Mail 711 Tuesday January 31, 2012

visiting Zeke

Jerry,

This morning I went to the Smithsonian to visit Zeke II. He was dozing comfortably when I arrived, in a cabinet on the fifth floor which a curator was on hand to open for me. (As you know, the Information Age exhibit is currently mothballed, to be replaced with something on "American Enterprise.") What a sturdy looking machine–they sure don’t make them like that anymore. Two shelves above him is the keyboard and some other components for the IBM Deep Blue computer, so I suspect he doesn’t lack for intelligent conversation where he is now. There’s also a Mac Classic: you’d know better than I whether Zeke would ever make a pass.

I looked through the documentation that was also included in the materials, much of it for the CP/M operating system. There were ten 8" diskettes. One was labelled "Safety: Storms." Would this have been Janissaries III: Storms of Victory?

I passed along your regards to Zeke. I can’t truthfully say that he blipped or blinked, but I think he liked getting some attention just the same. Couple of photos attached.

Best, Matt

—

Matthew Kirschenbaum

Associate Professor of English

Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) University of Maryland

Thank you. And yes, that was probably Storms of Victory. Those 8” floppies were the “mass storage” in those days…

TSA thuggery… looking for shovels in a suitcase because someone tweeted hat he was going to dig up Marilyn Monore. Come on.

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10272373-tourists-banned-from-us-over-twitter-jokes

I am no longer surprised by anything they do. The TSA needs defunding.

"Being forced to join and be subject to a home owners association is not a capitalist act, it is an undermining of property rights."

Except you aren’t "forced" to join. You join voluntarily, by moving into a community managed by a homeowner’s association. Private citizens voluntarily entering into associations is a Constitutional right.

If someone were to join a private club, break one of its rules, and then sue the club for enforcing those rules, would you say that law and morals were both on his side?

Yeah, this particular situation is awful, and what *should* have happened was that the HOA should have gone to him and worked out what the situation was. But a failure of an individual HOA’s management is not an example of how the notion of an HOA is a terrible concept that all right-thinking God-fearing Americans should abhor.

Maybe the moral of the story here is that if you’re gonna skip payments on a contracted obligation you should read the law *first*.

—

Mike T. Powers

Homeowner Associations

Dear Jerry,

I am puzzled by your contention that "Being forced to join and be subject to a home owners association is not a capitalist act, it is an undermining of property rights." As far as I know, homeowner associations are created only through the mechanism of real covenants, a form of contract that has been part of the common law for hundreds of years. If you do not like the covenants that "run with the land", you are not forced to buy it. If you have evidence of homeowner associations being forced on property owners after purchase, I would very much like to see it.

Home buyers may face more limited choices if all new developments in an area include homeowner associations, but let me suggest that it is a losing strategy for conservatives to claim that a person facing limited choices is thereby being "forced". It is a tragedy for an 81 year-old veteran to lose his home over a $340 debt, but, so far as I can tell, it is not a failure of capitalism. The failure here seems to be one of charitable organizations not providing the help that some senior citizens need in navigating legal requirements. Where is all the money raised in churches by social conservatives going? Perhaps, e.g., Santorum can take a moment to use his campaign rhetoric to redirect the considerable fervor of evangelicals in a more productive, less symbolic, direction?

Gordon Sollars

Point taken. I have never been the victim of a compulsory homeowners association whose membership is part of a restrictive covenant. In my limited experience restrictive covenants on real estates were things like not allowing the property to be sold to blacks. Of course the courts eventually held that enforcing such covenants is not in the public interest and covenants not in the public interest will not be enforced, and not long after the courts discovered this federal civil rights laws made the whole notion moot. But everyone I know who is part of a mandatory homeowners association hates them with passion. They seem to be great illustrations of the Iron Law in action: fussy old busybodies with far too much time on their hands end up as the officers. Perhaps I have friends in unusual situations.

There are matters of greater concern, I suppose. Fortunately I am not involved in any of this. I do pay my dues the local resident association but that’s purely voluntary. They can’t sell my house at auction if I decide to drop out.

