Links and Minifeatures 11 21 Monday (Late)

I've been wondering when this shoe would drop: GM Job Cuts Fail to Assuage Investors. The various car makers have been cannibalizing their future business with incentives for several years. It's a vicious cycle that gets the executives involved performance bonuses but leaves the company in a worse position, and vulnerable. Nor is GM the only one. Ford and others have been doing exactly the same thing thing. Anybody want to make a bet about a series of auto companies restating earnings downwards in the near future, as well as accounting standards violations (which almost always translate to major securities violations, fraud convictions, etcetera)?



No? Gee, I don't know why people don't want to give me their money.

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Enrevanche has an article about Jews in France voting with their feet. Seems they've been targeted by the Moslems there for at least the last five years, and if the French authorities had had the courage and good sense to deal with the situation instead of sticking their heads ever harder into the sand, they might have headed off the recent riots, not to mention had a better chance of, you know, keeping control of their country.



Committees of Correspondence has an article I wanted to review a few days ago on the same subject. Indeed, this one is more of a predictive nature while Enrevanche's is descriptive, but the prediction has been borne out by the description.



On a very similar subject, Pigilito Says has an article up on the changes in Holland since the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Van Gogh.



Especially taken as a group, in a connect the dots fashion, these cautionary tales illustrate the point that there's such a thing as too much tolerance. My working hypothesis is that Europe was playing to avoid the immediate confrontation that confronting its Moslem immigrants and the dictatorships they came from would have engendered, and by so doing placed themselves into a position where they were certain to lose the ultimate confrontation.



Victor Davis Hanson applies the brutal lessons France and the rest of europe are learning to the american domestic situation.



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Don Surber has a great round up on Open Source Media, oops, OSM. He even changed his site name to Open Source Media for a while (a couple more ideas like that and we'll be comparing him to Scrappleface).



Remember when I wrote this last Wednesday?

Note to any Open Sourcer who may read this: I have yet to see a coherent mission statement. I have yet to see an "elevator ride" sales pitch. I have yet to see any kind of coherent business strategy articulated. I have yet to see any kind of editorial standards articulated. I'd really like to. I have been paying attention, because I'd like your venture to succeed (I'm probably going to want to advertise if I can be convinced it'll deliver bang for the buck). I poked around on your site today. Maybe I clicked right past them, but I didn't find any of those things. However on target Dilbert is with making fun of those things, when they're done right, they make all the difference. The fact that they seemingly haven't been done at all, and the company is "open for business" says something, and it's not good.

Well, my Edsel sense in tingling more strongly now (I suggest you read the article to understand the sense in which I mean that). They need to find their editorial "voice" and soon. Which means, however much they want to pretend to the contrary, that they need a content and censorship policy and more people are going to be left out in the cold. It would have been better if they had never been let in than to be pushed out. And before any of that, they have to actually articulate what it is that they are trying to do. What is their core business, such that they are willing to cast off everything else if that is the only way to stay in business? Are they an advertising revenue collective? Are they an aggregator? Are they reporters? Sad to say, every time I have dropped by their website, http://www.osm.org/index_html, I have been saddened by the spectacle of people who elsewhere produce resoundingly wonderful, resourceful articles producing bland vanilla cut and paste.



I've just been struck by a thought. Question for consideration: Is OSM a tragedy of the commons (or should I say, commune) in the making?



(And lest you think I am "ragging" on them, I have not changed my opinion that I would like to see them succeed. The question in my mind is whether my desire is going to be matched by observed reality. If any Open Sourcer is actually reading this, please take it in the spirit of someone who may be misplaced or even wrong, but is at least trying to be helpful to a neighbor he perceives as having problems.)



Politechnical

thinks this is just normal "start up" jitters. The problem is that this is a media company of some nature. Yeah, this sort of thing happens in board rooms all the time, particularly start-up board rooms. But when it spills into the public view, that's not good.



PoliBlog wonders what effect OSM will have upon the 'sphere. My opinion: If it succeeds, probably beneficial on the whole. If it fails, nothing of any real significance. Like the dot com bust, a couple of bad years for venture capital is about the extent of it. Everything else that happened there was a result of things returning to economic reality.



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Gateway Pundit has a moving article that explains why President Bush stands out from other world leaders. Read the comments as well.



I certainly gripe and moan about some of the man's policies. But on the subjects of being willing to take action in the face of political cost or opposition when he believes it necessary, or of advancing the cause of democracy and freedom in the world, President Bush has done more than any other person in the country going back to at least George C. Marshall. Possibly since Abraham Lincoln. As evidenced by these Azerbaijanis, he is a giant standing amongst dwarves.



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Piling On Department: T F Stern's Rantings makes the case that if we need to pull out the situation in Iraq on the basis of troop casualties, we certainly need to pull out of Washington DC as well.



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I apologize, but I didn't get a chance to go through the Carnivals for Extra Good Stuff yet. I'll try to link them tomorrow. You'd think I had work to do or something...