Links and Minifeatures 06 16 Friday

For those who follow politics, a parody. Ms American Spy

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House rejects Iraq pullout deadline



1. Murtha is not a hawk, but the left wing calls him one because they think it makes him look more credible



2. 153 voted for it, "largely on party lines". The Nutroots™ really has taken over the Donkeys. Assuming that all 153 were Donkeys, that makes 3/4 of the ones in Congress. Not to mention 24 Congresscritters of both parties who didn't vote. Via Gateway Pundit, here's the Roll Call. I notice some interesting names in the not voting column.



3. This is just as stupid as the last time it came up. Once you mandate a pullout as of a certain date, you give your opponents a goal. No matter what happens, we're leaving on thus and such a date. That tells them they don't have to win before then, they just have to keep fighting one more day and they win by default.



If I got my news on the war from the papers, I'd likely think we were in trouble, too. But many thanks to the Milbloggers who have eyewitness accounts of what's really going on for us.



On the other hand, the good news is starting to filter into the media: Picture of a weakened Iraqi insurgency



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Probe in possible Haditha cover up complete. And the results are...?



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Gates to drop to part time at Microsoft.



Well, he built it into a huge, successful company. However, the writing is on the wall for those who know how to read it. They'll be big and important for a long time, just like IBM. But their era of controlling the market is over. Linux opened the door to other operating systems, and Open Office has put paid to their unconditional dominance of the Office Productivity Suite. They are losing market share in both. Why should someone pay $120 to $200 for Microsift Office when Open Office is free? This is the same problem Netscape had ten years ago, except that Netscape Suite was only $30.



Windows is a big agglomeration the interaction of the various parts of which are poorly understood, even by Microsoft. Too many things about Internet Explorer violate agreed upon web standards, and cannot be used properly. Both have way too many known vulnerabilities, and when they patch one, disturbingly often they open another.



Scrappleface has the real (funny) story.



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Rat study shows dirty better than clean In other words, you can worry about dirt and germs too much.



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Frist pushes for move on estate taxes.



Estate tax is not anywhere near my list of most important or immediate tax issue facing the country today. I'd like it gone, but I'd rather have AMT indexing, especially since AMT is pretty ironclad and there are so many ways to get out of estate tax that it is essentially voluntary. The current law is set to expire in 2010, at which point we go back to the pre-2001 scenario, which actually wasn't that bad.



Nonetheless, if we don't do something about the sunset provisions, I predict that a much larger number of well off elderly are going to kick off in 2010, especially the latter parts of it. This sample will be far larger than is explainable by the mortality statistics. Mom kicks off in December 2010, the kids get $10 million. Mom kicks off in January 2011, the kids get $1 million. Doesn't take a genius to see that some folks are going to make certain mom kicks off in time to get them more money, particularly if mom is one of those that refuses to do the necessary planning.



Will we as a society be culpable for those deaths? Not really. But for those keeping track of the moral scoreboard, do chalk it up as an assist. We set the conditions for them to happen.



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Finally. House removes Jefferson from committee They've got him on folm taking a $100k bribe. They found $90k in his freezer. They persuaded a federal judge to issue a warrant for his Congressional office. And now, nearly a year after the beginning, they've removed him from the committee with the most influence over the budget.



Looks like I spoke too soon and didn't read carefully enough. Rhymes with Right notes the Washington Post saying

If he refuses to step aside from the Ways and Means Committee, as urged by the Democratic Caucus, the next step would be a vote on the House floor to remove him from the prestigious committee. Even his allies want to avoid that.

In other words, his fellow Democrats merely asked him to resign, to avoid handing an election year freebie to the Elephants.



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The wave of the future: Delta to request end to pilots' pensions. Defined benefit plans are going to go the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo. Corporations always have better things to do with the money than fund the pension, and there is a distressing tendency to play games with the Assumed Rate of Return. Due to the amounts of money typically involved, by the time they get serious about the problem, the shortfall kills the company. Defined contribution plans (e.g. 401k) are much simpler, with fewer games available to the company. Not to mention that when they agree to defined benefit pensions, the company often has no idea how expensive they will turn out to be.



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If you haven't yet read Michael Barone's Vietnam, Watergate, and Rove over at Opinion Journal, you should.