ADHD Meds

A couple of comments about ADHD. The ability to multitask and to quickly shift focus when something grabs your attention is a survival trait for the person who is plowing the field and suddenly sees a tiger.

This ability is not helpful to the 3rd grade teacher who is trying to teach 25 students to read something that they think is boring.

When I was talking to my son’s doctor she noted two things.

1. ADHD is hereditary

2. Most adults self medicate with caffeine and sugar.

At which point I started laughing, and took another sip of my 4th starbucks of the morning.

Ritalin and coffee seem to work. They also are less needed once you get past about age 17.

College was wonderful because I could finally study only the subject that was interesting.

The ADHD ability is an asset for many professions which require quick task switching. Sales, and Customer service come to mind.

At a recent Amway Black Diamond sales meeting (highly successful full time Amway sales reps) a friend noted that almost all of them had kids taking Ritalin.

My brain can apparently switch gears quicker than normal. I view this as a good thing, not a handicap. The same is true of my children.

We suffer through the public school system and gravitate toward jobs where our ability is an asset. I have been doing technical service for various chemicals and plastics for 25 years. I love it when the phone rings. I love it when my lab tech interrupts me with a question. I hate it when I have to sit at the lab bench and run the same experiment 10 times in a row. My lab tech on the other hand loves routine and will gladly run the same experiment over and over with slightly different conditions.

We make a good team.

—

——————–

Jim Coffey

It may be that drugs like Ritalin do some good for some kids, but the studies seem a bit forced to me; and I know that we all got along without the stuff when I was growing up. Us nerds had our own problems, but being drugged was not one of them.

Ritalin

‘To date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve.’

——————–

My guess is when teachers get a kid who acts up they want to do whatever it takes to make him settle down. If that means zoning the student out with drugs that is acceptable if it makes the teachers job easier. Maybe they do not have any mental disorder at all, but as you say, just youthful exuberance and lack of self discipline.

I don’t want to go into a long diatribe on this. I think you know what I mean when I say it is a mistake to substitute ‘metrics’ for good judgment. The result is the teachers end up scurrying to meet requirements and follow an array of rules with no time for anything else.

B

I can only repeat that we seem to have got along fine without them for centuries, and I am not convinced that 10 and more percent of the kids now need drugs.

I guess they’ve never heard of RF jamming, much less latency.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16367042>

——

Roland Dobbins

‘The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini-ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.’

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html>

——

Roland Dobbins

More deniers self-identify

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/30/wsj_global_warming_letter/

Bert Rutan and a number of other formerly-respected persons consign themselves to the ash-heap of history as they insist on refusing to accept the obvious scientific truth.

—

Mike T. Powers

Fallen Angels was a lot of fun but we looked at serious subjects.The data are trumping the models.  But then it has been that way for decades: the modelers were convinced of warming and the data collectors were not so sure. I can’t remember when it wasn’t that way.

Over a hundred thousand year trend the Earth is cooling. Over the last two hundred years it has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. It has warmed somewhat since the beginning of the last Interglacial Period, but we are still in an Ice Age. The modelers say that CO2 has rescued us from the return of the ice. The data are not so clear on that.

I don’t normally send viral video links, but this is Niftier Than Nemo! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7aPzZsuBjo>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7aPzZsuBjo

I don’t usually print the links either, but this is too good to miss.

Fighting the law and winning 

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I suspect you will find the following story interesting. Mr. Mocek was acquitted of all charges brought against him when the evidence in his video camera contradicted the sworn statements of serving officers. They had previously attempted to confiscate the camera and delete the footage, but evidently didn’t reckon on recovery technologies.

http://mocek.org/blog/2011/02/07/i-fought-the-law-and-the-law-lost-but/

My parents brought me up to believe the police were the good guys and only the guilty had something to hide. As you can well imagine, this is no longer a viewpoint I share.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Charles Murray on the New American Divide – Jerry

A piece by Charles Murray in the Wall Street Journal, on The New American Divide:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html#printMode

“America is coming apart. For most of our nation’s history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway. "The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. "On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day."

