Let's not get to far of ourselves!

Usury and paper money should go says Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi a cleric and apparently a major theoretician. Why should we listen to him or his guests in Jerusalem?

"The Western system has collapsed and we have a complete economic philosophy as well as spiritual strength," he said at Sunday's opening of a conference on Jerusalem.

"All riches are ours... the Islamic nation has all or nearly all the oil and we have an economic philosophy that no one else has," Qaradawi said.

He urged Muslims to "profit from the crisis to bring about the triumph of the (Islamic) nation, which holds the spiritual and material resources for victory."

The sixth conference on Jerusalem is being attended by around 300 people representing political parties as well as Muslim and Christian NGOs, from various countries.

It is staged by Al-Quds (Jerusalem) International Institution, which is dedicated to the conservation of the holy city and its sacred places.

Participants include Khaled Meshaal, exiled head of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, and Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamenei.

The three-day conference will look at ways of protecting Jerusalem and its holy sites, which participants believe are threatened by Israel.

I think people ought to take a deep breath if they are intent on re-enacting the dark ages.

Need insurance, go get some!

Harvest Time

My mom's tomato sauce, very Italian!

Sending a message

The voters may choose their own "taxpayer bailout."

Pretty good analysis

With 'change' ringing in their ears, the voters are buying Obama's message. They will have buyers remorse to be sure, but the voters are tired and worried.

In this election, voters are leaning towards Obama because:

(1) they have convinced themselves their lives will be so much improved with 'Change',

(2) they have convinced themselves they can afford the purchase (it helps that Obama is selling 'Change' as being cost-free to 95% of America),

(3) they have convinced themselves that Obama can deliver this 'Change' (remember, it doesn't matter whether we believe he can (or will), what matters is whether the voters think so, and it is pretty apparent that they do), and

(4) there's nothing about Obama (family, past activities, friends) that so sours them that they're willing to do without this 'Change'.

They're not concerned with his past, and, despite GOP thinking, it isn't because they don't know of his past associations. They're not concerned with Obama's past because they have feel it is irrelevant to Obama delivering the 'change' they so desperately want (a desperate want is, by definition, a need). Put another way, they don't care if he did X or Y when he was younger, they just want this 'change' he's offering.

Thus, if McCain wants to go after Obama, he has to forget about attacking Obama on #4. Even without the MSM running interference for Obama, there is nothing that McCain could ever say about Obama that would make enough voters decide to give up their chance to get 'Change'.

Likewise, there's no benefit in going after #1; with the markets dropping on a daily basis, McCain is not going to persuade voters they really don't want 'Change'. Nor will it do McCain any good to try and 'Out-Change' Obama; Obama was there first, he occupies that particular real estate, and McCain just doesn't have enough time to dislodge Obama from that spot, even if he did have something nice to try and sell to voters. And finally, since voters think they're getting Obama's 'Change' for free, McCain's not going to get anywhere trying to convince voters he is offering just as much 'Change' as Obama, but at a more reasonable price; you can't sell something for less than zero.

In other words, McCain can't undercut Obama's pitch. And that's why he'll probably end up losing.

At any price, Democrats will do what it takes

Nice group that ACORN, right?

State authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income people to vote, alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus names, fake addresses or famous personalities.

The secretary of state's office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November's general election.

"Some of these (forms) were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys," Secretary of State Ross Miller said. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in Nevada. Anyone trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot."

Agents with the secretary of state and state attorney general offices served a search warrant on the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, at 953 E. Sahara Ave. shortly after 9 a.m. They seized voter registration forms and computer databases to determine how many fake forms were submitted and identify employees who were responsible.

They also sought information regarding current and past employees and managers.

Who says the natural state is equalitarian?

Why left intellectuals despise Richard Epstein of the Chicago School: Because he's one smart legal scholar and a very good political philosopher.

Now that yesterday's market nosedive shows the disappointing Congressional bailout has not calmed markets, let the post-mortem begin. Disasters like this latest financial meltdown don't just happen. Mistakes this huge require an impoverished political philosophy to grease the skids. Fannie and Freddie didn't design their horrific lending policies by chance. No, behind this lending fiasco lay the strong collective preference for the "patterned principles" of justice that Robert Nozick attacked so powerfully in his 1974 masterpiece, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

Believers in patterned principles hold that there is some preordained social order that is more just than others. Accordingly, the function of the state is to use the levers of powers to manipulate behavior to achieve the desired outcomes. These patterned principles stand in opposition to historical principles of justice, which are content to establish the rules of the game and then let the legal moves by individual players determine the social outcomes. For Nozick, the key rules were rules of justice in acquisition (to set up the initial property rights) and justice in transfer, whereby those rights (and others derived from them) could be exchanged or combined through voluntary transactions.

Because Nozick was no utilitarian, he did not dwell on the powerful efficiency features of this system, which shine through for ordinary real estate transactions. The key function of the legal system is to minimize the transactional barriers and increase the velocity of voluntary exchanges, all of which generate mutual gains for the parties. So long as one is sure that the given distribution of resources is obtained by legal moves from the original position, don't worry about the relative positions of one person vis-à-vis the others. Don't, in other words, use state coercion to create a distinctive pattern of rights deemed ever so desirable in the eye of some political beholder.

Out of the cold, more facts on the attempt on John Paul II's life

The Soviet Communists have long been accused of having a hand in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II through Bulgarian proxies. Back then, the international left didn't believe that narrative choosing instead a long run fantasy that included "that free-market economists like James Buchanan and Friedrich Hayek created 'a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures [leading] to today's idea of freedom.'" I know that last piece is just a small detail in left's habit of applying fanciful non sequitur thinking to a wrong headed world view.

