Zee Links and Minifeatures: January 2008 Archives

Cavalcade of Risk

(I didn't submit that post, which was previously published two years ago, but they linked it so I'm linking back)

Absolutely disgusting: Blood-boiler: Berkeley vs. the troops

How about DOD or even the entire US Government adopts a policy that there will be no contractors or subcontractors in the city of Berkeley. In fact, No federal services provided at all, since their representatives are unwelcome. Bye-bye, student aid at UC Berzerkley. Good bye, academic grants and matching funds and housing assistance and poverty grants and all of that good stuff. Send a message that if they're a part of the United States, they've got to accept what they may personally disagree with as well as everything else.

There are government programs I thoroughly despise. But it's a package deal - nobody is allowed to pick and choose. Berkeley can work to abolish the military if they want - but unless and until it happens, they need to allow the armed services to do their jobs.

Volokh Conspiracy has much more

I'd like to add to his contrast: "Adult" businesses are not agencies of the US Government. The military is. If the US Government can use interstate commerce to regulate a farmer raising grain for his own pigs, then they can certainly use it to control restrictions upon US Government activity. Suppose the city of Berkeley wanted to ban the Federal Bureau of Investigation? How far do you think that would get? And unlike the United States Military, the constitution does not, as I recall, mention the Federal Bureau of Investigation, let alone BATF. Or most other government agencies. How about if a libertarian state should decide to prohibit the activities of the Social Security Administration?

Abu Laith al-Libi Dead!

I may not be glad he's dead, but I am glad he won't be planning, supervising, funding, or encouraging any more terrorist activity.

For some folks, it's the only way to be sure.

Another cop killed in a no-knock raid over an insignificant amount of marijuana. Another innocent civilian tried for capital murder because the police want to play "Commando". Only the names have changed

This stuff has got to stop. Unless the police have reason to believe innocent lives are in imminent danger, there's simply no excuse for a "no knock" raid.

Of course, I don't agree that consumption of marijuana should be illegal, anymore than tobacco or alcohol. So long as you follow some rules designed not to endanger your fellow citizens, consenting adults and all that. I can't come up with a single positive thing to say about tobacco, and only the pain and nausea control for certain medical patients about marijuana. However, since it doesn't endanger anyone else per se, the government has no business getting involved beyond beyond rules to protect those who may not have made the decision of a competent adult to imbibe. I'm sure someone thinks it's wasteful of my life to play video games, surf the internet, or write an online website. That's no reason why it should be illegal.

HT Instapundit

I think I could support the Greenspan Amendment.

I liked Fred Thompson for many reasons, but one of the lesser ones was that running for President wasn't an all-consuming task for him. Having withdrawn from the race, he's back to doing other things.

A Banking Christmas Carol (part I) and A Banking Christmas Carol (part II)

Insider corroboration of things I was writing two years and more ago.

The Presidential elections are like two marathons. First, two groups of people run one marathon to see who gets to compete head to head in a second marathon. Not only that, but the criteria for competing in the two marathons are different. In the first race, you can only use one leg (right for Republicans, left for Democrats). In the second, you must use both legs.

That said, right now nobody has over ten percent of the delegates needed for nomination. So while the candidates have been training for months or years, they're maybe two miles into the first of the actual marathons. We may be down to five runners already (Clinton, Obama, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee), but it's waaay too early to call a winner even for the first set of marathons.

With that said, I'd rather have a RINO that can win the general than a "pure" Republican partisan who goes down to defeat against a hard left radical in centrist's clothing. Especially since I'm a libertarian in most things.

You want a better candidate to run next time? Start encouraging them now. Start laying the groundwork for them to succeed, even though they might not be the perfect candidate. We don't get the luxury of choosing some hypothetical candidate with no baggage (and therefore, no experience or proven ability). All three of the candidates I really liked have already dropped out, having met little success. Since one of these five people left standing is pretty certain to be taking the oath of office come January 20th, I'm going to vote for the best (or least bad) of the actual choices before me.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate Recommended: Gotcha Guide™: Agent Bonuses are Bunk! Offer Real Incentives

The Moral Economy

This is what a dictatorship looks like:

Rally Organizers Face May Death Penalty in Yemen

The Public Security Department (PSD) submitted charges against a top opposition leader and an editor to Aden's prosecutor in connection with a January 13 demonstration at which four protesters were killed when police opened fire on the crowd.