“Americans love to see themselves this way. But there’s a problem: It’s not true anymore, and it has been progressively less true since the 1960s.” <snip>

“Single parenthood: Another aspect of marriage—the percentage of children born to unmarried women—showed just as great a divergence. Though politicians and media eminences are too frightened to say so, nonmarital births are problematic. On just about any measure of development you can think of, children who are born to unmarried women fare worse than the children of divorce and far worse than children raised in intact families. This unwelcome reality persists even after controlling for the income and education of the parents.

“In 1960, just 2% of all white births were nonmarital. When we first started recording the education level of mothers in 1970, 6% of births to white women with no more than a high-school education—women, that is, with a Fishtown education—were out of wedlock. By 2008, 44% were nonmarital. Among the college-educated women of Belmont, less than 6% of all births were out of wedlock as of 2008, up from 1% in 1970.

“Industriousness: The norms for work and women were revolutionized after 1960, but the norm for men putatively has remained the same: Healthy men are supposed to work. In practice, though, that norm has eroded everywhere. In Fishtown, the change has been drastic. (To avoid conflating this phenomenon with the latest recession, I use data collected in March 2008 as the end point for the trends.)

“The primary indicator of the erosion of industriousness in the working class is the increase of prime-age males with no more than a high school education who say they are not available for work—they are "out of the labor force." That percentage went from a low of 3% in 1968 to 12% in 2008. Twelve percent may not sound like much until you think about the men we’re talking about: in the prime of their working lives, their 30s and 40s, when, according to hallowed American tradition, every American man is working or looking for work. Almost one out of eight now aren’t. Meanwhile, not much has changed among males with college educations. Only 3% were out of the labor force in 2008.

“There’s also been a notable change in the rates of less-than-full-time work. Of the men in Fishtown who had jobs, 10% worked fewer than 40 hours a week in 1960, a figure that grew to 20% by 2008. In Belmont, the number rose from 9% in 1960 to 12% in 2008.”

On and on. More in that vein. It appears to be a condensation of his new book. Quite sobering, especially in juxtaposition with a series of lectures I am listening to on Machiavelli. In The Discourses he describes the kind of institutions an uncorrupted people can be trusted with, and the kinds of institutions that must serve when a people are “corrupted.” It brings to mind Ben Franklin’s answer when asked at the end of the Constitutional Convention what kind of government we had: “A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”

Ed

I am a big fan of Charles Murray. I have his new book but I have not yet had a chance to read it – it only came today. I will have much more to say on it I am sure. And I read Machiavelli’s Discourses before I was an undergraduate as it happens; I have always found them far more compelling than The Prince.

And we kept it for two hundred years…

Mail 710 Sunday, January 29, 2012

‘To date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve.’

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/childrens-add-drugs-dont-work-long-term.html?pagewanted=all

——

Roland Dobbins

This is important. It may be that there are cases in which drugging kids for ADHD makes sense, but it is getting harder and harder to find them: in general the best you can say is that it doesn’t do any harm. In my own case, what I had to learn to was to sit still and pay attention even when bored out of me mind. There wasn’t really an alternative. I had to learn self-discipline. I learned it, and also learned how to use my imagination and fancy without disturbing anyone else. I would not have learned that if I had been drugged.

I was a typical ADHD child when growing up. I had all the symptoms and then some. I do not believe I would have benefitted from being drugged, and I am pretty sure I would in fact have been harmed. I have looked at a lot of ADHD data and I haven’t found much in favor of it; now we have this report.

At the very least, get the Federal Government out of this business and leave it to the states. At best we can just say no to the Ritalin manufacturers. There have to be other ways.

EU Tragedy

The EU is in worse shape than I thought. I’m not sure how the EU cooks their unemployment numbers. Most Americans are not aware of any difference between the U3, the U6, and other methods of calculating unemployment. I expect the real numbers are much higher.

<.>

More than a quarter (28%) of Italians between 16 and 24 are unemployed. Others are struggling to get by on unpaid internships or poorly paid jobs with little security.

