Lottery winner robbed. For the millions of you who will win various lotteries this year be warned. The clerks at gas stations, liquor stores, and convenience stores will steal the winning tickets. This has happened a few times in CA but the clerks were quickly caught. The best way is to photo-copy it and have it notarized. Very easy to switch tickets as they are being "looked" at. When somebody hands a clerk $80 million the chances are very good that the clerk will take it.

Ledeen really lays it out there today in NRO. Excerpts won't cover it because every paragraph is a left hook. Read it. Worst is the fact that France and Germany will be awarded contracts because Iran is taking over the local councils. When the Democrats get this it will be another bomb to launch.

Reynolds is spending too much time looking in the mirror as he accuses Sullivan of endorsing Howard Dean. Read the Sullivan piece today and see if you can in any way construe this piece as an endorsement. BTW Sullivan's observation about Arthur Miller is almost too accurate. He is clearly a man out of his time, a fact I realized when I saw Death of a Salesman in the 70's. Time has exposed Miller's 50s Left Wing rant as simply a story of a stupid whining loser who doesn't know how to refi his house. It's still put out there by "intellectuals" as Left Wing biblical study about the evils of capitalism.

"Here's how Bush has robbed you:" will be how the Democrats will campaign as Dean begins to focus. $87 billion for Iraq instead of socialized medicine; $100 billion for the war instead of government guaranteed jobs; and those pricks who make too much money will be assessed a "penalty" tax so this new bunch of programs won't cost you anything. This combined with a nightly reading of the war dead will be the campaign and if you think this won't be effective you are dreaming. This election will be far from a Bush walkover. Just the body count will get people very upset. Dean has the will and the ability to campaign like this and he is already finding the voice. You got what you wished for GOP. You better be ready to deal with it. Just imagine the nightly ads featuring young dead guys with the appropriate voice overs.

Is Moveon.org actually a Republican National Committee site? How else to explain the "contest" for the best Bush is Hitler ads? Can you imagine what the Libs would say about Trent Lott doing this? Any Republican? I guess hate is the thing these days on the Left.

Applications for Airport Security positions soar after it is revealed that women are hiding bombs inside their vaginas. Will Bill Clinton be appointed chief of Airport Security in Hollywood? Stay tuned. "Super Models busted at LAX". What a job.

BCS and LSU vs Oklahoma and Media Bias in general. Oklahoma has NO running attack and LSU has at best an OK passing attack and one or two guys who can break a lucky run. The Big-12 is a weak conference, how else can a punchless team like Oklahoma run roughshod over everyone? LSU? Only a defense which is fast but light and runs out of gas in a tough game. Anybody seriously think USC wouldn't trash both of them? The Sugar Bowl was a penalty filled, poorly played game. The most exciting bowl game was Oregon vs Minnesota, Georgia vs Pudue, or Texas vs Washington State, games nobody cares about. And White for Heisman? This guy can't throw at all under pressure. When you talk about media bias and media hype look no further than the BCS "ratings". And the Heisman? Every conference (other than the Big-12) has at least two other quarterbacks who are better than Oklahoma's White.

The elites strike again. Anybody notice that the movie "critics", liberal to their so-called core, are ignoring "Return of the King", the most popular movie in the World,? Any movie that makes the U.S. look like shit will get their collective nod. Q: Will the Oscar voters ignore it too? I doubt it. Like the Supreme Court, they watch the box office returns. Maybe if it was titled "Return of the Gay King" it would get the elite nod. "American Splendor" the latest "critically accaimed" left wing attack, shows us Cleveland Ohio as a dreary place with all who live there as boring slobs. Only the "hero", a self loathing loser made bad by "America", has hope. Once again it is the Left view of all of us.

Braden Files compares real cowboys with the rest of us.

How many times have you seen an arena full of rodeo fans take to the streets following a competition and set fire to cars or hold an impromptu riot because they felt dissatisfied with the final outcome, as Michigan State students recently did? There is no booing of officials when scores are announced.

I've never heard of a contested call by any competitor, even when it meant the difference between winning and losing.... Cowboys don't whine. Cowboys regularly loan each other equipment and even horses, frequently $50,000 to $100,000 animals, when a fellow competitor's ride didn't arrive in time for tonight's roping or bulldogging or whatever.