Megan McArdle on pharmaceutical profits and incentives.

Florida votes today. We'll be seeing projections based upon actual votes roughly an hour from now. I'm wishing Rudy Giuliani well, but I would be extremely (if pleasantly) surprised if he were to actually get enough votes to continue his viability as a candidate. Failing that, I'll hope John McCain pulls it out.

Michael Barone: The Political Plot Thickens

Obesity surgery seen as diabetes cure

The patients had stomach band surgery, a procedure more common in Australia than in the United States, where gastric bypass surgery, or stomach stapling, predominates.

Gastric bypass is even more effective against diabetes, achieving remission in a matter of days or a month, said Dr. David Cummings, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal but was not involved in the study.

FYI, a few days ago I wrote how links to the former Carnival of Debt Management had been redirected/replaced by spam sites? After I deleted my links to them, my search engine traffic jumped by about 40% within 24-48 hours. It could be partially or even completely due to an unrelated cause. Coincidences do happen. However, that's not my primary hypothesis at this point.

Did SocGen trades trigger market rout, Fed cut?

Societe Generale's shock disclosure of a fraud that lost it $7 billion has left investors wondering about a link between the fiasco and Monday's European stock market rout.

The sharp fall, which was followed by an emergency U.S. rate cut, came as SocGen tried to close out positions built up by one of its traders.

I strongly doubt that this was the entire reason, but it was a significant fraction.

History offers lessons for economic stimulus

Even if stimulus packages come late, they have a psychological impact, says Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and a former Congressional Budget Office director. "Almost always the kick comes too late to moderate the decline or begin the turnaround," he says. "But it does add a little oomph to the recovery that was going on anyway."

No kidding.

Wall Street extends its rebound

Wall Street scored its second straight big advance Thursday after economic figures suggested the job market is holding up and as lawmakers agreed on measures that could ease concerns about consumer spending. The Dow Jones industrials rose more than 100 points, bringing its two-day gain to more than 400.

On a 625-point run, Dow blasts out of deep hole

Wall Street is making a habit of turning stock death spirals into buying opportunities.

This stimulus package is about buying votes, not helping the economy.

Frustrated with air travel delays?

Air Traffic Safety vs. Capacity

Why is your flight so late? Finally, the explanation

I wrote about this almost a year ago.

Fed slashes rates

In a rare action between regularly scheduled meetings, the U.S. central bank cut the benchmark federal funds rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3.5 percent, its lowest level since September 2005.

and

Even after the Fed's move, interest-rate futures markets showed a 74 percent chance of another half-percentage point reduction in U.S. rates next week. They also pointed to a federal funds rate of 2.25 percent by midyear.

Market falls on recession concern but Fed cut helps

The Dow was down almost 465 points at its session low, while the Nasdaq, within minutes of the opening bell, dropped to a level indicating it had crossed the threshold of what is considered a bear market -- a fall of 20 percent from its October closing high.

The Dow, which isn't broad enough to be indicative of anything about the general market, nonethess fought back to only close 130 points down.

Emergency rate cut may show the Fed panicked

I'll agree with that. Of course, the overnight rate shouldn't have been at 5.25 in the first place. Kind of like what happens when you ride the brakes too long and too hard in the biggest train you can imagine - the US economy. You've now got to feed it more power that you otherwise would have so you can get up this hill the Fed created.

The cut was "obviously triggered by a stock market fall, regardless of the statement's talk about 'increasing downside risks to growth,'" said Gabriel Stein, an economist at Lombard Street Research in London.

By moving abruptly, the Fed took the gamble of exposing the extent of its own concerns about the deterioration in financial markets, and hinting it knows of even worse news waiting in the wings.

But asking bankers, who are mostly worried about inflation, to take action that might result in higher inflation before there's an obvious emergency, is expecting a little too much.

Don't ever confuse economists with bankers. To put it on a Sesame Street level, "one of these things is not like the other."

Dang, Darn, Drat, Phooey, Rats and Consarn it!

