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Over at OSDir it seems ACs can moderate any postings and moderate the same post multiple times. Registered users can't moderate unless given mod points. Let's hope someone from the "Happy Fun Slander Corner" doesn't figure this out. Go ahead, give it a spin. I don't know if it makes a difference but I had cookies shut off. Maybe it's somekind of weird honeypot. =)

In the words of the late, great Mr. Rogers: "Sure kids, can you say 'troll magnet'? I knew you could."

Today's commentary from Paul Krugman on Public Radio's Marketplace.

Long story short: the US dollar is tanking and investors in US debt have no good reason to stay invested. I'll bet that the Loonie will be trading at par [against the USD] by August 2005. If you have any debt with an adjustable rate change it to a fixed rate now. Those carrying a high debt load are really going to get hammered by next fall. Quite frankly it's pretty fucking grim. Thankfully between a low mortgage, two years left on a 4.5% car loan and my better half's student loans I'm fairly clear. I've got a few friends living off their credit cards and will get wiped out if the economy collapses.

For those outside the US buying US made goods: bargins will abound this summer.

Well, it looks like bush is on his way back to Washington barring a miracle in Ohio and the RNC picked up three Senate seats (totaling 53) and four House seats (totaling 228 out of 448 or 53%). The US is now 0wn3d by the RNC. They can pass a law without any outside help.

While this will effect almost everything, the SCOTUS' (Supreme Court) make up might be one of the biggest. Chief Justice Rehnquist (currently being successfully treated for thyroid cancer) is 80, John Paul Stevens is 85, Sandra Day O'Connor is 75 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 70. Rehnquist, Stevens and O'Connor are RNC appointees, Ginsburg is a DNC appointee. It's likely atleast one of the first three will leave the bench to take advantage of the current RNC stronghold.

The next four years is going to be like Nixon's second term: pure dirty tricks.

As most know I swing pretty hard to the left on some issues and pretty hard to the right on others (i.e.: gun control) so it may be a bit of a surprise that I have quite a bit of respect for William F. Buckley, Jr.. WFB is a conservative in the truest respect and writes well about it. While I disagree with some of the things he agrees with (like supporting the Heritage Foundation, IMO a first class troll tank) he does make some sense. He's often spoken out against the concept of a "Nanny State", something I agree with.

WFB is retiring and conservatives are losing one of their great rational minds. Please don't confuse true conservatisism with the current RNC or Bush. When WFB speaks in the abstract he many times makes sense. At times he's toted the party line and supported RNC (I'm sorry, the Grand Old Party is dead and a nasty mutation called the RNC has risen from it's ashes) leaders, but again, when not doing that he made sense. BTW, the DNC also sucks just as much, but that's for a later journal.

All the answers do not come from the left or the right. Both have some good and some bad.

Here is WFB's last column (not his last writings for the NR, but AFAIK his last regular column).

June 29, 2004, 12:07 p.m.
Free Weeds: The marijuana debate.
by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. The laws aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating. General rules based on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend. If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or -- exulting in life in the paradigm -- committing adultery. Send them all to Guantanamo?

Legal practices should be informed by realities. These are enlightening, in the matter of marijuana. There are approximately 700,000 marijuana-related arrests made very year. Most of these -- 87 percent -- involve nothing more than mere possession of small amounts of marijuana. This exercise in scrupulosity costs us $10-15 billion per year in direct expenditures alone. Most transgressors caught using marijuana aren't packed away to jail, but some are, and in Alabama, if you are convicted three times of marijuana possession, they'll lock you up for 15 years to life. Professor Ethan Nadelmann, of the Drug Policy Alliance, writing in National Review, estimates at 100,000 the number of Americans currently behind bars for one or another marijuana offense.

What we face is the politician's fear of endorsing any change in existing marijuana laws. You can imagine what a call for reform in those laws would do to an upward mobile political figure. Gary Johnson, governor of New Mexico, came out in favor of legalization -- and went on to private life. George Shultz, former secretary of state, long ago called for legalization, but he was not running for office, and at his age, and with his distinctions, he is immune to slurred charges of indifference to the fate of children and humankind. But Kurt Schmoke, mayor of Baltimore, did it, and survived a reelection challenge.

