RedState
RedState is my full time job. It is the largest right of center blogging community on the internet. It's also the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill and most quoted right of center blog in the media.
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WSB Radio
In 2010, I started the Erick Erickson Show on WSB Radio in Atlanta. WSB Radio is the nation's most listened talk radio station and broadcasts from Atlanta, GA. It's also the flagship station for Neal Boortz and Clark Howard. The show airs weeknights from 6pm to 9pm ET. If you can't listen live you can check out the podcast via iTunes.
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Should Conservatives Jump Ship
I want to comment on this. You know the story. It’s the Washington Times piece that quotes folks like Richard Viguerie saying, ” “I’m hearing a lot of anger. . . .I’m beginning, for the first time, [to hear] people talk about ‘it would not be the worst thing in the world if Howard Dean were president,’ because the size of government would stay still rather than increase 50 percent under a second Bush administration.”
First, full disclosure: while I don’t know Viguerie, I know people who have worked and do work for him and I have used his direct mail company for clients with whom I’ve done political consulting. He and his company are committed to the cause.
Okay, back my thoughts. Read more
Techie Question
When you use Internet Explorer with my blog, and some others, the text diappears. What’s up with that? If you highlight through, the text reappears, but scrolling up and down can make it disappear again.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Glenn Reynolds On Outsourcing
I didn’t want to say that Glenn Reynolds has written a lot about outsourcing because I was confident he has, which generally means he hasn’t. The general rule of my life is when I’m confident of something, I’m probably wrong.
Anyway, I was right. Here is Glenn on Bruce Bartlett’s piece.
By the way, how the hell does he have time for Instapundit, TCS, and GlennReynolds.com??!!
Outsourcing
A lot of bloggers and political types are predicting that outsourcing will be a big campaign issue. Bruce Bartlett over at NRO has a fine articulation of the issue and what it means to the bottom line. To be frank, protectionists brought this on themselves.
[M]uch of the move toward offshoring is the result of ill-considered efforts to keep software jobs in the U.S. Previously, companies had brought Indian programmers to this country to do their work under a program established in 1990. It provided these foreign workers with H-1B visas that allowed them to work here temporarily. But under pressure to save such jobs for the native-born, the number of visas allowed under this program was reduced from 195,000 to 65,000 in October. So now, instead of having Indian workers come here, where they spent much of their earnings, companies are contracting with them to work in India, which is where they now spend their earnings. Rather than admit that they were wrong in the first place, the same people who demanded restrictions on foreign workers are trying to get new limits placed on outsourcing as well. A new report from the National Foundation for American Policy details this effort and the likely costs. These include higher taxes when laws are passed preventing state and local governments from utilizing cheaper foreign sources for information technology (IT) services.
Bartlett shows that outsourcing actually can add value to companies without catastrophic job loss. He says:
he truth is that outsourcing is far less of a threat to American workers than they imagine, and there are significant benefits for the U.S. economy. For starters, there is not a one-for-one relationship between jobs lost here and those gained elsewhere from outsourcing. Boston University researcher Nitin Joglekar has found that outsourcing of IT services typically leads to domestic job losses of less than 20 percent. In other words, for every 100 jobs outsourced to India only 20 are lost here. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that workers freed up from routine tasks that have been outsourced are often redeployed within the company in projects generating greater value-added and jobs paying higher wages. It also found that companies engaging in outsourcing often established foreign subsidiaries that generate sales and profits for the home company. Adding it all up, McKinsey concluded that every $1 outsourced led to a gain for the U.S. as a whole of $1.12 to $1.14. The country where the outsourcing takes place captures just 33 cents of the total gain from outsourcing.
I haven’t heard of the McKinsey Global Institute, but I trust Brce Bartlett’s work. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
Depressing Thought
One of the attorneys at my firm is helping a guy with alzheimers. He has dementia, apparently, and has been diagnosed as having alzheimers at an early stage. He is 29.
I generally worry about and wonder about things like that. What would I do. Would I go ahead and end it. I think my faith would prohibit that. Besides, Christy says if I ever die, she’s coming with me. So I’d probably feel obligated to stick around so she can see that it wasn’t worth her following (Are y’all depressed yet).
I don’t know what I’d do. That is a thought I can’t rationalize or truthfully contemplate. I can just hope it doesn’t happen.
What is most troubling is the knowledge that at some point I would forget my wife and my life. Those words can be used interchangably. Even more troubling is the certain knowledge that I’d forget my God. If the absence of God is hell, alzheimers would have to come close to being a living hell.
I would just have to pray that he doesn’t forget me.
Okay, enough depressing thoughts.
Best Of The Year
I’m not into lists. Everyone else does them. But, I do have to place at the forefront of attention, my pick for best of all things this year. Yeah, I know, it’s the ultimate category. So, it should go to something like my new iPod (Time’s best invention) or wolrd peace.
But, no. Best of Everything this year should go to the one person who has made us all laugh, even in moment of war and tragedy. You know who I’m talking about. His name is Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf a/k/a the Iraqi Minister of (Mis)Information.
“In an age of spin, al-Sahaf offers feeling and authenticity. His message is consistent — unshakeable, in fact, no matter the evidence — but he commands daily attention by his on-the-spot, invective-rich variations on the theme. His lunatic counterfactual art is more appealing than the banal awfulness of the Reliable Sources. He is a Method actor in a production that will close in a couple of days. He stands superior to truth.” – Jean-Pierre McGarrigle
Who could forget these timeless classics:
“My feelings – as usual – we will slaughter them all” “Our initial assessment is that they will all die” “We are not afraid of the Americans. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid” (dramatic pause) “and they are condemned.” “The Americans, they always depend on a method what I call … stupid, silly. All I ask is check yourself. Do not in fact repeat their lies.” “I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly.”
Yes, MSS – Winner in the Best of Everything Category.
Days Of Whine And Asses
Power Line has the link to Michelle Malkin’s list of the worst whiners of 2003. Yeah, I know. I could have linked to it, but then you wouldn’t check out Power Line and it would be your loss.
So go check them out and then read the list. She’s got a good one.
Wheel Well Of Doom
Has Too Much Been Given Away
You need to read this over at Real Clear Politics. It’s very interesting. RCS’s question and mine is, “Did Sheriff McCoy reveal information he should not have revealed?”
Peoria and Champaign are part of a seven-city “circuit” that moves and disperses terrorists to specific sites across the nation, says Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy.
A Just War
Keith Burgess-Jackson has a fairly philosophical looke at Bush’s critics, most of whom would rather attack Bush than discuss whether or not the war is morally justified.
The point I’ve been trying to make all these months is that we should focus on the war itself (the act) and not (solely) on the motives, beliefs, intentions, or reasons of President Bush. These latter bear on his character and ultimately on his worth as a person, but they have nothing (literally) to do with whether the war he waged is morally justified. That President Bush’s critics can’t see this dumbfounds me. They seem unable or unwilling to address the morality of the war directly. Shouldn’t we be having a discussion of the morality of war? Doesn’t the war in Iraq provide the perfect occasion for us to do so?