[…]

It’s not just Italy, of course. Eurozone unemployment is at a record. According to Eurostat http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/ , the EU’s statistical office, 16.3 million people are out of work in the 17 countries that joined the euro. The story of a lost generation is becoming the scandal of a continent. In Spain http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/spain , 51.4% of those aged 16-24 are jobless. In Greece http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/greece , the figure is 43%.

</>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/28/europes-lost-generation-young-eu

This is a severe problem. Young men with nothing to do used to find a finger pointing in a direction and speaking words like "Deus volt". Or, these days, such men seem to become pirates, gangsters, terrorists, or lawful protestors. You have young people with nothing to do; you’re going to have a bunch of angry kids.

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Indeed it is all reminiscent of the deepening of the Great Depression. We are nowhere near out of the economic woods.

Mark Steyn on "women and children first"

Jerry:

Columnist Mark Steyn has a riff http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/ship-336602-titanic-concordia.html  on the evacuation of the Costa Condordia.

[quote]

There was no orderly evacuation from the Costa Concordia, just chaos punctuated by individual acts of courage from, for example, an Hungarian violinist in the orchestra and a ship’s entertainer in a Spiderman costume, both of whom helped children to safety, the former paying with his life.

The miserable Captain Schettino, by contrast, is presently under house arrest, charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship. His explanation is that, when the vessel listed suddenly, he fell into a lifeboat and was unable to climb out. Seriously. Could happen to anyone, slippery decks and all that. Next thing you know, he was safe on shore, leaving his passengers all at sea. On the other hand, the audio of him being ordered by Coast Guard officers to return to his ship and refusing to do so is not helpful to this version of events.

….

On the Titanic, the male passengers gave their lives for the women and would never have considered doing otherwise. On the Costa Concordia, in the words of a female passenger, "There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboat." After similar scenes on the MV Estonia a few years ago, Roger Kohen of the International Maritime Organization told Time magazine: "There is no law that says women and children first. That is something from the age of chivalry."

If, by "the age of chivalry," you mean our great-grandparents’ time.

….

The contempt for "women and children first" is not a small loss. For soft cultures in good times, dispensing with social norms is easy. In hard times, you may have need of them.

[end quote]

Another example of how thin the veneer of civilization actually is.

Another quote from the piece….

[quote]

Whenever I write about these subjects, I receive a lot of mail from men along the lines of this correspondent:

"The feminists wanted a gender-neutral society. Now they’ve got it. So what are you complaining about?"

[end quote]

I guess, like one "I Love Lucy" episode I recall, they want gender-neutrality only when it’s in their favor.

…………..Karl

But to stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew,

An’ they done it, the Jollies — ‘Er Majesty’s Jollies — soldier an’ sailor too!

Their work was done when it ‘adn’t begun; they was younger nor me an’ you;

Their choice it was plain between drownin’ in ‘eaps an’ bein’ mopped by the screw,

So they stood an’ was still to the Birken’ead drill, soldier an’ sailor too!

Election

Hi Jerry,

I’ve been following your discussion of the coming election with great interest. I too am worried that the country is headed in the wrong direction. I think a lot of Americans are. The question is, what is the correct direction? You and I believe in small, transparent government that is pushed down as close to the people as possible. If your local town council can solve the "problem" of unlicensed magicians, why do we need a federal bureaucracy to deal with it? I believe most Republicans believe this way. Many Americans think that leads to a large mess of regulations that a traveling magician must deal with. For them, why not centralize licensing so the magician only has to deal with one set of regulations?

The problem is, neither Democrats nor Republicans will decide who is going to be the next President. There are a large number of Independents and most of them are just as dissatisfied with President Obama as many Republicans. The problem is the Republicans are behaving the same way as Democrats. I’ve had many friends who have asked what the difference is between Obama and Romney. When I start to discuss policies, they immediately respond, "No, aren’t both of them doing and saying anything they can to just get elected?" Policies and statements on policies during elections are always meant to be broken once in office. The key is, how did the politician get there? What parts of his/her soul had to be given up in order to get into office?

