went to Fox News' website to find out when the State of the Union Address would air. While there, I caught this article about the troop levels in Fallujah having decreased from 3,000 at the end of 2006 to around 250 today. It's gone down 90% since I was there. I can't even imagine that massive base having only two or so companies on it. The point is, evidently things are pretty much cleaned up in Fallujah, and the Iraqi Police are nearly ready to take over (or whatever you want to call it...I wouldn't trust those bastards with a butter knife).

I mentioned this to my friend Karnolt, who was my best bud there, in an email after talking to him tonight. His response was "Wow, I'm very proud to say that I served in [Iraq] out of Camp Fallujah and it is practically a success." I hadn't even thought of it like that, I'd just thought it was an interesting news item. But indeed, the impending success of the Fallujah Marines' mission is in part my own success, and my efforts there helped to make this happen. And that feels pretty damn good.

"Taxes are easy to explain"

[editor's note: I got this from a friend from Fallujah on myspace.]

Ten men go out for beer. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. He said, "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80."

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men -- the paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share"? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay!

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"

"That's true!!"shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up any more. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

[editor's note: Friendlier? I don't know about that. But it's still a useful analogy.]

Al Gore updates climate change

Drudge has a news article about Al Gore revealing today that the impending doom of climate change will be significantly worse than earlier predictions. Read the article, it's almost humorous. He goes on to state that within five years the North Polar ice caps may melt entirely during the summer months. I like this news for two reasons: first, it allows us to prove much sooner that he's full of shit when the polar caps don't melt within five years (even the most horrific of "scientific" predictions don't have the polar caps melting for something like another hundred years). Second, it shows how much Al Gore knows the global warming scare is in his hands (and, logically, how unscientific -- read: "bologne" -- it is). Without even trying to cite demonstrable evidence, he ups the ante based on his word alone. After all, he's a "Nobel prize winner", even if it is a Peace Prize, so we should believe him. Clearly, he was underwhelmed with the obviously weak language of the IPCC report and feels a need to reestablish his mandate, so he makes a blatantly unsupported claim which ought to scare those idiots back in line. What an asshole.

Political education at University of Delaware

I don't know if this made the news or not. I don't think so, but I haven't been much a newshound for awhile. I just read an article called "Brave Newark World" from Halloween of last year written by Dr. Mike Adams about a re-education program the University of Delaware had started in its residence halls. It's chilling. Fortunately, there is Supreme Court precedence here and thanks to Dr. Adams' readers and a general community response the university revoked that initiative within five days of the article being published. Essentially, UD required the students in their residence halls to attend meetings (UD called them "treatments") with their RAs who had been trained in "diversity facilitation" and who would then conduct diversity training and ask the students invasive questions pertaining to their sexuality and experiences in "oppression". I urge you to read Dr. Adams' article. It's extremely important to recognize that things like this happen in America, so we have the vigilance to stop such things from happening again.

It's unbelievable to me that enough college administrators with such Orwellian agendas can get together and force these kinds of things down the throats of young and impressionable college people. If you read the quotes that Adams provides, these people weren't trying to just show their students that "underpriveleged" people exist in the world, nor were they simply advocating responsible recognition that racism is a problem. This is a systematic brainwashing of impressionable young people by the authorities they pay to teach them, people who hold economic power over them by virtue of their owning and being in control of the places the students live in, and who control these people's very livelihood as students. This disgusts me. "There, he is taught that '[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.'” They're taught that racism is a uniquely white thing? How racist is that? These people should be put into prison. This is a state school. The people enacting these policies are unelected government officials, imposing strict partisan dogma on every student who is paying to live in their dorms. This terrifies me.

I know I don't have many readers (to my knowledge, Dad and occasionally Ryan). But if you happen upon this blog and you're a college student, please visit the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and have them send you (for free!) their guides, especially if you're in a student group of any kind. I had them sent to me when I was vice president of the College Republicans and president of my fraternity, and though we had no occasion to use them (thank God), they are indispensable for what they tell you about your rights as a student, especially in situations like this. Again, they will send you their guides at no expense to you, and if you find yourself in such a situation you can get in touch with them (their site makes this easy) and there is a good chance they will provide you with legal representation and publicity to make this kind of damn thing stop.