A Light Footprint...

This post by John Hinderaker (at Powerline Blog) contains this bit that resonates strongly with me:

Krauthammer thinks that by selecting Palin, McCain threw away his best argument, the fact that his own qualifications are so obviously superior to Obama's. That was my concern, too, when I first learned of the Palin pick. But it fails to give enough emphasis to the basic fact that Obama is running for President, not Vice President. It also fails to acknowledge that Obama and Palin, being middle-aged, do have track records, and those records are very different. Obama has never been a reformer. He has always been a careerist. Wherever he has gone, he has left an extraordinarily light footprint. He has had little or no impact.

The opposite is true of Palin. She entered politics as an outsider--in Alaska!--and as a reformer. Wherever she has gone, she has made a difference. In political terms, her record usefully shows up the fact that Obama is a poseur.

That observation about Obama's few actual accomplishments versus Palin's many strikes to the heart of the matter.

And isn't it interesting that so many are comparing the Republican Vice Presidential pick to the Democratic Presidential pick?

Lipstick On A Pig...

Michael Mann is the creator of the infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph (at right) that in 2001 started the whole anthropomorphic (human-caused) global warming (AGW) madness. Though he is a scientist, Mann did something very unlike a scientist: he published his results, but not details of his data and methods that would allow independent scientists to replicate and verify his work. Replication and verification is a cornerstone of the scientific method, and it absolutely relies on full and open disclosure of everything underlying a result.

Mann was roundly criticized for this transgression, by both skeptics and advocates of AGW. So recently he published a reworked version of his original study, and this time he was more open about his data and methods. Warren Meyer, writing at Climate Skeptic, dubbed this new study “Lipstick on a Pig” – read his excellent article to see why. Meyer's post led me to Steve McIntyre's outstanding Climate Audit site and this article, where McIntyre did something very interesting that makes the root of his skepticism very accessible to people who don't know the math and are not climate experts. Spend a few minutes looking at the links below and you'll come away with a much better understanding of why I and many others are so skeptical of AGW.

First of all, here's the links (from Climate Audit): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. McIntyre broke this into five parts only because of limitations of the software he used to produce them.

The posts themselves delve into the technical reasons (though not too deeply) why so many scientists are concerned about Mann's study. But the graph animations linked above are simple enough for anyone to understand. McIntyre took all the temperature data that Mann started with, reformatted it so that he could display each source of data on an identical graph, and then flips through them one after the other. What anyone is immediately struck by is just how random the data is – there's no clear pattern in it at all. As a commenter observes, by cherry-picking and massaging this data, one could make a graph that has any shape you'd like it to have!

And cherry-picking and massaging is exactly what Mann has done with this data. What he most definitely did not do is simply average it all out – others have done this, however, and found no trend whatsoever. I'm not saying that a simple average is the right thing to do – but I am saying that if a simple average shows no trend at all, and Mann's manipulation shows the pronounced hockey stick, then we should be very skeptical indeed of Mann's results.

This kind of data manipulation hocus-pocus would be instantly condemned – and rejected – in just about every other field of science I'm familiar with. No reputable scientist would even consider relying on such a shaky foundation for public policy decisions that have trillions of dollars in economic impact.

Why are we allowing this to happen with AGW? Why do so many people listen to Al Gore rather than use their own common sense? I sure wish I knew the answer to that...

A Question for Obama...

Senator Obama, for the last week or so you've been repeatedly asserting that “we won't be bullied!” How, exactly, have you been bullied, or even threatened with bullying?

I see many who disagree with Obama, or who find him far more stylish than substantive...but bullied? Not unless that word has a far different meaning for Obama than it does for me. And I have to say that if Obama believes he's being bullied simply because there are some who disagree with him, or who don't find him admirable, then I find that alone a bit worrisome.

Seems a lot like whining. Like he needs his momma to come help him out with the meanies. Just sayin'...

Two Questions for the Media...

1. Why has every major news organization sent teams of reporters to Arizona (to hunt down and interview Cindy McCain's disinherited older half-siblings from her father's first marriage) and to Alaska (to hunt down and interview any disgruntled divorced in-laws or baby daddy's relatives) but not to Kenya (to interview the Muslim co-parents, half-siblings and co-siblings from Obama's father's numerous polygamist marriages) or to Indonesia (to interview the Muslim family of Obama's stepfather and any Indonesian half-siblings and classmates)?
   
   
2. Why is Obama's 18 year old birth mother (impregnated by an older African exchange student with several polygamist wives stashed away in Kenya) an example of all-American grit, courage and upward mobility, but Bristol Palin is a slut? (For bonus points - identify which one went on government assistance.)

(These are edited versions of questions originally asked by Concerned Democrats for McCain)...

Why The Left Mindlessly Attacks Palin...

Some excerpts from an insightful piece by Jeffrey Bell (titled Why They Hate Her, and subtitled Sarah Palin is a smart missile aimed at the heart of the left):

From the instant of Palin's designation on Friday, August 29, the American left went into a collective mass seizure from which it shows no sign of emerging. The left blogosphere and elite media have, for the moment, joined forces and become indistinguishable from each other, and from the supermarket tabloids, in their desire to find and use anything that will criminalize and/or humiliate Palin and her family. In sharp contrast to the yearlong restraint shown toward truthful reports about John Edwards's affair, bizarre rumors have been reported as news, and, according to McCain campaign directorSteve Schmidt, nationally known members of the elite media have besieged him with preposterous demands.

The most striking thing in purely political terms about this hurricane of elite rage is the built-in likelihood that it will backfire. It's not simply that it is highly capable of generating sympathy for Palin among puzzled undecided voters and of infuriating and motivating a previously placid GOP base, neither of which is in the interest of the Obama-Biden campaign. It also created an opening for Palin herself to look calm, composed, competent, and funny in response.

...

On August 29, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement by the McCain campaign, all that was widely known of the governor of Alaska was that she was married with five children, the last one of whom had been carried to term with Down syndrome, and that she was pro-life. No one knew that her oldest daughter was pregnant. No one knew much about what she had done as governor or in her previous career. No one knew how she had been drawn into politics, or that her sister had had a reckless husband and a contentious divorce. Above all, with the possible exception of John McCain, no one knew that Sarah Palin was both a married mother of five and a brilliant political talent with a chance not just to change the dynamics of the 2008 election but to rise to the top level of American politics, whatever happens this year.

The simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was--before anything else about her was known--enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction. She could not be allowed to contradict symbolically one of the central narratives of the left. How galling it will be to Sarah Palin's many new enemies if she survives this assault and prevails. If she does, her success may be an important moment in the struggle to shape not just America's politics but its culture.

This is as good an explanation as I've seen anywhere for the left's continuing attacks on Palin – attacks that are already backfiring badly. The real losers of this, in the long run, may not be Obama and Biden – but the lamestream media and the kookier leftists. The media is full of stories about people being upset with – the media! The Daily Kos has pulled more stories about Palin in the past week, I think, than in their entire history – they've gone completely berserk, evenly openly promoting the wisdom and morality of blatantly lying to keep Palin from being elected.

I wish I liked popcorn...

Why Ayers Matters...

I was planning to post on this topic, but Neo-Neocon beat me to it. And of course, she did a much better job than I ever could. Her lead:

It is troubling that the MSM has abdicated its investigatory task by being surprisingly uninterested in shining light into some of the more suspicious regions of Barack Obama’s past. And of all those dark corners, the very darkest may be the Obama-Ayers connection.

Why does it matter? Isn’t this just a meaningless game of “gotcha” guilt by association, and a rather tenuous association at that? Can Obama really be blamed for the doings of everyone who’s ever crossed his path?

The official Obama campaign statement about Ayers and the candidate focuses on the charges about Ayers’ terrorist background, the Woods hole connection, and the fact that Ayers is considered a respected scholar on education. It is entirely mum—as Obama has mostly been so far—about their work together on the Annenberg Challenge.

If you care even a whit about this election, you really should go read her whole post – and find out why the Ayers connection matters...

Patio Plants...

Our patio has been a great source of pleasure for Debbie and I this year. We've got something like 40 or 50 plants on it, all potted. Many of them are perched on log segments, both purely for the visual effect and to keep the hungry rabbits from munching them (Debbie won't let me shoot the damned things!).

The photos below were all taken this morning in a binge shoot. It felt good to spend a little time with a hobby; I haven't taken many just-for-fun photos for a while, having been so immersed in my work. All of them are in natural light, with a 100mm macro lens and a polarizer.

There is only one native plant in the entire collection on our patio: a Western Redbud. The other plants you see below include honeysuckle, rosemary, thyme, lantana, guava, polygala, Texas sage, Cape honeysuckle, a bloomin' basil, phlox, garlic, and more...

Don't forget: you can click on any photo to get a larger version...

Enjoy!

12,000 Tossed-Away Flags...

After the Democratic convention in Denver, crews cleaned up the mess – including about 12,000 American flags of many different sizes. They threw them away.

No matter what you think about the American flag, you have to admit that it is a powerful symbol to many – and that for a campaign for President to throw 12,000 flags in the garbage is bound to be interpreted negatively by many people, including even some in the Democratic party. Not everybody sees the American flag as just another piece of cloth. It seems a remarkably stupid move, most charitably interpreted, perhaps, as a stunning tone-deafness to the sensitivities of many patriotic Americans.

Now the Republicans are going to make some hay out of the incident. It seems a worker at Invesco field rescued the flags, and some veterans are going to bring them on-stage at a Republican campaign event in Colorado. Somewhere, someone in the Obama campaign is kicking him or her self right now. Hard.

At the Denver Post, David Harsanyi reports the story, and then wonders what the Democrats were supposed to have done with them. You can almost hear the sneering “They're just some leftover cloth, folks!” Commenters are quick to answer for him – there are, after all, rather a lot of things one might do with some surplus flags. But apparently those things are hard to think of for people of a certain mindset...

Update: A commenter claims that the convention just left the flags at Invesco field, and a Republican-owned company, responsible for cleanup, threw them away. Firstly, even if that were true, the Democratic convention still made the choice to just leave them there, instead of doing something more likely to be interpreted positively. Second, if this claim were true, you'd think it would be in the (many) news stories reporting the incident, and would be the subject of a response from the Obama campaign. It is neither. So until someone can back up this allegation, I'm treating it as business-as-usual smears-and-lies from the fruitcakes and loons on the left. My commenter may well not be one of them, mind you – just a bit more credulous than I am...

Obama's Existential Crisis...

Patrick Poole, writing over at PJM, makes a case that the Obama campaign is facing an existential crisis. From the article:

In his selection of Gov. Palin, McCain has exposed what was perhaps Obama’s greatest weakness, namely how the Obama project has really been a last-ditch attempt by Democrats to extend the miserable life of the New Deal/Great Society Democratic Party — the very bloated big government model they have pushed with the past three candidates: Al Gore, John Kerry, and now Barack Obama. Can anyone really tell the difference between these political triplets?

Make no mistake; Democrats are frantic now that the man behind the curtain has been revealed. Despite their shameless attempt to mask their plans behind identity politics, the Obama campaign has always been about big government liberalism, labor union dinosaurs, and K Street fat-cat lobbyists — Washington politics as usual. America saw this with his vice-presidential pick, Joe Biden.

Read the whole thing over at PJM.

Oh, lordy, I hope he's right...

Some Beautiful Music...

Yes, I know it's religious music. That doesn't stop it from being beautiful!

I am in awe of the skill of these a capella singers, nuns from the St. Elizabeth Monastery in Belorussia...

Why, Oh Why?

Fergus Shanahan, a British journalist writing for The Sun in London, compares Sarah Palin to the current crop of British politicians:

Palin shows us how it's done
From FERGUS SHANAHAN

WHY, why, why can’t WE have a Sarah Palin?

That was the question churning in my mind as I witnessed this astonishing American presidential race.

A week ago few in Britain had heard of Palin.

Today, the moose-huntin’ mom is the most talked-about woman in the world.

And with good reason.

Her sensational performance at the Republican convention may turn out to be the moment the White House slipped from Barack Obama’s grasp.

