Here is a good write
Here is a good write up on the issue of liability for bloggers. It takes off from Justene’s problems over at Calblog with the “fine” folks at Infotel. No doubt Justene will kick their ass. And she should.
This may be a good
This may be a good reason to finally put the Real World out of its misery.
Christy and I are headed
Christy and I are headed to Louisiana tomorrow. Rural Louisiana — as in more cows than people. So, probably no blogging until Monday. Maybe a bit in the morning, but otherwise don’t count on it.
Is here. The U.S. economy
Is here.
The U.S. economy grew at an 8.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, faster than the government initially estimated as companies boosted inventories in September to meet the surge in demand. The nation’s gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced, grew from July through September at the fastest pace since the first three months of 1984, when Ronald Reagan was president. The Commerce Department previously reported a 7.2 percent third-quarter growth rate, following a 3.3 percent pace in the second quarter. “Growth is now super-super strong compared to super strong,” said Joseph LaVorgna, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, whose forecast of 8.3 percent was the highest in a Bloomberg News survey.
A few days ago I
A few days ago I posted a link to the Economist’s article about the growing divergence between the U.S. and Europe. David Brooks follows up on this in the New York Timeshere. Here’s a look:
As we settle down to the Thanksgiving table in a few days, we might remind ourselves that whatever other problems grip our country, lack of vitality is not one of them. In fact, we may look back on the period beginning in the middle of the 1980’s as the Great Rejuvenation. American life has improved in almost every measurable way, and far from regressing toward the mean, the U.S. has become a more exceptional nation. The drop in crime rates over the past decade is nothing short of a miracle. Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates rose in the early 1970’s and 1980’s, then leveled off and now are dropping. Child poverty rates have declined since the welfare reform of the mid-1990’s. The black poverty rate dropped ‘to the lowest rate ever recorded,’ according to a 2002 study by the National Urban League. The barren South Bronx neighborhood that Ronald Reagan visited in 1980 to illustrate urban blight is now a thriving area, with, inevitably, a Starbucks. The U.S. economy has enjoyed two long booms in the past two decades, interrupted by two shallow recessions, and perhaps now we’re at the start of a third boom. More nations have become democratic in the past two decades than at any other time in history.
[Note: I finally figured out the block quote feature in HTML. Cool!]
Add this report from our
Add this report from our friends at Little Green Footballs to the mix.
We should not forget that
We should not forget that Palestinians are, to a large degree, considered 2nd class citizens in most of the Middle East. My father says that Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia keep the Jew hatred flames alive to keep the Palestinians focused on Insrael instead of the horrible treatment the Palestinians endured at the hands of fellow Arabs.
The headline catch your attention?
The headline catch your attention? Here’s something I’ve been meaning to comment on. A lot of you realize that there are issues (to put it mildly) between Arabs and Jews. But, because we all believe in getting along, a good number of fair minded and reasonable people think that both sides must share blame. In favor of that is the fact that Israel wins no friends when it levels entire villages to seek revenge.
However, in this fair minded balancing, consider this. As regular readers know, I grew up in Dubai, on the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the most free and most modern Arab states. I went to an American school with American teachers. But, in our textbooks the word Israel was blotted out. If it couldn’t be blotted out, the eastern Mediterranean would be cut out of the book.
Whole sections of the history books covering the 6 day war, etc. would be redacted or simply torn out. My classmates and I use to play a game at the beginning of each quarter (we used those instead of semesters) of racing through our books to see who could find the redacted material first.
In 7th grade geography, government ministers expressly forbade the school from teaching us about Israel (our teacher told us). In fact, in that book, the book publisher had a specially printed world map that had Palestine on it instead of Israel.
So, for all of you who think both sides are to blame, you may be partially right. But, do you really think a country like Israel can fairly reason with a group of people who refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Jewish state.
According to Matt Drudge, the
According to Matt Drudge, the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms has seized several computer servers to see who leaked memos from the Judiciary Committee.
It seems the Dems are trying to distract from the fact that the memos contain damaging information about how they are discriminating based on race.
I think I could design a powerful 15 second spot for latino television markets about the discrimination of Estrada. It could help the GOP big time.
This is a debate I
This is a debate I do not desire to enter. Needless to say, I am against the proposition that homosexual marriage should be permissible. For a very good article, see this over at Commentary. Worth cutting and pasting is this: “Marriage, to say it for the last time, is what connects us with our nature and with our animal origins, with how all of us, heterosexual and homosexual alike, came to be. It exists not because of custom, or because of a conspiracy (whether patriarchal or matriarchal), but because, through marriage, the world exists. Marriage is how we are connected backward in time, through the generations, to our Creator (or, if you insist, to the primal soup), and forward to the future beyond the scope of our own lifespan. It is, to say the least, bigger than two hearts beating as one.
“Severing this connection by defining it out of existence—cutting it down to size, transforming it into a mere contract between chums—sunders the natural laws that prevent concubinage and incest. Unless we resist, we will find ourselves entering on the path to the abolition of the human. The gods move very fast when they bring ruin on misguided men.”