Half Sigma

$90,000/year too poor to be middle class?

Left wing Eschaton defines middle class:

To me, "middle class" is a 4 person two income family with health insurance who can afford a 4 bedroom suburban home in a neighborhood where there's a half-decent public school, and one car for each adult.

All along I thought I grew up middle class because my parents had a three bedroom house and a car. Now I discover I was poor because they were missing a fourth bedroom and sometimes they only owned one car.

(Eschaton’s comment is also “racist” because “decent public school” is just a codeword for “white public school,” but we’ll ignore that.)

Eschaton goes on to explain that $90,000/year isn’t enough income to be middle class, and he writes a followup post as well.

I will now be fair and say that I understand where he’s coming from, and yes, I even agree with him. In some areas, the housing costs are so high that even with what sounds like an upper middle class income, you can’t afford to buy or rent anything that might be considered middle class.

In fact, the high cost of housing is incredibly unfair to working Americans who weren’t fortunate enough to buy a house before the prices went up. Such Americans surely feel like they are forever locked out of a decent middle class life.

If either political party truly cared about working Americans, they would make lowering the cost of housing their number one priority. But neither party cares about this segment of the population. They are probably beholden to the 70% of Americans who own a home and who don’t want lower housing prices—the fortunate Americans, whether Democratic or Republican, could give a crap about the less fortunate 30%.

But let’s be clear here, it’s leftist Democratic policies that have made housing so expensive. In areas where Democrats control the local government, housing costs more. I’ve written about this topic before, see my post Blue state, red state, and housing. I told you so. If Democrats truly cared about working Americans shut out of affordable housing, then they’d start acting like Republicans when it came to zoning and approval of new residential construction projects.

Poor workers and rich retirees

I never thought it was fair that poor people earning the minimum wage have to pay FICA taxes so that rich retirees who don’t even need the money get to collect their Social Security check.

President Bush has proposed making the system fairer by reducing benefits for those with higher incomes. This progressive proposal sounds like something that the left wing would normally applaud, but because they hate Bush they can only criticize it.

For example, Kevin Drum says something about the plan being crap.

Yet the left offers no practical suggestions on how to plan for the inevitable increase in the retiree/worker ratio.

Does a minimum wage hurt the worker?

I previously blogged about my support for a sensible minimum wage, and part of the reason for my support has to do with the unequal bargaining power between employer and employee which causes labor to be valued below its true worth.

These posts received some negative comments from libertarian pro-big business types, and one of the most common comments was that the minimum wage hurts the worker.

The average American is too stupid to retire

Not only is the average American stupid, half of Americans are even stupider than average!

Don Boudreaux says:

[D]oes Americans’ shocking ignorance of finance and economics – really weaken the case for turning over to each of us more responsibility for our retirements? I don’t think so.

First, the fact that Uncle Sam has for so long assumed primary responsibility for providing for Americans' retirement goes a long way toward explaining much of Americans' ignorance about investing for retirement.

Americans have plenty of other reasons to know about finance and economics besides knowing about their Social Security income. How about knowing what to do with their 401ks? Sorry Don, I find it unlikely that changing the Social Security rules will have any effect on the average American’s financial knowledge.

Furthermore, if we are talking about any kind of Social Security changes proposed by the current administration, they are all based on the assumption that Americans are either too stupid or too unwise to save for their own retirements unless the government forces them. We’re only talking about giving people illusory choice, which I don’t see as being any better than the current system.

This is a bad time to buy a house

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution gives what I think is bad advice on housing. He says:

So go ahead and buy that house. Yes, you might be better off by waiting for the price to fall. But don't worry about bursting bubbles, you won't end up worse off.

This is not true. If you buy a house for $600K, and the price drops to $400K because the bubble bursts, that means you lost $200K. Ouch.