She was an electrifying mix of passion, energy, optimism and plain speaking. The exact opposite of the slippery, two-faced, depressing bunch of third-raters who parade on our Westminster stage.

My first reaction to this was to wonder: Why, why, why, can't we have the likes of a Fergus Shanahan on the staff of (say) the New York Times? How refreshing that would be compared to the pap that rag feeds us today.

I rather like the rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred, heavy-on-the-humor style of the British press. There's much to disagree with on the content, but the style I greatly appreciate – most especially the unabashed advocacy of positions, and the lack of pretense about “objectivity” so laughably claimed by our press here. Their newspapers are much more along the lines of our talk radio. Oh, and they make money, too – something you'd think our down-and-nearly-out newspapers would pay attention to...

Quote of the Day...

Ilan Samson, talking about why he's in San Diego:

We are here to stay, because this is the place where people do things. They're enthusiastic, as opposed to Europe where they cleverly talk about things.

Taken from this article in Voice of San Diego. Samson is an Israeli who has lived in Europe for years, and recently moved here to pursue the development of a new kind of calculator.

What initially piqued my interest in this interview was the calculator (called “Qama”). What makes it different than an ordinary calculator is that it won't provide the answer until you give it a reasonable estimate of what the answer should be. This is exactly the aspect of using a slide rule for calculating that pushed me into becoming proficient with arithmetic and algebra (especially), along with some other specific areas of mathematics. With a slide rule, you get the digits of the answer, but not the magnitude. For example, you might get the result ‘535’ – but you don't know whether that's 5.35, 53500, or 0.000535. To get the complete answer, you must estimate the correct answer (within an order of magnitude), and then use the slide rule to give you the digits. By using the magnitude from your estimate and the digits from the slide rule, you get the right answer – and only by doing that.

Which sounds exactly like what Qama is doing. I think Samson is onto something here...

Palin Rumors...

Charles Martin has a running list, updated as needed, of all the nasty-but-debunked rumors being spread about Sarah Palin since the day she was announced for the Republican VP slot. As I write this, he's listing 46 of them...

Huh?

At first this article caught my interest because the main subject was interesting: an archaeological find of humans in Switzerland some 5,000 years ago. But as I read the lead, I did a double-take:

Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today's, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows.

The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier.

The emphasis above is mine. The rest of the article make clear the author's believe that the glaciers are melting today because of anthropomorphic (i.e., human-caused) global warming (AGW).

So...in the space of three sentences – the first three, no less – and with no apparent intended irony or sarcasm, this article (1) states plainly that 5,000 years ago the climate under today's glacier was warm, and (2) introduces the notion that anthropomorphic global warming is causing the glacier to melt, thus revealing our frozen Swiss hunter.

Presumably not even the most fanatic believer in AGW believes that the warm climate 5,000 years ago was caused by human activity. What amazes me is their assured acceptance of the notion that the many warm cycles our planet has experienced in the past are all different (and ok, somehow) than the current warming (assuming, even, that such warming is really occurring – something I am none too sure about). In other words, even though Earth has had hundreds of warm periods, dozens of them within the span of human history, AGW believers are certain that if another warming period occurs, it could only be because of (bad!) human activity.

And this set of assumptions is pervasive enough to make it into completely unrelated articles like this one.

I heard an interesting theory at work a few days ago. My coworker proposed this notion: that mankind has some sort of deep need to always be facing some upcoming disaster. Therefore if no real disaster is readily at hand, mankind will make one up through some sort of organic community process.

As I think back over my lifetime, it's not hard to plug in the looming disaster over each period of my life – the Soviets and their super-technology when I was a kid (think Sputnik), then the Communists and their quest for world domination. Oh, and let's not forget nuclear winter, over-population, the year 2000, and on and on. Yup, there always seems to have been one overriding looming disaster, except on a few occasions when we had two of them at once. Makes me wonder if my coworker might be right...

Your Morning Ponder...

Fascinating post over at Captain Capitalism, wherein the Captain makes a connection between lefties and terrorists. Here's a sample:

"Hey, Rahib. Do you want to go and get a degree in engineering, go to mosque, raise some kids and maybe some goats?

or...

"Go to the Western Infidel stronghold of London and against insurmountable odds wage an underground, underdog war in an epic and never-ending galactic fight against the evil, villainous forces of Capitalism, Christianity, America and Western Culture in a desperate attempt to convert the people of the world to Islam and destroy those that won't, while you guarantee yourself a position in heaven along with 72 brown-eyed virgins even though you have not the equipment to enjoy them!"

Again, what seems more heroic and romantic and would play to the psychoses of a brainwashed Islamic ego-manic?

Grab a cup of coffee and take 10 minutes or so to absorb the whole thing. There's lots of Saturday-morning brain-starterness in there...

Completely Unexpected?!?

Yesterday the stock market swooned over the “unexpected surge” in unemployment, to 6.1% (which, by-the-by, is still one of the lowest rates in the world). Naturally the media breathlessly echoed this sentiment.

Well, I'm beginning to think they're all idiots. This “unexpected surge” was completely expected by me. Along with a few of the (truly unexpectedly!) more intelligent politicians who opposed the raise in the minimum wage.

Because, you see, every single raise in the minimum wage has been followed by a surge in unemployment – as employers get rid of the workers whose work is no longer worth what they're legally required to pay them.

Bet those workers aren't all that pleased right now. That raise in minimum wages sure did them a lot of good now, didn't it?

There's only two possibilities here, you know. Either there's a lot of idiots around, or there are a lot of people who believe in magic and the tooth fairy.

Either way, it sure ticks me off.

Idiots!

Quote of the Day...

By Kellie Hoehn, housewife. Texas housewife:

I wasn't going to let them get to my babies.

Said while recalling earlier events, in which two armed intruders attempted to enter their home – but she grabbed the muzzle of one of their shotguns and hollered for her husband (Keith). In the end, one intruder was dead (with his own shotgun!), and the other was critically wounded.

The police are not pressing charges, saying the pair was simply defending their home.

Good guys: 2
Bad guys: 0

Palin's Speech Reaction...

From Roger Simon (Pajamas Media):

But Sarah Palin is a force of nature. Like a Jimmy Stewart character channeled by Claudette Colbert.