Fred Thompson quits presidential race

He was that rare candidate that the more I found out about him, the more I liked him as a leader, and the thought processes where he reached his decisions. I haven't been able to say that about anyone since Paul Tsongas (who made the mistake of alienating the Communist America-hating wing of his party with plans to economically revitalize the country).

All isn't necessarily lost. Thompson would be a good vice presidential pick for just about anyone, especially John McCain. But while Vice President has a lot of influence if he uses it correctly, he isn't the one with the big policy decisions to make.

With him and Duncan Hunter out, my hopes are pinned to Rudy Giuliani, after which I'll hold my nose and vote for John McCain. As far as I can tell at this point, everybody else would actively work to destroy the country.

(In case you haven't figured it out from the fact that I like Rudy Giuliani and really liked Paul Tsongas, I'm not a conservative. Indeed, I'm more Libertarian than anything else in my politics.)

Dems Feel Urgency to Enact Stimulus Plan

The only thing the Democratic leadership feels an "urgent need" to do is perform a bodily function with the taxpayer's money.

Okay, that's not quite accurate. They also feel a need to quit chasing the tail chasing impeachment and all the other Inquisistion-style hearings they've been holding about the Bush administration for doing things quite a bit milder than any other administration in recent memory. They need some kind of concrete accomplishment to take to the voters in November, or the Republicans are going to be back in the majority.

"The urgency that we feel at home is now even more urgent as we see the impact of our markets on others," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after lawmakers of both parties met with Bush at the White House.

Cross your legs and hold it, Nancy. We'll be paying interest on that money, and it'll be dragging us down until someone finds the integrity and courage to cut spending enough to pay it back.

The president also expressed confidence but said any deal must be done right, not just fast.

Right would imply that he has decided to do the intelligent, principled thing, which in this case is nothing. This whole call for economic stimulus really isn't going to help. There are things that would help, like, say, making it easier to do business and earn a profit. But that's not on the table.

This is called, "Voting with your feet":

More Jerusalem Arabs seek Israeli citizenship

After decades of living under Israeli rule and years watching the Palestinian Authority struggling to govern, more Arabs in Jerusalem are casting their lot with Israel.

Last year, as peace talks revived the possibility of handing over parts of Jerusalem to a new Palestinian nation, the number of Arab residents applying for Israeli citizenship more than doubled.

One party can't defeat jihadism

Campaign vows of "bipartisanship" are like New Year's resolutions to eat less and exercise more: ubiquitous, well-intentioned and usually forgotten.

Yet if anything has become clear since 9/11, it's that the war against jihadist terrorism must be owned and fought by both Republicans and Democrats. The war against jihadism is a long-term struggle to defend religious freedom, civic tolerance, democratic self-governance and other core Western political values. It's a war against an enemy with a different view of the human future. And it's a war that must be fought on many fronts -- military, political, intellectual, moral and economic -- simultaneously. A war this complex can't be the project of one party alone.

Read it. With less than a year to go in George Bush's term, if we don't get both parties on board, we're doomed. And I don't mean that in the "Charlie Brown" sense of the word. I mean in the literal sense of the word.

Carnival of Real Estate Recommended: #1 Question You Need to Ask Your New Stager

FYI:
For all you folks who may have linked or submitted to the Carnival of Debt Management in the past, it was brought to my attention that every single one of those carnivals has now been replaced by or redirected to a spam page (and vile lying spam at that). I have therefore removed all past links to the Carnival of Debt Management. This is not the only carnival that particular person runs. If you have past links to other carnivals run by the same person, you may want to see that linking to a spam site isn't hurting your search engine ranking.

"Help Wanted" highlights skills drain in U.S.

Tell people there's no future in an industry enough times, and nobody will train for that industry.

Some 20 percent of small to medium-sized manufacturers -- those with up to 2,000 workers -- cited retaining or training employees as their No. 1 concern, according to a survey by the National Association of Manufacturers. The survey was carried out in 2007 but has not been published yet.

A separate study in 2005, the latest available, said 90 percent of manufacturers are suffering a moderate to severe shortage of qualified workers.

