The Grace Notes

Be A Hardcore Liberal or Change Politics: Obama's Challenge

2008-11-07T15:34:00.001-06:00

All the political pundits have switched from trying to predict the race to defining the challenges facing Barack Obama. Most of them are focusing on the difficulties and problems of the country (and the world), and not on the leadership qualities of Obama. But the difficult situation was staring down whoever won the election, and it is the leadership qualities of the President - not the details of the situation - that will determine the outcome.

Obama's initial leadership dilemma will not be satisfying the sore losers on the right. His challenge involves the differences in the two core factions that elected him. The fundamental liberals expect him to reverse eight years of conservative rule (if you call record spending and deficits conservative) and enact a legion of standard left-wing policies and regulations that they believe will fix the free market and the problems of the lower classes. Meanwhile, the younger hopefuls expect him to usher in a new era of changing the way politics is done. He cannot do both.

We have to wait over two months to see which direction Obama will lean, although we will get a clue by the kinds of people he appoints to surround and advise him. Hopefully he will select some who are well-grounded in business and economic principles - both in theory and experience, since Obama has virtually no experience administering a corporation concerned with inflows and outflows of money - whether a business or the government. (His presidential campaign, which was overflowing with so many donations that he reveled in half-hour blocks of advertising, doesn't count. The organization he is inheriting is a little bit more starved for cash.)

My concern is that he will be encouraged to push for many standard Democratic policies that end up being counterproductive to their own goals. I've been skimming through his "Blueprint for Change," which contains promises such as enforcing equal pay of genders, since for every $1.00 a man makes, a woman only makes $.77.

Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics reminds us that the average person's salary rises significantly over the years as they gain more experience and productivity that makes them more valuable to a company, and that the average woman leaves the workforce for some period or periods of time to bear children, thus giving those women less work experience as well as making it harder for them to keep up in industries that are fast-changing (which, requiring more work and learning, typically pay higher). Sowell claims that when you adjust for the right factors and compare men and women of equal work experience, the pay difference disappears. This makes sense because it is disadvantageous for a company to discriminate against women who are just as productive as men when a competitive company will gladly pay a woman the same amount - or more if she is more productive and more valuable to the company.

So if the government forces an employer to pay the same wages for some high-skilled task to a man who has never left the workforce or a woman who has taken some time off to bear and raise children and thus has less experience and is less efficient, which person would the employer rather hire? He might have hired the woman and paid her the same amount as a different man with the same amount of lower experience and efficiency, but if he has to pay her as much as a man with more experience and efficiency, he is going to be encouraged to hire the man. It will actually be harder for some women to get a job if employers have to pay them more than their work is worth, and make it harder for them to gain the missing experience that makes them as valuable as some men. Thus "fair wage laws" that fail to take into account factors such as childbearing end up hurting the job opportunities of women, not helping them.

There are similar problems with other well-meaning Democratic policies, and hopefully these problems will not be realized to the full extent that economic theory suggests. The best scenario is that Obama saves the planet. The worst is that he fails and we come to think that his election wasn't something groundbreaking, but that he was thrust into this position because it would be groundbreaking - before he was truly ready. That is my concern, and I'm hoping history proves me wrong.

Michelle Obama Wants To Steal Your Pie

2008-10-12T21:59:00.006-05:00

And take down basic principles of economics with it.

Today I saw an old quote from April where Michelle Obama spoke about accomplishing some of the necessary things for the poor in America. "The truth is someone is going to have to give up a piece of the pie so someone else can have more."

Nevermind the fact that the Obamas don't practice what they preach - giving 1% of their income to charity from 2000 to 2004 and nudging to 4.7 and 6.1 in 2005 and 2006. What concerns me is that Mrs. Obama's talk about forcing a redistribution of the pie betrays an ignorance of some simple economic principles about wealth and poverty - and the more her kinds of ideas are allowed to flourish, the harder it will be for the poor to rise out of poverty.

When we talk about who has more money than someone else - who has a bigger piece of the pie - it's important to clear up misconceptions about the "pie."

First, it's important not to forget that the pie is always animated, and most people do not stay in the same pie share their entire lives. In Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, he points out that:

Three-quarters of those Americans who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point over the next 16 years. This is not surprising. After 16 years, people usually have had 16 years more experience... It would be surprising if they were not able to earn more money as a result.

...When a large majority of those in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point by 1991, you cannot determine the degree of income inequality between people by looking at inequality between income brackets at a given time.

Second, the pie in a (mostly) free market is not of a fixed size. As resources are allowed to flow to their most productive uses, the overall standard living of the economy as a whole improves - and the pie gets bigger. The bottom 10% of wage earners in America have a much higher standard of living than the bottom 10% did fifty years ago, and also much better than 100% of wage earners in many countries where free markets have not been allowed to raise the standard of living. Even if your share of the pie doesn't change, your share is bigger when the pie gets bigger.

Since both the size of the pie and the relative shares within the pie change so much over time, it's completely meaningless to take a single frame snapshot of the pie and say that some people with more at one point have to give up some of their share to those with less.

If those who have worked hard to rise through the ranks of income brackets - including the Obamas themselves - are not allowed to keep the larger share of the pie that they have earned, we will take away the entrepreneurial incentives that create the innovation that makes the pie grow and increases the standard of living for all.

What's worse than Mrs. Obama's ignorance of basic economic principles is Mr. Obama's implementation of them. His tax plan, while in many ways not as frightening as Mr. McCain claims, basically takes more money from the rich and gives it to the poor who pay no taxes. Kimberley Strassel explains this magic:

Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't.

While the plan is good-intentioned, like many misguided government policies, this kind of plan prevents the free market from pushing resources to their most productive uses and ends up slowing the overall improvement of the economy. As a result, some of our poorest people may temporarily end up with a little more cash - but a large portion of them will rise through the income brackets over time anyway, and the ones trapped in poverty will have fewer opportunities to rise above and cease depending on that little cash handout than they would have had otherwise.