The big losers tonight are obvious: Joe Biden, who will look like hackopathropus erectus next to her, a dinosaur out the Washington everybody hates, and Hillary Rodham Clinton who, I would bet anything, was staring at her television set in horror tonight at the possible first woman president of the United States - and it’s not her!

“Hackopathropus erectus” – heh!

Quote of the Day...

From Hal Stratton, commenting on Sarah Palin's speech last night:

That's what we out West call opening a whole can of whup-ass on your opponents!

Palin's Speech...

She seemed a little stiff and nervous at first, but then a short way into it she loosened up and seemed natural, even ad-libbing a little. She's a talented speaker, with very good timing, and an equally good sense of the audience. I thought her jabs at Obama were particularly effective.

But my favorite line was this: “I put it on eBay.”

She was referring to the Alaska governor's jet, which she sold, saying that it was over-the-top spending. Besides warming my small-government heart, it made me immediately contrast her with Nancy Pelosi and her insistence on getting the big jet as a privilege of being Speaker of the House. Needless to say, Sarah fared much better in that comparison, on just about every count one could imagine.

I'm headed for sleepy-land with a smile on my face, because I'm beginning to think that The One might not, er, be the one after all...

Headline of the Day...

HURRICANE SARAH HITS ST. PAUL

Drudge Report, referring to Sarah Palin's arrival at the Republican convention site...

The Strange Ways of the Internet...

This morning I looked at my blog's traffic report, and discovered that yesterday the traffic (people looking at my blog) was ten times what it normally is. A little research and I figured out that about 85% of this extra traffic was coming from a single source: Google image searches for "Sarah Palin".

So I tried that image search myself, to see where JamulBlog ranked. I looked through the first 200 images and didn't see any JamulBlog hits. So all that extra traffic came from people paging through more than 10 pages worth of Google image “hits” (for all I know, a lot more!). Every image of Sarah Palin that I have on my blog is copied from some other public source, and I'm pretty sure that I saw all of them on the search hits. So what were these people looking for so diligently?

Strange are the ways of the Internet...

Blog Note...

Ordinarily this little blog doesn't attract the “trolls” – commenters who make statements intended to provoke, and who take malicious delight in insulting and maligning any who try to reason with them. I'm very familiar with the trolls from reading the “big blogs”. Like the examples I've seen there, on the few occassions the trolls appeared here, they are universally liberals.

Well, last night the trolls were back here. I've allowed their comments to post, because I think some of my readers might like this peek into the crazy left mindset. For example, one commenter last night – apparently seriously – declared that the mainstream media is controlled by the right wing. That demonstrates a truly amazing ability to ignore all observable facts in favor of a more appealing (to them) belief.

But here's the real point: as I've witnessed many times on other blogs, these trolls feed from the controversy they create on the blogs they post on. They live to cause hate and discontent. Please don't feed the trolls by responding to them. It's instructive (and even entertaining, in a dark sort of way) to let them spew their stuff where we can all see it. But I am not interested in hosting the vitriol I see on so many other blogs, so if the troll-fed crap starts on my blog, I'll stop allowing the troll's posts to appear...

The Florist, The Cop, The Professor, and the Politician...

My mom passes along this little tale:

One day a florist goes to a barber for a haircut. After the cut he asks about his bill and the barber replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The florist is pleased and leaves the shop.

When the barber goes to open his shop the next morning there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The cop is happy and leaves the shop.

The next morning when the barber goes to open up there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Later that day, a college professor comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The professor is very happy and leaves the shop.

The next morning when the barber opens his shop, there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen different books, such as 'How to Improve Your Business' and 'Becoming More Successful.'

Then, a Congressman comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The Congressman is very happy and leaves the shop.

The next morning when the barber goes to open up, there are a dozen congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.

And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the members of our Congress.

Quote of the Day...

From Mike Huckabee:

"Sarah Palin got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president."

Keeping It Classy, As Only The Lefties Can...

Rachael Lucas is having a great time this weekend:

This is the most fun I’ve had on the internet since Al Gore invented it. Holiday weekends are usually the slowest but this one is like a turbo bullet train and I’m totally enchanted and mesmerized. Not even so much about Palin herself as the reaction to her on both sides, such as the right’s giant collective woody and the left’s giant collective fetal-position thumb-sucking crying-itself-to-sleep heartache. How’s the left dealing with everything? With pure solid-gold class, that’s how.

Don't miss the rest of it – it only gets better, and there's even a surprise ending: she's leaving Rupert for her new love...

Freedom of the Press in Russia...

It's gotten to the point where you pretty much expect any dissenting Russian journalist to be killed. The more entrenched Putin has become as Russia's chief thugocrat, the lower the life expectancy of any Russian journalist who doesn't toe the Putin line.

This most recent case is from Ingushetia, which is near Georgia and South Ossetia. Excerpted from the Wall Street Journal:

Police arrested and shot to death Sunday the head of an Internet news service who had been critical of authorities in the volatile Caucasus province of Ingushetia.

...

Authorities in Moscow issued a statement confirming Mr. Yevloyev was shot in the head while in police custody Sunday in an "incident" that is under investigation. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin didn't elaborate, saying a check to clarify the circumstances of Mr. Yevloyev's death had begun. The committee is under the Russian Prosecutor General's office.

Mr. Yevloyev had been a vociferous critic of Ingushetia's governor, a former security-service agent who has been backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Mr. Yevloyev had charged that regional and federal agents were brutalizing the locals, and kidnapping and assassinating political enemies. In June, a judge ordered him to close down his site on charges of spreading "extremist" statements, but it lately reappeared under a different name.

Mr. Yevloyev had been in Moscow on business during the weekend and was arrested Sunday morning as he stepped off a plane that landed in Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia. He was whisked away in an armored jeep of Russia's Interior Ministry and dumped a short time later near a local hospital with a single bullet wound through the head, said a friend, Mogamed Khazbiyev, who had gone to the airport to meet him.

...

Mr. Yevloyev was the latest in a series of Russian journalists to have died in suspicious circumstances. The death of Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot in October 2006 at her Moscow apartment, highlighted the dangers faced by Russia's independent press. Ms. Politkovskaya was a lead reporter at Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow-based newspaper that specializes in muckraking and probes of government corruption. She was the third journalist at the paper to die under mysterious circumstances. Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, was shot on a Moscow street in July 2004.

