From The Street...
Friday, August 29, 2003
Hoping We Fail
From National Review Online, once again, Victor Davis Hanson nails it down...
Few Die in San Joaquin Valley In August. Ten thousand deaths in France expose the socialist paradise as amoral and corrupt, no? Ah but the cheese and wine, they answer...Hmm...California Cheese and Wine compete very favorably, it seems to me. And don't get me started on Wisconsin stuff...
Hoping We Fail
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Apple Jesus...
The Ultimate Endorsement....
Quicktime file : Apple Jesus
Monday, August 25, 2003
GM - Healthcare....
From Monday's The Daily Reckoning
===========================
- Consider GM... again. During boom times, the company did
not set aside sufficient reserves for the inevitable,
upcoming bust. Therefore, as we have noted innumerable
times in this column, the giant automaker labors under a
crippling debt load and pension plan liability.
- "Few Chevrolet drivers would guess that the single
biggest cost of making their car was medical care for
retired workers," the Financial Times reports. "But General
Motors... spends more on healthcare for pensioners than it
does on steel. On each one of the 5.5m vehicles churned out
by GM's north American factories, healthcare for pensioners
cost more than $1,300, well above the steel cost."
- As a result, General Motors, which is the world's largest
buyer of steel, has become one of the world's biggest
healthcare providers.
- At the end of last year, GM's total post-retirement
benefits liability - consisting almost exclusively of
healthcare obligations - totaled a staggering $51 billion.
Even worse, GM's already considerable liability will likely
increase by an additional $4.5 billion this year. How much
money is $4.5 billion? Almost double GM's anticipated
profits this year.
- But despite the troubles at GM and the looming
difficulties in the U.S. financial sector, the virile stock
market seems to rise every day. Even so, the market may be
vulnerable to the embarrassment of premature expectation.
===============================
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Arizona Gas...
Let free market solve energy woes
Aug. 20, 2003 12:00 AM
There are lessons to be learned from the Phoenix gas shortage and the Northeast electricity blackout. Unfortunately, in all likelihood, they will be the wrong lessons.
Until Sunday afternoon, the Phoenix retail gas market was following a conventional economic path. After a supply disruption, prices went up as supplies contracted.
On Sunday afternoon, consumers, fearing shortages, increased their demand.
And then a curious thing happened, or more precisely failed to happen.
Even with curtailed supplies and increased demand, there was a market-clearing price for gas that would have brought supply and demand into equilibrium. Fewer people would have been willing to queue for a half-hour to top off their tank at $4 or $6 a gallon than at $2.
And there were a few reports of significant spikes in prices. But for the most part, sellers instead chose to run out of gas at around $2 a gallon, when it was obvious that they could be selling their product for considerably more.
Why weren't sellers in such circumstances willing to move to the market-clearing price? Probably they feared retaliatory actions from government and consumers.
And not unreasonably so. In fact, the reactions of government officials and consumers in these kinds of circumstances do tend to prolong and exacerbate the supply-and-demand imbalance.
Gov. Janet Napolitano probably has no political alternative to trying to put herself in the middle of the market, given unrealistic public expectations. In reality, she's not going to produce or deliver any gas, or cause it to be produced or delivered any quicker than market incentives already provide. Yet the public expects her to at least appear to be in charge.
So, she cuts short an out-of-town trip, huddles all day with industry and government officials, then holds the biggest press conference of her term to announce: There is no crisis.
Of course, her actions convey an entirely different message.
Napolitano did clear some environmental restrictions on supply, and overall her intervention has been as much benign as detrimental. That of Attorney General Terry Goddard, however, has been more problematic.
Earlier this year, when a hiccup in the supply chain caused a temporary spike in gas prices, Goddard launched an investigation. He has made clear his intent to investigate prices charged in this situation.
Goddard also proposes that Arizona join only seven other states in passing a price-gouging law, a call Napolitano appeared to join. Such laws substitute resentment for economic rationality.
They are based upon the conceit that there is, in circumstances such as these, a "correct" price that government can divine. Goddard told Monday's press conference that in most states that price is 20 percent to 25 percent above the wholesale price.
But what if such a margin is still below the true market-clearing price, as was clearly the case here, at least temporarily? Government artificially suppressing the true market-clearing price can only prolong and deepen shortages.