But the story is becoming clearer years later.

It is increasingly certain that it was a Soviet operation. Historian Nigel West, author of a number of important books on Soviet intelligence, and the Italian government long ago determined that the KGB, via its proxies in Bulgaria, were deeply involved in the planning and execution of the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II. Back in 2005, the report produced by an Italian government commission was buttressed by a cache of files found deep in the East German Stasi archives.

Not blockheads, blockbuster writers

The top ten authors who make serious money.

1. JK Rowling - $300m (£170m)
2. James Patterson - $50m (£28m)
3. Stephen King - $45m (£25m)
4. Tom Clancy - $35m (£20m)
5. Danielle Steel - $30m (£17m)
6. John Grisham - $25m (£14m)
6. Dean Koontz - $25m (£14m)
8. Ken Follett - $20m (£11m)
9. Janet Evanovich - $17m (£10m)
10. Nicholas Sparks - $16m (£9m)
Source: Forbes magazine

Hot heads in the clouds mean trouble

Richard Stallman, the theoretician and founder of the Free Software Foundation, says watch out when you're tethered to computers in the cloud.

Cloud computing – where IT power is delivered over the internet as you need it, rather than drawn from a desktop computer – has gained currency in recent years. Large internet and technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon are pushing forward their plans to deliver information and software over the net.

But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

"It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he told The Guardian.

"Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true."

The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.

His comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticised the rash of cloud computing announcements as "fashion-driven" and "complete gibberish".

Stallman, always interesting.

Defaming Milton Friedman: Naomi Klein's disastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist - Reason Magazine

Defaming Milton Friedman: Naomi Klein's disastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist - Reason Magazine

When it comes to heart, Troy Brown was one of the best Patriots to wear the uniform

Number 80 retires. Troy Brown was a great athlete not because of his records and talent but because of his restless enobling heart. In announcing his retirement, Brown worn that heart on his Patriot sleeve. A necessary debate should take place on whether the franchise molded the wide receiver or he molded the team that would eventually capture three world championships.

Drafted in the eighth round out of Marshall in 1993, Brown was often the embodiment of the unselfish, team player during his career. While emerging as a go-to receiver by catching 281 passes from 2000-2002, he made the Pro Bowl in 2001. He returned punts and kickoffs. He also bailed the Patriots out on defense by playing cornerback while the team went on to win three Super Bowl titles in a four-year period. He had three interceptions in 2004.

His talent will be missed but his example should be seared into the memory of any authetic football fan.

Mass. high-tech exports on a bumpy road!

The slowdown impinges upon key Bay State sectors. Certainly this is something to watch.

The technology trade association AeA has released Trade in the Cyberstates 2008, its annual national and state trend report on global trade of high-tech products.

Compared to other states, Massachusetts ranks fifth in most high-tech exports in 2007, bringing in $8.7 billion — an almost 10 percent decrease from the $9.6 billion in high-tech exports the state gained in 2006. Leading the export sectors were industrial electronics, in which Massachusetts ranked third in the nation, and electromedical equipment, which the state is ranked fourth in the country. The report also found that Massachusetts high-tech exports added 30,300 jobs to the state.

The state’s $8.7 billion represents 35 percent of the state’s total tech exports. The leading destinations for state exports are Japan, Germany and Canada.

On a national basis, high-tech goods exported had decreased three percent in 2007, which marks 18 percent of the nation’s total exports. High-tech imports to the U.S. had increased 3 percent in 2007.

Nixon's revenge

Can we question their patriotism now? Rosenberg a commie spy. In Cambridge, Berkeley and Port Huron, they are all besides themselves.

How can this be?

White Demorats have a race problem? Who knew?

Maybe we should blame the Fed and its low interest rates

Economists Brian Wesbury and Bob Stein:

"As in the 1980s and 1990s, the roots of our current financial market problems reach back to a period of absurdly low interest rates. In the 1970s, when the Fed held interest rates too low for too long, banks made similar mistakes with their balance sheets--borrowing at short-term rates to make longer-term loans in inflation-sensitive assets.

In this decade, by cutting interest rates to 1%, the Fed caused investment banks to overuse leverage-based strategies. Borrowing short and lending long turned so lucrative that many financial market players could not help themselves. Wall Street based its business model on leveraging up the most leveraged asset on Main Street--housing.

When the Fed pushes interest rates below their 'natural' level, mal-investment always occurs. And in the current case, the mal-investment was a double whammy. Not only did Main Street gorge on real estate, but Wall Street ate it up too. This double set of leverage has blown up because the housing market became overbuilt and housing prices stopped rising.

Mark-to-market accounting exaggerated this process by allowing firms to mark up assets above true fundamental value when the market was strong but is now forcing firms to mark down assets, to below true fundamental economic value."

And now for a little bit of bile

Don't tell socialist Joe Conason, kin of I.F. Stone, that free markets deliver the goods. The idea is just Republican hogwash even though Fannie and Freddie were Gummit Sponsored Enterprises created by politicians to game the mortgage marketHey Joe, are you kidding me?

Not so tall tales from Higher Ed!

Who's teaching our kids? Liberals.

A libertarian economist reviews Stiglitz's book on the cost of the Iraq War

Fred Foldvary, libertarian economist has a few kind words for Joseph Stiglitz's The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Here's a telling passage:

Another factor distracting the public away from understanding the direct cost of the war is that the military operations have been almost entirely funded via a series of “emergency” supplemental spending bills totaling in the hundreds of billions. This budget gimmick makes it possible to avoid painful budget choices since “emergency spending” is exempt from the budget caps designed to set an upper limit on government spending.