This headline is basically what I was thinking Saturday night:

McCain Gets Rebound Win, But No Clincher, in South Carolina

33-30 over Huckabee, with Fred Thompson 3rd. I'm sad Duncan Hunter dropped out, I'm even sadder that Fred Thompson (my current 1st choice candidate) didn't do better, but at least Huckabee didn't win. I do think Huckabee's campaign is on the verge of losing all credibility, both as far as with voters and as far as ability to win. If he couldn't win South Carolina, where his message could be expected to resonate far better than (for instance) Florida, California, and New York, he's toast. Furthermore, it was a big win for Senator McCain, in that he took on opponents with a more regionally appealing message and won anyway. Fifteen years of trying to repeal the first amendment or not, I could live with John McCain as president. He is able to lead, he is able to compromise, and he has steadfastly maintained a correct stance on the War on Terror, no matter how politically unpopular at the time. I'd much rather have Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani, but if the choice on the ballot in November is John McCain or any of the leading Democrats, I'll hold my nose and vote for McCain.

On to Florida, where Rudy Giuliani (my current second choice candidate) has staked his candidacy. Rudy wins Florida, we've got a whole new ballgame. If McCain or Romney wins Florida, chances are that everyone else should depart the race, and I would really rather have McCain, flawed as he is, than Romney. If Romney wins the Republican nomination, it's very possible that I might vote for the Democrat in November. If Huckabee should somehow pull out the nomination, it's all but certain that I would.

The San Diego Special Edition

I have to agree with Don Surber on the economic stimulus package.

Yes, there are people who are getting hurt by the mortgage meltdown. The stimulus package won't help those who are consumers. The ones who are corporations made a bet and lost. That's why they make the big bucks - because they're supposed to, in theory, deal with it themselves if it all goes wrong.

Those corporations made those choices in full cognizance of consequences. Far as I'm concerned, they can. Suck. It. Up.

Photographs are easily understood. Unless they've been altered, they tell truth. Unfortunately, they only tell that portion of the truth seen from that camera's viewpoint when the shutter clicked. Neo-neocon has a beautiful example of how photographs can be used to lie.

I was 11 in 1972. I remember the reactions to those photos. For one, I found out the real truth almost immediately. For the other, I was in college (late 70's/early 80s) when I found out what had really happened. In both cases, however, the editors of the newspapers involved knew the stories at the same time they got the photographs, and nonetheless used these two very famous photographs to twist their representation of those events in the furtherance of their preferred narrative. For me, It was an early education in the way smart people get others to believe lies: Tell the truth, but only that portion of the truth that agrees with your agenda.

Whatever our opinion of our current governmental mess, we can all give thanks to whatever we worship that we don't live in Yemen, as Jane over at Armies of Liberation covers their seemingly escalating civil conflict.

Jeez, keep people in poverty and under the oppression of a ruthless dictatorship for a measly thirty years, a mere half dozen or so stolen elections on one hand, turn a blind eye allowing religious nutcases to arm themselves and organize...

And you have a recipe for disaster like any number of others. You really want the litany? It just makes me even more depressed.

Every single one of the people of Yemen is a human being, with as much human dignity and value as anyone else anywhere in the world. That we don't have to put up with it and they do is nothing more than an accident of birth, and I am embarrassed and mortified that the people of the developed world have let it come to this pass, and that I among them haven't done more to shut it down. I weep that there is no way any of the so called "wealthy, developed" countries of the world is going to do anything to help remedy the situation, and that many of the very people who pretend to care the most about the downtrodden have caused this in the name of immediate political expediency. I am deeply sorry that the people of Yemen, once one of the more promising countries of the region, have been sold down the river one tiny bit at a time over the last six decades in the name of what was convenient at the time.

Words fail.

When are we going to face the fact that anyone living in a repressed state anywhere in the world is the problem of everyone else everywhere in the world in these days when one mentally imbalanced "revolutionary guerrilla" with access to the right weapons can potentially murder hundreds of thousands of people that have nothing to do with their conflict? There may not be any immediate solutions, but that's no excuse for allowing these problem areas to fester. Can't we at least adopt, "Set up the conditions to make it better. Never let it get any worse" as a working creed?

To all the "international realists": Your butcher's bill has come due. Again.