High prices, particularly those that shock and offend, deliver important messages to producers and consumers. Four-dollar a gallon gasoline would do far more to bring more product to market and cause consumers to meaningfully conserve than exhortations from the governor.
And an itchy investigative finger makes producers less likely to temporarily divert supply, regardless of the profit opportunity.
Allowing prices to reach true market-clearing rates, even if they are temporarily shocking, is the fastest route to eliminating short-term shortages and even getting interim prices down.
Opponents of electricity deregulation are claiming that it caused last week's blackouts in the Northeast. Transmission, however, not only hasn't been deregulated, it has been threatened with increased regulation.
For some reason, government reformers are fixated on market interventions to favor wholesale competitors.
To benefit such competitors, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had proposed that utilities that currently own the grid be required to relinquish it, with capacity on it subject to auction. FERC has backed off that slightly, but still proposes to require that grid control be taken over by regional organizations, with access subject to FERC approval.
This, then, has been the posture of the federal government: You can build additional transmission capacity - but we will decide who gets to use it and at what price.
Gee, wonder why transmission investment, despite the obvious need, has dried up?
Markets can work, even in energy, and even in extreme circumstances such as relieving the Phoenix gas shortage.
But only if given a chance.
=============
Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8472. His column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
======================
From a Colleague -
"Hi Jim,
I read the article you suggested...thanks. Basically, it is too simplistic and narrow in scope for a complicated subject. One only has to know that over 90% of the laws every written in the western states deal with water to know a few lines to meet a column deadline is insufficient to discuss the subject at hand and workable solutions for all the special interests that run our governments...none of which are representatives of the constituents that do actually vote.
Let's see, in the seventies when gas lines first showed up under Nixon, as a country we were gorging ourselves with six million barrels of oil a day...after many solutions from all types of interests and politics, we now use twenty-million barrels of oil a day.
At the moment, the downed pipeline that Kinder Morgan decided to shut down completely when the Feds said it was OK to operate at 80%, we still do not have the known one mile of pipe replaced. This line supplies only 30% of the daily gasoline needs of the Valley of the Sun, which is the fourth largest city in the USA. However, less than five percent of all the service stations in the area are open at any time. The other pipeline, operated by Kinder Morgan also, supplies 70%. This line is supposedly moving even more fuel than normal now to the gas farms in the city where more trucks are waiting to deliver to local service stations than normal as they have been brought in from California and New Mexico. Other truckers are driving between Tucson and Phoenix to replace the pipeline. If one does the math, the pipeline that is down has been at least 50% replaced by the additional flow on the other line, and all the additional trucks. So, we might be around 85% of our max and yet stations are closed, empty and people can't go anywhere for fear of running out of gas. Here, almost anything is at least ten miles away one way. So, we have supply, distribution capability and demand reduced. However, the price of gas is around $5 for something that was $1.43 before Aug 8th when the pipeline went down on the decision of the supplier. One doesn't have to even wonder what is going on for if you don't know, you really are stupid. This is but just one little snippet of the situation and a so far removed from anything one could imagine resembling a "free market." Certain businessmen should be hung in public for "controlling" the so called "free market." Personally, I think any vehicle that doesn't get 20 mph should be outlawed regardless. Of course, we could charge $5 a gallon like in Europe, but then you have to have a "public transportation" system, which is a joke here.
Hope you never have to push your vehicle into a station.....
Ciao..."
=============
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Critical Power
Peter Huber and his partner Mark Mills put out a monthly newsletter on Digital Power. The last issue was May 2003. This is their web site Digital Power.com
This is a link to a 54-page PDF report dated August 2003 Critical Power
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Speidini...a recipe!
From Marina, a poster on Italofiles - Spiedini Siciliani
Involtini Siciliani
1 medium-small onion, minced
2 tb olive oil
1 cup stale white breadcrumbs
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup currants or raisens
1/4 cup or more of grated caciocavallo or
pecorino cheese
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
1 1/2 lb veal or beef fillets, cut into 3-by-
5-inch thin slices
1 large onion, cut in wide slices
Bay leaves
2 tb olive oil
1/2 cup stale white breadcrumbs
Saute the medium-small onion in 2 tb of
olive oil until soft, then stir in 1 cup
breadcrumbs, pine nuts,currants, grated
cheese, and salt and pepper to taste.