The professional budget staff in Congress is therefore unable to do its usual thorough review of the numbers, and there has been little Congressional oversight, since emergency spending takes place mainly outside of the regular budget process. Congress is not blameless in this process, as it has used the war to attach special and local interest spending to war bills with minimal scrutiny, despite the legal requirement to separate war spending from regular defense appropriations. The corruption is spread throughout the government.

Wish you were still here

One of the great keyboardists of my time has passed away. Pink Floyd's Richard Wright lost his battle with cancer over the weekend. The thrust of his melodious work still rings in my ears from my first rock concert at the Boston Garden in the early seventies. He will be missed. But his signature lives on. More here

The next disaster

Robert Higgs: Social(ist) Security is next!

We should be worried about the solvency of Social Security. Yet many people are ignoring this timebomb.

Ex-Clinton Aide: Media Tougher On Palin, Political Players: Former Clinton Chief Strategist Mark Penn Argues The Press Has Lost Its Credibility - CBS

Notable and Quotable:

Mark Penn: Well, no, I think the people themselves saw unfair media coverage of Senator Clinton. I think if you go back, the polls reflected very clearly what "Saturday Night Live" crystallized in one of their mock debates about what was happening with the press.

I think here the media is on very dangerous ground. I think that when you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed, if they don't do that for all four of the candidates, they're on very dangerous ground. I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems.

And I think that that's a real problem growing out of this election. The media now, all of the media — not just Fox News, that was perceived as highly partisan — but all of the media is now being viewed as partisan in one way or another. And that is an unfortunate development.

Safire's back and he's great

I'd wish he step out of retirement and return to that sluggish excuse of a newspaper, the New York Times. Safire would be worth the price of that fishwrap!

The passing of a great American, wrestler Killer Kowalski

R.I.P. Killer Kowalski

"In the ring he cursed at old women and scared little kids. In private, he wrote poetry and was religious; he practiced vegetarianism and listened to Mozart."

Recently read: James Buchanan, Nobel Laureate in Economic Science (1986)

Worth reading: James Buchanan's essay "Socialism Is Dead but Leviathan Lives On" from Volume 1, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty.

Notable and quotable:

"The death throes of socialism should not be allowed to distract attention from the continuting necessity to prevent the over-reaching of the state-as-Leviathan, which becomes all the more dangerous because it does not depend on an ideology to give it focus. Ideas, and the institutions that emerge as these ideas are put into practice, can be killed off and replaced by other ideas and other institutions."

Think Putin, I suppose.

Leland Yeager's review of the volume is here.

A nation of thoughtless joiners?

Hat tip: NE Republican

BlogTalkRadio Host, Stephanie Davis, aka BostonPatriot, will cover DNC- RNC from JP's Doyle's Cafe

My very good and close friend Stephanie Davis hosts an BlogTalkRadio show named Boston Patriot Games. She'll be busy for the next few weeks, holding forth at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain. She's be watching and listening in both the DNC in Denver (8/25 - 8/26) and then to the RNC in Minneapolis (9/1 - 9/4). Her program starts each night at 8 p.m. and runs to 10 p.m. She's bringing new meaning to the term, neighborhood politics in the world of Web 2.0. Don't miss it.

Patriot Games Radio to Cover Democratic and Republican Political Conventions

By Patriot Games Media.
Stephanie M. Davis

Dated: Aug 19, 2008

Patriot Games Radio, a Boston-based Internet Radio program announces plans to cover the upcoming Democratic and Republican national political conventions. Coverage for both conventions will air live from Jamaica Plain's renown Doyle's Cafe. on air from 8-10 PM Monday through Thursday (8/25-8/28) The RNC will take place 9/1 - 9/4.

Patriot Games Radio is a Boston-based public affairs program airing live on the BlogTalkRadio network. The host, Stephanie M. Davis (a.k.a. Boston Patriot), interviews civic, political, and business thought leaders throughout the state and country. Past guests include Ambassador John Bolton, Frances Rice, Grover Norquist, George Mitrovitch, Barbara Anderson, and Jeff Beatty. The show's New Media format (http://blogtalkradio.com/patriotgames) includes a blog, a chat room, live phone call-in lines, and an archived Podcast of each segment. In keeping with its Citizen Journalism roots,

The show will be broadcast live from historic Doyle's Cafe, in the heart of Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. In keeping with its Main Street Media mission, the show has joined forces with a national network of credentialed bloggers, vloggers, and radio hosts to provide up to date coverage of convention developments.

BlogTalkRadio has been featured on ABC News, The Washington Post, Portfolio, Talkers Magazine, and The Street.Com. In July, BlogTalkRadio announced a $4.2 million dollar capital infusion from the Kraft Group, owner of the New England Patriots. The citizen broadcasting network can be found at http://blogtalkradio.com.

On the reading list of tomorrow....

So many books, so little time for ....God? Michael Novak's No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers. He's no slouch.

The joys of my father's garden in East Boston

Why I'd like to study with Mario Rizzo someday

Having recently read Friedrich A. Hayek brilliant essay, "The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization" I would prize a class with NYU's Mario Rizzo. The syllabus for his class on Classical Liberalism is expansive. I trust it would be free of the Marxian cant that dominated my college days.

Why artists should read Joseph Schumpeter

Album or CD cover art, a victim of progress. Or should artists embrace creative destruction and make way for new media?