Right now, even as a long-time Republican I can see no difference between the tactics of Romney, Paul, or Santorum and what Obama did to get elected in 2008. Gingrich at least tried to hold off from jumping into that shark tank, but we Republicans pushed him over the edge. It was either jump in or go home.

Unfortunately, I see happening again what I saw here in California and in Nevada during the 2010 elections. The Republicans are going to nominate the only candidate that won’t be able to defeat the encumbant. Romney will lose and he will lose big. Most Republicans will vote for him, but not all. I for one will not. He is not a conservative AND he is not a true Republican. I won’t vote for Obama but Romney is certainly not getting my vote.

It’s about his tactics, his morality, and more than anything else his history while in office previously. Romney is just not presidential material. Congress will eat him alive. He will compromise and compromise just to get things passed and the result will be Democrats in Congress will be running the country.

I would vote for Gingrich or Santorum, but the elites in the GOP have determined those two are not going to get the nod. So be it. If Romney gets it, I, some Republicans, and many Independents will put Obama back into the White House. Better the devil you know than the one who doesn’t appear to be any different.

Braxton Cook

I do not agree. I believe that no matter who wins the Republican nomination, a vote for anyone other than the Republican nominee will be a vote for Obama. I have opposed the Republican Country Club Establishment since being involved in delivering the Washington State nomination votes (a convention, not a primary) to Goldwater in ’64 and being Republican County Chairman in San Bernardino that year. I do not think we have had a more fundamentally important election since I have been able to vote; and defeating Obama is the goal.

“They can take the SAT for you, no problem. Most students don’t really think it’s wrong.”

<http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/thailand/120103/US-college-application-fraud-asia-elite-economy-china>

–

Roland Dobbins

Yea Capitalism! HOA Forecloses On Korean War Veteran To Collect $338.91 Plus Attorney Fees

# # # BEGIN QUOTE

http://privatopia.blogspot.com/2012/01/homeowners-association-pursues-extreme.html

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Homeowners Association Pursues Extreme Option — Foreclosure — Against

Korean War Veteran

A measly $338.91.

That’s how much Sherman McCray owed his homeowner association when the

board of directors foreclosed on his Clermont house.

Of course, the debt wasn’t just $338.91 by the time a Lake County

judge on Jan. 3 ordered the 81-year-old Korean War veteran’s home

sold.

Oh, no. Between 2010 when McCray failed to pay a homeowners assessment

and that final hearing, the all-powerful homeowner association in the

Vistas subdivision had levied late fees, costs and interest, and it

had busied itself running up absurd lawyer bills by sending

threatening letters at every turn.

Total cost now: $4,272.24.

——————

The commentary describes this as yet another sickening tale of

diabolical, petty homeowner associations in South Florida and asks why

the HOA would exercise a punitive option against an elderly disabled

veteran obviously overwhelmed by health troubles and without a

thorough understanding of the rules. McCray clearly needs an advocate

to help him navigate the dangerous legal minefield that’s Privatopia.

I do not see this as a failure of capitalism, but quite the opposite: it is a failure of government to protect the rights of private property. Being forced to join and be subject to a home owners association is not a capitalist act, it is an undermining of property rights.

Subject: Space travel, moon base emerge as wedge in Florida primary race

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/28/space-travel-emerges-as-wedge-in-florida-primary-race/#ixzz1km8Hd69A <http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/28/space-travel-emerges-as-wedge-in-florida-primary-race/#ixzz1km8Hd69A>

Tracy Walters

I suspect that after Florida only one of the Republican candidates will be in favor of anything pro space. None of them will mention it again.

Column on manned space

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16749916

The columnist does not point out that this would be done with Prizes and X projects, not as a big government funded project. Opinions can differ on when it must happen, but it’s certain that Arthur Clarke was right: if mankind is to survive, then for most of its history the word ship will mean space ship.

Greeting again!

I see you have already covered the necessary counterpoint to the anti-Newt agenda. Powerline has as well.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/01/newt-vs-reagan-the-sequel.php

When I see the derision of Newt’s even brief mention of the necessary future of USA in space policy, and then see alleged official correct candidate Romney blurble incoherent nonsense on the same subject seconds later, I actually felt as if I was no longer at home in the good old USA.

