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THUNDERBIRD

ttpn March 17, 2005

Outlook Express remains the default mail client for most Windows users.. Most people are used to it, and it does an acceptable job of getting and sending mail. Furthermore, Outlook Express has a built in news reader. I’ve mentioned newsgroups in the past, including my column on Firefox two weeks ago. I’ll mention them again later in this column.

Outlook is the application of choice for people who use its scheduling, calendar, and contact functions. While not quite a full fledged personal information manager or business contact manager, it has many of their functions. It is sufficient for a single (more…)

THE REAL LOCKBOX

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 16, 2005

So now Alan Greenspan says the “lockbox” the Democrats pretend to advocate for Social Security must be “real.” Addressing the Senate Committee on Aging this Tuesday the 15th, he proclaimed:

In addressing Social Security’s imbalances, we need to ensure that measures taken now to finance future benefit commitments represent real additions to national saving. We need, in effect, to make the phantom `lock-boxes’ around the trust fund real.

It’s going to be very interesting to watch Democrats squirm – and a lot of squishy Republicans – when conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill take Greenspan’s demand seriously.

They are going to (more…)

FRUITCAKE FASCISTS

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 16, 2005

The decision by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer this week that withholding marriage licenses from homosexuals is somehow unconstitutional is the latest example of America’s retreat from democracy. The type of government America is moving towards is a krytocracy.

Remember the word. A democracy is a government of the people (the demos in Greek), or their freely-elected representatives, a government of elected legislatures and laws passed by them. This has been superceded, replaced, by a krytocracy – a government of judges. Unelected judges.

America’s Constitution and the laws passed by Congress under its authority no longer have (more…)

DON’T DEMOCRATS KNOW HOW TO PLAY FOOTBALL?

Guest Author March 10, 2005

Partisan politics in Washington this season are getting interesting, as a few Democrats are cautiously beginning to challenge their leadership’s strategy of total opposition to major Bush initiatives. It is dawning on some Democrats that their all-defense strategy may not pair up well with President Bush’s all offense strategy.

President Bush plays politics the way my friends and I used to play pick-up football when I was a kid. In the huddle, the quarterback would tell everyone else to go out long. On the snap the quarterback would dance around in the backfield until one of us five or six (more…)

ITALIAN MORAL STUPIDITY IN IRAQ

Guest Author March 10, 2005

Giuliana Sgrena does not lack a sense of self importance. The 56-year-old journalist for the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto thinks she knows so many deep dark secrets the U.S. military tried to shut her up permanently.

Sgrena went to Iraq to report on the heroic resistance to the American imperialists. Dutch journalist Harald Doornbos rode in the airplane to Baghdad with her. "Be careful not to get kidnapped," Doornbos warned Sgrena.

"You don’t understand the situation," she responded, according to Doornbos’ account in the Nederlands Dagblatt. "The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers. The enemies of the Americans have nothing (more…)

RUSSIA LOSES ANOTHER ONE

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 10, 2005

A friend of mine whose name you know but is embarrassed to have his name mentioned and I will never forget standing on a street corner in Kishinev, Moldavia. We stood there looking like fools trying to keep our jaws from dropping open and our necks from snapping back and forth – for everywhere we looked, we saw another stunningly beautiful woman walk by. Between the two of us, we had been to just about every country in Europe, and we agreed: the most beautiful women on the European continent were right here. Kishinev left Paris in the dust.

That (more…)

THE UNKNOWN KING OF TERROR and the Coming Lebanon Civil War

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 9, 2005

Last week, we discussed how there could be a light at the end of the terrorist tunnel. Now let’s talk about how that light could be an oncoming train.

One of the most famous quotes of America’s favorite philosopher, Yogi Berra, is: “It’s never over until it’s over.” We’ve all been swept away with democracy seeming to march ineluctably forward in the Middle East, thrilled by the sea of red and white Lebanese flags waved in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square, and confidant that the Cedar Revolution will be victorious over Syrian imperialism. We need to pause now, take a deep breath, (more…)

RATHER DISTORTED

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 8, 2005

I write this with a Reidel glass of Rosemount Merlot at the ready, toasting the forced departure of an individual who has infested America’s airwaves for 43 years – ever since he joined CBS News in 1962. I won’t be watching Dan Rather’s final broadcast this evening, just as I haven’t watched CBS News for many years. I’ll merely sip my merlot in gratitude for all those bloggers who exposed Rather’s Memogate and did him in. And my friend Brent Bozell.