Designer Peter Saville, who is responsible for pioneering sleeve designs for Roxy Music and New Order in the Eighties, fears album art has had its day.

Speaking from his studio this weekend, Mr Saville believes that cover art is dead, not just because of technology, but because the youth culture in which albums once operated has changed: "We have a social disaster on our hands," he said. "The things that pop music was there to do for us have all been done... there's nothing to rail against now.

"When I was 15, in the North-west of England.... the record cover to me was like a picture window to another world. Seeing an Andy Warhol illustration on a Velvet Underground album was a revelation.... It was the art of your generation... true pop art."

Veteran keyboard player Rick Wakeman, once of the progressive rock band Yes, and now a DJ on the Planet Rock radio station, said: "With downloads and everything... it's just killing the whole art side of music stone dead. To be quite honest, unless you have 20-20 vision it's very hard to read anything written on a CD cover. There was something very special about [vinyl] albums... it's a great shame."

Record companies set aside up to £50,000 for the design of a leading band's album sleeve. The compact disc, launched in the Eighties, offered artists a much smaller canvas. Now, with the iPod, album design has shrunk to about a square inch, and the budget for its sleeve to about £5,000.

"Why would someone with so much talent... feel the need to promote herself by offending so many people?"

Tempus fugit. Madonna turns 50. Here are 50 facts about the irrepressible Madonna, a signature for the age. In may ways, Ms. Ciccone, is a visionary. But as Warren Beatty said she rarely wants to live off-camera. Why the lack of humility? Even as she acts nobly by adopting children from far off places, it's all about her.

"She is raising £1.5m for an orphanage in Malawi because "for the last few years I have felt responsible for the children of the world".

That's some burden to bear but Madonna's vanity obscures any true sense of self-knowledge.

Drug companies tend to be stupid

Not good public relations.

Novak on the Messiah: Closer Than He Should Be

Why do we have our doubts about The Great One?

"As You Like It " on the Boston Common

A little bard on the Common, a worthy production of As You Like It.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many, parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the shining school-boy, with his stachel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel...

One of Shakespeare's greatest passages. Delightful.

City payroll costs grow 25 percent, report says - The Boston Globe

There's never enough money for city government, which needs to go on a diet.

The city of Boston has hired more than a thousand new employees in the last four years, driving up personnel costs by 25 percent and drawing criticism from a fiscal watchdog group that warns that the city needs to keep a lid on hiring.

A report released yesterday by the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded, nonprofit organization, says that the School Department has added 658 positions since 2004, the Police Department hired 266 employees, and the Fire Department hired 78. The total city workforce is now 17,075.

The additional employees, combined with increases in the cost of health insurance, pensions, raises, and other benefits, meant that the city's personnel spending grew to $1.6 billion, an increase of $312.5 million. Personnel costs now represent 69 percent of the city's total budget.

Boston officials defended the growing payroll as necessary to respond to vital city needs.

Jeff Jacoby hits his stride

One of Jeff Jacoby's best columns.

Column after column could be filled with the ways the Massachusetts political class and its hangers-on play taxpayers for suckers - the gold-plated tax breaks for moviemakers, the insanely lucrative sick-time buybacks, the indefensible police details, the public-sector-only paid holidays, the "temporary" tax hikes that last forever, the state budgets that keep growing even as family budgets shrink.

It will never end - not until the suckers get riled up enough to fight back. Not until they start throwing incumbents out of office, instead of blindly reelecting them. Not until they stop letting themselves be treated as ATMs for politicians and doormats for public-employee unions. Not until they force their public "servants" to defer to them, instead of the other way around.

Are you angry yet?

It's always difficult to get statists to face the facts of government failure.

Why is government almost always at the bottom of a problem and a long way from the solution?

The current world food crisis is not the long predicted signal of Malthusian overpopulation. Instead, it is the result of political Malthusianism, that is, a series of government policy failures that are preventing farmers from growing the food demanded by the world's hungry billions.

Get that? It's about government failure, not "market failure."

Hooray for Milton Friedman, the workable libertarian

It usually begins with Milton Friedman. But really it begins with Jerome Tuccille.

Let us now praise Venus, again!

Two great athletes. One family. Venus Williams outlasts her sister. Bravo Venus!

On the limits of libertarianism

Dr. Wheelan strikes a libertarian balance.

I've discovered just one problem with my elegant libertarian philosophy after spending two decades in public policy: It's terribly impractical for actually governing society. My whole quibble with libertarians can be boiled down to one banal question: What's the libertarian point of view on stoplights?

I like stoplights. More to the point, they're a simple and tangible example of how government can make us better off: They enable complete strangers to interact more safely and efficiently. Given a choice between the freedom to speed through an intersection at any time and the coercive red light, I'll tolerate the red light.

That's kind of silly, so consider a more significant example, like counterterrorism. In a world of libertarians, who finds Osama bin Laden?

Read the whole thing.

Now for a little Roxy Music!

There's always time for Bryan Ferry.

The solo that defined a decade!

Jimmy Page unleashed from New York City in The Song Remains The Same, the movie

Soon to be gone: All you can eat Internet

Some people aren't going to like this arrangement.

Well this is nice to know!

We are all pretty far out!

An Olympic logo done with Chinese efficiency!

At least the Chinese don't outsource their graphic work.

NESN drops the ball!

How can this be?

A respectful critique of F.A. Hayek

This fellow certainly isn't a hack like Naomi Klein. Writing from the left, he acknowledges the analytical breadth of Hayek's social thought.

Read it here.

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution.

It's Walt Whitman's Birthday

"Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves."
-preface to the Leaves of Grass.