Jawa Report is asking for help getting some terrorist websites shut down. If you want to feel a little bit better about yourself after the above, take some action in the propaganda war against repressive murdering scum that are also trying to kill our soldiers and a few million-sized lots of us civilians, if they can.

Christopher Hitchens on bigotry in The Perils of Identity Politics

I have nothing but contempt for anyone who votes for or against anyone upon the basis of such superficialities as skin color or gender. It is just as bigoted to vote for someone because they are black or a woman or a giant three toed tree sloth as it is to vote against them because you're not. Please, can somebody kill this undead horse of an idea once and for all so we can all stop beating it? Otherwise, we're going to end up in a tribalized mess like the former Yugoslavia, or any number of countries in Africa, to name only the most obvious examples.

I am not going to vote for a bad candidate because "it's time" for a member of whatever group they supposedly represent to be elected. Any representation that doing so can in any way be represented as sane or rational behavior is pure Male Bovine Fecal Matter.

Captain's Quarters on "Politicizing the Office"

Or, to use the morality of an eight year old: "It's okay when we do it because we're the good guys."

That one won't wash with anyone past middle school.

Much much more at Judicial Watch (via Michelle Malkin

Carnival of the Capitalists. Looks like Bizosphere has come to a similar conclusion I have as regards Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate

Recommended: A post summarizing mortgage securities from Econbrowser. Nothing that regular readers shouldn't be familiar with (indeed, I've gone into greater detail on some points), but worth reading for dealing with it all in one place.

A worthy discussion of rational libertarian views versus irrational ones over at Q and O

I have no use for anyone who substitutes jingoism for thinking a problem through, even if they might happen to agree with me on some subjects. Dale's done a good job of thinking it through. The people complaining to him (about his voting as a juror to convict a drug trafficker), not so much.

Note to politicians: A telephone is a two way communication device. When my phone rings, I expect to be able to hold a conversation. You are, after all, asking for my attention right now. Using automated message delivery frustrates this. If you just want to send me a message, use mail - whether electronic or snail. Believe me, you're better off if I drop your message in the trash unread or consign you to the email blacklist than when I get a phone call from a machine. It wasn't for nothing that people demanded the Do Not Call list, and nobody likes political calls any better than telemarketers. It's not like you're not after my wallet just as much as they are, if not more. Just because it's not illegal doesn't mean you have to be that stupid yourself. Just sayin'.

Looks like Romney finally won one. Of course, he's from Michigan originally, his father was governor of the state, and he heavily pandered to his audiences in the state, which his major competition (John McCain) declined to do. Furthermore, the weather was reported as being bad in most places, bad enough to keep the independents McCain was hoping would cross over home. If Romney hadn't won under such circumstances, it would be time for him to go home. As it is, a 39-30 victory allows him to stay in the race, but it isn't as strong as he should have been under those circumstances.

I've decided Romney ranks behind John McCain, ahead of only Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee on my current list of Republican preferences. Judging Romney by his record (MassCare and electoral pandering are only the most salient), I might even vote for Hillary if she appears on the ballot opposite Romney. At least everybody knows she's the enemy of fiscal prudence and civil rights and individual responsibility. But with her only winning by 15 points over "None of the Above" since her supporters kept Obama and Edwards off the Michigan ballot, it's looking less likely she'll even win the nomination.

(My first choice at the moment is still Fred Thompson, followed by Rudy Giuliani, then Duncan Hunter. John McCain would still get my vote over any of the current crop of Democrats, but I'm not so sure the same thing can be said for Romney. Huckabee, who seems to be running upon his credentials as a minister, is Right Out for that reason as well as his record in Arkansas. Obama talks a good game right now, but his record indicates his real sympathies are elsewhere. Edwards is a false-populist demogogue in the worst tradition of Elmer Gantry, albeit with false populism substituted for religion. Ron Paul is as crazy as "Mad Cow" Kucinich, and the only thing we'd accomplish by electing either one is making Jimmy Carter's record as president look good, because there's no way they could lead Congress or the Courts where they want to go, and that is a requirement for a successful presidency. After about two months, even if it was a national emergency, Congress would be trying to figure out which of half a dozen congressional plans they'd enact, instead of anything proposed by either one of them)

Carnival of Personal Finance

I don't often link or even read "aggrieved relatives" letters, but Armies of Liberation has one worth making an exception for. A letter from Gary Swenchonis, who was the father of Gary G. Swenchonis Jr, murdered on the USS Cole in Yemen. It's damning.