Lyrics For Thought

2008-09-29T23:22:00.001-05:00

"Instead of A Show" by Jon Foreman (Listen at myspace.com/jonforeman)

I hate all your show and pretense
the hypocrisy of your praise
the hypocrisy of your festivals
I hate all your show

Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stop up my ears when your
singing ‘em
I hate all your show

Instead let there be a flood
of justice
An endless procession of righteous
living, living
Instead let there be a flood
of justice
Instead of a show

your eyes are closed when you’re praying
you sing right along with the band
you shine up your shoes for services
but there’s blood on your hands

you turned your back on the homeless
and the ones that don’t fit in your plans
quit playing religion games
there’s blood on your hands

Instead let there be a flood
of justice
An endless procession of righteous
living, living
Instead let there be a flood
of justice
Instead of a show

Ah! let’s argue this out
if your sins are blood red
let’s argue this out
you’ll be white as the clouds
let’s argue this out
quit fooling around

give love to the ones who can’t love at all
give hope to the ones who got no hope at all
stand up for the ones who can’t stand up at all
instead of a show
I hate all your show

Act Gives Frightening Powers to Paulson

2008-09-29T10:33:00.001-05:00

http://www.speaker.gov/pdf/AYO08C04_xml515pm.pdf

I've read some stuff about (and some of the actual text of) the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" that the House is voting on today and it gives some frightening powers to the Secretary of the Treasury. I e-mailed Todd Akin and told him to vote NO.

If it passes, the House votes Wednesday.

I also learned today that the short-sell ban (which every opinion I read about it called it a bad idea) ends Thursday night. So expect another stock market drop on Friday.

Video Blames Dems For Crisis, Vindicates GOP

2008-09-28T17:50:00.002-05:00

Here's an interesting video circling the web (to the tune of 600,000+ views in less than 4 days). The text moves fast to stay in the YouTube 10-minute time limit, it looks like it was done in Windows Movie Maker, and it seeks to lay the blame squarely on one side, but there's no denying the powerful facts included.

In summary, it claims that Clinton's adjustments to the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995 forced banks to make more loans to people with bad credit, and that it was only after this action that housing prices rocketed past overall inflation. It further claims that Bush and McCain tried unsuccessfully to stop these actions and that Democrats resisted such moves because they wanted to keep housing "affordable" and because they were getting the most money from Freddie and Fannie. It reveals that Obama worked for a law firm that attacked banks that weren't making as many "affordable" (i.e. bad) loans as the government mandated, and claims that it is total hypocrisy for Obama to blame Bush policies when it was Democratic actions that caused and propped up the housing bubble.

Deas Vail - White Lights EP

2008-09-28T17:46:00.003-05:00

(Originally posted at AbsolutePunk.net)
Deas Vail was a pleasant surprise last year with their debut All the Houses Look the Same on the new Brave New World Records. The smart, piano-driven melodies, melded by Mark Lee Townsend's production quality and topped with Wes Blaylock's soaring vocals, have been creating remarkable impressions everywhere. They've wasted no time working on the next chapter in their growing history, and with White Lights they've given us a five-song EP to hold us over until the new full-length releases early next year.

The familiar Deas Vail elements are present here, once again treating us to the cohesion of Laura Blaylock's flowing keys, Kelsey's deliberate rhythms, Justin's nimble bass, and Andy's undulating guitar work. Their strategy of pulling things back for the choruses threatens to feel overused, but it's not regrettable. Fans looking for progression will note the added influence of strings, which throughout the EP sounds not unlike a string quartet coming out of the background to add accentuating flavor. (I confess that the coda of "Balance" reminded me of Relient K's "Failure to Excommunicate".) Background vocals are also given more of a role, complementing Wes at several strong points.

For the most part, the lyrics contain the typical Deas Vail abstractness, although there may be some growth here as well. "White Lights" is simultaneously Wes's most complete metaphor and most straightforward tale to date. "From Priests to Thieves" is a haunting admission of loss: "We're not coming back / It's all our fault / We loved ourselves and lost it all / What have we done / What have we become?" Wes carries it, but it's Laura's softly wrenching harmonies that sell it.

Deftly creating an engaging musical landscape, listeners will wade through smart rhythms and subtle time signatures in an atmosphere of flawless production that brings out the talents of each band member without ever sounding busy. The keys and vocals of the debut reminded many of Mae or Mew; the soothing guitars here are drawing more comparisons to Edison Glass. Complemented by the natural tone of a few strings, this is the perfect EP to experience over and over on a lazy swing as you watch summer turn into fall.

Soothing but not dull, active but not puppy, beautiful but not proud - Deas Vail has captured me again. There's nothing quintessential here that will rival fan favorites such as "Shoreline" or "Rewind," but it's another very strong and satisfying release, and since you can order it for $5 with free shipping, you have no excuse.

Some Thoughts On The First Debate

2008-09-26T17:42:00.000-05:00

> Both candidates did a good job responding to each other's jabs by providing fuller context (although Obama conveniently declined to respond to McCain's comment that he's requested $900 million in earmarks in the Senate. Yeah, that's change. Although I would like to know how much McCain's requested.)

> I dislike McCain's continued Doomsday fearmongering that if we don't pass a bailout plan soon the country's gonna collapse. I'm much more concerned about the long-term incentives and effects of whatever may come out of this short-term politicized bill.

> I really like McCain's drive to dissect federal agencies and cut wasteful spending, especially in the bloated defense area, and his continued opposition to ethanol subsidies, which inflexibly prop up one type of energy and prevent the allocation of investing and resources to their most efficient uses.

> I dislike Obama's railing against the ideology of free markets and lack of regulation. It's kind of ironic to blame these ideas when it was some of the obstacles to the free market system (such as letting the government provide loans cheaper to people who really couldn't afford them) that were some of the very causes of our current crisis. It's like watching a ship sink because somebody didn't plug all of the holes and then blaming the policy of hole-plugging as ineffective.

> I was really glad that McCain mentioned that we have the second-highest corporate tax rates in the world, something that is a huge incentive for businesses to move to other countries instead of supporting the American economy. It was also important that Obama mentioned that tax loopholes make it one of the lowest rates. But loopholes do not help businesses equally, and Obama's plan to close these loopholes without lowering the tax rate will only provide an even greater incentive for businesses to leave America, making things worse, not better.

> I really dislike McCain's "League of Democracies." I'd hoped he'd abandoned that idea in the primaries, but I guess not. Our dealings with UN and NATO cause enough headaches - let's collect more world power in a global organization!

> I think (and this is probably the least rigid of my opinions, because it is only based on my unresearched reasoning) I agree with Obama's non-fear of talking to other world leaders without "preconditions." McCain's repeated claim that sitting across the table from a totalitarian and/or a liar somehow inherently legitimizes their claims or actions doesn't quite make sense to me.

Why Gas Prices Jumped: Economics Of The Ike Spike

2008-09-14T17:42:00.000-05:00

As I write this something like 95% of our refineries along the Texas gulf area are shut down, or roughly 20% of our nation's capacity. That means prices have to rise, and it's not anybody's greedy fault. Here's why.

