BAD NEWS FOR HUGO
There seemed to be a lot of good news for Venezuela's Castro Wannabe, Hugo Chavez, this weekend. He was wined and dined by London's wacko-commie mayor, "Red Ken" Livingstone, and serenaded by his supporters waving Venezuelan flags and dancing to salsa music in London streets.
The commie dog-and-pony show is what the media focused on - and not the bad news reality behind it.
First was the refusal of Prime Minister Tony Blair or any member of the British Cabinet to meet with him. The dutifully-left press reported this backwards, claiming Chavez rejected "hints" of an invitation to 10 Downing Street. The truth is that Blair wouldn't give Chavez the time of day.
Second was the US blacklisting Venezuela regarding arms sales, with Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon publicly accusing Chavez of ties with terrorists. "Cuban intelligence has effectively cloned itself inside Venezuelan intelligence," announced Mr. Shannon, and has developed substantial "links to terrorist organizations in the Middle East."
But that's just for openers. The real bad news for Hugo is the contempt and antipathy that much of Latin America now has for him, including South America's giant, Brazil. And Mexico.
ROLL YOUR OWN SEARCH ENGINE
With its billions of sites, the Web has become the natural place to turn for information about nearly any subject. Large search engines like Google and Yahoo have their little search bots running 24/7, gathering data on sites and reporting back to the database, which you tap into when you conduct your search.
Unfortunately, though, finding what you need isn't always so easy. The data you need are definitely out there - the problem is getting to the right site, ferreting out the useful Web pages from the 5 million others ones that might mention the term you searched for, but in a totally useless, completely irrelevant context.
There is an easy, fast, and free way around this dilemma - and that is to create your own personalized search engine. Here's how.
TAXING THE LEFT’S BRAIN CELLS
Do you think your taxes are too high or too low? Though I expect that well over 90 percent of you are thinking "too high," the liberal media and political class keep telling us taxes are too low.
The left-leaning intelligentsia, in their arrogant smugness, claim we just don't know what is good for us. Yet, they are the ones who ignore the empirical evidence and are unable to distinguish between variables and constants.
As a prime example, a May 7 editorial in The Washington Post, advocating higher tax rates on the rich, states: "Economics cannot predict how high taxes can be raised before they reach counterproductive levels."
The editorial then says an increase of "taxes on the top 1 percent by 5 percentage points would raise $85 billion annually or perhaps a bit less if it spurred some extra tax evasion."
The fact The Post's editorial writers did not seem to realize the contradiction in these two statements in the same paragraph is disturbing for several obvious reasons.REPORTING PHONY NEWS IN AMERICA, REFUSING TO REPORT REAL NEWS IN IRAQ
Because it dominated the news this past weekend, many Americans are aware of the USA Today story May 11 revealing that the National Security Agency has established a data base containing the records of telephone calls made by tens of millions of Americans.
Not so many Americans are aware that USA Today's "scoop" is recycled news. The New York Times ran a story on the NSA database last December. It was treated then with the ho hum response it so richly deserves.
Cynics note the recycling occurred on the eve of Senate hearings on the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden -- who as head of the NSA established the data mining program -- to be director of the CIA. Could the leakers and the journalists going bananas over the recycled revelation be trying to sidetrack his nomination?
Whatever the reason, the contrast between the ink and air time given the NSA telephone number database rehash and the inattention given a startling al Qaeda document captured in Iraq could not be greater.
PUTIN IN A CLOWN SUIT
Amidst all the gloomy news of the week - Goss' firing, Bush's poll numbers falling to almost Nixonian levels as he continues to refuse to protect our borders, on and on - yesterday's (5/11) headline provided welcome comic relief.
Putin Warns Arms Race Not Over Yet screamed the front page of papers like the Washington Times. For folks on the White House National Security Council and in foreign policy think tanks around town, this was funnier than a Seinfeld rerun or Larry the Cable Guy.
Putin had delivered his state-of-the-nation address to the Russian Parliament, or Duma, and was desperate to appeal to Russian egos mortally wounded by America's winning the Cold War. Russians, you see, would rather wallow in nostalgia for the Cold War when they were feared and respected than be free.
The terrible irony is that such nostalgia is so masochistic.
WHAT COUNTRY GETS MORE FOREIGN AID THAN ANY OTHER?
Which country receives the most in total foreign aid from all donors? The official numbers show Iraq at the top with $3 to $18 billion in aid (depending on how you define "aid") and all the other recipient nations of the world at less than $3 billion per year.
However, if you look at which nation benefits most from foreign subsidies, the U.S. would come out on top by a very wide margin.
Yes, I did just say that the U.S. is the world's largest recipient of foreign assistance. Other countries are not sending official government "aid" dollars to help the U.S. but are doing things that have the same effect. For instance, China provides the biggest single subsidy to the U.S.THE WORLD’S BEST (AND MOST POLITICALLY INCORRECT) STEAK
I love the full page ads in the New York Times with a full-size picture of a very large steak knife and the caption: Terrifying Vegetarians Since 1886. Smith & Wollensky's Steak House.
The ad is fun but the truth is, their steaks are not that great (and way overpriced). The best steak in America is the porterhouse at Peter Luger's in Brooklyn. Many international folks think the best restaurant steak in the world is served at La Cabaña in Buenos Aires. But the true best steak in the world cannot be found in any restaurant.
Years ago, I was invited by Reason Magazine to contribute a recipe to The Libertarian Cookbook. There were recipes by Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Tibor Machan, and other libertarian luminaries. I decided to swing for the bleachers.
My recipe was for The World's Best Steak. The world's best steak is made from the nerve of an elephant's tusk.
SKYPE 2.5 (beta)
We first talked about Skype, the software program by which you can make free phone calls most anywhere in the world, last September in Talk Is Cheap.
Last week Skype marked quite a milestone: 100,000,000 registered users. That's just the number of downloads, though-there aren't necessarily that many regular users.
Still, at any moment, several million people in the world are online using Skype whether for free Skype-to-Skype voice calls, instant messaging chat, video calls, or to take advantage of the premium services that actually earn Skype its money. That's impressive by any measure.
As of May 3, 2006, there's a new and modestly improved version of Skype available for download.THE GREAT UN-COMMUNICATOR
You've got to hand it to President Bush. For a pretty decent, straightforward guy, he sure has a knack for making enemies.
The economy is booming. There has been no successful terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. Al Qaeda officials acknowledge we're winning the war in Iraq. Yet in the history of polling, only three presidents have had job approval ratings as low or lower than President Bush does now.
They were Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter just before they left office, and Harry Truman after he had fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Mr. Bush is about where Mr. Carter was (34 percent), but still has a ways to fall to reach the nadirs of Nixon (24 percent) and Truman (23 percent). Will he?
The president's popularity problem isn't one problem, but three.SAVING DETROIT
If you live in Washington and you're a guest on Fox News, the producers graciously send a car and driver to take you to the studio and back home after the show. One of the Fox drivers is a colorful character everyone calls "Wolf." He grew up in Yugoslavia (in what is now Bosnia), and he told me a very illuminating story.
Wolf had read The Natural Gas Solution (soon after we first met he became a TTP subscriber) and explained how he knew it was accurate. "I drove a Yugo car when I lived in Sarajevo back in the 70s," he said. "Gas was so expensive and it was rationed. So I, like several of my friends, installed a CNG (compressed natural gas) tank in the trunk, hooked a line up to the carburetor, and ran the car on natural gas. We got such great mileage and the car ran so well, that we could drive to Trieste (in Italy) on weekends."
It was by talking to Wolf that made me realize how the Natural Gas Solution can save Detroit.