Links and Minifeatures 06 14 Wednesday

Carnival of Liberty



Carnival of The Vanities

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Googlebomb for Alaa Egypt



Goes to the free Alaa website



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Home prices too high in 71 cities



The attached chart shows San Diego overvalued by 38.6 percent. That may be a little high; or my rules of thumb computations which say "approximately 30 percent, given an interest rate of 7%" could be a little low. I can do "no points loans at lower rates than that, but for how long is anyone's guess, given that inflation kicked up to about 5% annualized. Given taxes, at 7 percent the bank is just about breaking even in real terms on a loan if inflation is 5%.



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"Glass carbon" is a world first. I don't know if there's anything potentially useful, but getting a glass from Carbon Dioxide is cool.



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Don Surber hits the nail on the head as to when we should leave Iraq. When a freely elected Iraqi govenment asks us to. Not before. They want to create a situation where they can ask us to leave without the minions of Al-Qaeda moving into the Baghdad version of the White House and dispatching the current occupants with prejudice. I think we can safely project that they'll ask us to go as soon as they feel able to stand on their own.



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Environmental Republican has a round up of the "no indictment for Rove" and the reactions of the tinfoil hat brigade.



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This is revolting. Michelle Malkin has the story of seven Marines and one Navy Corpsman kept in close confinement confined to an 8x8 cell , shackled every time they leave the cell, and not allowed to so much as talk to their family except on the opposite side of a thick glass wall. They aren't even charged with anything. Where is the ACLU on this one? Can you imagine the screams of outrage if prisoners anywhere in any of our justice systems were subjected to this, especially prior to being charged with anything? They may be under investigation for suspicion of murder, but if the evidence is this strong, why haven't they been charged?



To turn a phrase to much better use than the original, No. Not in my name.



I'm in San Diego. If there's something we can do, let us know. Meanwhile, here are the links to the families' web sites:



no name

Jodka

no name



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I had to do almost this whole thing on my laptop. I hate laptops, for reasons varying from the keyboard to the fact that I just don't like this ******* touchpad pointing device, not to mention the fact it only has two buttons. Nonetheless, I suspect I'm going to be doing more on the laptop from now on. Anybody got any suggestions for a alternative pointing device? I'm biased in favor of trackballs, other things being equal. I can live with the keyboard if I have to, but this touchpad will lose me my few remaining sanity points.



This morning I finished a post titled "The Pin That Pops The Housing Bubble?". It'll post Sunday, giving me a day up on next weeks four money articles. You might want to check back then.



Finally, today is the ninth anniversary of marrying The World's Only Perfect Woman. We still can't decide whether we should go to dinner tonight or wait until the weekend, but tonight's agenda is spending time with her and the girls.