First, the demand at the current price will not change at all (in fact, it may even have risen as hundreds of thousands of people rushed to evacuate) even though the supply is suddenly cut short by 20%. Prices have to rise to reduce demand to the level of the supply, and yes, even something as "inelastic" as gas demand can be influenced by raising the price. Just look at how much demand dropped earlier this summer when oil (and subsequently, gas) hit record levels - the number of miles driven by Americans actually dropped significantly, something that almost never happens.

When prices suddenly rise to factor in shorter supply, the supply that is left will go farther. Some people who would have filled up under the old price will only get enough gallons to last a few days under the new price. This lets the supply of gas last for more people, whereas under the old price gas would have run out sooner and some people would have no way of getting much-needed gas, even if they had enough money to buy gas at either price.

Secondly, the transportation of oil and gas has to be adjusted, and the costs of this extra transportation make the gas cost more. If any still-running refineries have extra capacity, they will take on some of the oil from the shut-down refineries, and it costs money to transport them. More importantly, some of the remaining supply of gas has to be transported farther to get to all the stations that normally rely on the gas refined from the shut-down refineries. If prices aren't raised, they won't be able to afford to transport the gas these extra miles, and the stations will not be able to get more supplies of gas.

President Bush has promised that they will be on the look-out for "price-gouging," but they're unlikely to find any. The reason prices temporarily rise is to ensure that more people who need gas will be able to get it. There's no point in forcing prices down for something if you can't get it anywhere.

I Still Don't Like McCain, But I'm Loving His VP Choice...

2008-08-30T11:50:00.000-05:00

So get this. She runs for governor of Alaska. The Republicans don't like her cuz she's been ratting on the corrupt ones. She wins the primaries anyway and defeats the Democrat who outspends her. So she starts ratting on corrupt Alaskan Republicans in Washington. She fixes the budget, kills the "bridge to nowhere," shelves 300 pork-barrel projects, and says Alaska needs to be self-sufficient instead of relying on federal money. She replaces a whole board committee that wasn't doing their job right.

Romney wouldn't have excited me. I read up on Pawlenty when he was getting buzz and thougt he was ok. But an initial read up on the no-nonsense integrity of Palin has me more excited about anything political I've been in awhile. She hasn't even been governor for two years, but it's more of an executive record than McCain, Obama, and Biden combined, and it's an impressive one two.

You want a Washington outsider, Democrats? It doesn't get any farther than Alaska.

Russia vs. Georgia: Round Two

2008-08-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

As we resume the scene, Russia continues its full-scale launch, pouring columns of tanks into Georgia, staging air raids, and lining up ships on the Black Sea. They claim they're not after civilians, just retaliating for Georgia's advances in South Ossetia, but bombs destroy some apartments in the city of Gori (which is in regular Georgia - not the questionable province - or, as the journalists say, "Georgia proper").

The UN and other powerless busybodies keep crying different versions of "Stop that!" to the deaf ears of Russia. Cheney says their response can't go unanswered, but what that means is unclear.

Georgia pulls their 2,000 troops from Iraq to help out a more urgent front. For awhile both sides claim to control the South Ossetian capital, but overpowered and gunned down, Georgia withdraws from the province and calls for a cease-fire on the same deaf ears.

Now that South Ossetia is back in its own hands (or now is it Russia's?), the fight rages for another province called Abkhazia that also wants to fully break from Georgia. Russia continues to claim that they don't have plans to invade "Georgia proper," - they're just helping out these poor independent provinces that Georgia wants to take back.

But somebody lied. Forget the provinces - Russia is now delving deep into the heart of Georgia - bombing infrastructure, capturing government buildings, and cutting off a crucial highway. There was a claim that they're just punishing Georgia for its aggression, but Russia's current aggression doesn't look like the noble motives of a protector.

Russia's definitely serving its own interests here - "protecting" the breakaway provinces just happens to play into their hand. Just what those interests are is still unknown - I haven't found any reports of what Russia says will make them stop; all they're doing so far is shouting justifications for what they're doing.

Will the breakaway provinces be truly independent or will Russia conveniently take them back under the fold of the ol' USSR? Does it want to recapture all of Georgia? Or is it just invading the whole country to mete out the emerging strains of democracy - and pro-western ambitions - that threaten Russia's backyard? And how long will the US and UN be content to just scream "stop it, stop it"? And what does all this have to do with the oil pipeline that runs through Georgia.....

Stay tuned.

Russia vs. Georgia: Round One

2008-08-09T21:48:00.000-05:00

So Russia and Georgia are at war. No, not the Georgia that the devil went down to... the little country in the middle of the other hemisphere. Here's what I've gathered in reading articles, blogs, and editorials last night and today:

The Georgians broke away from the collapsing U.S.S.R in the 90's along with all those countries that end in -ekistan. But one of Georgia's provinces, South Ossetia, is made up mostly of Russians, so they broke away from Georgia in 1992, and have basically been independent since, although most of the world calls Georgia a country and doesn't pay much attention to South Ossetia.

Anyway, Russia and the U.S. get along better than they did during the Cold War, but things have been.. er.. heating up again. For instance, the U.S. wants to set up missile defense shields in Europe with its NATO allies, or even Turkey, and Russia's not too keen on more Western military technology so close to home (remember when they set up missiles on our side in Cuba?). And while Russia's not exactly communist anymore, it's not exactly a free country either; the government still wields plenty of totalitarian power.

Georgia, in conjunction with its dislike of Russia, likes the U.S. and wants to join NATO. I was surprised to learn that they actually rank third in number of troops in Iraq (2,000) behind U.S. and Britain - that gives you an idea of how much they want to be with us and our pals. This makes Russia dislike Georgia even more - you probably don't remember when Russia cut off gas lines to Georgia for a bit in 2006. But don't forget the immense Russian population in South Ossetia, which sort of but not really is a part of Georgia.

More tension's been building lately. Georgia's leader has been wanting to take South Ossetia back. Russia's been flying war planes over Georgia's territory. Both sides claim the other shot first, but one way or the other Georgians killed a dozen Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, probably along with some civilians.

While everyone was watching the Chinese unfurl a majestic Olympic opening ceremony, Russia responded full-scale with troops, tanks, and fighter planes, and the Georgian army fought back - there have been reports of destroyed tanks and planes. Russia appears to be mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of Georgia, and over a thousand people - Russians, South Ossetians, and Georgians, mostly civilians - are dead already.