His conclusion is that being a cowboy is a dam good thing and Bush need not apologize for being one.

LIBERALS IN FEEDING FRENZY---TARGET IS DEAN

"Coulterizing" Dean, the long knives are out. Starting with, or maybe including, the WaPo today.

Dean 2004 Web site trumpeted the rollout of the governor's ostensibly tough-minded foreign policy team with the admonition, "McGovernize This!" -- a request, alas, that anyone who bears the slightest familiarity with the writings of its members could all too easily oblige. Which is the burden those who reject the McGovern caricature must bear: In Dean's case, the caricature happens to be substantially true.

The WaPo goes on to explain that Dean IS another McGovern in that his anti-War views go much farther than just Iraq.

Yet, just as the foreign policy positions McGovern touted as a candidate obscured his earlier service as a bomber pilot and his votes in favor of military action in Vietnam, so too do the actual positions of candidate Dean rightly count for more than the foreign policy inclinations of Gov. Dean. And, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, candidate Dean's critique of America's global role has been no more confined to Iraq than McGovern's was to Vietnam. The White House contender's promise to seek "permission" from the international community before resorting to force, his refusal to "prejudge" Osama bin Laden, his pledge to "tear up the Bush Doctrine," his (subsequently withdrawn) demand that U.S. troops in Iraq "need to come home," his broadsides against the more hawkish members of the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party" -- is it really necessary to point out the echoes of McGovern in this litany?

It is a very good read, keeping in mind that the lazy press corps is trying to stir up a contest that can sell papers, not really cover a campaign. Dean is drawing huge crowds. Huge.

AND THE WINNERS ARE: The Pac 10 which won most of their bowl games. The Big 12 and SE Conferences are just equal to them, not superior and the Big 10 is not there yet. KSU and Texas lost (they were #6 only in the minds of cowboys and computers), and maybe Oklahoma will lose tonight, but the Big 12 ain't that good. BTW who knows how much the rape charge hurt KSU? But that kid Roberson thought he was bullet proof and he destroyed the whole team for a piece of ass.

The object of war is peace,the object of work is leisure, and the object of saving is spending. Thus starts a short but sweet essay at the Belmont Club today. The next item down, "Discovering Belligerency" is terrific too.

MUSLIM LAW TO BE USED IN SOME CANADIAN DISPUTES

The cultural sellout continues as Canda opts to use Shiria Law to settle some disputes. Canada's Islamic Institute of Civil Justice was formed in October and plans to begin arbitrating family and business disputes using Muslim personal law early this year in Ontario. Eventually, operations will be expanded across Canada.

If any of you thought that the Muslim Conference in Florida would produce "moderate" Islam, just link here to WND. Let's see how the current Muslim Conference in Canada turns out.

While Bill Quick's new "system" isn't up and running full bore, the guy who said he was going to "lighten up" on the blog is blogging 50% more. This is a good link to start, basically Fisking the Firefighter lay offs in the Bay Area in preference for "arts", "music", and other Lefty entertainment. So we get to listen to the music of Bach and Hayden while our apartments burn to the ground. I'd only point out that the number of firefighters is like insurance, most of the time you don't need either. I've never been burned out so I've never needed the fire department. When huge fires like the ones that just hit SoCal break out you need every firefighter in the State. All budgets should be looked at. Read the whole thread because it's interesting.

Long list of accomplishments in Iraq is up on Braden Files. They include:

# Over 60,000 Iraqis now provide security to their fellow citizens.
# Nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning.
# The Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.
# On Monday, October 6 power generation hit 4,518 megawatts-exceeding the prewar average.
# All 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary schools.
# By October 1, Coalition forces had rehab-ed over 1,500 schools - 500 more than scheduled.
# Teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries.
# All 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open.
# Doctors salaries are at least eight times what they were under Saddam.
# Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons.
# The Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccinations to Iraq's children.
# A Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq's 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals which now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.
# We have restored over three-quarters of prewar telephone services and over two-thirds of the potable water production.
# There are 4,900 full-service telephone connections. We expect 50,000 by year-end.
# The wheels of commerce are turning. From bicycles to satellite dishes to cars and trucks, businesses are coming to life in all major cities and towns.
# 95 percent of all prewar bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily.
# Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.
# The central bank is fully independent.
# Iraq has one of the worlds most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.
# Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years.
# Satellite TV dishes are legal.
# Foreign journalists aren't on 10-day visas paying mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information for "minders" and other government spies
# There IS no Ministry of Information.
# There are more than 170 newspapers.
# You can buy satellite dishes on what seems like every street corner.
# Foreign journalists (and everyone else) are free to come and go.
# A nation that had not one single element - legislative, judicial or executive - of a representative government, now does.
# In Baghdad alone residents have selected 88 advisory councils. Baghdad's first democratic transfer of power in 35 years happened when the city council elected its new chairman.
# Today in Iraq chambers of commerce, business, school and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country.
# 25 ministers, selected by the most representative governing body in Iraq's history, run the day-to-day business of government.