This is a particularly apt occasion to make you aware of Brent’s book: Weapons of Mass Distortion : The (more…)

CONDI AND ARLEN

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 2, 2005

I have been chastised by a number of folks for seeming to endorse Condoleezza Rice for the 2008 GOP presidential candidacy. Cheney and Condi didn’t actually do so, for it merely revealed a plan many on Capitol Hill believe will be enacted by the Bush White House next year to replace Cheney with Condi as VP. This would clearly put her in the driver’s seat for the nomination.

Yet I will plead guilty. The Republicans have many fine potential candidates. I have even agreed to serve as foreign policy advisor to my friend Rod Martin’s coalition supporting the candidacy of (more…)

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TERRORIST TUNNEL

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 2, 2005

The War on Terrorism – more precisely the War on Moslem Terrorism – may have been won on March 1st, 2005. That was the day US intel folks announced they had intercepted messages from Osama Bin Laden to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, begging Zarqawi to launch terrorist attacks inside America itself.

The media went into a tizzy, bombarding Homeland Security officials with demands as to how they were going to protect us from this latest threat. And maybe there is a threat. Far more likely it’s an announcement of surrender.

Osama’s message was in Arabic. Let’s translate its real meaning into (more…)

A YOUNGER BRAIN

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 2, 2005

One difference between younger and older folks is that the former feel “endless possibilities of the future,” while the latter feel the future closing in on them. Time seems repetitive – like being caught in Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. This is a significant drain on one’s mental energy. An openness to the future, on the other hand, creates a youthful mental energy.

Such a feeling of endless possibilities requires new neuronal connections in the brain. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks because the dog’s brain has become static, and has lost the capacity to grow new neurons (more…)

FIREFOX

ttpn March 2, 2005

[I have a fondness for Firefox if only for the name: I was Clint Eastwood’s arctic location advisor for his 1982 movie “Firefox,” during which time we had a number of adventures together. I’m glad to see the Wizard finally discussing the Firefox web browser, as I have been bugging him about it for about a year nowï¿½ —JW]

Many people with Windows use two mediocre programs – Internet Explorer and Outlook Express – for the most important aspects of their computing experience: browsing the Internet and managing email.

For email, Microsoft Office provides a better way. Microsoft Office includes Outlook, which is a robust email application. It includes tasks, scheduling and many other features of a Personal Information Manager.

But what about a better way than Internet Explorer?

You’ve probably heard of that better way by now. There have been widespread reports in the mainstream media about Firefox – a new and worthy challenger to Internet Explorer. Mozilla (more…)

ALL BUT WON

Guest Author March 1, 2005

Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, chief intelligence officer for the First Infantry Division, roared with laughter as he recalled the increasing missteps of the resistance in Iraq in an interview earlier this month with British journalist Toby Harnden, writing for The Spectator.

"There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone," Stockmoe said. "They were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off."

The surviving brother sought refuge in (more…)

THE LETHAL WEAPON OF FREEDOM

Michael Ledeen March 1, 2005

Some ancient Chinese philosopher is said to have taught his students that one cannot understand an event simply by attempting to reconstruct a chain of causality leading up to it. Instead, one must immerse oneself in the context, to fully understand the moment in which the event took place. If you get the context right, you can understand what came before and what comes after.

That sort of understanding is important both for historians and leaders.

If that ancient wise man were alive today and were asked to summarize the unique characteristics of this historical moment, he would say “revolution.” (more…)

HOW LONG CAN PUTIN LAST?

Guest Author February 23, 2005

Only one year after Vladimir Putin handily won a second presidential term, his domestic and foreign challenges are snowballing and his aura of almost superhuman invincibility is quickly dissipating. This is not to say, however, that Putin should be counted out: He is still in control. The question is: for how much longer?

U.S. interests in Russia include cooperation on terminating Iran’s nuclear arms program, non-proliferation, the global war on terrorism, Russian membership in WTO, and bilateral cooperation on energy and economic issues. President George W. Bush, who will meet Putin in Bratislava, Slovakia, on February 24th, should maintain a (more…)

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THUNDERBIRD

THE REAL LOCKBOX

FRUITCAKE FASCISTS

DON’T DEMOCRATS KNOW HOW TO PLAY FOOTBALL?

ITALIAN MORAL STUPIDITY IN IRAQ

RUSSIA LOSES ANOTHER ONE

THE UNKNOWN KING OF TERROR and the Coming Lebanon Civil War

RATHER DISTORTED

CONDI AND ARLEN

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TERRORIST TUNNEL

A YOUNGER BRAIN

FIREFOX

ALL BUT WON

THE LETHAL WEAPON OF FREEDOM

HOW LONG CAN PUTIN LAST?

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