Links and Minifeaures 02 05 Monday

Carnival of the Capitalists Recommended: Anti-Sisyphus (combating the employee pits of despair)



RINO Sightings Recommended: Techography (fisking William Arkin - offensive language warning)



Carnival of Investing



Carnival of Real Estate Recommended Zillow blog (how to get good comments), Bryant Tutas (debunking the "realtors have a monopoly" canard)

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The Right Place on Another Reason To Not Raise Minimum Wage



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Don Surber on The real danger from global warming



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Iran sets up 328 centrifuges at big atom site Anonymously sourced, but not a good sign.



Call me prejudiced, call me racist, call me an Islamophobe. I don't think it is in anybody's best interest - except the mad mullahs - for the current regime in Iran to have access to nuclear weapons technology. Not the developed nations, not the developing nations, not their neighbors, and especially not the people of Iran. Matter of fact, I'd estimate that the mad mullahs of Iran getting nuclear weapons would be far more likely to lead to the use of nuclear weapons than all other current possessors of them combined. But consider: I am not saying this about the Pakistani or Indian possession of such weapons, already a fact. Those two nations and their leaders understand the need for some kind of status quo. Nor Israeli or South African possession. Both of those nations seem to go out of their way to avoid rattling their sabers. Even North Korea seems to understand their use as a bargaining chip is greater than their utility in winning a war with any likely opponent. Iran's rhetoric, backed up by long term sponsorship of Hezbollah and similar organizations, is of an entirely different sort, the language of jihad.



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His motive may be politics, but it makes sense also: Bush Proposes Litany of Tax Cuts

The lion's share of the president's proposed tax reductions would come from making permanent his signature cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Those cuts would otherwise evaporate at the end of 2010.



"Well-timed, pro-growth tax policies helped create the right climate for innovation and entrepreneurship," powering a resilient economy, Bush said in his budget message.

His motive might be politics: force the Dems to get in his face about their agenda, so that they can't campaign both ways in 2008. But I'm glad he's making economic sense while he's doing it. That's much better than his opponents are doing. Even if he loses this battle - and he will almost certainly lose this battle - he sets the Republicans up to win the war. Politically speaking, of course.



The Democrats and their leftist supporters will howl about how this hurts the little person, meaning, of course, that there will be less patronage to hand out. Unfortunately for them, the Laffer Curve won't go away simply because they don't like the implications.



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UPDATE: I am going to conduct an experiment with comments. I'm going to allow guest posting of comments, but require approval of comments before they post (to discourage spam)



The changes have already been made. If I get enough more "real" comments to justify having to deal with the spam artists, I'll leave it the way it is. If I don't, I'll change it back.



The experiment is tentatively set to run the rest of February, but that is subject to change if the experiment becomes an obvious failure.