First, some nut job suggests that cycling is worse for the environment than driving. Now another idiotic study suggests that WALKING is worse for the environment than driving

Both of these so-called "studies" base their findings on the eco-cost of the extra food production required to replenish the calories burned. Clearly, this guy doesn't exercise.

If you take a fat ass 300lb person. That person has to ingest somewhere in the range of 4,000 calories daily to sustain his enormous fat self. If that person walked a few miles everyday, he doesn't have to eat more to replenish the "lost" calories. Guess what, he could lose some damn weight instead!!

I ride my bike to work 2 to 3 days a week. I don't think I eat any more - or less - than when I didn't ride my bike, but guess what. My weight is lower when I ride than it used to be before I started riding to work. Hmmmm. And that's bad for the environment?

Just goes to show you any nut job can "prove" their point with a little pseudo science, some statistics and some downright stupid assumptions.

For all of the political wrangling over Iraq, it seems to me that 10 years on the outcome is not in serious doubt.

First, regardless of which party wins the next couple of elections, the drawdown of troops out of Iraq will be quite slow. Maybe a little faster for a Democrat with semantic differences in objectives and reasons, but ultimately not much faster than a Republican would do it. The fact is, neither party is going to let Al-Qaeda setup permanent camp and so we are going to hang around enough to help the Iraqis get on their feet enough to run their own country so that we can leave somewhat gracefully. Further, neither party wants to be identified as the party that let it turn into complete chaos, genocide and terrorist state. You can blame Bush all you want, but in the election of 2012 that won't fly. There will be at least 1,000 troops in Iraq in 2017 and probably more.

Republicans will claim victory for the "Bush" doctrine and Gen. Patraeus will be a hero. They will point to small changes towards democracy in the Middle East as "proof".

Democrats will say "I told you so" - as in "Bush's war was a miserable failure." The proof of this will be some continued sectarian violence and some level of terrorism in Iraq which the MSM will continue to trumpet. The Israeli and Palestinian conflict will still be unresolved. We will still be at Terror Alert level will still be orange.

Does that mean that the Iraq issue doesn't matter to me in 2008? Actually it does, my point is twofold:

• Politicians are more rhetoric than substance and what we accomplish, or when we leave, will not be as stark as what they are saying. Witness the 2006 Democratic victory. The left thought we'd be out of Iraq in weeks or months. Ain't gonna happen.
• Partisans believe what they want to believe and substantiate their beliefs by emphasizing facts that support their side and ignoring those that don't.

The unfortunate part of this is that no matter what real victory we salvage out of Iraq, Democrats will spin it as bad and our strength and credibility as a country will not be significantly enhanced. Partisan politics is what is ruining our image more than any actions we've taken in Iraq.

Would you make more money (i.e. profit) if you sold beer for $4.00 a six-pack or $8.00 a six-pack?

If you answered $8.00, you must be a Democrat, government educated, unemployed or all of the above. Clearly, the answer depends on much more complex factors than the price of a single six-pack. Even for economic illiterates, you would have to recognize that people might buy a lot less of your beer if you charged such a high price.

This is what frustrates me about Democrats and their pundits as well as the CBO. When any tax cut is considered, the impact is computed in a linear fashion with absolutely no consideration of the economic impacts of the tax cut.

For instance, if beer cost me $3.00 per six-pack and I sold 100 six-packs for $4, I would have made $100 profit. According to the above method of calculating tax revenues, if I raise the price of my beer to $8, my profit would obviously by $500!! WOW! Of course, at that price, my unit sales would probably go down to about 2 - or how many six-packs I could sell some extremely desperate alcoholic.

So, when I see news items decrying tax cuts such as "how will the gov't pay for the tax cut" or "the cuts will make the deficit bigger", I simply cringe. Yet, I'm guessing that there are a fair number out there who just assume that tax cuts means less revenue and tax increases mean more. Certainly, this is the prevailing attitude in the press.

I'd just like to know who these people are so I can ask them what would be a fair portion of their income to pay in taxes.

I'm happy to see that the Fair Tax is actually getting some traction, at least in the Republican presidential debate. It is interesting to me that this topic has support divided along political lines.

The left has tried to take the privacy issue as their own, painting Republicans as insensitive to individual privacy (e.g. abortion, warrantless wiretaps, etc.). Yet to me, the biggest infringement on our privacy, and incidentally our private property rights, is the IRS and the income tax. The gov't has more personal information on more people available to them via the IRS than all other government programs combined. Consider that when the gov't can't prosecute someone for the actual crimes they committed such as racketeering, fraud, prostitution, mob killings, etc. they go after the tax evasion angle. 

So, for the life of me, why are the Democrats demonizing an alternative to the IRS and the income tax? The Fair Tax may not be perfect, but you can't argue that it's not

• at least as fair as the current income tax,
• easier for individuals to comply with and
• much more private since the gov't would no longer be able to collect a wealth of personal financial information from each and every citizen.

Come on! Let's make this a non-partisan issue and take a serious look at taking back some of the power we've given to the gov't.

The political left has staked out its position as the "anti-racism" party. Not that I buy into the stereotype of Republicans as racists, but I think everyone would agree with the first statement.

So, I find it odd that many on the far left find it so easy to have such an extreme negative prejudice against those who serve in the military. While that's not racism per se, what's the difference? I realize that you could argue that joining the military is a choice while being born in a particular race is not, but it seems clear to me that those in the military are as varied a group as those born into a given race.

If you want examples, they're easy to find. Here is one particularly interesting and relevant story. There are lots of threads and links to get the full story, but like I said - it's very interesting.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/08/018142.php