What happens if you buy your house, and then lose your job and can’t afford to make your mortgage payments? Well in a rising market, you just sell it and make a profit. But in a falling market you’re in a real bind because if you bought the house with 10% down and its resale value has dropped by 33%, you can’t even afford to sell.

Prior to the new bankruptcy law you’d just file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and let the bank get stuck with the house (such is the cause of recessions), but now you may get stuck paying for your mistake for many years. (Although, with your “means” calculated based on your last six months of income, if you can stick it out for six months of unemployment you could still get the benefits of Chapter 7—just what our economy needs, another government law which actually encourages people to be deadbeats.)

Even if you can afford to sell your house, you wind up losing your life savings. So my advice is don’t buy a house right now.

Will Yahoo or Google buy a newspaper?

Professor Bainbridge suggests that a big internet portal like Yahoo or Google could easily buy a real news company because the internet companies have much higher stock valuations. Yahoo and Google have market caps of $50 billion and $60 billion respectively while Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, has a market cap of only $3 billion (according to the quoted LA Times article).

Such a move would arguably be sensible because Yahoo and Google already both provide news on their websites. Why not have direct control over the source of the news?

Of course, many used to think that Amazon.com would use its massive market cap to buy a bricks and mortar bookseller (Borders was always considered the most likely opportunity), but that never happened.

Say yes to nuclear power

“President Bush presented a plan on Wednesday to offer federal risk insurance to companies that build nuclear power plants.” NY Times.

Good news indeed, a suggestion from Bush that makes sense. Nearly all new electric plants use natural gas because clean burning natural gas is the only thing that can get approved to be built. But the problem is that the U.S. and Canada have only a finite supply of natural gas that is quickly being used up. The price of natural gas is now at all time highs.

Uranium, on the other hand, is very plentiful, and there’s enough uranium to supply our energy needs for hundreds of years. Even coal (our primary source of electricity) isn’t as plentiful as uranium. Furthermore, uranium is mined in politically stable and friendly countries like Canada and Australia so there’s no fear of the supply being suddenly cut off by an Islamic revolution.

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If you click on the linked article, you will also notice a statement which demonstrates the hypocrisy of liberals:

"The Republican plan won't help the families, truckers, farmers and small businesses suffering from skyrocketing gas prices today," Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who ran for president against Mr. Bush in 2004, said in a statement.

Ignoring the fact that less expensive electricity from nuclear power plants will indeed help families and small businesses, it’s liberal Democrats like Kerry who have always said that Americans use too much gas. High prices will encourage conservation which is always what they said they wanted! How else do they expect to make people conserve? Low prices will encourage people to use more. Maybe they never took Economics 101?

Scott Peterson and reverse racism

Michelle Malkin says that there’s no racism involved in the lack of attention being given to the death of Lisa Eatmon when the facts are very similar to the Scott and Laci Peterson media brouhaha, but with an important difference being that Lisa Eatmon is black.

I hate it as much as anyone when the left screams “racism” where none actually exists. But let’s get real here Michelle. The only reason anyone cared about Laci and Scott Peterson is because they were good looking preppy white people.

And I say it’s reverse racism because in criminal law the rights of the accused are paramount. Law enforcement and prosecutors when far beyond the call of duty to prosecute Scott Peterson when, as far as I can tell, the evidence against him was severely lacking. If Laci and Scott had been ugly black people from the ghetto (or ugly white trailer trash) there would have been no media attention and probably no trial.

Bolton inquiry continues

The NY Times reports:

In a widening of the inquiry into John R. Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee intends to conduct formal interviews in the next 10 days with as many as two dozen people, Congressional officials said Tuesday.

This is getting ridiculous. Don’t they already know enough about the guy? Vote yes or no and stop wasting the taxpayers' money with this ridiculous investigation.

All they are going to find out is more of the same; he’s a conservative hardliner on foreign policy issues, and he’s obnoxious to his subordinates (not the only guy in DC). He would have been confirmed by the Senate long ago were it not for his foreign policy views that liberals disagree with.

