One of the delights of science is its capacity for showing us that the world is not as it seems. A good example is the startling statistic that there are at least 10 times as many bacterial cells (belonging to up to 1,000 species) in your gut as there are human cells in your entire body: that "you" are actually an entire microbial zoo as well as a person.

You are 90% microbes by cell count, though not by volume -- a handy reminder of just how small bacteria are.

It has been clear for a long time that the microbes in your gut are not just passengers but colleagues that help with the digestion of food: releasing vitamins, breaking down toxins and metabolizing nutrients into more useful forms.

What's becoming clear from such experiments is that they are also vital to the immune system's capacity to fight infection. It's as if they train the body's defense forces.

For instance, breast-fed babies, whose gut microbes are dominated by creatures called bifidobacteria, are less likely than formula-fed babies to suffer not only from diarrhea but also from allergies later in life.

Beware Greeks bearing debt -- or any other country that has too much of it.

Despite ever-increasing government regulation of banks, which often are required to hold government debt as reserves, the systemic risk of a failure in the global financial system is growing rather than diminishing. There are solutions that require less, rather than more, regulation.

If you look at the big banks that have been in trouble or the banks that regulators and others worry about being in financial trouble, you will notice that virtually all of them have a corporate form of ownership and are heavily regulated. They also increasingly are being forced to be tax collectors for governments.

There is an alternative form of bank ownership that is likely to lead to fewer problems and avoid the "too big to fail" problem, and that is mutual-fund banking.

One of the very first “Liberation Links” we put up at the inception of To The Point was to John Linder’s FairTax. John is a Republican Congressman from Georgia who has authored a bill, HR 25 for the 109th Congress, that would in his words, “repeal all corporate and individual income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes - and replace it with a revenue-neutral personal consumption tax.”

If the FairTax were to become law, the IRS would cease to exist, and we would pay our taxes like we buy a gallon of gasoline. Yes, that gallon and just about everything else would cost 23% more in a national retail sales tax - but since business-to-business transactions are not taxed, nor would businesses be paying corporate taxes or the employers’ share of payroll taxes, consumer prices would drop by at least that 23% if not much more.

The extent of the explosion of increased prosperity that would happen throughout America if the FairTax were to replace the IRS is difficult to exaggerate. Let’s put it this way: The FairTax would be the single greatest act of wealth creation in the history of man.

We are now fast approaching a tipping point of acknowledgement that the federal tax code is irretrievably broken and has to be replaced. Linder’s FairTax is by far the best fix. Except there’s this one little problem - actually, it’s the 16th problem.

[Last Saturday (6/30), Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders delivered this speech at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, Colorado.]

Thank you, dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, for inviting me to the Western Conservative Summit. It is always a pleasure to come to America. I was here a few weeks ago to meet with my dear friend, congresswoman Michele Bachmann, to talk about Islam and the threat to America and Europe.

I feel honored to have been invited to address you today about the situation in Europe and in particular in my own country, the Netherlands. This situation serves as a warning to what might happen in America if you fail to be vigilant.

For make no mistake: Islam is also coming for America. Indeed, it has already arrived. Your country, too, is facing a stealth jihad - an Islamic attempt to introduce Sharia law bit by bit.

Islam demands separate campus housing for Moslems; Islam demands that women have separate hours in gyms and swimming pools; schools are banning Christmas celebrations and are taking pork off their cafeteria menus to avoid offending Moslem students. And courts - even in America, we have seen an example in Florida - have begun to apply Sharia law.

Be aware that this is only the beginning.

Former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Blinder wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal this past  week (6/21) attacking Republicans who have said that more government spending will kill jobs.

In the same vein, my old friend Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury official in the George H.W. Bush administration, wrote an article attacking former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and other Republicans for claiming the Reagan tax cuts paid for themselves.

(Note: Mr. Bartlett used to be a supply-side advocate, but in the past few years, he has become an almost full-time Republican basher and, not surprisingly, now writes for the New York Times.)

Mr. Blinder, Mr. Bartlett and others of their stripe no longer seem to be able to see beyond the first-order effects of an economic policy. That is why they are always dead wrong.

The most powerful Congressmen have, in addition to their regular offices in one of the House Office Buildings (Cannon, Longworth, or Rayburn) on the south side of Capitol Hill, a private office in the Capitol itself. It was in such an office earlier this week that I asked a member of the House leadership about the MSM (mainstream media)/Democrat vendetta against his colleague, Tom DeLay.

“Hillary’s fingerprints are all over it,” came his response. “She has no intention of having to deal with an opposition party controlling the House as her husband did for six years and Ronald Reagan did for eight. She has a very clear plan for seizing control of the entire United States government, which includes orchestrating Democrat control of the House in 2006 so it is firmly in place when she is elected president in 2008.”

It is, then, at Hillary’s direction that the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the entire Liberal Media apparatus are waging a relentless war upon House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Last week in Part 1 of this series, The Dynamics of Crude, we discussed refineries and products.  Now we move to Logistics of Crude Oil and Refinery Products.

Although Ayn Rand's 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged" portrayed rail as important, especially for Wyatt's Refinery, rail was on its way out by the end of WWII.  Today's major transportation methods are via pipeline and water (barge & ship).  The reason is quite simple: loading and receiving infrastructure.

Here is a great description of both crude oil and refined product pipelines from 2001:  How Pipelines Make the Oil Market Work.

I have read lots of supposedly learned pundits wailing away how Warren Buffett and BNSF Railroad are going transport all that Canadian crude oil when Obama announced that he was blocking the Keystone XL's construction.  This is impossibly dumb -so dumb that Jack Wheeler is convinced it isn't dumb at all, that it's a crony capitalist payoff to Buffett for his supporting Zero.  Buffett bought BNSF for $34 billion in 2009, counting on graft from Zero to provide his ROI.