...

I've traveled extensively in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of the time I felt completely safe, though at times I was worried about petty thieves (and actually had an expensive camera lens stolen). I would not feel safe today...

How tragic this is for the ordinary Russian citizen. Their country had its chance to take the same course as other former Soviet states, to prosperity and personal freedom. Instead the thugs have taken over, ordinary folks are suffering, lifespans are declining, income is declining, population is declining, and this sort of brutality is now...expected.

Palin and Obama: a Brit's View...

Gerard Baker is the U.S. Editor, and the Assistant Editor, of the Times of London. He's got a piece up today at Real Clear Politics called Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama, focusing on the differences between the two. It's fascinating to see how this foreigner (albeit, one who is very familiar with the U.S.) views the two. Here's his conclusion:

Now it's true there are other crucial differences. Sen Obama has appeared on Meet The Press every other week for the last four years. He has been the subject of hundreds of adoring articles in papers and newsweeklies and TV shows and has written two Emmy-award winning books.

Gov Palin has never appeared on Meet the Press, never been on the cover of Newsweek. She presumably feels that, as a mother of five children married to a snowmobile champion, who also happens to be the first woman and the youngest person ever to be elected governor of her state, she has not really done enough yet to merit an autobiography.

Then again, I'm willing to bet that if she had authored The Grapes of Wrath, sung like Edith Piaf and composed La Traviata , she still wouldn't have won an Emmy.

Fortunately, it will be up to the American people and not their self-appointed leaders in Hollywood and New York to determine who really has the better experience to be president.

Go read the whole thing.

Success in Anbar...

Smells like success to me:

Today in Iraq, responsibility for security in Anbar Province was transferred to Iraqi civilian authorities. Iraqi forces will now take the lead in security operations in Anbar, with American troops moving into an overwatch role. Not long ago, Anbar was one of the most dangerous provinces in Iraq. Al Qaeda was in control of almost every major population center, and its leaders intended to turn Anbar province into a safe haven from which to plan and launch further attacks against Iraqis and others in the region, as well as here at home.

Today, Anbar is no longer lost to al Qaeda - it is al Qaeda that lost Anbar. Iraqis - like countless other Muslims across the world - witnessed al Qaeda's brutality first-hand and rejected it. As a result, Anbar has been transformed and reclaimed by the Iraqi people. This achievement is a credit to the courage of our troops, the Iraqi Security Forces, and the brave tribes and other civilians from Anbar who worked alongside them.

Today's ceremony returns the 11th of 18 provinces to provincial Iraqi control. Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed Special Groups remain a threat, but the United States and the nations of Multi-National Forces-Iraq continue to stand with the Iraqis as they work to defeat these enemies and build a democracy in the heart of the Middle East. The success of Iraq will make the American people more secure and help yield the peace we all desire.

President Bush's statement today, lauding the Anbar handover.

Handovers like this (though perhaps not as significant, admittedly) have been occuring on a near-daily basis in Iraq for the past couple of months. The lamestream media's response is predictable, but very disappointing nonetheless. Their rules seem to be:

American casualties, rumors of quagmires, real or imagined atrocities, accusations by our enemies: front-page news, naturally.

American success in Iraq: not so much – ignore it or bury it.

And they keep bleating about their declining readership or viewership. You'd think that after getting bludgeoned over the head enough times with the facts, they'd wise up and start more balanced coverage of the news. There are even a few success stories out there to guide them: the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and USA Today, all of which are doing well.

But instead we see precipitous declines in the numbers for nearly all major news outlets. The New York Times numbers are falling at a rate that must be terrifying its Board of Directors. Ditto the Los Angeles Times. Right here in San Diego, the Union-Tribute (known locally as the “Union-Buffoon”) is in disaster territory, announcing multiple waves of layoffs within the past year and publicly putting themselves up for sale – and no interested buyers have appeared yet.

In any industry I'm familiar with, the Board of Directors of each such company would long ago have taken some concrete action to staunch the bleeding. When I see nearly an entire industry headed into the toilet like this, with no mystery whatsoever about the solution to their financial woes, I can only think of one explanation: liberal ideologues must hold majorities on those Boards. They are deliberately making bad business choices in order to keep pumping out the liberal viewpoints, talking points, and narratives. How sad for all those shareholders...

If you think I'm spouting stuff and nonsense, consider talk radio. There are a few liberal talk radio shows, not a single one of which is making much money. There are hundreds of conservative and libertarian talk radio shows, many of which are making good money, and some of which are raking in the big bucks (think Limbaugh). Do you think it's an accident that more people want to listen to conservative viewpoints? Given how few television or print news outlets have a neutral perspective (much less a conservative perspective), doesn't it strike you as significant that they are the only such outlets that are growing and profitable?

Obama's National Service Plan...

The One's web site is not lacking in documentation of Obama's promises, proposals, and plans. One of these is his National Service Plan, documented in this fact sheet (PDF). You really can only understand the magnificent liberal insanity of it by reading the whole thing, but here are some things from it that jumped out at me:

• “In November, Barack Obama laid out a comprehensive plan to provide all Americans with a world-class education and give our schools a substantial infusion of funds to support teachers and principals and improve student learning. That plan conditions that assistance on school districts developing programs to engage students in service opportunities. Obama believes that middle and high school students should be expected to engage in community service for 50 hours annually during the school year or summer months.”
  
  Translation: He's going to send a lot more federal dollars to local schools, if they require every kid to “volunteer” 50 hours a week of community service. Of course, just like every other federal school funding program that's conditioned on the schools toeing the line, the vast majority of school districts will leap on this. So our kids will be headed off to a week or two of slave labor every year. This is a wonderful peek into the liberal mindset: if some group of people don't want to do what you want them to do, then force them!
  
  
• “In recent years, social entrepreneurs have been the catalyst for much social innovation in education, economic development, health and the environment. By developing innovative solutions to important social issues, social entrepreneurs provide many of the important services that address human needs, improve our quality of life, and make democracy work better.”
  