Healthcare statistics and lies

Brad Plumer, Steve Verdon and Angry Bear have all written posts trying to compare healthcare results between the U.S. and other nations.

Let me make the following points, all related to stuff I’ve previously posted about:

(1) Infant mortality rates are a bad way to compare the U.S. to other developed countries.

(2) Angry Bear has a chart comparing obesity rates, and that’s largely a function of racial makeup, and furthermore, being fat is healthy. I posted a healthy height-weight chart based on the new study.

(3) Our healthcare system is already mostly socialized, so it doesn’t surprise me that another socialized system, perhaps built from the ground up to be socialized, works better.

(4) We could save billions on drugs if we had free market competition.

Filibuster poll and the stupid impressionable public

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll:

[B]y a 2 to 1 ratio, the public rejected easing Senate rules in a way that would make it harder for Democratic senators to prevent final action on Bush's nominees.

If ever there was a case of Americans having an opinion about what they don’t understand, here’s a great example. Do even 5% of those polled really understand how the Senate rules work, how they relate to the Constitution, and the history of the rule in question? No they don’t, so any “opinion” they have is merely what they are feeding back from what they’ve seen or read in the liberal-biased news media, or is influenced by how the poll question was worded.

Republicans should ignore this bogus poll and do what they have to do.

Read my previous post on this topic:

Advice to Senate Republicans: end filibuster now.

Hybrid cars: yuppie toys, not economical

The latest yuppie toy is the hybrid car. It allows yuppies to waste money on conspicuous consumption, yet convince themselves they are helping the world. A press release says that hybrid car registrations are up 81%.

Let me set you idiot yuppies straight: you are not making the world a better place by buying expensive cars. You conserve the world's resources by being frugal and not wasting money on stuff you don’t need.

According to MSN Autos, the Prius gets 51 mpg on the highway. But for $9000 less you can get a Toyota ECHO which gets an impressive 42 mpg on the highway, and it uses a plain old gasoline engine.

If you plan to drive the car 100,000 miles, how much would gasoline have to cost before you save money with the Prius over the ECHO? Over $21/gallon.

James Joyner says: “More people are buying hybrids because they've finally more-or-less caught up to regular cars as reliable transportation and offer several advantages like lower gasoline bills and the ability to drive in carpool lanes alone.”

I think I’ve demonstrated that the first part of James’ conclusion is wrong because as economical practical transportation, hybrid cards simply don’t make sense. But it’s possible that people are buying them to drive in carpool lanes, and if so, this is bad government policy.

If people are willing to pay an extra $9,000 to drive in carpool lanes, then the government ought to be selling those rights and using the money to reduce taxes. By giving this privilege away for free, the government is basically stealing money from the taxpayer. The average working American is paying higher taxes so rich yuppies can drive to work faster.

Glenn Reynolds and fat

Glenn Reynolds links to David Brook’s NYT column about the fat study which says it’s healthier to be “overweight” (see my previous post), but Glenn uses this as an excuse to try to hawk bodybuilding books at Amazon.com. Obviously Glenn doesn’t get it.

My favorite line from the Brooks column:

The shallowest people end up blissfully happy and they are so vapid they don't even realize how vapid they are because vapidity is the only trait that comes with its own impermeable obliviousness system.

It has nothing to do with fat, but it’s hilarious and true.

Where to meet women over 40

According to the Washington Post, they’re online playing games.

When it comes to online games, women over 40 play the most often and spend the greatest number of hours doing so, even beating out teenage boys, according to a study conducted by Digital Marketing Services.

But they’re not playing stuff like Final Fantasy XI (a game which I shamefully admit I’ve wasted time playing), but rather are to be found at Pogo.com.

I’ve previously blogged about chess at Pogo.com (when I was in my nerdy blogging phase), but I don’t think that the women are playing chess. I’ve given up on chess myself because I finally figured out that I suck at it.