Here's another Whitman gem:

The true government is much simpler than is supposed, and abstains from much more. Nine tenths of the laws passed every winter at the Federal Capitol, and all the State Capitols, are not only unneeded laws, but positive nuisances, jobs got up for the service of special classes of persons.

Who knew that Whitman was an anti-government libertarian?

Not "O Superman" but "O say can you see.."

O Laurie Anderson, let me sing your praises! Deconstructing the national anthem...

Where there's smoke, there' s fire!

Are terrorists-in-the-making just sitting ducks in Europe? Strategy Page thinks so.

The Europeans have been far more successful at finding and arresting Islamic terrorists than their American counterparts. Part of that is because there are ten times as many Muslims in Europe as there are in the United States, and it's much easier for Islamic terrorists to get into Europe (mainly because the homelands of Islamic terrorists are close). Another reason is the tendency of American Muslims to integrate into their communities more than is the case in Europe (where governments have long encouraged migrants to maintain their language and culture.) Thus U.S. Muslims are more likely to report any suspicious activity. For this reason, even before September 11, 2001, al Qaeda warned terrorists operating in the United States, to avoid American Muslims. The greater integration into U.S. society also means American Muslims are more economically successful than their peers in Europe. It's the unemployment and sense of helplessness among European Muslims that causes so many of them to become Islamic terrorists.

There are al Qaeda fans in the United States. Some are just young, or not-too-bright. But others are older and smarter and dedicated to the goals of Islamic radicalism. It's just that there aren't that many of them (the FBI won't say exactly how many, just that the number is growing), and apparently they are carefully monitored. But if a few of these lads go unnoticed, for too long, there could be another terror attack.

Memorial Day in Wakefield, Massachusetts

More on the patron saint of the conservatives

Victor Navasky, former Nation editor. reviews Buckley's latest and more

A fatherless future?

A society that devalues fatherhood is a society headed for trouble.

Music for the Day! Symphony No. 8

Ah Bruckner's Symphony No. 8! Magnificent!

Wishing the senior senator well

Hell knows we aren't fans of the senior senator from Massachusetts. But we wish him well. The AP is reporting that Sen. Kennedy was rushed to the hospital this morning around 8:30. His situation was deemed serious enough to transfer him by helicopter to Mass. General according to radio reports.

Decency from the loyal opposition requires such sentiments.

We are driving less!

Who would have thought that Americans would be driving less?

Oh to be stuck with Jerimiah

Doing Dylan a good turn, the ballad of Obama.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Reflection on the afterlife

Browsing through Cicero's Selected Works offers a moment to reflect on the soul that always moves.

It is by these means, my dear Scipio,-for you said that you and
Laelius were wont to express surprise on this point, -that my old age sits lightly on me, and is not only not oppressive but even delightful. But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as I live. But if when dead, as some insignificant philosophers think, I am to be without sensation, I am not afraid of dead philosophers deriding my errors. Again, if we are not to be immortal, it is nevertheless what a man must wish-to have his life end at its proper time. For nature puts a limit to living as to everything else. Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.

This is all I had to say on old age. I pray that you may arrive at it, that you may put my words to a practical test.

Authors at Google, my recommendation

A delightful lecture from John Searle on a weighty topic: free will.

Here's a recommended interview from REASON magazine in 2000.

Neoliberalism is not a failure but a starting point

What happens when you go overboard and criticize free trade and open markets without any sound basis in history? You look mostly like a fool. Protectionism never works no matter how Hamiltonian you make it look. James Surowiecki takes apart the Chang counterfactual.

At the same time, though, Bad Samaritans is not ultimately convincing, particularly when it comes to the solutions it proffers. In part, that’s because Chang’s definition of what matters in an economy is strangely narrow, focused almost entirely on some Platonic notion of the “nation” rather than on the people who actually live in it. There are few businessmen, few workers, and almost no consumers in Bad Samaritans: Individuals appear mainly as factors in a nation’s productive enterprises. Now, in one respect, this is not surprising: Macroeconomists write about macroeconomies, and the nation-state remains, even in the age of globalization, a fundamental economic unit. But Chang’s resolutely statist vision of the world necessarily leads him to under­estimate the costs and overrate the benefits of protectionism.

Meanwhile, some of us should take a cue from the estimable Russ Nelson. There's a reason America's the freest country on earth.

The lounge singer is back!

The return of Silvio -- so much for the Communists in Italy!

Big Media is getting smaller, is this good?

Is this good news? The cutbacks in the newsroom are hardly a good thing for an informed citizenry. However, it may be time for the media to ask if its collective end product is really useful to how people live their lives each day. One more thought for the day: Isn't it time we close down journalism schools?

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Is Economics Destroying the World?

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Is Economics Destroying the World?

Hollywood doesn't get it as fools rush for an antiwar narrative

It's clear Hollywood fools are rushing to make the definitive anti-Iraq-war movie but the public isn't buying. The script is is very tired. The truth is we don't know the outcome of the war and we won't for some time.

Putting it much better than Rev. Wright ever could, Sec. Rice hits U.S. 'birth defect'

Rice is more convincing dealing with America's original sin than the hucksters. Some hard truths need a honest messanger, not a demogogue.

A very different perspective on Black Liberation Theology

Meet James Cone.

Simply audacious! Sowell nails Obama

Our greatest contemporary philosopher Thomas Sowell takes on the sainted Obama.

The irony is that Obama's sudden rise politically to the level of being the leading contender for his party's presidential nomination has required him to project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together.

The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change, and entranced both white and black Democrats, is a tribute to the man's talent and a warning about his reliability.