The simplified coverage paints the Goliath Russia as invading poor little ol' Georgia - nevermind how much poking and provoking Georgia did to upset the bullying Bear. The U.S. presidential candidates are sticking with that populist picture. "Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory," says McCain. "“What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia’s sovereign — has encroached on Georgia’s sovereignty," says Obama.

No time to talk about Georgia invading South Ossetia's sovereignty. Because, after all, Russia really is a bully and Georgia is our friend.

It's hard to say how much worse things will get. It seems that another province is fighting Georgia now, too, and with the immense backing of Russia it would seem that Georgia would be knocked out pretty quickly. But apparently Russia has only one supply line into that area, and Georgia may be able to hold their own - especially if they get requested help from the West. They're certainly banking on it.

And just because the U.S. gets involved won't make it World War III, either - we've been involved in Eurasian skirmishes in the last few decades - Kosovo or Bosnia, anyone? In fact there is already a U.S. presence in Georgia, training and arming enemies of our enemies and hoping they don't become our enemies later (Remember Afghanistan against Russia?)

But U.S.-Russia tensions will be strained even more by this situation, There's no way Russia will forsake their own in South Ossetia - but will they continue a full onslaught of the rest of Georgia? It's doubtful that the U.S. and Co. will stop at paltry rhetoric.

Stay tuned.

Wanna know how I got these scars?

2008-08-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

Wednesday night I saw The Dark Knight again (mild spoiler alert), and it was ten times better the second time around. I'm not quite sure if it was the fact that I didn't have a headache and I wasn't so close that I had to look up for two and a half hours, or if it was because I already knew the overall plot so I had a chance to pay closer attention to how things unfolded and pick up a lot more about the details, plot intricacies, cinematography...

Mainly, though, I came away with a greater understanding of the philosophical themes presented in the movie (as an aside, the political themes are worth an essay in themselves) and was blown away by the unabashedly honest portrayal of human nature.

As I watched the film the second time, I was thinking about the Joker's character and why he's so simultaneously likable and hateable. The mannerisms and nuances of Ledger's acting makes every appearance by the Joker charmingly enjoyable, and he delivers several of the film's funniest lines (although Fox's "Blackmail?" taunt is my favorite), yet his diabolically cruel plans mixed with the casualness of their deployment makes you want to hate him for his evilness.

I also noticed - and I don't know how I missed this the first time - that the Joker's fight is not against Batman, but against the idea that people are inherently good. Batman has lent courage to the town of Gotham to flush out the mob and turn itself around, and that doesn't sit well with the Joker's paradigm that people are inherently cruel, selfish, and heartless, so he tries to use Batman to bring out the worst in people. He tells Batman that the laws and morals of the citizens is all just a bad joke. "I'll show you, that when the chips are down, these uh... civilized people, they'll eat each other."

Thus the Joker proceeds to concoct "social experiments" to strip away the moral fiber of Gotham's inhabitants. He tells everyone that if a certain character isn't dead in an hour, he'll blow up a hospital - instantly turning relatives of the sick and injured into would-be assassins of an innocent man. And his detonation scheme involving two ferries is downright ingenious.

I then realized the brilliance of making the Joker's character so likeable - he doesn't represent the typical magnificent but distant force of a Hitler or even a Sauron, such an extreme of stereotyped evil that no one can identify with or use to make philosophical comparisons. No, the Joker represents the simple potential impulse for evil inside of us - the bare, sinful nature of our own hearts, just as you can love yourself but hate what you find yourself doing.

The Joker corrupts the most honorable man in Gotham to prove his point, which Batman views as a defeat for the forces of good. With an epiphany, I viewed it as a vindication of the beginning of the most beautiful victory, because, in a sense, the Joker's paradigm is correct - but only as the opening frame of a much more complete and fulfilling paradigm. The Joker's corrupting of Gotham's "white knight" represents the fact that all of us are sinners, acting for our own selfish desires, fulfillment, and feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment. But that's not the end of the story!

I'm reminded of a song by Shane & Shane called "Embracing Accusations," where the duo sings about the devil accusing people of being horrible and selfish and tries to bring them down with dismay and despair. With a twist, the Shanes say the devil is actually telling the gospel story; he's just stuck on the first part and has "forgotten the refrain," where Jesus says, "Yes, you have sinned, you have done things only for yourself at the expense of others, but I have paid the price for that, and I'm offering you forgiveness. Follow me and I will teach you to love."

It is Love that covers the Joker's paradigm that people are cruel, and takes them and molds them into something better. It is this brilliant portrayal of the realities of human nature that thrusts The Dark Knight from greatness to a legendary film.

Bush Ignored As Cause of Oil's Recent Plummeting

2008-07-17T20:51:00.003-05:00

It's been a long time since I've played apologist for Bush and defended him against attacks from Democrats and the media. After all, as a conservative I can't blindly defend actions that destroy the budget or civil liberties, regardless of the identities of the people who engage in them.

But when somebody does something with a positive outcome and then gets ignored by those that illuminate all of his negative outcomes - well, that's not right.

On Monday, President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling. Now there's a lot of debate about what obstacles are still in the way of pulling oil out of the Gulf, and about how long it will take, and about how much impact it will really have on gas prices. But regardless of the direct impact, there was also a harder-to-measure psychological impact on the economic forces with this new indication that the government was willing to remove one of its previous interventions in the market.

And what happened?

Oil has plummeted $16 a barrel from its record highs over the last three days, breaking all sorts of decreasing records.

But when you browse today's headline articles about the extended fall, nowhere is Bush's decision mentioned as a cause - not even derided as a potential or negligible one. They churned out the usual reasons of concern about the weakening U.S. economy, declining demand, surprise reports about increases in stockpiles... they even took time to explain away an "explosion that damaged an oil pipeline in Nigeria’s restive south — the sort of threat to supply that has helped fuel crude’s recent rally" as something that didn't affect the falling prices.

Since they're so concerned about everything else that has to do with oil, you think they'd at least mention Bush's removal of the offshore drilling ban, even if just to insist that it had nothing to do with the price dropping.

But they don't. I browsed all the major news sites - USAToday, MSNBC, CBS, New York Times - they all had headline articles about oil's drop. CNN even had a detailed article about several causes that contributed to the fall. But not a nod to Bush or offshore drilling. Not even on FOX, where the Republican party can do no wrong.

