Links and Minifeatures 08 20 Saturday

As a reminder, please be certain to come back Tuesday for Carnival of Liberty VIII hosted here. I will set to auto-post at 6 AM Eastern time so you can look before work if you want. If any of you LLPer's need it earlier, email me before Monday morning!

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Had the girls Friday, so it was light activity. Ramona, the baby, is sweet and easy to take care of, even if I am "Not the Momma!" Hilda (the five year old) hasn't quite gotten over the green eyed monster regarding the baby yet, so she can be difficult at times, but she has learned that Daddy means what he says, so she gives me a lot less grief than she gives my wife. She knows if I say I'll swat her bottom, I will swat her bottom, and so... I don't have to.



Activity may be light for a while. I should be signing the contract to develop my commercial sister site this week, and I got a call from the cardiologist today saying my test was abnormal. So I'm going in for another test Monday morning. We don't think it's serious, but I'm going to set Carnival of Liberty up to auto-post before I leave the house Monday morning just in case they decide I can't come home. My apologies if I don't get to "just before the deadline" submissions on time.



I do find it pleasing that 19 days into August, my visitors and bandwidth usage are already 20% more than my entire July statistics.



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This one hits all the big political issues: Captain's Quarters has an excellent analysis of a 1985 Memo John Roberts wrote having to do with Terrorism and the 1977 Protocols.





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Victor Davis Hanson shares some perspective and some good recommendations in "More Continental Drift? I think most of our old allies in Europe are in the same economic cycle the old communist countries were, just that they didn't have the military expenses or the ideological ones, and so they haven't gone bankrupt yet. But they're getting there.



Before I had a chance to post. he put another essay up The Biteback Effect



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Terrorism Unveiled has an excellent post on the missile attacks. (HT La Shawn Barber



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Daffyd at Captain's Quarters detailing more on how the wall between intelligence and law enforcement was built, and by who (largely 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick). I have previously detailed that this whole idea was not only incredibly stupid, but didn't act to protect anything except the right of foreign and terrorist agents to be free of constraints in operating against us. When will the privacy kneejerkers learn?



Debbie Schlussel has a dynamite grocery list of reasons why it probably wouldn't have mattered if the FBI had been informed. She lists many places where they did nothing, or even killed the messenger. HT to Michelle Malkin



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How far we've come from Eisenhower telling the press we were going to attack Sicily next: La Shawn Barber sends us to Accuracy in Media. Back in 1943, not a single reporter in the room told anybody. Anybody want to guess what would happen in an equivalent situation today? Does anyone have to?



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Michael Ledeen at NRO gives us a Who's Who in Iran's government and a pretty good idea of their intentions, and accomplishments.



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Air America



Radio Equalizer has the promised Part II. It does look like both the SEC and state regulators should be interested in this stuff. I'm only a financial advisor, not a lawyer and definitely not a judge, but it appears to me that there are serious violation of disclosure issues, as this went way beyond a so-called "tombstone announcement" which by my reading of the rules requires a copy of the prospectus filed with the SEC to be given out to every person who heard the pitch. Unfortunately (using a quick search), I don't see any evidence that said prospectus exists, or the required to be available Statement of Additional Information, much less that it was given out. This might be within the legal limits, but from the reported information I don't see how. They send this kind of crooks to the kind of federal prison described in "Office Space" all the time. If this is illegal, this is not an offense that the SEC or state regulators regard as a minor offense. It strikes right at one of the fundamental protections of potential investors.



Michelle Malkin has more.



The New York Sun has put together a web page with of all the stories they've run. HT to Captain's Quarters



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PressThink asked Austin Bay what he thinks about the relationship of the White House and the press, and printed the whole thing. Good, rational food for thought, including on why the White House should cultivate the press.



Dean's World has an idea on how it might all shake out. I agree. If nothing good comes of it, why bother? This would be a loss; this is our country's closest approach to question time in parliament. Nonetheless, given the attitude of the press one wonders why the White House continues to cater to them. It's not like there's any mass conversion in the works.



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Asymmetrical Information wants to ask John Kenneth Galbraith, "If you think that we should equalize the distribution of income, why do you not think that we should equalize the distribution of PhDs?" The answer to this is obvious. If everybody had a PhD, they wouldn't have anybody to look down upon. It's all about whose ox gets gored.



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Chrenkoff has a great follow up to the Jawa Report's research of yesterday, and demolishes the meme about "you have to be X to write about X".



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Wizbang has the scoop on fallout fron Willism's rating Carnival of Vanities Last Week. I'm hosting my third carnival (Liberty) on Tuesday, and let me tell you I've been tempted to do what he did. I am somebody that tries to read every submission to every carnival I submit to, but Will's got a point. A lot of them are simply traffic whoring with drivel, and I make a point to stay away from such blogs in the future. I think, "If that's your best post on the subject," and you can imagine where I go from there. I'm not going to do what Will did unless the traditions of the particular carnival permit, which Liberty doesn't, but every time I host I'm seeing posts that are nothing more than a quick link and a line or two of text, not clever at all. When I submit, I try and tell the person that I won't be offended if they decide not to include it. So I got a 6 rating from Will when I would have hoped for a seven or eight. It doesn't crush my poor little ego. Maybe he didn't think my snarky humor was as good as I did. Maybe he thought I should have done more digging. Maybe he thought I should have fleshed it out more. Big surprise - lot of QC failures going around all over the 'sphere. At least I got a 6 - he considered it actually good. I may not have agreed with all his ratings. But he gave me what can be regarded as a small amount of constructive criticism with his rating. Maybe I can use it to improve. There's a lot of dreck out there. That's why the sites that are consistently good get traffic. Will was Carnival Host and is entitled to his opinions. The host who refuses to include my post, which may I think is good but is in fact drivel, is likely to be doing me a favor. If the clown Will rated zero to gets mad at Will, he's hunting the wrong target. The post was drivel, and I should have taken Will's word for anything below 4. The constructive solution, of course, to do is submit better posts.



(and the fact that many people do quick checkouts is why I try and pick out posters who put effort and thought in and give them a recommendation when I link the carnival. I may not agree with the post, but if it's a good thoughtful post when so many aren't, it deserves to stand out somehow. Two rules: my own posts aren't eligible for carnival recommends. Nor are posts I've already linked.)