There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the left to the far left. That's bringing us all together?

Is "divisiveness" defined as disagreeing with the agenda of the left? Who on the left was ever called divisive by Obama before that became politically necessary in order to respond to revelations about Jeremiah Wright?

One sign of Obama's verbal virtuosity was his equating a passing comment by his grandmother -- "a typical white person," he says -- with an organized campaign of public vilification of America in general and white America in particular, by Jeremiah Wright.

Since all things are the same, except for the differences, and different except for the similarities, it is always possible to make things look similar verbally, however different they are in the real world.

Among the many desperate gambits by defenders of Senator Obama and Jeremiah Wright is to say that Wright's words have a "resonance" in the black community.

There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan's words had a resonance among whites, not only in the South but in other states. Some people joined the KKK in order to advance their political careers. Did that make it OK? Is it all just a matter of whose ox is gored?

Remember Obama's just another liberal. Read the whole article.

Rankings that border on the ridiculous

Which is the more dynamic nation, the United States or the Vatican? This ranking puts little nations at the top, which is rather ridiculous, if you ask me.

Why recessions are good for something....

Nobody likes a recession which means that few see the virtues of creative destruction.

Every day we pray for HIllary

Why interfere when your enemies are destroying themselves

1968: The year of the posturing rebel - Times Online

It's refreshing to hear a dissent in the cultural community deviate from the predicable politics of his guild.Tom Stoppard has the right stuff on and off stage.

I sing the body electric: Bobby Orr

The great one turned 60 the other day. In East Boston, he was our idol. No hockey player electrified the game the way Bobby Orr did. That's indisputable and few people would be foolish enough to even contest the idea.



Hat tip Pundit Review.

Currently reading: Swift's "Battle of the Books"

Revisiting the ongoing culture wars, I dusted off none other than Jonathan Swift's allegorical Battle of the Books set between a cast of characters who take the whimsical form of books, ancients and modern. In this economical tale, Swift draws his sword for most of the story but my reading suggests a tilt toward the ancients. Despite the hubris of the post-modernists, we will always stand on the giant soldiers of the antients. Who studies Cicero or a Seneca for guidance? What have the modernists offered to improve both the questions and the answers first tumbled upon by the "antients". For all the hubris of science and discovery, in his time and ours, Swift says we still stand on the shoulders of the giants, who are not forever young but forever wise.

RIP Ivan Dixon, trailblazer for African-American actors

God bless one of the coolest Hogan's Hero, Ivan Dixon, known to us as fondly Kichloe. May all of those who came after him in Hollywood remember the hardship he endured.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Actor Ivan Dixon, who brought the problems and promise of contemporary blacks to life in the film "Nothing But a Man" and portrayed the levelheaded POW Kinchloe in TV’s "Hogan’s Heroes," has died. He was 76.

Dixon died Sunday at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte after a hemorrhage, said his daughter, Doris Nomathande Dixon of Charlotte. He had suffered complications from kidney failure, she said.

Dixon, who also directed scores of television shows, began his acting career in the late 1950s. He appeared on Broadway in William Saroyan’s 1957 "The Cave Dwellers" and in playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking 1959 drama of black life, "A Raisin in the Sun." In the latter, he played a Nigerian student visiting the United States, a role he repeated in the film version.

While not a hit, the 1964 "Nothing But a Man," in which Dixon co-starred with Abbey Lincoln, also drew praise as a rare, early effort to bring the lives of black Americans to the big screen.

Other film credits included "Something of Value," ”A Patch of Blue" and the cult favorite "Car Wash."

"As an actor, you had to be careful," said Sidney Poitier, star of "Patch of Blue" and a longtime friend. "He was quite likely to walk off with the scene."

In 1967, Dixon starred in a CBS Playhouse drama, "The Final War of Olly Winter," about a veteran of World War II and Korea who decided that Vietnam would be his final war. The role brought Dixon an Emmy nomination for best single performance by an actor.

He was probably best known for the role of Staff Sgt. James Kinchloe on "Hogan’s Heroes," the hit 1960s sitcom set in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

The technically adept Kinchloe was in charge of electronic communications and could mimic German officers on the radio or phone.

Dixon was active in efforts to get better parts for blacks

U.S. is finally getting it right in Iraq

We hope this is true

Techincal advice; how to get a blog to notice

Cory Doctorow blogs at Boing Boing, and is also a journalist and Internet activist. He offers some tips on how to get noticed in the blogosphere. My favorite:

Linking policies are ridiculous. There is no legal right to control who gets to link your Website (no more than you have the right to control who gets to hand out driving directions to your office). The lawyer who advised you to put up a "linking policy" describing the "terms and conditions" under which the world is allowed to link to your site is an idiot who owes you your money back. Standing on your lawn, shaking your fist at the airplane flying overhead and shouting "Get out of my sky" makes you look like a dork -- so does threatening text about linking to you. At best, you'll make bloggers snort derisively and then go link to someone else.

The convert

It really shouldn't be so hard to disavow post-modern liberalism in favor of classical liberalism (or mild libertarianism).First Mamet, next Vermont!

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

The media as Spitzer's enabler

The boosters in the media should have caught the signals. The Wall Street Journal did for years. But the New York Times was busy building its ideal candidate, the scourge of Wall Street. Oh how the mighty have fallen!

Getting leaks is a reporter's dream - yet the media wound up ignoring not only the countervailing evidence in Spitzer's cases, but even the prosecutor's own shortcomings.

Slide by slide into the subprime mortgage slide!