In case you want to read my other chess posts:

Yahoo Chess sucks
Chess Genius for the PocketPC, a review
The $100 chess set I bought online

Small countries are better than big countries

Gary Becker and Richard Posner both have some interesting thoughts on the economic benefits of small countries versus big countries.

Here are my thoughts:

The primary advantage of being big is self defense. In a world where wars are frequent, small countries tend to get swallowed up. But in the modern era, this doesn’t happen as often, and the United States is around as the world’s cop to protect small countries from larger aggressors.

Becker and Posner both point out that with globalization and free trade, countries no longer need to be self sufficient in all things, a factor favoring small countries. They even explain why small countries have an advantage in global trade.

Big countries lead to bigger, more bureaucratic, and less efficient government. Unnecessary laws are created that interfere with free markets and harm the country’s economy.

When the big country is compromised of different ethnic or religious groups which don’t get along well, this creates another problem which prevents the country from being efficiently run.

For some reason, our foreign policy seems to discourage the breaking up of countries. For example, one of our goals for Iraq was to keep it a single country even though it’s compromised of three different groups that don’t like each other very much.

Our foreign policy is backwards. We should be actively encouraging the splitting up of large countries into smaller ones.

Defending Reaganomics

The Blithering Bunny, a blogger from the United Kingsom, defends Reaganomics, especially against the liberal assertion that Reagan's “tax cuts” caused the budget deficit to increase:

Tax revenues did increase under Reagan. That is, cutting tax meant more money came into the pot (I can even post the exact figures tomorrow). The deficit was caused by Reagan, like every other President of recent decades, spending like mad, and spending more than was coming in.

I have always wondered if Reagan really cut taxes at all. Under Reagan, we saw the top marginal income tax rate decrease from 70% to 28%. But under Reagan, many loopholes were closed (only people with very poor tax planning actually paid the full 70%) and corporate income taxes were increased (which is mostly a tax on the rich because most shares are owned by rich people).

I do give Reagan lots of credit for making our tax code better, and he deserves much credit for the economic boom of the 1990s.

The Judge Bork-John Bolton connection

The Moderate Voice explains that the reason why John Bolton is having problems being confirmed is the same reason that Robert Bork couldn’t get confirmed: it’s the weird facial hair.

Yes it’s a funny blog post, yet I think that the weird facial hair really is related to both Bork and Bolton’s problems. What kind of person would flaunt weird facial hair? Someone who doesn’t care what other people think about him? Someone who is such an egghead that they lack interpersonal skills? Someone who is lousy at politicking and schmoozing?

Yes, I think that people with weird facial here are eggheads who are probably not so good at politicking and schmoozing, and these are skills which are very helpful in getting fifty senators to vote for you. (But if he’s so bad at schmoozing, how is he a diplomat?)

Advice to Senate Republicans: end filibuster now

I fully support the proposal to modify the Senate rules to prevent filibusters for judicial nominees. My advice to Senate Republicans is to get on with it and change the rules already. Do it first thing Monday morning.

It’s the good judicial nominees that the Democrats are blocking. The ones who believe in strict construction and in the original intent of the Constitution. The ones most deserving of serving as judges.

This issue is bigger than the nominees currently being filibustered. Between now and the end of Bush’s term, more judicial slots will be open for nomination, including Supreme Court positions. Are the Republicans going to let Democrats filibuster the nomination of a conservative Supreme Court Justice, one whose philosophy is similar to Justice Scalia?

It’s obvious that if the Democrats are going to use the filibuster against nominations to lower courts, they are certainly going to use it for a Supreme Court nomination. Therefore the Republicans should just get rid of the filibuster now instead of letting the issue drag on for the next three years. Republicans mustn't let Democrats cow Bush into nominating a Souter-like Justice to the Supreme Court.

The only reason for not getting rid of the filibuster is the theory that in the future a Republican minority in the Senate could use it against a Democratic president nominating liberal justices. I use the word “theory” because (1) who knows when that scenario is going to happen? and (2) if that scenario does happen the Democrats could just as easily change the rules as the Republicans can now.

