Links and Minifeatures 2008 02 08 Friday

Anti-impotence pill could boost high flying pilots

Just what we need. Military pilots usually suffer from testosterone poisoning anyway.

Not to mention it's certain to be used to increase the amount of spam in our email.

The Israeli air force, which funded the study, is not planning to make use of it:

(Because of the different circumstances) there is no significance for medical treatment of any drug for pilots in the Israel Air Force ... and it has no intention of using any form of drug,

Not to mention it's kind of difficult to devote your full attention to anything when you've got something uncontrollable going on below the waist. Far more important to be able to plan your air-to-air combat without distractions than to get a marginal improvement in black out point or oxygen usage.

Buffett: Bank woes are "poetic justice"

Buffett, one of the world's wealthiest people, appeared to see irony in the fact that many of the banks who marketed complex investments which have now crashed are bearing much of the fallout.

"It's sort of a little poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end," he said.

I can't say it any better than that.

"I wouldn't quite call it a credit crunch. Funds are available," Buffett said during a question and answer session at a business event. "Money is available, and it's really quite cheap because of the lowering of rates that has taken place."

He added: "What has happened is a repricing of risk and an unavailability of what I might call 'dumb money,' of which there was plenty around a year ago."

Which is what I've been saying for months.

I said I wanted him to stay in, at least for now, and I am disappointed that he didn't:

McCain seals GOP nod as Romney drops out

John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering campaign. "I must now stand aside, for our party and our country," Romney told conservatives.

H is only suspending his campaign, as John Edwards did, so he could get back in in the event of a brokered convention, which has now become quite unlikely. I am sorry it got so personal between McCain and Romney, because otherwise he would have been a good VP choice. Not as good as Fred Thompson, but much better than Huckabee. Duncan Hunter would also be an excellent VP choice - solid conservative credentials, tough on terror, and together with McCain's maverick status, might be able to put California in the R column. The Donkeys don't stand a prayer in the electoral college if they lose California. I don't know anything about the Florida politicians that boosted McCain there and various folks are predicting McCain will give heavy weight to, but California has twice the electoral votes. Just sayin'.

A Modest Proposal for Middle East Peace over at Private Papers

a small sample:

diplomats might find common ground about displaced populations, many from the post-war, late 1940s. Perhaps it would be best to start with the millions of Germans who were expelled from East Prussia in 1945, or Indians who were uprooted from ancestral homes in what is now Pakistan, or over half-a-million Jews that were ethnically cleansed from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria following the 1967 war. Where are these refugees now? Were they ever adequately compensated for lost property and damages? Can they be given promises of the right to return to their ancestral homes under protection of their host countries? The ensuring solutions might shed light on the Palestinian aspirations to return to land lost sixty years ago to Israel.

Wizbang covering McCain speaking at CPAC

Captain's Quarters seems to largely agree.

Michelle Malkin doesn't, but at least she's now calling for conservatives to work for candidates they believe in rather than trying to form a circular firing squad before the election.

Something for the eight year old in all of us:

A friend of mine (Hi, John!) sent me this a while ago and I promptly forgot about it. Meet the Disintegrator: 24 barrels of rubber band minigun madness

It's tripod mounted!

There's video of it in action!

Whoa! The Democrat race just got nasty personal! Obama suggests Clinton show tax returns

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread and all that. I agree unconditionally that transparency is a good thing where it won't get our warriors killed, but Hillary can't afford this issue. Damned if she does and damned if she doesn't.

Note that I don't think it's likely that I'd agree with most folks on what the really damaging information would be. Lots of people get all worked up about sheer amounts of money made, where I tend to look at where it came from and what people did for it (and in Hillary's case, whether the amount is really believable for what she claims it was for). Furthermore, recurring patterns are of more concern than single events, however large they may be, so one year's returns are likely to ask a lot more questions than they answer. Finally, it's not like I expect there to be an entry like "$15 million dollars from Mr. Hsu in consideration for..."

Carnival of Real Estate Podcast is up. I hadn't done a podcast before. I hadn't even listened to a podcast before - I read much faster than I type. But this was kind of cool.