Bush does something big to help oil prices. The next day, oil plummets a record amount. Two days later, it's fallen even farther. But in all of the media that constantly details every action that affects oil prices - up or down - in every new article about oil, there is not even a mention about Bush. And you want to tell me his action had nothing to do with the drop in oil that just happened to begin the very next day?

Something just doesn't add up.

Evolution in Tasmanian Devils? Nothing New Here.

2008-07-17T20:28:00.002-05:00

There's a curious story about Tasmanian Devils circulating the science news. Typically, they mate around two years of age, but a tumor has been killing severe numbers of the little devils, and many of them are dying before they have a chance to mate. But a newly published shows there has been a sixteen-fold increase in the number of devils mating at one year.

The species seems to have altered its instincts of sexual activity and everyone's excited that this is evolution's way of preserving the species. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorialized with almost visible glee, as if pointing at the silly creationists:

"Researchers studying, of all things, Tasmanian devils, have documented significant biological changes that occurred over about 12 years... Before the cancer appeared, virtually all female devils reached sexual maturity at age two... the number capable of breeding at the age of one — what scientists call 'precocious breeding' — has jumped 16-fold.

University of Tasmania zoologist Menna Jones reported the change in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 'We could be seeing evolution occurring before our eyes,' she told the AP.

That's not likely to sit well with the anti-evolution crowd, which prefers its devils with horns, pitchforks and a tail..."

I'll ignore the fact that pitchforks and tails are not actually included in the doctrine of any of the several major religions that discount evolution. In the commentators' haste to shout a "gotcha" at creationists, they brushed right over the fact that no genetic evolution has taken place here.

I'm reminded of the infamous white moth / black moth event, where changing numbers of different colored moths was said to indicate evolution in color as an adaptation to survive in cities where smog turned the trees from white to black, when really all that was happening was different shades of already existing moths were finding it easier or harder to survive, depending on what shade the trees were.

And all that's happening today is that the earlier mating Tasmanian Devils are spreading faster than the late bloomers, since the late bloomers are dying before they can bloom. If there's been a 16-fold increase, that means early mating isn't a new phenomenon - it just happened less often in the past. No genetic mutations, no passing on of new traits - just good ol' natural selection selecting one already-existing trait over another as the environment changes.

The local newspaper loves to disparage creationists for a lack of intelligence and not paying attention to science, but I have to wonder at the scientific smarts of their own editorialists - and that university zoologist - if they so readily conclude that tangible evolution could actually take place in a mere 12 years.

Fannie & Freddie: Paving The Way For More Socialism

2008-07-17T20:10:00.002-05:00

The news lately has been dominated by the potential failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the innocent-sounding names of two giant mortgage lenders set up by the government years ago. I've been reading as many articles and editorials as I can (RealClearMarkets.com is my favorite collection of multiple economic opinions), and it seems that Fannie and Freedie (or, the FM's) hold $5 trillion in housing loans, or half the national debt, and no one wants to think about what happens if these guys go under, and there's even talk about the government bailing them out.

I may be oversimplifying things in my limited understanding, but it seems that Congress set the FM's up years ago to help more people afford houses. Indeed, as long as everyone pays you back, it doesn't matter how many people you guarantee a loan for; no matter how much money you really have - it will all balance out after everyone gets their money and pays you back. But when thousands of people have to default - because no matter how much the government wants to believe it, it can't automatically make houses affordable for everyone - there's a big problem because most of that money never really existed, and now it matters.

Now the root of this problem was in too much government involvement - it artificially influenced supply and demand for housing, and it's coming back to haunt them. But in the cruel irony of advancing socialism, capitalism and free markets are being blamed for not regulating the FM's well enough to keep this from happening, and populist appeal is building for more government intervention - bailouts, regulations, and who knows what else.

In other words, government involvement was the problem, but when government involvement fails, the suggested solution is that the government needs to be more involved... and round and round goes the expanding circle of big government. (Andrew Napolitano and the Washington Post have some decent, explanatory editorials.)

Obama Breaks His Word In Self-Interest

2008-06-21T19:46:00.002-05:00

Obama broke his pledge to take public financing for the election if his opponent did. John Dickerson explains why this is worse than McCain's flip-flop on offshore drilling in the same week:

Obama's change of heart was more closely tied to his self-interest than McCain's. If he entered the public financing system, he would have denied himself hundreds of millions of dollars. Money is the mother's milk of politics. More of it allows Obama to better get out his message, organize, and send himself across the country. (He can even cook up a jazzy presidential seal for himself. Next: cuff links.) The self-interest that may motivate McCain's drilling proposal, by contrast, is more indirect. For McCain to benefit from his flop, voters have to believe in his drilling idea and then vote for him at least partly because of it.
Obama's is also exposed because he initially pledged to work against his self-interest on this very point. His promise to take taxpayer funds was always conditional—he'd do it if McCain did, too—but he and his aides said he would "aggressively pursue" negotiations with McCain to work something out. He even said he'd sit down with McCain to find a way. When it came down to it, though, the negotiations that took place don't qualify as aggressive. Obama's lawyer met with McCain's lawyer for a single 40-minute session. That was it. The Obama camp says they quit because it was clear McCain wasn't interested in a deal. But the evidence for this seems to rely in large part on interpreting McCain's position rather than probing and testing it through serious negotiations. Giving up after one meeting seems a little weak, particularly for a candidate who, in the foreign-policy context, says that he will never fear to negotiate.
The final problem for Obama is that he didn't spin his decision very well. He claimed that he had to refuse public funding because McCain was being supported by unregulated 527 groups while his campaign wasn't. That's not so. Right now, Democratic-leaning groups funded by unregulated donations are helping Obama more than Republican groups are helping McCain. Obama also claimed that McCain and the Republican National Committee were fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. Factcheck.org labeled his claim a "large exaggeration and a lame excuse" for opting out of public funding.

Not too promising coming from the one who's supposed to change Washington.

Show me your papers, please? For REAL?

2008-06-21T17:53:00.003-05:00

A three-year-old piece of Congressional legislation has been receiving more coverage and criticism lately, and it's time you were made aware of what's going on.

In 2005, "the Real ID Act was subsequently attached by the House Republican leadership as a rider to H.R. 1268, a bill dealing with emergency appropriations for the Iraq War and with the Tsunami relief funding. H.R. 1268 was widely regarded as a 'must-pass' legislation.... The Senate never discussed or voted on the Real ID Act specifically and no Senate committee hearings were conducted on the Real ID Act prior to its passage." (Wikipedia)

Does this "never discussed" bit remind you of the original Patriot Act? Stay with me.