I applaud Dick Cheney for supporting the elimination of the filibuster. (See today’s Washington Post.) Stephen at Hold the Mayo asks if this was too soon. “The question remaining is was the timing right for Cheney's statement.” No, it’s not too soon, it’s too late, the Republicans should have done this already.

The liberals are, of course, upset about this. For example, Blogenlust writes, “…the Republicans want to end the filibuster for no other reason than to grab more power[.]” It’s not about “grabbing” anything, it’s about getting good deserving nominees onto the courts, using the existing power granted by the Article II Section 2 of the Constitution. And we know very well that Democrats would do the same thing if they were in power and the Republicans were being as obstructionist as the Democrats currently are.

Cars for kids

Mr Bingley writes, “No kid needs to drive a BMW at 17.”

I sadly confess to sharing those middle class values. When I was a kid, I would have been thankful if my parents bought me a used Ford Pinto.

Actually, I think that families should live in cities where kids can get around by foot or with public transportation. No need for kids to have cars in the city. Unfortunately, the perception (mostly true) of unsafe public schools in the cities have caused all the families to move to the suburbs where there’s no way to get anywhere without a car.

I agree with Roger Chermak who suggests that school vouchers can bring middle class families back to the city.

Business Week doesn't quite get blogging

Instapundit also links to a worthy article about blogging at Business Week. But the author of the article demonstrates that he doesn’t quite get it when he writes:

If this were a true blog, that last post would have generated a mountain of comments over the weekend

Only a tiny fraction of blogs have enough traffic to generate even a foothill of comments. The vast majority of bloggers blog in unread obscurity.

The egalitarian part of blogging is that with hard work and smart marketing, a nobody can garner a readership, but it doesn’t happen very often.

Instapundit links to fat story

Instapundit links to a story about the obesity study at Tech Central Station. I have previously written about this topic.

While I certainly would have liked to see my blog linked to, at least the story is getting some more attention. But unfortunately, not enough attention. As the author of the TCS article points out, “In a world without junk science, results like these would mark the end of the supposed obesity epidemic that is killing us by the thousands. Unfortunately the public health community is already busily discounting the CDC's numbers and telling us that whatever the science says, fat kills.”

People are so brainwashed by the anti-fat conspiracy that they can’t believe that the truth is actually true.

Bring back IQ tests

Steve Sailer has written an excellent column in which he recommends that we bring back IQ tests.

However, I disagree with a very minor point. Steve writes:

So, why do employers care about which college applicants attended? Mostly because it’s evidence of an applicant’s SAT score—along with high school grades—which in turn is correlated with his IQ. What college you go to permanently signifies your position in the IQ strata.

Not true. The vast majority of employers, just like the vast majority of Americans, don't believe in IQ. But because IQ is highly correlated with job performance, and IQ is also correlated, as Steve correctly points out, with graduating from an elite college, therefore there is a correlation between job performance and graduating from an elite college. Employers are ignoring the IQ part of the connection.

But there's more to the elite college preference than mere IQ. It's a cultural preference. Certain firms have a culture of elitism, and they don't even realize it has anything to do with IQ or mathematical correlations.

I have a BS from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, and throughout life I've observed that it's very rare that anyone gives a crap. The preference for graduates of elite universities lies with only a tiny number of firms, the rest of America doesn't care (or even realize that Penn is not a state school).

(Note that big law firm are among those firms that are into the culture of elitism. If you want to work at a big law firm, don't bother going to any but one of the top fourteen law schools. See my essay Law school: the big lie.)

Give D.C. back to Maryland

About a year and a half ago, I wrote, “If a solution to D.C.'s lack of representation is really required (and I don't think it is), then I'd suggest that D.C. be given back to Maryland.”

