Links and Minifeatures 02 09 Thursday

Carnival of the Vanities is up.

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Social Security Choice writes some more about a great article he found at Students for Saving Social Security.



The train wreck is coming, and for anybody sixty and below (at least), you can expect it to happen in your lifetime. For those of use who are above thirty now, probably when there is not time or opportunity to do anything about it as an individual then, and after you have put a major portion of your income for your entire working life into it. The question is are we going to do what we can now to mitigate it, or are we going to wait until we as a nation have bankrupted ourselves on benefits we cannot afford to pay. Because the nation cannot afford these benefits, and if we wait until the train wreck happens, the social and economic consequences will be catastrophic. Those obstructing social security reform are laying the seeds for their own political destruction.



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Here's an article that talks about something really smart. Something equivalent to this should be the first item on the agenda of every school and every organization in the world. Its title? Smart People Ask Questions



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Financial Rounds has another severely helpful item: List of top tax scams. And here's the original article at the IRS website



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Entrepreneurial Mind has some information of importance to anyone thinking about starting a business, as I am next week: The cost of compliance.



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There's a new housing resource that may be helpful. Zillow.com. I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, other than a quick glance at their front page, but it might be worthwhile.



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Hezbollah leader in Lebanon says Bush and Rice should 'shut up' about prophet drawings



Dear Islamic World: Now you have a window upon a pale shadow to that which you have been subjecting the Christians and other non-believers, and especially the Jews.



If it's wrong or unacceptable for them to do it to you, it is equally wrong and unacceptable for you to do it to them. You earn respect by giving it. You earn peace by being peaceful. You earn acceptance of your differences by being accepting of others. Guess what? Your accounts in all three areas are significantly overdrawn.



If the Muslims started apologizing en masse for the much stronger slurs that have regularly appeared in their news media for longer than I have been alive, and stop putting them in, then and only then will they have any kind of standing to request an apology. Until then, they should learn to take what they dish out. And thus far, it's a bare shadow of what they dish out.



Captain's Quarters has more perspective.



Michelle Malkin has the roundup of how the Muslims faked up more offensive cartoons to "stir the pot".



Congratulations to Armies of Liberation! Published in Middle East Times. She disagrees with me, but that's cool.



Belmont Club covers, among other things, the admission of Danish imams that they were intentionally inflating the offense by including extra, more offensive in context, images amongst those that were actually printed.



Tim Blair has more.



Pigilito Says covers a journalist with a compare and contrast on American response to insults versus Islamic response. Not so much praising us as damning the Islamic response, I'm afraid.



On the other hand, INDC Journal covers some very reasonable responses from the Islamic world.



It is worth noting in defense of Islam that there are roughly one billion Muslims in the world. It'd be amazing if there weren't several million fruitcakes among them. Certainly there are that many in any other group of a billion. But the way in which they express their insanity is particularly disturbing. When this movie and this movie came out there was certainly controversy, calls for censorship and protests, especially in the latter case. Nobody was calling for beheadings.



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This is bad. Fiery plane collision kills 3; debris falls on homes, park. This is all the specific information I have, but I used to work at Gillespie Field; once the aircraft turn left crosswind they are out of sight of the tower behind a ridge within half a mile. The story said both had just departed Gillespie, and it's good sense as well as routine to tell the pilot of departing planes what the one in front of them is doing. Pilots are responsible for vigilance under VFR rules, and under those rules, once a pilot reports another one in sight, the controller's responsibilities are fulfilled. My guess, especially given the presence of a student pilot, is pilot error, but until I talk with some witnesses, that is only a guess.



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Michael Barone makes a point about government research and procurement, and how the Air Force is dealing with the problem (by buying GPS equipment from Radio Shark, among other things). He points to the fact that government funded basic research is now 30 percent of basic research as opposed to 60 at it's peak.



This is a good thing. The difficulty is that the government is never spending it's own money. The dollars to fund a five year study of basketweaving in Atlantis does not come out of the pocket of the bureaucrat granting it. If it did, said bureaucrat would be much less sanguine about granting it. Instead, the more money the bureaucrats spend, the more they are rewarded, as government measures these things, with suborinates and promotions and raises and larger budgets in the future. Contrast that with a corporate manager, where if a million dollars of the company's money is spent, that manager had better be able (in general) to show a million dollars worth of results for the company. And those who are spending money that is actually theirs, earned with the sweat of their brow, are more careful still. Many of those requesting, even demanding, government funding are themselves multi-millionaires. Why don't they put some skin in the game themselves?



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Armies of Liberation reports on the Yemeni military raping Somali refugees.



Now that's about as pathetic an excuse for humanity as you can get.



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HT to Dean's World for noting that the US and eropeans are getting together openly and officially to promote democracy in Iran



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Protein Wisdom has a good article about the resolution of the domestic monitoring on foreign calls, and one final danger. I agree that I'd rather have the President running the program with consent from a judge, than an appointed judge who has to keep no one happy.



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HT to Jawa Report for An Interview with Kate O'Beirne



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Last but certainly not least, Truth Laid Bare has some porkbusters news worth reading. I've sent to Filner, Boxer, and Feinstein, for all the good it'll do. Not that any of them is particularly egregious on pork, but they're not exactly the sharpest watchdogs when it comes to the taxpayer's money.