Basically, the REAL ID Act mandates new rules for identification purposes, providing national standards for driver's licenses and linking state databases in an attempt to increase efficiency and combat terrorism and illegal immigration. Unless things change, by the end of 2014 you will be required to show your REAL ID to board a plane or enter a federal building or nuclear plant. Critics maintain that REAL ID is a dangerous invasion of privacy that brings us one giant leap closer to Big Brother.

Many fear that the effort to streamline identification will actually make identify theft easier. As expressed by an anonymous smug commenter on the Internet: "Oh and how will this protect against Identity theft? Storing everything they need to know in one centralized location on a server probably running on windows. It is one stop shopping for hackers!"

But most fear the potential for worse. While the REAL ID Act spells out few menacing details, it places no limits on what can be done in the future. It transfers the duties of identification to the Department of Homeland Security, an executive branch not accountable to the public in the way the Congress or local governments are (Remember, any power not given to the federal gov't belongs to the states. Not that we've been following that, but if we don't follow or amend it, why have a Constitution at all?). There is also controversy over the bill's checks and balances, as an old version "would have prohibited any judicial review" of a certain part of the bill, and even the final "limited restrictions on judicial review remain controversial." (Wikipedia)

Rumors already circulate that the REAL ID could require your fingerprint, or maybe even an RFID chip that can be tracked. More realistically, the national standard ID could be made to contain more and more types of personal information, and required for more and more places and activities, all in the name of "your own safety." Remember that iconic Nazi (or was it Communist?) image of "Show me your papers." Christians are reminded of the infamous "mark of the beast" that will be required to buy or sell, and wonder just how much closer this ID will bring us.

Is this really such a big deal, or is it nothing more than an upgraded driver's license - which is already required for many things? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm glad that many are fighting against it. The financial requirements and intrusions of privacy have made unlikely allies of governors, state legislatures, gun owners, and the ACLU. Originally, states were supposed to have complied by last month (May 2008), but they've received extensions (mostly for funding excuses) through 2009 - and we have five more years before we'll start to need the new cards.

I don't fly much, and I can avoid federal buildings (that includes the Arch) for awhile. I may avoid upgrading to a REAL ID as long as possible, especially if requirements seem to start slipping down the slope of the fears of the paranoid. (Because once people start losing their cards, or have them stolen, or a state's database is hacked, it'll be safer to implant the info in humans... but, hey, that's science fiction stuff!) But maybe I've got nothing to worry about. Maybe a streamlining of databases will be a good thing. Maybe the government will never want to track everything I do and buy just in case I might turn out to be a terrorist. Maybe I should stop humoring the civil libertarians who scream everytime Congress passes hundreds of pages of things without reading them first.

But I just thought you deserved to know. Unless, of course, ignorance is strength...

British losing civil liberties, not caring

2008-06-19T22:42:00.002-05:00

The Economist has posted a brilliant, disturbing article about the erosion of privacy in Britain. Selections include:

"Those who breach one of its Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, introduced in 1998, can be jailed for things that are not illegal in themselves (such as visiting a forbidden part of town or talking to certain people)."

"Britain possesses one of the largest police DNA databases in the world, containing the records of over 4m of 60m citizens (including a third of the black men in the country). Records are kept for everyone who is arrested, meaning that many on the system have never actually been charged with any crime. The government's identity-card scheme, the first phase of which is due to start later this year, aims to record the fingerprints and biographical details of everyone in the land."

Canadian Dad grounds 12-year-old; Court overrules

2008-06-19T22:39:00.003-05:00

First heard at AndRightlySo.com

The state's determination to replace the parent continues its full force in Canada, where a father tried to ground his daughter from a school trip for using too much Internet and posting "inappropriate" pictures, so she took him to court and won.

Read Yahoo news article.

Scientists get bacteria to poop crude oil

2008-06-16T22:43:00.002-05:00

You've got to read it to believe it. They've figured out how to genetically modify bacteria so that their poop is crude oil. They're not ready to put the stuff in their vehicles yet (but they think they're close), and they don't know if they can mass-produce it, but this is the latest example of an alternative ingenuity that may yet save us.

Read the full article.

Japan imposes waistline limits to trim healthcare costs

2008-06-15T18:10:00.002-05:00

An inevitable conclusion of tax-supported health care is that the government will enforce lifestyle choices on its citizens. Once it realizes that people who choose to live unhealthily tend to require more care than those who do not, they must impose restrictions to force a healthier populace that will cut down on avoidable costs.

The United States, which does not yet have tax-supported health care, is not yet ready to accept government intervention in its eating habits. When the Mississippi legislature introduced HB 282, which would basically have made it illegal for restaurants to serve the obese, it died in committee and never was taken seriously enough to receive a vote.

In Japan, however, things are much different. A traditionally and emphatically not obese nation is concerned about the rising health care costs of its tax-supported system, especially concerning a growing generation more excited about McDonald's and Starbuck's than the traditions of the ancestors.

The blogosphere is currently resonating in reaction to the revelation that, beginning in April, Japan has enacted stringent waistline restrictions (33.5 inches for men and 35.4 for women), requiring all citizens within certain demographics to be measured annually, with dietary help or increasingly stiff penalties for businesses and individuals who cannot get, shall we say, up to shape.

But something is being lost amidst the ridiculous inefficiency of such a one-dimensional guideline and the jokes about pregnant women and the sumo industry. What is just as frightening as the fact that the Japanese have so willingly surrendered the right to choose their own waist size is the fact that so many Americans seem just as ready to surrender theirs. A selection of comments across blogs and articles reveals such attitudes as:

"I actually don’t think it’s a bad idea… some people need limits or they will eat themselves to early death."

"I think its great that Japans government cares enough about its citizens' to take this sort of action."

"I agree wholeheartedly! Enough is enough!"

"I think we need to set waistline limits in this country... I think it it is a great, it's time to stop coddling fat people and time to start helping them."

Predictably, pathetically, these people are swallowing Big Brother's pill: The government knows what's best for you. It's for your own good.

I suspect none of these consenting folks are the obese ones. Humans have a remarkably selfish tendency to not care about the principle of losing their libertarian rights until the loss of a right affects them personally (Thus America's collective yawn over the recent see-sawing of their right to habeas corpus, something most of them probably can't even pronounce, much less understand the significance of.)