The Subprime Mortgage Mess explained in pictures. It's a basic lesson in economics. The slide show posits another lesson, in my humble opinion: don't trust the "quants" on Wall Street.

Hat tip: Greg Mankiw

Do as I say not as I do: Pinch is a tax-sensitive penny pincher!

No surprise the publisher of the New York Times is a hypocrite! I bet you he doesn't even send his kids to public schools.

It's not every day that one finds a tax policy argument in the world-famous gossip column of the New York Post, but there it was yesterday in "Page Six": The news was that the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., had sold his Upper West Side apartment to his wife for $3.25 million for what a Times spokeswoman described as "estate-planning purposes." The editors of Page Six have their wits about them; they noted the irony that the Times, as they put it, "is always for higher taxes." Sure enough, the Times editorialized on April 15, 2005, that "The only thing driving the push for repealing the estate tax is ideology. It sure isn't sound tax policy." We look forward to reading an editorial in the Times about what's "sound" in a tax law that drives a man to sell the apartment he lives in to his wife just to minimize taxes. Its editorial from 2005 went on, "most Americans never even have to think about the estate tax." Looks like the owner of the newspaper that issued the editorial is one American who did have to think about it — and took some action to minimize the amount he had to pay. We wish Mr. Sulzberger the best of luck in minimizing his family's death-tax liability. Maybe the exercise will force a reassessment.

Hat tip: Donald Luskin.

Can there be atheists in foxholes?

Do atheists have rights in an Army dominated by Christians?

A soldier claimed Wednesday that his promotion was blocked because he had claimed in a lawsuit that the Army was violating his right to be an atheist.

Attorneys for Spc. Jeremy Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation refiled the federal lawsuit Wednesday in Kansas City, Kan., and added a complaint alleging that the blocked promotion was in response to the legal action.

The suit was filed in September but dropped last month so the new allegations could be included. Among the defendants are Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Hall alleges he was denied his constitutional right to hold a meeting to discuss atheism while he was deployed in Iraq with his military police unit. He says in the new complaint that his promotion was blocked after the commander of the 1st Infantry Division and Fort Riley sent an e-mail post-wide saying Hall had sued.

Fort Riley spokeswoman Alison Kohler said the post "can't comment on ongoing legal matters" and offered no further statement.

Brett Favre Set to Retire After 17 Years

He was a great quarterback and a thrill to watch!

Be afraid, be very afraid of "swatters"

This phone swatting business is a dangerous trend. Someone is going to get killed someday.

At 4 in the morning of May 1, 2005, deputies from the El Paso County Sheriff's Office converged on the suburban Colorado Springs home of Richard Gasper, a TSA screener at the local Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. They were expecting to find a desperate, suicidal gunman holding Gasper and his daughter hostage.

"I will shoot," the gravely voice had warned, in a phone call to police minutes earlier. "I'm not afraid. I will shoot, and then I will kill myself, because I don't care."

"I will shoot." Listen to the Colorado Springs hostage hoax.

But instead of a gunman, it was Gasper himself who stepped into the glare of police floodlights. Deputies ordered Gasper's hands up and held him for 90 minutes while searching the house. They found no armed intruder, no hostages bound in duct tape. Just Gasper's 18-year-old daughter and his baffled parents.

A federal Joint Terrorism Task Force would later conclude that Gasper had been the victim of a new type of nasty hoax, called "swatting," that was spreading across the United States. Pranksters were phoning police with fake murders and hostage crises, spoofing their caller IDs so the calls appear to be coming from inside the target's home. The result: police SWAT teams rolling to the scene, sometimes bursting into homes, guns drawn.

Now the FBI thinks it has identified the culprit in the Colorado swatting as a 17-year-old East Boston phone phreak known as "Li'l Hacker." Because he's underage, Wired.com is not reporting Li'l Hacker's last name. His first name is Matthew, and he poses a unique challenge to the federal justice system, because he is blind from birth.

If he's guilty, the attack is at once the least sophisticated and most malicious of a string of capers linked to Matt, who stumbled into the lingering remains of the decades-old subculture of phone phreaking when he was 14, and quickly rose to become one of the most skilled active phreakers alive.

"Who's the best out there?" says Jeff Daniels, a veteran phone hacker and an admitted mentor to Matt. "The little blind kid is one of the best. And that's a fact."

Innocent at first, Matt's worst instincts surfaced after he fell in with a gang of telephone ruffians -- men as old as 40 -- who eventually fingered the teenager when they were swept up in an FBI crackdown on swatters late last year. The government says the gang launched swatting attacks in over 60 cities, leaving hundreds of victims and chalking up over $250,000 in losses.

Interviews by Wired.com with Matt and his associates, and a review of court documents, FBI reports and audio recordings, paints a picture of a young man with an uncanny talent for quick telephone con jobs. Able to commit vast amounts of information to memory instantly, Matt has mastered the intricacies of telephone switching systems, while developing an innate understanding of human psychology and organization culture -- knowledge that he uses to manipulate his patsies and torment his foes.

Bravo David Stewart, keyboard master

The only kind of National Health I can endorse!

For solace I reach for Cicero's essay on old age, so should Prince!

Extreme Showbiz from the News of the World: Prince crippled by sexy dancing

One of the great put downs -- putting Arthur Schlesinger back in his kennel

JFK knew how to put the flattering man with the note cards in his place. And now Joseph Epstein does it a lot better. An expose of the historian as sycophant is long overdue. This is priceless. Unfortunately it's gated. It's worth a trip to the library.

