Links and Minifeatures 09 12 Monday

Michael Yon has a new article up on Lieutenant Colenel Kurilla's convalescence. He makes some good points that from recent polls need to be made for the twenty millionth time.



Victor Davis Hanson dismantles moonbattery in a series of responses to mail he's gotten.

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Captain's Quarters has a good bit of research on the city and state's plans and lack of adherence to same.



Captain's Quarters also has an excellent article linking Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. By any objective measure, the response from the federal government has been excellent.



Louisiana Libertarian has another dispatch. If you're unaware, he was one of those who evacuated Slidell ahead of Katrina.



Wizbang has some thoughts about what a good job was done in responding to the Hurricane and levee breach, and by and large, I agree. He uses the metaphor of a 1 hitter in baseball, which I'm not sure is accurate - more like a 1 run game, which is still pretty good (how many pitchers in baseball have an earned run average of 1.00 or less?), but you don't want anybody scoring on you, whether you're a pitching a game in baseball or responding to a disaster. When I was a controller, I used to use the metaphor of guys on base for little mistakes or sitations that needed to be cleared up, and runs against for allowing it to build into something perceivable by the public. The situation here is a little more critical and less controllable than that, but the analogy holds.



Seems my prediction here was correct. Insurers say Katrina losses worse than expected. This is usually homeowner's insurance speak for "we didn't price major disasters into our policies"



Asymmetrical Information debunks some more myths, in this case that of smarmy europeans.



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Armies of Liberation has a post up about the political opposition to the regime in Egypt and Yemen. There's another about the Yemeni Parliament starting to chafe at the bit.



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Dean's World has some thoughts on the War in Iraq along the lines of what I wrote yesterday.



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Just threw another negative amortization loan wholesaler out of my office. With the softness in the real estate market here in California, those lenders with any sense are backing off on these, so I hadn't seen any of them in a while. After all, a loan where they add more to existing balances every month may not be a good idea where it's likely the house will sell for less than it was purchased for. Just one more example of the power of Denial, I suppose.



I'm sorry, but I'm out of time for today. Recommended Reading for RINO Sightings and Carnival of Personal Finance will have to wait.