Go there for the full article. It's impressive when it is all in one place. And while you're there scroll down to Michael Crichton's piece satirically titled "Aliens Caused Global Warming", it's very very good and as usual with anything Crichton writes, it makes you think. Braden is always worth a weekly visit.

Right Wing News combs the Democratic websites to come up with some of the more despicably odorous opinions voiced there. It would be a mistake to just write these rantings off as fringe observations. If you ever read any of them on a regualr basis you will see that these opinions dominate. TAKE A LOOK HERE. If you doubt this stuff actually represents more than a few nuts, keep in mind that I live in the Left Wing center of LA and several apartments jumped for joy during the Iraq War when one of our helicopters was shot down and 16 of our soldiers were killed. These people are truly slime, I only question how many of them really exist.

I used to be an assistant football coach on the Pop Warner level when my son played. My experience was only on the Service Team/Junior College level so before embarking I read up on the modern techniques. Early this AM a couple of us re-ran tapes of the USC defense trying to figure out the "fancy" schemes they used. What was fancy was that their players manhandled the Michigan line. Butchered them. Meant that any blitzes could work because the Michigan line was trying to double team three to four guys, and not doing a real good job it. USC was that much better. Reminds me of something I read by a famous coach back when I was going to coach.

I once designed a play that seemed perfect. An off tackle blast with delayed blocking that worked like a million bucks in practice for two weeks. When I pulled it in a game my back got hit in the backfield, spun off and hit the now closing hole where a linebacker stood him up. He spun off the linebacker, dodged a safety, and picked up fifteen yards. It was then I realized that players make plays, not coaches or fancy designs.

Carr was not so much out coached as totally out recruited. USC's athletes were and are superior in almost every respect. USC receivers did not run bad routes, passers did not overthrow open receivers, tackles were sure. Better players won. They may have been taught better but there is no way of knowing that. USC took the cream of SoCal players, one from Florida (Williams), and one from Colorado (White). Tough fast kids. What most people don't know is that in almost every match up between Florida high schoolers and California high school players, the California kids win (Florida won this year but both teams lacked the best players who played elsewhere). Only six USC players will graduate. They will probably lose their #2 QB, a kid from Louisiana who has a big rep, but there is no way he will run off the current #1 who is a soph. BTW did anyone notice the way Washington State manhandled Texas in the Holiday Bowl? Their defense was all over them just like USC was all over Michigan. Total aggression. I think the PAC 10 was very tough at the top this year. Very tough. Next year Cal will join the club of top teams; great coach and some top talent.

Disapppearing Issues and the Dem responses are interesting. The "No Child Left Behind" Bush program is now under attack openly. By teachers who hate any accountability for their ineptitude and by local school boards who don't want to be held accountable either. The school boards claim they don't have the money but with the economy growing full tilt that argument may not stand up very long. Big losers: our kids.
Handouts to farmers at a sickening pace is now a big Democratic platform plank, but watch out for the WTO on this one.
The wild claims of money raised by Dem candidates are beginning to raise eyebrows. Is it really possible for Dean to raise $40 mil and Clark to raise nearly $20? This smells to high heaven. Bush "reportedly" has $111 million in the bank and not yet spending anything.
Al Hunt joins the short list of people thinking Dean might lose in Iowa. And mark James Carville as joining the "shocked" by Dean's comments section; "I'm scared to death that this guy just says anything. It feels like he's undergone some kind of a political lobotomy here.'' Good line for Dean opponents to use.

