A few thoughts to add to Kim’s excellent post below about opposition to private accounts for social security. This whole argument that the accounts won’t be protected if the markets collapse is like saying homeowner’s insurance is no good because it won’t protect you if a large asteroid collides with the earth. If the capital markets go down the drain the entire economy will have crumbled, and getting our social security check will be the least of our worries. In that scenario, private or no private accounts, we would all be economically doomed.

Given that there appear to be more experts that say a devastating asteriod is likely to hit earth than there are experts fortelling the demise of our country’s economic foundations, perhaps we can move on to an intelligent debate on the subject.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation aimed at helping parents keep their children from seeing sex scenes, violence and foul language in movie DVDs. The bill gives legal protections to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs.

As a parent this is great news. Ankle Biting Pundits notes that studios aren’t too happy with the notion as they are concerned with protection of copyrights. I can’t see this as a problem long as it’s for personal use and not for redistribution. Think of it this way: if I buy a book and want to black out sections or tear out pages, that’s my right. It’s my book. The same should apply to DVD’s. What is particularily nice about this technology is that it puts the decision making process in the hands of the parents, where it belongs.

My Pet Jawa continues with it’s multi-part series on hostages in Iraq, featuring an exclusive interview with a spouse of a hostage. Check it out.

There’s a new attack ad running on CNN by a group called Move on Pac regarding the ending of the filibuster. It shows a bunch of elephants storming around Washington destroying various landmarks around the capital while the commentator says “the Republicans control the White House….the Senate….the Republicans control congress” going on to say that Republicans want to control the entire government!

Uhmm….last I checked, the reason that the Republicans are in control of those various bodies is because the public put them there. Talk about slash and burn politics: the public is increasingly rejecting Dems at the polls causing them to lose power and what do the Dems do? Last election they tried to delegitimize the elections. Now their attempting to deligitimize the institutions that Republicans occupy, portraying the excercise of democratically derived power as something wildly destructive.

Welcome Jawa Report readers. Please look around.

Kim and I have been a tad busy so posting is a little light. I encourage you to check out our blogroll, particularily the ones you may not have heard of before. We’ve recently added a few Canadian sites that I mentioned a few days ago. Things are pretty politically hot here in the Great White North.

On the Iraq front, I encourage you to check out our friends at OpiniPundit. I just had a gander and they’ve got lots of good stuff. Keep scrolling and you’ll get up to speed pretty quick.

I’ll be travelling for a few days and I may not have internet access (oh man, CNN as my only source of news??!!??) so you may not hear from me for a bit.

Cheers

France is apparently backing China in the event it invades Taiwan, and is seeking to open the door to European arms sales to the scary Asian giant. Talk about a blatant invitation to invade. After supporting Saddam and now China it seems that France has thrown all pretense of being an American allie out the window. The question now is whether the U.S. will allow France to have it both ways. (Hat tip LGF)

As many of you know, I’m Canadian. I appreciate that many Americans don’t necessarily find information out of Canada that newsworthy. Many Canadians are distressed by this and consider this to be symptomatic of American “arrogance” (primarily from the liberal wing of our country). Personally I think its because we are a relatively small country population wise. Ask a Canadian from a big city if he knows the news from a local small town and he won’t have a clue. He or she isn’t “ignorant” he’s just got his own things to worry about closer to home.

But I think I’ve got something that you may be interested in: The Canadian blogoshpere. More particularily the conservative blogosphere. It’s rising rapidly, perhaps at a greater pace than what occurred with Rathergate. There’s big things happening up north, and the Canadian blogs are at the forefront of the news. The news was even more concentrated here in Canada than it was in the U.S. and the immense void is rapidly being filled by the blogs. Even members of Parliament are getting in on the act, and believe me, they sound like bloggers and not stuffy politcians. Oh, and in case you haven’t heard, they’re helping take down the Canadian government. Here some of the big ones:

Small Dead Animals
Angry in the Great White North
Andrew Coyne (also a National Post Columnist)
Brock on the Attack

They all have plenty of links to many others. I’ll keep my commentary focused on American politics for now, but I urge you to check out what’s going on up north, it’s pretty wild stuff.

The Jawa Report has started a multi-part series about Roy Hallums, a civilian contractor taken hostage in Iraq, as well as others who are currently being held. It’s good that we celebrate the accomplishments in Iraq, but we must not forget about those whose only “crime” was to go to Iraq to help rebuild the country.

It seems that the MSM only becomes interested in these stories when the terrorists invite them to be interested for propaganda purposes. Check out the series here.

Lorie Byrd at PoliPundit links to Right Wing News’ favorite blogs list. Lorie provides her list as well, which includes…..ahem…….Musing Minds (update: in the “expanded list” on Poli) thanks Lorie, and thanks to those in the comments section that included us, it’s really flattering. Go check it out, there may be one or two there that you haven’t visited before.

When I have a bit more time I’ll provide a list of my own (took the day off to spend with the family, we all went to see my wife’s/baby’s ultrasound- amazing experience which I’ll post about later…..off to spend the next four hours building the LEGO Star Wars Episode III Final Battle Scene).

I sure am glad that Lorie Byrd and I share many of the same political views. For a “girly girl” she can dish out quite the nasty smack down. As for Kerry proponents taking the “you weren’t there man” approach, OK, I’ll play that game.

I wasn’t there, but there sure are a lot of vets that were there who don’t think too highly of Kerry. Instead of deferring to Kerry’s experience, try putting yourself in their shoes. Imagine losing a leg, or an arm or suffering some other horrible injury. You come home and go about your life without fanfare because serving was your duty, and because you realize that no matter how much you suffered, someone else suffered more, or never came home at all. Then you turn on your T.V. and see some politician touting his own service as if he alone fought the enemy, flouting his relatively minor injuries as if his were somehow more worthy or deserving of attention.

Yeah, I’ll defer to those who served.