  Translation: “social entrepreneur” is lefty-speak for what the rest of us would call a government-paid meddler. Unlike real entrepreneurs, “social entrepreneurs” don't earn a profit by providing things that people want. Instead, “social entrepreneurs” take your money (through taxes) and shove things you don't want down your throat. Not my idea of a good time...or progress.
  
  
• “Barack Obama’s national service plan will cost about $3.5 billion per year when it is fully implemented. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent any increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government. This plan will be paid for in part by cancelling tax provisions that would otherwise help multinational corporations pay less in U.S. taxes starting in 2008 by reallocating tax deductions for interest expenses between income earned in the U.S. and income earned abroad. The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with ending the war in Iraq.”
  
  Translation: Total bullshit! This is my favorite part of the entire document – the final paragraph. It's titled A Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility – and what a load of crap that is.
  
  The BS starts right at the beginning, with the notion that all the programs described in this paper could be funded for $3.5 billion per year. A more level-headed estimate would be in the range of $15 billion per year, and that's making the wholly unwarranted assumption that government spending would be done efficiently.
  
  The tax provisions he's talking about canceling were those enacted to bring U.S. tax practice into line with international practice. These provisions were intended to keep U.S.-based multinational corporations in the U.S. – and they're working. Basically what these provisions do is stop our former practice of double-taxing multi-national corporations – so that if a company is taxed on money it made in (say) France, the U.S. would not require the company to pay U.S. income tax on that money in addition to the French tax. This is how the tax code works in most of the world. Before we implemented these provisions, U.S.-based multinational corporations were picking up and moving overseas – because in many cases they would save millions or even billions by doing so. Obama could only raise money this way for a few years, because after that those companies will all be located somewhere else...
  
  And then there's that last bit of double-speak about using “savings” from ending the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq is being funded (like any war) through a series of “extraordinary” (meaning outside the budget) funding resolutions. Obama is proposing that after the war is over, we'll simply add the amount of those outside-the-budget funding resolutions to the budget, to fund this National Service Plan. Somehow in the twisted liberal world view, that constitutes “savings.” You just can't make this stuff up...

Sarah Palin Mashup...

The photos in this video slide show reinforce my impression from reading about Sarah Palin and her family: they truly seem to be people imbued with traditional American ideals, experiences, and accomplishments, thrust into a political world full of very different animals. They seem to have an ordinary American's common sense; they've faced the same kinds of problems we all have. They are not only a family full of people I can identify with; they are people I can admire.

In the other three top-of-the-ticket candidates we have an Ivy-league elitist with a suspicious background (especially ties to the Chicago political machine and to unapologetic American radical terrorists), a genuine American war hero of towering ego and questionable intellect, and a traditional glad-handing, plastic-smiling politician with a runaway mouth and little actual achievement. None of these are people I can easily identify with. None of these are people I admire, or aspire to be like. None of these are people I'd hang with.

Sarah and Todd Palin? It's easy to imagine having them over for dinner...

Sarah Palin Reactions...

From three of my favorite blogs: Protein Wisdom, The Anchoress, and Villanous Company. All three are well worth reading; the first is full of links that take you to all sorts of information...

Solar Irradiance vs. Climate...

Some scientists advocate the notion that small changes in solar irradiance (basically the brightness of the sun) make a major contribution to the changes in the Earth's climate, most especially the average temperature. I've seen bits and pieces of their work before, and while there are some very suggestive correllations, I haven't seen much in the way of plausible mechanisms explored.

Still, the apparent fact that solar irradiance is well-correllated with average global temperatures is very suggestive. I think we can be fairly certain that climate changes on Earth do not cause the sun to get brighter or dimmer. It's at least plausible on the face of it that changes in solar brightness do cause temperature changes on Earth. And it seems highly unlikely that a correllation like this could be a coincidence:
There's much more where this came from, in a very readable seven-page report available here (PDF). The discussion on the current solar cycle is particularly interesting...

Democrats Support Drilling!

Palin and Bullwinkle...

Politics of Personal Destruction...

The Clintons famously accused Republicans of engaging in the “politics of personal destruction” when accusations about Bill's dalliances emerged. Of course, the real masters of such politics are the Clintons themselves – most notoriously for the way they dealt with the “bimbo eruptions” that plagued the Clinton presidency.

Some lefties are now carrying on the tradition with a vile attack on Sarah Palin. They're accusing her of faking her last pregnancy to cover for the “fact” that her daughter (Bristol) was pregnant. The accusation is based entirely on amateur evaluation of carefully selected photographs, and on no actual evidence. Even worse than the accusation are the running commentary from Kos Kids and members of the Democratic Underground. Just awful. Makes me hang my head in mortification that these people are (presumably) fellow Americans. It's so bad that even a number of the commenters are begging their fellows to stop raking this muck...

I know I'm voicing a fantasy when I say this, but...wouldn't it be wonderful to have a Presidential election campaign that focused on actual substantive issues?

Palin Visits the Troops...

I set out this morning to see if I could find anything at all – good or bad – about Palin's attitude toward our troops. I was especially looking for anything that occurred well before her getting the VP slot. In her Dayton speech, she referenced her son Track, who's in the Army and about to be deployed to Iraq – but politicians are slippery beasts, and I wanted some evidence that was uncolored by her recent leap onto the national stage.

Well, it wasn't hard to find what I was looking for, because it turns out that last year (2007), shortly into her tenure as Governor of Alaska, she embarked on a worldwide tour to the places where Alaska's troops are serving. The top photo shows her visiting with an injured soldier in Germany (which of course immediately brings to mind Obama's snub on his recent trip). The bottom photo shows her visiting with some Alaskan troops (their faces make their Inuit heritage evident) in Kuwait. This trip was widely – and very approvingly – covered in the contemporaneous press reports.

In addition to that tour, as Governor she has made many visits to military facilities in Alaska. It's also easy to find approving references to her by military support organizations, for whom she's made publicity appearances, helped with fund raising, and made contributions herself. Even before she was Governor she was involved in these efforts.