(it's also cross-posted at Jawa Report, which is a general anti-terrorism site worth reading)

What is the biggest concern amongst financial advisors right now? The sub-prime meltdown? The housing downturn? A possible recession? No, no, and no. It's a Democrat in the White House

"[Departing from] the Bush administration's approach to taxation will have a large impact on advisers and their clients," said John E. Coyne, president of Berwyn, Pa.-based Brinker Capital, which manages $9.4 billion in assets. "When taxes begin to erode returns, equities remain less attractive."

This doesn't just influence financial advisors' standard of living, you know.

Separated-at-birth twins get married

Nope, wasn't talking about the Clintons. These folks weren't even from Arkansas!

Private Papers has a review - from a historian's viewpoint - of Jonah Goldberg's new book.

The. Truth. Hurts. (in ways that lies cannot)

Why Comments here require login:

I had sent email to my hosting service asking why pages were loading so slowly (the main control panel and email pages were the worst - my browser was timing out half the time - but it impacted basically every page on the site)

Here is the response I got:

There are repeated passby attempts of spammers to hammer away at your comments script. A look at the overall resource usage on the server indicates that your site is actually the highest in terms of usage. We do, however, want to move the site to a beefier server of a higher specification than DELETED (and brand new, since we just set it up last week) to see if that will take away some of the load created when the spammers make their runs through the sites.

By the time you're reading this, the change should have been made, completely transparent to the readers. I may have to modify a bookmark or two.

Between the two sites, I've been averaging 2000 to 2500 actual human visitors per day and less than 30,000 total page views even counting all the bots and search engines. It's all text, so I'm not even averaging a Gig per day bandwidth. But spamster scum and their bots evidently really want to put links to all the usual spam here. This site is not THAT big. Okay, it's not as far out "the long tail" as some, but still, even if they were to succeed, I'd rip it down next time I looked at comments (every day, usually more than once. How about a few more folks speak up?)

(I told them what my bandwidth usage was when I signed up with them, and I have yet to equal the bandwidth I used in July with the previous hosting service).

FYI: the Guidelines for Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate have been amended, adding the following:

"UPDATE: (January 11th, 2008): I am so tired of getting the same crud time and time again that effective with the submissions for the Carnival for January 30, 2008 (everything submitted after January 13th, 2008), I'm going to be starting a section entitled "Spam and Other Ridiculous Submissions" There may or may not be links, depending upon whether the host believes the public shame will offset the search engine value of a link in a given case. I'm just tired of getting the same things that are solicitations for business based upon ideas that are incorrect, poorly researched, and often, just plain wrong. I'm not intending to use it for anyone that I believe might have been made in good faith with attention paid to these guidelines, but the submissions I've been getting just cry out for some kind of answer. You're willingly submitting this garbage, or having your agent do so. Deal with it."

One instance of collateral damage from our current legal system.

My wife would have loved an effective morning sickness pill, such as Bendectin is supposed to be. Her morning sickness with our first was something awful. But she couldn't, because lawyers and people looking for jackpots and scapegoats caused the manufacturer to remove it from the market in the United States.

The "first listed" plaintiff against Indiana's Voter ID Act is registered to vote in Florida.

She has a Florida Driver's License.
She has homestead exemptions in two states. The legal limit is one. Two is tax fraud, as well as the voter fraud she committed.

She represented herself as a Florida resident in order to get a Florida license and Florida property tax exemption, and willingly registered to vote in Florida as well as surrendering her Indiana drivers license as part of the process. Then she wonders why her vote is challenged in Indiana.

Time to have the property tax people pay her a visit for tax fraud. As well as introduce evidence that this law has actually prevented voter fraud in the case of one of the plaintiffs against it.

She claims she never voted in Florida, which isn't directly answered yes or no in the article, and therefore am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. But I doubt that all Snowbirds shared her restraint. I seem to recall more than one call on leftist sites for snowbirds to vote in two states back in 2004. Even if they share my views, nobody is permitted to vote twice, or even register in two places which renders such voting easily achievable. State voter registries are not set up to catch people registering in multiple states. But here's one who has now been stopped. And a tax cheat frustrated as well. I'd say that's two benefits from one law.