Put a tb of the breadcrumb mixture on each
slice of meat, rolling it up, and placing it
on a skewer, interspersed with slices of
onion and bay leaves. When all the slices
are rolled and skewered, sprinkle them with
oil and coat them lightly on both sides with
the remaining 1/2 cup breadcrumbs. Broil or
grill over moderate coals for about 10
minutes.
Thursday, August 14, 2003
New Age Parenting...
The Bleat
In the middle of a diatribe about dealing with DSL Customer Service Quality Assurance Representatives, James Lileks spins off on parenting...I was Strongly Discouraged From Sending this to friends with kids...
==============
".......Because they bought space on the copper and resold it to Earthlink. They would have to initiate a trouble ticket. "
Yes, a "trouble ticket." Sounds like something a New-Agey parent would give a four-year-old for drawing on the wall with a Sharpie. Ooh, someone’s going to get a trouble ticket for making bad choices!
Screw you, Mom! I hate you!
Now, now, you don’t want a naughty-mouth citation, do we?
(kicks mother in shin)
Well, just wait until coparent gets home - he’s going to use the angry bear voice and reduce your SoyDream frozen confection ration by 15 percent.
(kicks mother in shin)
Someone’s asking for a 20 percent reduction.
(stamps on mother’s foot)
Well, mister, that’s another trouble ticket. One more and you give up your carob sprinkles.
===========================
Europeans are different...
Their Ancestors chose not to get on the boats to the New World; they chose "security", not freedom. Look what happened...
EUROPE: WORLDS APART
By RALPH PETERS, New York Post
August 14, 2003 -- LIFE may not be predictable, but Europeans are. If we criticize them publicly, they splutter, outraged that we don't recognize their perfection. They can dish it out abundantly, but continental Europeans can no more take criticism than their welfare armies could have taken Baghdad.
The only thing you can get for free from Europeans is advice. And they're always ready to give us plenty of it, as they've been doing for more than two centuries.
Still, behind the easy pleasure of poking fun at European pretensions, there are serious - and hardening - differences between Americans, who embrace the future, and the French or Germans or Belgians who cling to the past.
None of those differences go so deep as our opposing concepts of freedom.
For Europeans - excluding the Brits, who are more like us than they sometimes find comfortable - "freedom" means freedom from things: from social and economic risk, from workplace insecurity and personal responsibility, from too much competition in the marketplace or too much scrutiny of governing elites.
Socialism, a doctrine born in Europe, struck very deep roots. The collective takes priority over the individual. The European social contract amounts to this: We will not let the talented rise too high, and we will not let the lazy fall too low. "Equality" doesn't mean equal opportunities, but equal limitations.
For Americans, freedom means the freedom to do: To make our own way, to struggle, achieve, to rise (to climb social, educational or economic ladders), to move beyond our parents' lot in life and give our children better chances still.
We are products of the immigrant spirit and the pioneer mentality. Our ancestors (as well as today's new immigrants) dared to take a chance, instead of remaining in the "old country," with its degrading social and economic systems.
The Europeans with whom we must deal today are those whose ancestors lacked the courage to pack their bags and board the ships in Hamburg or Antwerp or Danzig. They chose a miserable security over hope that carried risks.
The American Revolution was entrepreneurial and constructive. The French Revolution was vengeful and destructive. Even during the Great Depression, when extremist ideologies achieved their greatest popularity in the United States, nothing approaching a majority of Americans signed up for any totalitarian creed of either the right or left. In the words of Huey Long, who for all his faults spoke for the average Joe, we never stopped believing in the possibility of "every man a king."
Europeans are content with "every man a servant," as long as the terms of service are not too severe and the position comes with job security. Hitler did not cement his hold on power with anti-Semitism - that was an add-on - but with works projects, with jobs for Germans, with a promise of economic security, however low the level.
The Bolsheviks never preached liberty. Their credo was the nanny state, a "fair share" for the workers and the promise that decisions would be made "for the good of all."
We elevate the individual; Europeans worship the group. We dream. Europeans fear. Indeed, the only belief that has been pronounced dead more often than religion is the American dream. Professors write its obituary almost daily. The rest of us live it.