I still feel this election boils down to "the investor class" opposing any and all tax increases that might stall the economy. The Dow will be above 11,000, the S&P will be really high (1200??), many other indexes are at all time highs right now (S&P Mid Cap and small caps) and only the speculative NASDAQ will be much below the Clinton bubble highs. Everyone's 401K, IRA, and portfolios will be more than OK. Anybody (Dean, Gephardt, Clark) who threatens boomer retirement funds will lose.

Back to Religion: Football. The big big spiritual weekend continues; How 'bout them Trojans?

FARM SUBSIDIES, MORE THAN MEET THE EYE. IOWA IS THE WELFARE STATE AND DEMOCRATS ARE EAGER TO KEEP THEM THAT WAY

Dresner runs a small piece on Sullivan today about the "end of farm subsidies". This is the biggest joke since Michigan by seven in the Rose Bowl. Below is a reprint of an essay I ran about six months ago. Covers subsidies AND farmers. Keep in mind that Iowa is Left Wing because their farmers are on welfare and the Dems keep promising them more hand outs. Another client for the Welfare State.

I know, feeding Africa is a topic du jour on 43rd street, CNN, and the other lying media circles; the H'wood Left, the LA Times, and Yale. But remember this: the first purpose of every government is to provide cheap food to their own people. Ever since some Egyptians almost killed a Pharaoh who failed to provide, all the following Pharaohs made dam sure they had seven years supply of grain on hand, just in case. Every government since then has tried to do the same, even the stupid Communists. Cheap food is job one.

But the hard nosed politics of food is one hell of a topic. The current party line on my side of the divide is that the EU is deliberately trying to capture the African market by starving part of the continent to death. They are more interested in subsidizing French farmers, arguably the most inefficient in the history of the planet after Soviet Collectivization. They forbid EU trading with any country that grows genetically engineered food, falsely claiming the food is unsafe, unhealthy, and a menace to adjoining countries. GE food could end starvation in Africa in a single growing season. All this is true and the U.S. attacks the EU farm subsidies. Taaa Daaaa.

So how about us, the good old capitalist USA? Do we subsidize farmers? In a nutshell the answer is, "Holy Shit!!". Forgetting the individual farmer, let's just look at the money. The government sent out 22 million farm subsidy checks just last year. Starting with sugar, subsidized at twenty cents a pound while the world price is between six and eight cents. The sugar subsidy cost you and me $1.4 billion per year in higher food costs. According to the GAO study, 33 sugar farmers have received more than $1 million each in government subsidies, with one Florida family receiving $65 million in one year alone. A positive labyrinth of business and farming interests is involved in keeping the sugar program in place. ADM and Carghill who are corn processors lead the way here because they need higher sugar prices in order to force candy, soft drink, and other users of sweeteners to use expensive corn syrup, and the only way they can do this is if sugar costs more than eighteen cents a pound. Get it? This agribusiness is also behind the unnecessary corn created gasoline additive called ethanol. Ethanol costs us around two or three cents per gallon of gas. Corn subsidies are a part of the sugar deal. And it's deeper than that but you get where I could go here.

Then we have cotton, a water sucking crop with almost no equal (only rice, sugar, and coffee suck up as much) now subsidized at seventy something cents a pound while the world price is hovering around fifty cents (Now over 70 cents for the first time in years as of 1/04). You have to go all the way back to 1998 to see cotton briefly sell at seventy cents or higher, meaning we are guaranteeing farmers the highest price in recent history for growing it and tossing it on the world market at fifty cents. Now here's the boring capitalistic data. Hold your nose. The top 10 percent of cotton farmers got 73 percent of the handouts of $5.3 billion of total payments from 1996 through 2001. These cotton producers received an average payment over this time period of $286,007, an average of just over 55K per. However, hold your breath here, the top 1 percent, which only represents 1,858 recipients, collected nearly 25 percent of total payments of $1.7 billion with an average payment of $913,478, that's more than $120,000 per year, guaranteed. Worse, (if you need worse) this subsidy is also destroying cotton farming in Africa because those poor dopes have to sell their cotton at world market prices which we depress even further by dumping ours. Every acre of cotton farmland in the US attracts a subsidy of $230. The total cotton subsidy is three times higher than the entire USAID budget for Africa's 500 million people. Capitalist enough for you?