But sooner or later a government-funded health care system is sure to realize that smokers put as much of a drain on the system as the fat folks once did. And, of course, preventing people from smoking will make them healthier, too - it's for their own good. Forbidding cigarettes might dampen the enthusiastic surrender of the skinny more than forbidding obesity does now.

I won't continue peering down the slippery slope of the negative health effects of alcohol... carbonated beverages... skimping on seven servings of vegetables and thirty minutes of daily exercise... I don't seriously fear that 33.5 inches of waistline today means government-mandated dietary scheduling and monitoring tomorrow; it's hard to predict how much health government is willing to enforce, and how much health citizens are willing to have enforced.

But once governments start drawing those kinds of lines, they seem to have trouble stopping. Tax-supported health care is a caring hand that easily turns into an iron fist; once government expands to provide everyone health care, it discovers that to truly do so it must expand even more in an increasingly dangerous and bloated form. Perhaps we should reconsider how much we enjoy our freedom to deviate from someone else's definition of a perfect lifestyle before we agree to fund the health of everyone.

Why I Can't Vote For John McCain, Either

2008-06-15T14:27:00.001-05:00

Being terribly disappointed with both of the mainstream choices for President, I haven't yet delved into collecting my respective reasons against either of them, especially since I haven't found someone else to vote for anyway.

But this latest McCain flip-flopping will go on that eventual list. The Supreme Court decided, against the Bush administration, but barely (5-4), that we can't keep foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without bringing charges against them. (Some have been there 6 years and haven't been accused of anything.)

I regard this as a positive move - if the government were to call me a terrorist, I wouldn't want to be held indefinitely without any charges. If I am a terrorist, charge me, try me, convict me, and send me to prison.

Anywho, Mr. 2008 McCain, trying to get the conservative vote, says this "is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Senator Graham, and Senator Lieberman, and I…made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have.

But Mr. 2003 McCain, bucking the conservative party for his principles, wrote with Graham that "we firmly believe it is now time to make a decision on how the United States will move forward regarding the detainees, and to take that important next step. A serious process must be established in the very near term either to formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action."

Which is it?

This is not the first thing he's talked both ways about either. I just haven't been motivated to collect them all yet.

Don't mistake this as an endorsement for the most liberal-voting (when he votes at all) senator who is going to magically bring us all together, either. He's got his own inconsistencies I haven't collected, either.

I can't trust anything either of them say.

Alas.

Modesty Schmodesty

2008-06-09T14:27:00.001-05:00

Last Thursday, on my lunch break, I stopped by Waldenbook's display of $3.99 paperbacks. The only book that caught my eye was called A Return To Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit. Some brief flipping through the pages hinted at an interesting read. It did not even necessarily seem to be coming from a religified Bible-verse-touting perspective, and I was interested in what sort of secular or practical arguments would be expounded in favor of modesty and in criticism of our sexualized culture and all of its problems, for the book did not seem to be concerned with modesty in our often narrow application concerning clothing, but as an overall attitude toward sex and sexuality.

Well, there is certainly a religious element to Shalit's beliefs, but that is not what drives her book. It's more along the lines of, "Free love and the sexual revolution were supposed to make us all uninhibited and happy, but instead it's lead to problem after problem after problem and so many miserable, unsatisfied people.... hmm, maybe the old, moral generations of the past were on to something!"

The book is not perfect, and contains some weak arguments, stereotyping, naivete, and repetition. But there are also plenty of thunderous, thought-provoking challenges and truths, and it's an easy, inspiring read that I recommend to all. Shalit spends a great time on feminism, coherently arguing that the equality that was supposed to remove the differences between the genders and free women from the oppression of men has only made women more powerless and oppressed by men, removing the cultural system that once protected them and destroying the ability of men to relate to women as men:

"Women then didn't need their boyfriends to protect them, nor have to 'prove themselves worthy of respect,' because men respected all women as ladies, not only their girlfriends. Today, we are taught that this 'every woman is a lady' ideas was sexist, that it made women into property, but sometimes it seems that abandoning it has made women all the more into property. Because men no longer treat all women as ladies, my 22-year-old friend needed her boyfriend on the street to give off everyone-stay-away-she's-mine vibes, as it were. Maybe treating all women respectfully was not subordinating, after all, but precisely a way of conveying that they were not mere property - that they didn't have to be 'owned' by one man to deserve respectful treatment."

She notes how the pressure has turned to women being expected to have sex with their men even if they don't yet want to. When comparing advice offered in magazines of different ages, she reveals, "In 1905, a man who was too presuming wasn't 'fit to be welcomed' in society, while in 1997 the problem is the woman's. Now it is up to her to invent various arbitrary maneuvers to alleviate her discomfort, whereas before it was the man's job to demonstrate he was worthy of her."

In an earlier age, it was the man who had to prove himself worthy of a woman's love and attention; now women have to worry about satisfying their men, many of whom who will without a second thought move on to someone else who's more fun or who doesn't start talking about marriage and commitment once she finds that she has an emotional attachment to this man she's been sleeping with - an emotional attachment that cannot seem to be gotten rid of no matter how hard our society tries to promote casual sex. Perhaps there's a reason for that, Shalit offers.

She explains how women now have to deal, in greater degrees than ever before, with such things as stalking, date rape, and sexual harassment - things which legislation, focusing only on the symptoms, cannot prevent or cure, and things which were restrained by an earlier respect by males for "female modesty," or a woman's prerogative to own her sexuality until she chose to share it.

She also links our culture's portrayal of sex and gender roles to heartbreaking, developing phenomena such as anorexia and self-mutilation - things which 90% of the time affect women and which were unheard of in previous generations. Even those who disagree with her conclusion will be hard-pressed to provide a better explanation for why so many young girls are now starving or cutting themselves in an age when their sexual freedom is supposed to leave them unoppressed and uninhibited, while instead it's leaving them unsatisfied and completely miserable. "Why are none of my grandma's friends anorexic?" Shalit asks (twice).

"Modesty" is about more than a religified "absence of cleavage," or whatever lines particular societies want to draw. That is missing the point; modesty is much richer than that. Modesty concerns the entire character of a woman who chooses to guard her sexuality, and of men who respect that modesty. Shalit is not beating a great, moral stick saying, "EVERYBODY NEEDS TO STOP HAVING SEX OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE" - although she believes everyone would truly be happier; she is noting the sad irony that in this age of tolerance and freedom, women who do choose to save sex for a special relationship with someone who cares about them find it increasingly difficult to do so, as they face stalking, harassment, and intense pressure from all sides because no one anymore respects female modesty.