Life isn't fair, of course. But too much enforced "fairness" robs life of its vitality. We Americans live in the one country where each of us, regardless of race or religion, has the chance to realize our potential. Reaching that potential is up to us. But our laws and our culture don't stand in our way.
There are, of course, many further differences between us and the Europeans, but the greatest other distinction relates to the first: American is the land of second chances. And of third, fourth and fifth chances, if only we have the gumption to seize them.
In Europe, there's little provision for late bloomers. The placement tests the student takes as a teenager determine his or her academic, economic and social fate to an extent that would spark another revolution in America.
Here, attending Harvard is no guarantee that you'll succeed in life - it just gives you a head start out of the gate. On the other hand, beginning your academic career at a community college doesn't mean you can't climb to the highest income levels.
Europeans accept their fates. Americans make their own.
Most Americans would be astonished if they understood how few opportunities there are for Europeans to pursue adult education, to change careers, to learn new skills - or to recreate their lives. It's an adult version of being forced to retain your identity in junior high school forever.
Europeans demand security, no matter the price. Americans want a shot at the title.
And so it comes to pass that, as America seeks to change the world for the better, Europeans are content to let dictators thrive and populations suffer - as long as Europe's slumber is not disturbed.
Strategically, Europe is in danger of becoming the greatest impediment to positive change in the world. Europe clings to the international status quo, no matter how dreadful, simply because risk has been bred out of its culture. This leaves the United States (and Britain) with the choice of doing that which is necessary and just without Europe's support, or accepting the rules that made the 20th century history's bloodiest.
Europeans are correct when they insist that America has become a danger. We are, indeed, a tremendous threat to their self-satisfaction, to their dread of change, to their moral irresponsibility and to their dreary, state-supported cultures.
Our ancestors chose a new kind of human freedom. Europeans have resisted it ever since.
Ralph Peters, a frequent Post contributor, is the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
==================================
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Summertime
I brought some “real Italian” food back from Chicago and St. Louis. The sausage was wonderful tonight in a Penne with Sausage and cream sauce. Had red clam sauce with spaghetti and fresh mozzarella earlier this week. The garden’s herbs (thyme, parsley, oregano, basil, scallions, chives) are going into a lot of stuff – salad dressings, sauces, salads, pasta - and they add a lot.
A large (60 foot?) oak tree right next to the house came down in bad weather while in Chicago, and now a local fellow is slowly making his way thru it with a chain saw. With no fireplace or woodstove, there is not much we can do with the wood. Friends have suggested:
1. I get the stuff to do Deep Fried Turkey outdoors. Wal-Mart has all the stuff, and Many Report this is Really Good. Not sure you can Fuel It With Oak.
2. I build (read: get others to build) an outdoor woodstove. Temperatures can get to 600 degrees plus and there are no worries about surrounding kitchens getting burned down, or Building to Code To Prevent That. For Bread? Pizzas?
3. Brother Thomas is a Master Of Smoke – and Cooks Everything Outdoors.
Mebbe a Compromise Solution is to Get a Smoker and Go Thru The Oak and See How It Goes.
Got some Grapes..but not enough to make Wine…but Frozen Grapes are a Nice Compromise.
Met a fellow who made his Own Lure For Walleye. Walleye is the closest thing to Perch, down here. He catches them by sinking the lure to seventy feet and trolling. He brings me frozen Walleye filets occasionally…enough to Whet My Appetite, and makes me want to acquire The Right Stuff to Catch Them Myself.
Love Fried Fish…especially on Friday.
Several years ago, I met an Ex Governor of Arkansas at an Industry Conference. (No not That Guy). Now he is in The Cable Business in Hong Kong. His daughter also went to Wellesley and Studied Chinese, so we have a bit in common. Back for home leave, hope to hook up with him and Swap Stories soon.
It is really Nice Here
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Global Warming Benefits...warmer nights, not hotter days
Telegraph-Opinion
From a Serious European who has written extensively about the Environment (The Skeptical Environmentalist) and who has been attacked for his reasoned approach repeatedly.
More Farming in Siberia! Yeah! Buy John Deere futures!