In other words, her record demonstrates a clear commitment to our troops. The news reports at the time have many quotes from the soldiers themselves – some what you'd expect from young men who get to sit down and talk with a beauty queen; others more substantive words of praise for their Governor who so obviously cares about them. Not a negative peep of any kind.

Chalk up one more plus in her column for me...

War on Ants...

Anyone who lives in the high desert is familiar with the never-ending war against ants in the house. A house – perhaps especially a house with pets – is chock full of things that ants cherish. It's not even necessarily the food that they're after – sometimes it's just water, even splashes accidentally left on the countertop. No matter how carefully we clean up after ourselves, there always seems to be an inviting target for the ants – and the intrepid little explorer ants always find it.

Debbie absolutely loathes the ants. Me, I'm not too excited by them. But I've been doing my husbandly duty for years, trying every way I can think of to battle them. A few years ago we had our first success with the discovery of a spray formulation you can buy by mail that actually works. With this chemical warfare weapon, we were able to greatly reduce the ants living in the yard surrounding our house. This also reduced the ants we saw in the house, as many of them came from somewhere in the yard.

But it didn't eliminate the ants in the house, no matter how diligently I sprayed around the house. Without a single ant visible for several yards around the house, we'd still see hordes of them attacking some choice morsel. Usually this happened in the morning, when I'd be shaken out of my sleepiness by a shriek of dismay and anger from Debbie.

I figured that these ants must be living inside the house somewhere, or perhaps under the house. There are plenty of places that ants could use to sneak in – tiny cracks in the slab, the little spaces between cabinetry and the wall, and so on. Over time we came to suspect that there might be a colony of ants living in the very skinny-but-broad space under our granite countertops, just over the wood that underlies them. We still think that might be the case.

The challenge with these interior ants is that we don't really want to use our chemical weaponry on them. I have actually used it in a few careful cases, such as behind wood or under waterproof carpet cushion, where the chemical would be isolated from us and our pets. But we certainly wouldn't want to use it in a place like our kitchen!

A few weeks ago, Debbie and I started trying another strategy: we began patiently following the ants to find out where they were taking their ill-gotten gains. Inevitably the trail of ants led to an ant portal of some kind. One of the first things we discovered is that the ants in the kitchen were nearly all disappearing under the front edge of our countertops, where there was a roughly 1 mm crack between the edge of the rock and the wood supports. So I took out my new favorite anti-ant weapon – a tube of silicone caulking – and sealed all of that up.

A day or two later, the ants were back. So we followed them again, and discovered another ant portal behind the dishwasher. We sealed that up with more silicone caulking. A couple of days later, they popped out of another hole, so we sealed that one up. And so on, and on, and on – but not quite endlessly. As we've sealed up more and more of our house (which I'm now beginning to think of as a seive!), the ants were clearly having more and more trouble finding a way out. We are starting to think they have the look of desperation about them. And their numbers are down – way, way, down. We might actually be winning this war, and the total cost so far is two tubes of silicone caulking (from the Jamul Hardware Store, of course) and a few hours of our time. It's even taking on a bit of the aspect of a game, as Debbie and I track the little bastards down to their latest portal.

I decided to write this post because of an experience this morning. When I got up to make my morning tea, I noticed about a dozen ants going after the droplets of water in the kitchen sink. I followed them back, as has become our habit, and discovered that their new portal was in the vinyl framework of one of the bay windows in our kitchen. The ants had discovered an almost impossibly tiny crack – one sheet of paper would go into it, but not two sheets – and somehow they were squeezing through this. I think they really must be desperate! Five minutes later, that crack was sealed up.

I think our war on ants is almost over, and I'm almost ready to declare victory...

Steyn on Palin...

The incomparable Mark Steyn has a piece today about McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, and absolutely nails it. A selection:

What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.
...
I kinda like the whole naughty librarian vibe.

But do go read the whole thing!

Rain in Lawson Valley...

Not a whole lot, mind you -- just 2 mm (about 0.1 inch) as I write this. But the rocks are wet, the normally-black moss is bright green, the frogs are ecstatic, and it hasn't stopped yet...

Startup of the Week...

InformationWeek magazine is profiling the company I work for as the “Startup of the Week”. Here's the lead:

"I founded this company to atone for my sins," says Fred Luddy, CEO of Service-now.com. His transgression? Developing expensive and cumbersome IT management software while at Peregrine. Service-now provides help desk, change and configuration management, discovery, and more via easy-to-deploy SaaS. Can you forgive him?

Go read the whole thing, and decide for yourself if you forgive Fred.

Sarah Palin...

A couple of months ago, when I first heard Sarah Palin's name mentioned as a possibility for the VP slot with McCain, I did as much reading as I could about her – as I'd never heard of her before. The more I read about her, the firmer my conclusion: that there was no way McCain would choose her as his running mate. It would simply be too risky: she's light on experience (though not as light as The One), she's a solid, traditional conservative (as opposed to whatever the heck McCain is), and she's completely untested on the national stage.

Much of what I read and saw on video clips I really liked. An article written about her last year includes this paragraph, which matches what I've learned:

Her rise is a great (and rare) story of how adherence to principle--especially to transparency and accountability in government--can produce political success. And by the way, Palin is a conservative who only last month vetoed 13 percent of the state's proposed budget for capital projects. The cuts, the Anchorage Daily News said, "may be the biggest single-year line-item veto total in state history."

She is the antithesis of the pork barrel politician (a disease shared in a completely bipartisan fashion), a refreshingly direct and honest politician. Being attractive doesn't hurt a darned thing, nor does having a charming family that could have been carved from an All-American novel. She hunts, fishes, works on the family fishing boat on weekends, has five children. She also has a great track record of executive leadership, both in private business and in public service. The lefties are ignoring her roles other than governor and mayor, but the simple truth is that her experience is arguably more relevant to the Presidency than is The One's experiences, which are entirely non-executive. There's a good reason why so many more Presidents have been Governors than have been Congressmen.

Do I have any faults to find? A few, and all of the non-scary variety. She's a fundamentalist Christian, and on many issues I disagree with them. For example, as governor she has indicated a willingness (short of advocacy, though) for creationism to be taught in public schools alongside evolution. I strongly disagree with that, though in terms of importance that issue pales before national security.