She contrasts modesty with prudery, which is merely the extreme stubborn opposite of promiscuity. "Promiscuity is really much closer to prudery... As types, they represent two sides of the same unerotic coin, which flips over arrogantly and announces to the world when it lands: 'Ha! - I cannot be moved.' Modesty is prudery's true opposite, because it admits that one can be moved and issues a specific invitation for one man to try."

"Women who dress and act 'modestly' conduct themselves in ways that shroud their modesty in mystery." It is the mystery which gives modesty its attraction, Shalit argues, and the lack of mystery that gives our accepted culture its inability to satisfy. Modesty prolongs the unknown, and there is a thrill of discovery that sexualized culture cannot hope to duplicate. "With no obstacles in the way of desire, what is left to desire?" With everything revealed, there is nothing to discover, and perhaps it's why we see increasing perversions (incest? necrophilia? bestiality? from hardcore to child pornography...) in any and every attempt to keep things interesting and rediscover the fun, or why every magazine on the rack promotes tips and techniques for great sex.

Technique. How that word disgusts me. Shalit discusses it in passing as another reference to how feminism and equality have led to more oppression of women: "Instead of saying goodbye, women are... buying that depressing title I keep seeing in bookstores, 203 Ways To Drive A Man Wild In Bed... In a different time her innocence would have been valued and the man would have been learning how to please her."

I grew up in a sheltered environment, and I still avoid explicit portrayals of sex and explicit jokes about it, although my reasons have changed. It's not that I think it's horrible, shocking, and bad, though that's surely an element; it's that I don't want to expose myself to too much of it and learn too many extra things before I actually get there. Quite frankly, it feels like ruining all the fun - like spoiling the end of a great movie before you see it. Anyone who's ever been in a relationship remembers the first thrill of discovery, where even the simplest and purest explorations of contact could leave one completely elated for days. I want to follow that thrill all the way to marriage, as She and I become one in a continual, deeper discovery of each other emotionally, spiritually, physically, and - yes - sexually. Why was the old Biblical euphemism for sexual intercourse "to know"? It's all intertwined; you can never stop getting to know someone.

I don't want to know beforehand all the techniques - that seems to imply something cold and heartless, something artificial and forced, a reducing to cause and effect or action and reaction, something that implicitly destroys the very passion it's supposed to foster (If they work so well, why do we have to keep being taught more?). I don't want her to have to worry about being "good in bed," and I don't want to worry about that either. I want a woman to love, to protect and care for, a woman who understands me with all of my shortcomings and quirks and loves me anyway, a woman to share in my passions and interests and calling and purpose. In that big picture, worrying about learning a few techniques to be better in bed seems almost comically irrelevant; I'm sure we'll figure things out just fine on our own.

Perhaps that's why study after study shows married people more satisfied with their sex life and why casual sexers are notorious for dumping after the fun of the initial encounter; there's nothing left for the man to discover when it's all revealed at the onset, and if there's no passion, no longing, no deep love and concern and care for the other person, there's no desire to further discover the entire character of the woman, so he moves on to someone else in a continual chase, trying harder and harder and getting diminishing returns.

Modesty is incredibly sexy. I don't simply mean a woman who covers up - although there is no greater turn-off than a woman who leaves little to the assaulted imagination. I mean a woman who does not want to parade her sexuality before many men, a woman who recognizes that she will form an emotional attachment with someone and wants to wait until she's sure she it's someone with whom she wants to form that attachment, a woman who is free to guard her sexuality despite everything culture has done to try to wrench it from her in the name of freedom. That kind of woman inspires me to want to protect her modesty - indeed, the modesty of all women - and to prove myself worthy of hers. And I know I'm not the only one.

Song Sales Week 24 (May 27)

2008-06-06T16:17:00.002-05:00

From Billboard Hot Digital Songs:
(Total Sales In Parentheses)

4 1 COLDPLAY VIVA LA VIDA 219278 (514556)
2 2 LIL WAYNE LOLLIPOP 193941 (1886649)
13 3 PERRY*KATY I KISSED A GIRL 172787 (331683)
1 4 COOK*DAVID TIME OF MY LIFE 163287 (399311)
3 5 RIHANNA TAKE A BOW 125481 (733000)
-- 6 LIL WAYNE GOT MONEY 113774 (113774)
5 7 LEWIS*LEONA BLEEDING LOVE 111190 (2328883)
6 8 BEDINGFIELD*NATASHA POCKETFUL OF SUNSHINE 109718 (1123986)
8 9 MADONNA FEAT. JUSTIN TIMBERLAK 4 MINUTES 99163 (1632260)
12 10 USHER LOVE IN THIS CLUB 76582 (1664633)

Also of Note:

25 15 METRO STATION SHAKE IT 61518 (430185)
17 17 3 DOORS DOWN IT'S NOT MY TIME 58106 (377004)
42 29 COLDPLAY VIOLET HILL 36827 (145269)
48 39 FLYLEAF ALL AROUND ME 31430 (546448)
123 60 WEEZER PORK AND BEANS 19908 (90986)

Album Sales Week 24 (May 27)

2008-06-06T16:09:00.003-05:00

From the Billboard 200:

(Total Sales in Parentheses)

1 USHER HERE I STAND 442,930 (443,974)
2 SEX & THE CITY SOUNDTRACK 65,925 (66,014)
3 3 DOORS DOWN 3 DOORS DOWN 63,184 (217,991)
4 BUN-B II TRILL 40,222 (138,566)
5 LEWIS*LEONA SPIRIT 38,713 (706,618)
6 SINATRA*FRANK NOTHING BUT THE BEST 36,852 (190,333)
7 DUFFY ROCKFERRY 35,900 (151,202)
8 CAREY*MARIAH E=MC2 35,581 (967,568)
9 GREEN*AL LAY IT DOWN 33,753 (33,953)
10 DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE NARROW STAIRS 33,432 (229,845)

Also of Note:

67 RADIOHEAD IN RAINBOWS 8,833 (534,548)
68 FLYLEAF FLYLEAF 8,740 (1,041,932)
81 UNDEROATH SURVIVE KALEIDOSCOPE 8,028 (7,741)
108 CHAPMAN*STEVEN CURTIS THIS MOMENT 6,128 (62,645)
112 TOBYMAC ALIVE & TRANSPORTED 5,856 (3,391)
135 CASTING CROWNS ALTAR & THE DOOR 4,717 (312,546)