But the stodgy inertia most politicians feel is up against a creeping reality. It is that marijuana for medical relief is a movement which is attracting voters who are pretty assertive on the subject. Every state ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana has been approved, often by wide margins. Of course we have here collisions of federal and state authority. Federal authority technically supervenes state laws, but federal authority in the matter is being challenged on grounds of medical self-government. It simply isn't so that there are substitutes equally efficacious. Richard Brookhiser, the widely respected author and editor, has written on the subject for The New York Observer. He had a bout of cancer and found relief from chemotherapy only in marijuana -- which he consumed, and discarded after the affliction was gone.

The court has told federal enforcers that they are not to impose their way between doctors and their patients, and one bill sitting about in Congress would even deny the use of federal funds for prosecuting medical marijuana use. Critics of reform do make a pretty plausible case when they say that whatever is said about using marijuana only for medical relief masks what the advocates are really after, which is legal marijuana for whoever wants it.

That would be different from the situation today. Today we have illegal marijuana for whoever wants it. An estimated 100 million Americans have smoked marijuana at least once, the great majority, abandoning its use after a few highs. But to stop using it does not close off its availability. A Boston commentator observed years ago that it is easier for an 18-year old to get marijuana in Cambridge than to get beer. Vendors who sell beer to minors can forfeit their valuable licenses. It requires less effort for the college student to find marijuana than for a sailor to find a brothel. Still, there is the danger of arrest (as 700,000 people a year will tell you), of possible imprisonment, of blemish on one's record. The obverse of this is increased cynicism about the law.

We're not going to find someone running for president who advocates reform of those laws. What is required is a genuine republican groundswell. It is happening, but ever so gradually. Two of every five Americans, according to a 2003 Zogby poll cited by Dr. Nadelmann, believe "the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should regulate it, control it, tax it, and make it illegal only for children."

Such reforms would hugely increase the use of the drug? Why? It is de facto legal in the Netherlands, and the percentage of users there is the same as here. The Dutch do odd things, but here they teach us a lesson.

As someone who read WFB as a youth, his writings will be missed. If you learn anything from the man please remember that intellectual honestly and conservative politics can and should peacefully coexist.

I wish him good health for many years and the wind to fill his sail.

"The US Senate has unanimously approved a $447bn defence spending bill which includes $25bn for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

$477b ÷ 294m people = a $1623 USD bill to every US man, woman and child for stuff that is meant to kill other people.

From US approves $447bn defence bill:

It is 5.7% larger than the 2004 defence budget, excluding the Iraq money, but is 1.7% below what President George Bush was asking for.

Senators also voted to boost army numbers by 20,000.

And the US House of Representatives has approved record funding for the US intelligence agencies.

The approval came despite recent criticism over intelligence failures, including the September 11 attacks.

The Senate must approve its own version of the bill before it can become law.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a similar defence budget for 2005 by a 403 to 17 vote.

The Senate's budget includes a 3.5% pay raise for all military personnel and $10.2bn for a missile defence system.

Programs such as the F/A-22 Raptor aircraft, Joint Strike Fighter and DD(X) destroyer program are also set to receive billions of dollars.

The extra spending on Iraq and Afghanistan reverses a previous spending pledge.

But the White House, in making the request last month, said it was down to "recent developments on the ground and increased demands on our troops".

The increase in troops was initially opposed by the White House and Pentagon and aims to relieve the pressure on the US Army.

It increases the Army size by about 4% to more than 500,000.

Ed.: Formatted as originally posted. Apparently the BBC doesn't know how to form a proper paragraph.

(sidebar)

2005 Defence Bill Highlights:

$76bn weapons and ordnance

$68.6bn research and development

$30bn national defence programs

$10.2bn missile defence system

$4.6bn Joint Strike Fighter

$925m heavy armoured vehicles

$905m light armoured vehicles

$727.3m Chinook CH-47 helicopters

$603.2m body armour

$131.1m reconnaissance drones

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." - President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to the US, 1961. FYI, to some that don't know he was the former Allied Supreme Commander in WWII and US Army five star general.