===================
Let's take a long, cool look at the dangers of global warming
By Bjorn Lomborg
(Filed: 10/08/2003)
This time last year, the rains were so heavy in central Europe, northern Italy and southern France that not merely crops, but whole buildings, indeed whole streets, were washed away. The Danube and Po rivers overflowed and flooded many of the cities on their banks, causing irreperable damage to historic buildings and destroying much of the year's agriculture.
This year, those same regions are experiencing drought. The Po is now so low that in some regions it is possible to walk across it. London, Milan and a number of cities in Switzerland and France have experienced their hottest days since records began. Forest fires are devastating Provence and other regions of southern Europe. The shortage of water is becoming acute.
Unsurprisingly, newspapers and television are packed with stories of climatic doom and disaster. The media's message is simple: the climate is changing, for the worse, and it is all our fault. And it is not just newspapers in search of a summer story that claim this: so too do politicians and scientists. Only last week, for example, the prominent researcher Sir John Houghton compared extreme weather with weapons of mass destruction and called for political action.
As one sits sweltering in an apparently unprecedented heatwave, that analysis seems completely persuasive. We are boiling, and it is all down to global warming. Something must be done. In this area, however, what seems obvious is not necessarily true. Climate change is notoriously difficult to identify, never mind accurately to explain. And one hot summer in Europe doesn't mean that the world's climate has permanently changed for the worse.
Perhaps surprisingly, the UN Climate Panel cannot find anything significant to suggest that weather has become more extreme over the past 100 years. Global warming is a certainly a statistically-proven phenomenon - but its only well-attested effect is to produce slightly more rain. Alarmists such as Sir John Houghton readily cite the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to the effect that global warming has now shown itself to produce extreme weather such as the present heatwave. Unfortunately for Sir John, this much-cited newsflash from the WMO was only a press release. It was not based on any research. When questioned on that point, the WMO acknowledged that its results suggesting that there was more extreme weather could be a statistical artifact: they could be explained merely by - as the WMO put it - "improved monitoring and reporting".
It is not something that the doom-mongers want to hear. It does not fit in with the claim that global warming is becoming a "weapon of mass destruction". But it is simply not correct to claim that global warming is the primary explanation of the kind of heatwave we are now experiencing. The statistics show that global warming has not, in fact, increased the number of exceptionally hot periods. It has only decreased the number of exceptionally cold ones. The US, northern and central Europe, China, Australia and New Zealand have all experienced fewer frost days, whereas only Australia and New Zealand have seen their maximum temperatures increase. For the US, there is no trend in the maximum temperatures - and in China they have actually been declining.
Having misidentified the primary cause of the heatwave as global warming, we then tend to make another mistake: we assume that as the weather gets warmer, we will get hotter and more people eventually will die in heatwaves. But, in fact, a global temperature increase does not mean that everything just becomes warmer; it will generally raise minimum temperatures much more than maximum temperatures.
In both hemispheres and for all seasons, night temperatures have increased much more than day temperatures. Likewise, most warming has taken place in the winter rather than the summer. Finally, three quarters of the warming has taken place over the very cold areas of Siberia and Canada. All of these phenomena are - within limits - actually quite good for both agriculture and people.
The idea of comparing this with weapons of mass destruction is, to put it mildly, misleading. Yes, more people will die from heatwaves - but what is forgotten is that many more people will not die from cold spells. In the US, it is estimated that twice as many people die from cold as from heat, and in the UK it is estimated that about 9,000 fewer people would die each winter with global warming. But don't expect headlines in the next mild winter reading "9,000 not dead".
It is a typical example of the way that we ignore the fact that climate change has beneficial effects as well as damaging ones, allowing ourselves to be scared witless by every rise in temperature. All the same, you may say, isn't it true that the effects of the weather extremes we do experience are getting more serious? Yes it is - but the explanation for this is simply that there are more people in the world, they are wealthier, and many more prefer to live in cities and coastal areas. Accordingly, extreme weather will affect more people than before and because people are more affluent, more absolute wealth is likely to be lost.
Florida is an example of this development. When Florida was hit by a hurricane in September 1926 the economic loss was, in present day dollars, $100 million. In 1992 a very similar hurricane cost the economy $38 billion. Clearly it was a bigger disaster, but not due to developments in extreme weather. The explanation comes from economic growth and urbanisation. We are becoming more vulnerable to extreme weather - but this is only very weakly related to climate change. It is therefore tenuous to blame the damage currently unfolding on global warming. And it does not help to argue - as Sir John does - that the wise political solution is a massive collective action against global warming.