Today, Eugene Volokh writes, “And the fairest remedy, I argue, is not to give D.C. residents two Senators, but rather to give them a say in the election of a neighboring state's (e.g., Maryland's) two Senators.”

When I wrote my original post, I thought my idea was unique. Maybe Eugene has been reading my blog?

Attractiveness cause and effect error

David Tufte takes at face value the conclusions of a study mentioned at FuturePundit.

Researchers observed children in shopping carts at supermarkets, and rated the children for physical attractiveness on a scale of one to ten.

Findings showed that 1.2 per cent of the least attractive children were buckled in, compared with 13.3 per cent of the most attractive youngsters. The observers also noticed the less attractive children were allowed to wander further away and more often from their parents. In total, there were 426 observations at the 14 supermarkets.

Harrell, who has been researching shopping cart safety since 1990 and has published a total of 13 articles on the topic, figures his latest results are based on a parent's instinctive Darwinian response: we're unconsciously more likely to lavish attention on attractive children simply because they're our best genetic material.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

People from higher social classes have more attractive children. (Higher social classes value attractiveness more, and because of cross-assortative mating they tend to have better genetic material.) People from higher social classes also look more attentively after their children. Thus it is the higher social class that causes both the attentive behavior and the attractiveness. Mr. Harrell has his cause and effect backwards.

The "overweight" lie: where's the outrage?

People ought to be outraged by the lies being perpetrated by our government. No, I’m not talking about WMD in Iraq, I’m talking about the lies about what your weight should be.

I previously discussed the new study which shows that people classified as “overweight” actually have lower risk of death. The chart below shows the risk of death for the various categories:

Category	Deaths
Underweight (BMI < 18.5)	33,746
“Normal” (BMI 18.5 to < 25)	0
“Overweight” (BMI 25 to <30)	-86,094
Obese (BMI 30 to < 35)	29,843
Extremely Obese (BMI 35+)	82,066

Note the following amazing conclusions: (1) More deaths are caused by people being “underweight” than by people being “obese.” (2) More lives are saved by people being “overweight” than deaths caused by people being “extremely obese.”

If the number of people in the “normal” category is approximately 67% (a very rough approximation) of the number of people in the “overweight” category, and if all those people moved from the “normal” category to the “overweight category,” then 57,683 deaths would be prevented each year!

Of course, that’s not going to happen. But let’s suppose that, because of the government telling us that we need to lose weight in order to be healthy, one third of the people in the “normal” category would have otherwise been in the “overweight” category. Under this supposition, government lies have caused 19,228 deaths per year.

Let’s put this number in perspective. People are outraged over the 2,792 deaths caused by 9/11. Every single year, government lies about weight have caused the equivalent of nearly seven 9/11s!

People are outraged that 1,563 U.S. military deaths occurred because of our conquest of Iraq. More than twelve times that number of deaths have occurred every year because of government lies about weight.

Where’s the outrage? Why isn’t the whole blogosphere up in arms? Why isn’t Congress calling for hearings? Why aren’t people being punished for all of these preventable deaths?

Gay marriage, Judge Kramer, and the California Constitution

Skippy is not a bad person at all (after all, he linked to my blog today, thanks very much), but unfortunately I strongly disagree with his recent post about Judge Richard Kramer, the California Superior Court Judge who concluded in March 2005 that “no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in [the State of California] to opposite-sex partners.”

Support marijuana legalization

According to a study by Boston University professor of economics Jeffrey Miron, enforcement of marijuana prohibition costs state and local governments $7.7 billion annually. Furthermore, $6.2 billion would be collected if marijuana were taxed like alcohol and tobacco.

With the huge budget deficit we have (no thanks to the big-spending Republicans), we can certainly use an extra $13.9 billion per year.

Furthermore, I believe that there are a lot of hidden costs to marijuana prohibition that can’t be measured. Such as the cost when a kid in the ghetto thinks that becoming a drug dealer is a better occupational choice than doing something legal. Or when some college kid is convicted of marijuana possession, and he loses his financial aid, and has to drop out of college.