Nor do I see anything in common with the old Jim Crow "keep the black folks from voting" Poll taxes (together with grandfather laws, the origination of the concept).

Fare the well, Sir Edmund Hillary.

He seems to have done an awful lot of good with his fame.

He will be missed.

Thanks to Don Surber for his link to my article on the future of agency!

I just haven't felt much like writing these past couple days. I have lots of ideas blocked out, but nothing inspires me right now. Mind you, Wednesday's article was a monster. I've also been playing a game of Stars!, which is quite time intensive (it's only a few Meg - not much for graphics, but for someone who likes high level strategy games, quite addictive, and available shareware). Maybe I'm just a little burned out, and will feel like writing in a few more days. If you've got any questions you'd like to see addressed, now might be a good time to ask!

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate (Thank you for choosing to highlight my submission!)

Be Prepared: Boy Scout Saves Maldives President

Makes the cut for me.

Four health changes can prolong life 14 years

Pretty much the ones you'd expect.

The lifestyle change with the biggest benefit was giving up smoking, which led to an 80 percent improvement in health, the study found. This was followed by eating fruits and vegetables.

My thoughts on today's New Hampshire primaries: If we were to go by what the candidates are telling us today, I'd be voting for Obama or McCain if I lived in New Hampshire. However, since I believe upon going by records of actions, neither one is my first choice at this point.

Once again, no matter who the winners are today, the rest of the country loses.

Here;s a good page covering the due on sale clause of mortgages.

While I'm at it, Default Lines: The New Math Of Credit Scores

Two people with the same FICO score currently could see their scores diverge under the new system. One possible reason: FICO 08 gives more points to consumers who maintain a variety of credit types, such as credit cards, a mortgage and auto loan, because it shows they can manage payments on different kinds of loans. On the other hand, the new scoring system penalizes to a greater degree borrowers who use a high percentage of their available credit.

So maxing your credit cards will hurt more, as will serious and repeated delinquencies. They're also closing the "authorized used" method of credit repair, despite the fact that it may hurt some legitimate users, as it has been abused too much. No word yet on whether they've implemented the massive hit for negative amortization loans they've been talking about.

Scotland Yard Joins Bhutto Probe

I have a hard time believing anybody really falls for a "pump and dump", but here's evidence they do: "Spam king" indicted in stock fraud scheme

$3 million in the summer of 2005 alone. That's a lot of cheez whiz. And every penny made from suckers who thought they were getting something for nothing.

Almost makes me want to invent a Santa Claus con...

Carnival of The Capitalists

via Liberty Papers, The Media's Top 10 Economic Myths of 2007

Allow me to state that the airlines don't get off the hook entirely. How many flights are theoretically scheduled to depart at 8:00 AM? How many actually can? Now ask yourself how many are scheduled to arrive at peak times? Sequencing arrivals is a real trick - sequencing for LAX covers the whole of the southwestern United States. And even though there may be four parallel runways there, it's real tough when you have a twenty way tie.

My predictions for the Iowa caucuses: Someone will win for each of the two major parties. Whoever it is, the rest of the country loses.

Bills that came due, over at VDH's Private Papers.

December 2007 visits were up significantly from November, weirdly enough, and page views by visitors skyrocketed thirty percent! 60,021 visits, 757,248 page views (There were an additional 505,000 page views by automation, such as bots and web-crawlers). Running totals, 2,244,807 visits, 8,834,644 page views

Thank you all for stopping by

I recently read that Hello Kitty was going to start marketing to boys. I was thinking, "Yeah, right," but it appears someone has a suggestion which may make it happen.

Scrappleface has the best take on Huckabee's holier than thou dirty tricks.

Samizdata and Instapundit on Fred Thompson: "Too sane to be president."

I must disagree. I think he's sane enough to be a great President. Unfortunately, he's much too sane to be elected President.

Bill Whittle has posted another of his Magnificent Works, over at Eject! Eject! Eject! Make time to read them. Part I and Part II.