Although global warming has had little effect on extreme weather in the past, it might have a greater effect in the future - although we have little idea how much, except that as we get richer, it will cost us more to repair the damage. Still, shouldn't we, for the sake of our children, or our children's children, start to tackle the greenhouse effect - the heating up of the atmosphere caused by the increase in carbon dioxide emissions? Well - no, actually. If the goal is to reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather, limiting carbon emissions is certainly not the most cost-effective way.
In the Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries have agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 30 per cent by 2010. This will be very expensive and will only have a negligible effect. Estimates from all macro-economic models show a global cost of $150 billion-$350 billion every year. At the same time, the effect on extreme weather will be marginal: the climate models show that Kyoto will merely postpone the temperature rise by six years from 2100 to 2106.
The major problems of global warming will occur in the Third World. Yet these countries have many other and much more serious problems to contend with. For the cost of implementing the Kyoto Protocol in the single year of 2010, we could permanently satisfy the world's greatest need: we could provide clean drinking water and sanitation for everybody. It would surely be better to deal with those most pressing problems first.
Bjorn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and a professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Speidini...like Mama's
Speidini
When I went to work for Mike D in Chicago, many years ago, he talked about Speidini. (or sometimes spelled spiedini or spedini). His Milwaukee Sicilian parents never allowed the family to speak Italian, preferring the “total immersion” in English that made their kids fluent and colloquial and American, which they knew they had to be to succeed here. But they sure did cook Italian…or rather Sicilian, which is a whole different thing.
Mike had been to restaurants all over the country and nobody could produce anything remotely resembling the magic of his mother’s speidini. Speidini means skewered meat and vegetables. Even Martha Stewart and Emeril have there own “romano” versions, or grilled cheese sandwiches on a skewer on the food.tv site. But not like Mama D’s.
“Real” Sicilian speidini is not a mozzarella and bread sandwich. It is top round beef, left cold to allow thin slices, like a breakfast steak. The pieces are spread out and are filled with a mixture of breadcrumbs and garlic and olive oil and tomatoes and pancetta. Then they are rolled up, skewered, and grilled – or baked. Cut into small two-inch lengths, they are covered with an olive oil/garlic/herb crust from grilling. Absolutely everything you ever dreamed that Real Italian Cooking can be is in those delightful morsels.
Tonight I had some on The Hill in St. Louis. Sicilian spedieni. They it make only on Wednesday nights because of the significant preparation times. The owner of the place is Sicilian, his wife of German extraction. She tells about dinners and holidays at his relatives’ homes. Big plates piled high with speidini were done as appetizers, no matter what the main course. With all respect, when she eats there, they ask her to bring…well, not dumplings…but the soda.
Speidini..the Holy Grail of Palermo cuisine. Mebbe Mike will visit St. Louis soon to relive a little of his Milwaukee Youth…
Friday, August 01, 2003
Bring our troops home, out of harm's way...
From The Wall Street Journal - Best of the Web Today - August 1, 2003
==============
Left Coast Quagmire
By JAMES TARANTO
California is a desert land roughly the size of Iraq. It is also an object lesson in the dangers of trying to impose democracy in a culture that is not ready for it. California "is degenerating into a banana republic," writes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman in his New York Times column. Leon Panetta, himself a Californian, writes in the Los Angeles Times that California is undergoing a "breakdown in [the] trust that is essential to governing in a democracy." Newsday quotes Bob Mulholland, another California political activist, as warning of "a coup attempt by the Taliban element." Others say a move is under way to "hijack" California's government.
What isn't widely known is that the U.S. has a large military presence in California. And our troops are coming under attack from angry locals. "Two off-duty Marines were stabbed, one critically, when they and two companions were attacked by more than a dozen alleged gang members early Thursday," KSND-TV reports from San Diego, a city in California's south.
How many young American men and women will have to make the ultimate sacrifice before we realize it isn't worth it? Is the Bush administration too proud to ask the U.N. for help in pacifying California? Plainly California has turned into a quagmire, and the sooner we bring our troops back home, the better.
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