There is a movement, based on the study (follow the link above), to urge Congress to legalize marijuana. If you’re an economist, then I urge you to sign the letter they want to send to Congress. According to Robert Murphy, famous economist Milton Friedman is actively supporting this. (If you click the Robert Murphy link, you will note that he takes an extreme position that demonstrates how hardcore libertarians lack common sense.)

The overweight lie

For years you’ve been told that you need to lose weight for your health. It turns out that this was a big lie. As stated by the AP:

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.

Our government has been lying to us, but that’s not the whole story. The study, which is available online, shows that being overweight (a Body Mass Index [BMI] between 25 and 30) actually lowers the chance of dying.

That’s right, according to this data, a lot of Americans should be gaining weight for their health. Thus the headline of the NY Times article reads Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says.

The following chart (source: NIH) shows the ideal minimum and maximum weight range:

Height	BMI 25	BMI 30
5’0”	128	153
5’1”	132	158
5’2”	136	164
5’3”	141	169
5’4”	145	174
5’5”	150	180
5’6”	155	186
5’7”	159	191
5’8”	164	197
5’9”	169	203
5’10”	174	209
5’11”	179	215
6’0”	184	221
6’1”	189	227
6’2”	194	233
6’3”	200	240

Now I’m sure a lot of you, especially my female readers, fall below the healthy weight range, so go out there and start eating. I, for one, am going to hit McDonald’s tomorrow.

The new religion of Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan says: “You know I wish in many ways I could simply leave this church, and say to hell with it. But I cannot.”

Sure you can. We live in a country where there is freedom of religion. Anyone can be any religion that they want. Or even choose to believe in no religion at all.

“We are required to assent in every way to every papal pronouncement, even if it belies what one can see with one's own eyes and see in one's own experience.” Hey, that’s what Martin Luther was complaining about in 1517. You’ve missed the Protestant Reformation by 488 years. Get with the program and choose a different religion. Stop whining about who’s Pope.

Or even better, why not start your own religion? Joseph Smith founded his own religion. He said an angel came to him, led him to some gold tablets that contained new Truths, he copied the words from the tablets, and then the Angel conveniently repossessed the gold tablets. Instant religion! Today there are millions of Mormons. According to this article, 5% of Congress is Mormon.

Andrew Sullivan should go forth and copy some gold tablets somewhere. One can only imagine what his tablets might say.

And the Lord sayeth that the man who placeth his penis into the anus of another man shalt be raised up above other men and be blessed in the eyes of the Lord. So sayeth the Lord.

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Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Professor Bainbridge, in a much linked to blog post, says that Andrew Sullivan is an ass. “It's always about sex with Andrew, isn't it?”

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Homogenius at Daily Kos uses the “F” word to refer to the new Pope. I guess he’s trying to demonstrate that liberals are against people of faith, just like Bill Frist said.

The Pope and the environment

Rob Huddleston, who perhaps received the fastest Instalaunch ever (his blog is only four hours old, and the Instalaunch must have come in the third hour), writes about the Pope and the environment:

Maybe I am a bit rusty on my Bible knowledge . . . but I don't remember any references to "exploiting" Earth's resources in the King James translation.

Probably people are thinking of Genesis 1:26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Exploit, as used by Rob, means “to make use of meanly or unjustly for one's own advantage.” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.) Dominion means “absolute ownership” or “supreme authority.” Thus mankind cannot possibly “exploit” the environment because it belongs to us to do what we want with, at least according to the God of the Genesis. The animals and the plants have no say in the matter; we get to decide what’s good for us.

Hardcore environmentalists believe that the animals and plants do need to be considered, even if their interests are contrary to the interests of man, so therefore I conclude that Genesis 1:26 takes a view of the environment more consistent with political conservatives than liberals.

Of course, remember, I’m not Catholic, I’m just writing this stuff because it’s topical.