Other crops like rice, soybeans and wheat get plenty through farmer co-ops. The data is only available for the Clinton years which shows five out of the top ten subsidies went to Arkansas farming co-operatives.. Number one was Riceland Foods in Stuttgart AR who picked up a nifty $222 million, however $220,821,863 of the total came in the last two years of the Clinton administration. Riceland is followed by Producers Ricemill also in Stuttgart that only pocketed around $70 million. Why Arkansas? It just so happens that these farmer co-ops are there. I think.

But these U.S. subsidies go even deeper, if that is possible. Farms are also owned by prison systems, jails, cities, and hospitals. They get paid off too. Jails? Yes. Cities? Yes. Why? Well they just do, they have political clout and they want more in handouts. So they get them. Haven't you ever heard of Georgia Correctional corn? Sing Sing wheat?

How about the farmer? You know, that guy who gets up at 4AM and works in the hot sun til sunset every single day. What about him? He wakes one morning in April and looks out upon nothing. Just land. Planting is coming so he has to "work" the soil, meaning he tills his acres to prepare the ground, usually plowing under a legume crop that fertilizes the soil. This costs money. Then he goes to the bank to borrow money for seed, fertilizer, and pesticide or herbicide. The bank will lend him the money IF he also buys crop insurance. This means if the weather destroys the crop the bank will be paid. The farmer will not be paid if there is no crop to deliver to the government. Now let's look at cotton. He will get 72 cents per pound IF there is a per pound to harvest. Too much rain, too little, too hot or too cold and there won't be enough per pounds to feed him and his family through the winter even at $2 per pound. The cotton farmer can't plant until the soil is the right temperature. Then he will seed it. During the growing season he has to weed it (more money), remove insects (more money), and be sure there is enough water (irrigation is more money). If things go right he harvests the cotton (more money). Rain, even one drop during pollination period of a single day will ruin the entire crop. So will not enough rain. A farm will average around 700 pounds per acre on a good year. It's the cost and grade that has to work out. 500 acres (average size of a cotton farm) may yield 350,000 pounds of cotton that cost the farmer at least $200,000 to grow not counting land taxes, maintenance on his equipment, and fields AND IF there were no weevils infesting the crop. IF the cotton grades well he may get around $.60 at current prices; much higher if bad weather hit other parts of the world or country; a hell of a lot lower if everybody in the world has a big crop. If he has to sell at market he will lose everything unless the market is at $.62 or higher. He has to pay interest on the loan to the bank and he is out the crop insurance. At sixty two cents times 350,000 he makes $17,000 out of which he has to support a family, maintain his farm, his home, etc. At the subsidized price of seventy two cents per pound he will make $52,000 before expenses. Keep in mind that a yield of 700 pounds per acre is on the very good side. If the yield is only 600 pounds per acre he is dead. It is a boom or bust existence for a farmer who works longer hours than any two men any of us know. The AVERAGE farmer is still getting screwed. He can grow other crops but cotton offers the best return if the weather is good. Without a subsidy the average cotton farmer doesn't farm, but neither does anyone else.

To sum up this state of things, every major country is subsidizing their agriculture, not a bad thing in and of itself. As I said at the beginning of this piece, the number one job of any government is to assure cheap food for their own people. The French Revolution was not caused by any yearning for democracy but because good old King Louie had refused to pay the farmers (barons and counts) a high enough price for their wheat so they refused to deliver wheat to Paris. Paris ran out of bread and Louie became toast. "Let them eat cake," still resonates today. Every country on the planet has to have cheap food or their governments are done.

Which means things ain't gunna change real soon no matter how many Africans who we really don't give a rats ass about die. Do you care? I mean really care enough to risk the day when we must have foreign food to exist because our own farmers can't possibly earn a living on $1 corn or fifty cent wheat? Think about that one.
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Will the arrest of Roberson affect Kansas State? No. Kid plays better with an erection, true. But another "he said, she said" isn't going to bench him. Snyder, who runs a tight ship, may bench him. Then it's Ohio State by at least two TDs. That's why you don't bet on college games til the day of the game. You never know. Personally, I'd like to see USC vs a healthy Kansas State which I think deserves to be in the top six. And how about them Trojans? Those of us who have seen them all year weren't surprised. All the bullshit about "establish the run and then pass" is just that: bullshit. If you've got seven receivers and a passer who can hit them, combined with a truly imaginative offense, you pass first and then run. Of course the offensive line is great too. USC is a really great team, with the emphasis on team.