In general, though, I am basically charmed by her choice as McCain's running mate. I'm not at all sure that it will play out well for McCain. For instance, how will she do in a debate with Joe Biden? I've seen video of her being interviewed by a hostile journalist, and I was impressed with her speaking and debating skills – but does she have the depth of knowledge at the national and international level that would enable her to hold her own with Joe ("The Mouth") Biden? And of course the rabidly pro-Obama press pirahnas will be all over every little gaffe she makes – real or imagined, relevant or not.

I'm fascinated that McCain would choose the one mentioned candidate that I was almost certain he would not. However he got there, the fact that he's chosen a solidly conservative, relatively young, female, status quo-bucking running mate has got to be shaking up the opposition a bit. And yes, an attractive female, wearing a skirt no less. The fact that the Republicans nominated a woman, and not the Democrats, is already rankling more than a few Hillary supporters (their blogs are full of bitter commentary on the topic).

An already interesting campaign, albeit bereft of interesting Presidential candidates, just got more interesting. And entertaining, I'm sure...

Barackopolis...

Some wit coined the term “Barackopolis” for the stage set in Invesco Field where The One will deliver his acceptance speech tonight. Though the venue is not yet open to the public, there are innumerable photos and videos available of the grand stage set, which strongly resembles Hollywood notions of ancient Roman or Greek temples. The McCain campaign has already poked fun at this, by publishing tongue-in-cheek guides for how to dress appropriately to attend the speech – in togas, of course.

I'm more bemused than amused at this. It strikes me as a perfect metaphor for the Democratic party: the party of personalities, rather than of ideas or ability. The party that promotes a rock star, instead of a doer. It makes perfect sense that there would be a grand, high-tech stage for such a candidate. I'll be disappointed if the presentation tonight doesn't include an automated light show, heavily engineered audio, careful attention to video-friendly lighting, foot-thumpin' music, and (of course!) spectacular fireworks.

On the other hand, I'll be very surprised to hear any actual ideas, plans, or commitments...

And doesn't that fit the candidate perfectly?

So now we have one of our major parties producing an entertainment spectacular instead of a public debate on ideas and issues, and in place of any real platform of plans and commitments. Let's hope that the other party can rise above this, even if just a little.

Here's a ponder for you, though. Suppose, for a moment, that The One wins the election – that the rock star campaign wins the popular vote. What do you think that portends for our future?

Watching Hillary...

I did not watch Hillary's speech last night – that is not the sort of thing that I could stand to sit through an entire hour-plus of. But, thanks to the magic of the Internet, this morning I watched several clips of the “highlights” of her speech. Here's some things that occurred to me as I watched:

• Her loss to The One has spared the U.S. citizenry from possibly dangerous exposure to one of the worst public speakers on the national stage since the dawn of television.
  
  
• What's up with the bright orange pantsuit? As my retinas burned, I had two thoughts: (1) she looked like a sort of psychodelic Chairman Mao, and (2) Sheriff Joe Arpaio must have been involved in the design.
  
  
• Those bulging eyeballs have to be mechanically aided somehow. Normal human anatomy does not include eyeball pusher-outers.
  
  
• Jaysus, woman, the shriek – please, please, please do something about the shriek!
  
  
• I didn't detect even a whiff of genuine support for The One – my overwhelming impression was of someone bulling through an extremely uncomfortable duty in a minimally acceptable fashion, giving off vibrations of righteous indignation that nearly shimmered in the air. The frequent cut-aways to Mrs. One showed her looking less-than-thrilled, and it's easy to understand why.
  

Hey, I didn't promise you intellectual stimulation at 5 in the morning!

She's Right...

Here's a McCain ad that speaks directly to the only important reason I'll vote for him over The One:


I'm deeply disappointed by both candidates, but...on the one issue that I am most concerned about (radical fundamentalist Islam), there is a clear difference between the two. I cannot even imagine Obama having a constructive or effective response to a terrorist attack, whereas I'm confident that McCain's response would be robust. And that's reason enough, in my book, to vote for McCain...

Yes, Hilary was right...

Over the Cliff?

New Jersey (the state I grew up in, and escaped from over 30 years ago) is a political and economic disaster. For well over 100 years, New Jersey has been a leader within the U.S. – a leader in corruption, taxation, and leeching the life out of legitimate businesses, that is. I had several jobs there while a teenager, and even as an entry-level employee the pervasive corruption those businesses operated in was evident.

My parents and one brother still live there, for reasons I've never been able to fathom.

Stephen Malanga, writing in City Journal, has an excellent piece about the most recent shenanigans in New Jersey. The lead:

The state’s leaders seem determined to drive it off a cliff.

Adam Smith once wrote that there’s a “great deal of ruin in a nation,” by which he meant that it takes an awful lot of bungling by political leaders to bring down a powerful and prosperous state. Today, New Jersey pols are giving Smith’s thesis quite a test drive. They are steering the Garden State toward ruin at an astonishing pace, and no amount of bad economic news seems capable of deterring them.

The latest indication of the state’s decline is the rapid deterioration of its newspapers, which rely heavily on the local economy and thus are good barometers of a community’s conditions. New Jersey’s biggest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, once one of America’s most profitable papers, is cutting 20 percent of its workforce because it’s losing more than $30 million annually, while the Bergen Record, to stay viable, is closing its headquarters and sending most of its reporters to work out of their homes. Six Gannett newspapers in the state are cutting jobs and planning early retirements for their employees.

Though Jersey’s papers are to an extent suffering the afflictions—like the flow of advertising dollars to the Internet—that plague the newspaper industry generally, they are also being hammered by the state’s considerable economic woes. The Star-Ledger’s owner, Advance Publications, says that the paper is doing far worse than the company’s papers in other markets. That’s not surprising, because Jersey never recovered as did the rest of the nation (New York included) from the recession of 2002. Only government employment soared in the state from 2003 through 2007, while private job rolls grew a meager 1.8 percent, mostly through the addition of low-wage service employment. In 2006, when the country was in the middle of an economic boom, New Jersey, virtually alone among the states, faced a crushing budget deficit of $4.5 billion that prompted an embarrassing shutdown of state government.

There's much more. Read the whole thing.