Links and Minifeatures 11 28 Monday

RINO Sightings is up over at Don Surber. Recommended Posts: Strata-Sphere, legal redux



Best of Me Symphony is also up! Recommended posts: TFS Magnum, Living the Scientific Life (Whose experience parallels my own, even if it is in an entirely different discipline).



Carnival of Personal Finance is also up!

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WHITE HOUSE PLAN IF SADDAM FOUND 'NOT GUILTY (Yes, the link is Drudge. Get over it). I'm torn between being happy that there is a Plan B, and being nervous that they're going to keep after him with more charges. Oh, I know that they intentionally didn't hit him everything, only the stuff that they thought was the easiest conviction. I also know that he's a mass murderer, serial torturer, human rights wasteland, and all around nutjob. Nonetheless, I'm not happy that they are planning to hit him with more and more until something sticks. Not a good precedent to have in front of you. Stuff like this is why we need to get it right the first time.



While I'm on the subject of Iraq, a little bit of hope for our legacy media in that they picked up this story: The Iraq story: how troops see it



Money quote (From an Iraqi Army officer): "Marines are not friends; marines are brothers." You cannot buy that kind of thinking. Well, actually you can, but not with money.



Captain's Quarters has more on the disconnect between the press and what's happening.



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Teen With Peanut Allergy Dies After Kiss. My deepest sympathies with the family. I'm not quite as allergic as she was to anything common, but I've spent a lot of time very sick with nasty allergy attacks due to inconsiderate smokers. This is one of the reasons I don't want to leave California, with its mostly enlightened views on the subject. The time I spend in other states is mostly miserable, and even with the best medications available, foreign travel is worse.



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Cool! I just got a neat little bit of consulting work from a certain title company, as a result of this site.



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HT to Michael Barone for a pointer to a Washington Post article debunking a lot of rhetoric on the subject of Medicaid.



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Stupid, Stupider, and Stupidest: Calif. Congressman Pleads Guilty. Boys and Girls, accepting illegal favors is stupid. Accepting bribes above the level of chump change is stupider - there will always be records that your opponents can find, and both parties have people looking. But doing it on a real estate transaction is King of The Land of Stupid, as the records are explicitly public, freely available for anybody who cares to look. My five year old daughter could have dug this one up. Stuff like this is why I love the concept of transparency, as it holds the rich and powerful accountable to the same degree as everyone else, and largely because they've painted the target on their own backs. Many people, used to the mechanics of bygone eras where this stuff wasn't quite so easily found, still haven't figured it out. Get used to it. If you do something illegal, anybody who really looks is going to find it.



Sadly, this doesn't surprise me from Cunningham, who unlike many who have claimed the accolade, is a legitimate war hero but seems to have been coasting upon that fact ever since. I still respect him (and will humbly thank him to his face if I ever meet him) for what he accomplished back then, but that in no way excuses what he did recently.



And he's out of there! Cunningham Resigns



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Here's an interesting site I ran across: Housing Panic. I think they're significantly over the top, but that's just my opinion. Please note that despite the fact I'm a real estate agent, I've been saying prices are in trouble for months, I've been saying it clearly, I've been saying it consistently. I should have some built up credibility on the issue. I have given specific advice on strategies to deal with the possibility, not just stirred up the garbage. My best guess is we're looking at about a 30% loss of real estate value here in San Diego, but that's all it is - an educated guess, based upon numerical computations of similar goods. With inflation revving up a bit, it might be lower than that. Once investor psychology and fear kick in, it could get much worse. Don't panic. Don't ever panic. That's what hurt the poor schlubs worst when the dot com bubble burst. Keep your head about you and you will come out just fine. If you've got the right loan, even those who buy right at market peak will be fine. I bought my current residence right at the last peak, and I'm doing just fine, thank you. If I was offered the chance to go back and do exactly the same thing again or refrain from doing it, I'd do it in a heartbeat.



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An excellent, logical, mathematical piece on how many real civilian casualties there have likely been in Iraq at Logic Times. I spotted a couple of adjustments they should have made, but basically solid work.