The recent publication of Schlesinger’s diaries* is a useful reality check on such claims. The book also provides an account of a career in American liberalism that is, in microcosm, a partial account of the career of the liberal temperament itself over the past half-century.

One of Emerson's best pieces of work

"Take a pebble" withstands the test of time. This is a great live version.

ELP Live - Take A Pebble

Revisting Patti Smith

A nice ringing acoustic guitar to a great Springsteen song.

Smoke on the Water, by way of Japan

Great interpretation of a rock classic!

An introduction to the mellotron

I imagine all of those nifty mellotron tapes are now on a tiny computer chip!

Blah! Another six weeks

He saw his shadow.

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (AP-Feb 2, 2008) — If you believe in folklore, bundle up for six more weeks of wintry weather.

This is Groundhog Day, and the furry little critter known as Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning. That, according to tradition, means six more weeks of winter.

The apathetic-looking rodent was pulled from his stump by members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle. They are the local businessmen in the Western Pennsylvania town who carry out the February 2nd ritual while garbed in top hats and tuxedos.

The ceremony was preceded by a boisterous celebration attended by thousands of cold, but happy people, including a few couples who used the occasion to get engaged.

The town of Punxsutawney leads the modern observance of what is essentially a German superstition. The belief is that if a hibernating animal casts a shadow on February 2nd, the Christian holiday of Candlemas, winter would last another six weeks. If no shadow were seen, legend said spring would come early.

Just read! The Clouds, by Aristophanes

I read Aristophanes great work, the comedic The Clouds, as a defense of epistemological conservatism against the sophistry of the then-modern, irritating inquiries of Socrates. Whether Aristophanes contributed to the climate that eventually lead to the great philosopher's demise is debatable; I do not fall in that camp as Socrates proved to be his own worst enemy. But the sharp, biting critique found in The Clouds is a delightful but tragic reminder that the populace has always had little time for philosophy! The agony of unexamined lives!

Post-Iraq America, bankrupt?

The Democrats have a big wish list. The Republicans have lost their credibility on spending; the Democrats never had any they accepted voluntarily. Remember divided government put Clinton in the box. And the hot technology unleashed under his watch played a big part.

Luck should have it...

This man had a very bad day.

A very exciting idea for a laptop

Would you go without a hard drive on your laptop

Somebody, in this case Taiwanese Asus, is certainly thinking outside the box. Is this a WinTel killer?

As it refines the software and instructions, Asus - better known as the world's largest maker of computer motherboards - could garner a following among mainstream computer users who right now might be puzzled by some of the eccentricities of Linux.

The $400, seven-inch Eee PC is a new entrant in a fast-growing market for ultra-portable PCs. All such computers, including the Eee, require sacrifices. Its keys may seem painfully small. For people used to a desktop or a standard notebook, its screen makes you feel like you've just moved from a McMansion into a studio apartment. (Tricks for maximizing screen real estate when Web surfing can be found on the helpful user forum, Eeeuser.com.)

Unencumbered by Windows, the Eee boots up so quickly I didn't bother counting the seconds. Its Wi-Fi chip links with the Web in a flash, and its webcam - a feature missing from many laptops triple the price - turns it into a video messaging device with the help of eBay Inc. (EBAY)'s Skype, which comes pre-loaded. There are USB ports for peripherals, a port to connect to a monitor, and - most essential - a flash memory slot to expand its meager storage. Battery life is advertised at 3.5 hours.

Prediction: I say Hillary "wins" New Hampshire!

I am going out on a limb. Hillary will survive to fight another day. The press is so far ahead of itself I couldn't believe that they believed that Hillary was losing support in her own state of New York. Hillary's up by 5 percent at ABC News at 8:25 p.m. EST.

Clinton 17,008 40% 0
Obama 14,959 35% 0
Edwards 7,077 17% 0
Richardson 1,832 5% 0
Kucinich 803 2% 0
Biden 75 0% 0
Gravel 58 0% 0
Dodd 35 0% 0

A list worth knowing

I didn't know about this bug which would have been catastrophic.

1. A faulty Soviet early warning system nearly caused World War III. In 1983, a software bug in the Soviet system reported that the U.S. launched five ballistic missiles.

Certainly not a feature! I venture to say that even today we place too much trust in software. Then there's this:

4. Two partners used different and incompatible versions of the same software to design and assemble the Airbus A380 jetliner in 2006. When Airbus tried to bring together two halves of the aircraft, the wiring on one did not match the wiring in the other. That caused at least a one-year and very costly delay to the project.

I bet someone at Airbus was really having a bad hair day!

Good news America is still number 1

David Brooks the optimist in America.

So it’s worth pointing out now more than ever that Dobbsianism is fundamentally wrong. It plays on legitimate anxieties, but it rests at heart on a more existential fear — the fear that America is under assault and is fundamentally fragile. It rests on fears that the America we once knew is bleeding away.

And that’s just not true. In the first place, despite the ups and downs of the business cycle, the United States still possesses the most potent economy on earth. Recently the World Economic Forum and the International Institute for Management Development produced global competitiveness indexes, and once again they both ranked the United States first in the world.

In the World Economic Forum survey, the U.S. comes in just ahead of Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany (China is 34th). The U.S. gets poor marks for macroeconomic stability (the long-term federal debt), for its tax structure and for the low savings rate. But it leads the world in a range of categories: higher education and training, labor market flexibility, the ability to attract global talent, the availability of venture capital, the quality of corporate management and the capacity to innovate.

The era of small government is over

Should conservatives throw in the towel in the fight to slow down the growth of Big Government? Yes says this author. Meanwhile, we are tempted to ask: Where have you gone Barry Goldwater?