Usually the dum-dum’s know who they are themselves, and they stay quiet except in the friendliest environs to stay out of trouble. Last night, I guess they were serving notice they feel safe everywhere, including 100% of the media and briefing "major" Presidential candidates.

= Jay R. Larsen BA, MBA ====

I will point out that I am pro-space, to the extent that I once made a fund raising speech for then Congressman Leon Panetta, a Democrat. He thanked me.

as you predicted

http://space.flatoday.net/2012/01/romney-picks-up-endorsement-from-space.html

The space vets endorsed Romney. Of course, unlike Newt, he does not favor prizes and when he says "gather Industry and NASA together" I assume he means aerospace.

Phil

To the best I can tell, Romney to the extent that he supports space development supports the traditional big projects approach.

Textbooks

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I recently returned to school. I found that the old textbook scams I hated way back when are far worse now. Not just new editions coming out every year, but school-specific editions. I can’t buy a used chemistry textbook for my intro chem class, because the publisher has a version edited specifically for my school. No texts used at other schools will do. No used texts through Amazon.

A few texts are in use long enough and widely distributed enough to have a used market. I ordered texts through www.campusbookrentals.com, and was quite satisfied with their service. A four-month rental cost me about $40, when a new purchase was $300.

I purchased an online text. What an awful experience that was. I paid $50 for a badly written (writers and editors seem to have given up on distinguishing countable and uncountable nouns, or singular vs plural for Latin and Greek words), badly formatted ‘book’ that I can only access for three years. The alternative was $400 for the same book in hardcopy. I gave up on trying to read it after a few chapters, and concentrated on taking good notes! It was searchable, so I got some use out of it while doing homework.

Digital texts won’t do us much good as long as publishers and schools are in cahoots, with shoddy and expensive goods.

I will note though that chemistry texts seem to have improved a lot, compared to texts in 1980. Plenty of examples, plenty of practice problems with the answers, so that a student can check his own work. Far superior.

Tom

Tom Bridgeland

I continue to follow the publishing revolution. The textbook story is nowhere near over.

Never attribute to Alzheimer’s that that may be attributed to malice.

Dr. Pournelle,

You are struggling to avoid attributing Elliot Abrams’ behavior to malice. While this says much to me that is positive about your own personality, perhaps the simplest answer, rather than defective memory, is indeed that he has used his public stature to work his own agenda.

I also wouldn’t put an age limit on memory issues. I am a few years younger than you, and I’ve had memory problems since my mid twenties — especially where I’m emotionally involved with the outcome. The less forgiving of my critics call me a poseur (the least forgiving have worse labels), but I am usually absolutely convinced of my own righteousness — at least until I have time for introspection.

Your respect for Gingrich seems reasoned, and I agree on many points although I’m a little more pessimistic on his party’s chances to capitalize on their relative strengths. If someone else’s statements disagree with your own evaluation (as they have many time in the campaign thus far), I’d recommend not to let your brief association in the past to provide Abrams an out. I know you’re not a Limbaugh, but if it is needful, call a pinhead a pinhead. He’s become the dupe of the opposition and deserves the label.

I would have preferred that the candidates had held to Reagan’s non-criticism policy, as I think would you. However, recognizing that few, if any, are holding to that standard in this campaign, it is well to note that Abrams has not been one of those maintaining that behavior. If the main election is lost to the opposing party, the results will be partly his responsibility.

-d

I will continue to assume that Elliot Abrams was deceived. I will also continue to observe that if Newt ever publicly insulted Reagan, Nancy Reagan remains unaware of it; she continues to regard Newt Gingrich as a friend, and Reagan’s designated successor in carrying the conservative banner Reagan got from Barry Goldwater. She has said so often.

I absolutely agree that it would be better if in general candidates adhered to Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment.

Jerry

Did someone just find a flying saucer ditched in the Baltic?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/video-divers-large-unexplained-object-bottom-baltic-sea-161749619.html

A mystery of one of the shallower seas.

Ed

I would say very probably not…