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"I left my 9-year-old at Bloomingdale’s (the original one) a couple weeks ago. Last seen, he was in first floor handbags as I sashayed out the door. Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad."
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-the-subway-alone/
"Two of the nation's leading civil liberties organizations and a new organization dedicated to the abolition of software patents have all filed amicus briefs in a patent case that could give the courts an opportunity to revisit the issue of software and business method patents."
"In fact, throughout history candidates who did not win have had a tremendous impact on changing the paradigm in the United States. Almost every major shift has been spurred by third party candidates who did not win...."
"Yes, the open-source database market is still relatively small (roughly $200 million in 2007, according to Gartner). But when The Wall Street Journal starts paying attention (subscription required), it's clear that the opportunity is huge. "
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9913963-16.html
"It is an economy in which government is the largest employer. Manufacturing employment comprises just under 10% of total employment and about 12% of private sector employment. Everything else is services, and not particularly high level services."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts04092008.html
"The Bush administration is likely to move its research on one of the most contagious animal diseases from an isolated island laboratory to the U.S. mainland near herds of livestock, raising concerns about a catastrophic outbreak."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080411/ap_on_go_ot/animal_disease;
"Jefferson County failed to post $184 million in collateral in early March and has been in technical default since then. JP Morgan and other investment banks are on the other side of the swaps. The investment banks want Jefferson county to raise taxes to cover its obligations. Jefferson County wants the Wall Street brokers to renegotiate the swaps and insists it will not raise taxes."
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/jefferson-county-death-spiral-swaps.html
"And worse yet for us alcohol-besotted worthless lushes out here, heroically keeping bartenders and comely barmaids gainfully employed year around, the price of hops, an integral ingredient in beer making, has soared from $4 a pound to $40."
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG041008.html
"When the state confers a special privilege on an occupation, a business firm, or an industry, and then sets regulatory limits on the use of that privilege, the regulation is not a new intrusion of statism into a free market. It is, rather, the state’s limitation and qualification of its own underlying statism. The secondary regulation is not a net increase, but a net reduction in statism. On the other hand, the repeal of the secondary regulation, without an accompanying repeal of the primary privilege, would be a net increase in statism. Since the beneficiaries of privilege are a de facto branch of the state, the elimination of regulatory constraints on their abuse of privilege has the same practical effect as repealing a constitutional restriction on the state’s exercise of its own powers."
http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/04/08/dialectical-libertarianism/
"The one recurring element in this story is that, while governments can control the flow of some and even all petroleum, they cannot print it as they do paper notes. The Gulf States and OPEC, along with every other institution that holds dollar reserves, is sitting under what James Fallows and others have called the Sword of Damocles: they are damned either way. The issue is further precipitated every time the Fed manipulates the interest rate, creating bubbles and devaluing the currency even further."
"We're happy when we're Money. We feel clean. But then we get turned into Taxbucks and we're never clean again. What happens is that a thing called 'Government' ignores the libertarian principle of non-coercion and forcibly takes a bunch of us away from the humans who legitimately earned us."
http://www.rcreader.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12696&Itemid=42
"One obvious difference between a common criminal gang, and the specialized version of a criminal gang called a 'government,' is this: Common gangs don't expect their victims to be abjectly grateful to be on the receiving end of criminal violence, and even to pay for the privilege of being plundered."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/04/bipartisan-brotherhood-of-plunder.html
"Our economic future could be even bleaker than you expect — and last year was the moment to unleash your inner survivalist. If the financial system suffers any more crises of confidence, credit gets even tighter, and the fed falls into a liquidity trap, we could be in for several hardscrabbling dystopian years. Forget maintaining your current shiny standard of living — how will you feed and clothe yourself, in the worst case scenario? We've compiled a few suggestions for things you can do now to brace yourself." [BTW, silver remains relatively inexpensive and accessible, compared to foreign currencies.]
http://io9.com/378581/12-ways-to-prepare-for-the-next-great-depression
"These protests are not specifically about democracy, land usage rights, or welfare provisions per se, all common protest themes of Han Chinese. Rather, they are about de jure independence. They are not limited to a single concentrated area or even a single country; instead, the protests have gone global and become highly diffused. "
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5138
"If tax evasion were unfeasible or impossibly risky, the majority could go further to exploit the minority. In that sense, facilities for tax evasion are safety valves against taxation becoming more abusive than it is at present. Tax havens are one such facility. This is not to say that their operations are just. But they do fulfil a useful function in tempering the democratic juggernaut."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Jasaytaxes.html
"[T]he exodus from the dollar which has gathered pace over the last few years has led both private and institutional investors globally to ratchet up their gold acquisitions. Investment demand, since the inception of the bull market, has climbed relentlessly higher as a result. In 2001, according to World Gold Council statistics, 400 tonnes were purchased for investment. By 2007, that figure had climbed to just over 1000 tonnes, and the 2007 gold turnover in dollar terms set a new record. Above ground stocks of gold held for investment in the aggregate now rival that of central banks -- 25,800 tonnes held by private investors and 28,500 tonnes held by the official sector."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/71693-why-gold-is-likely-to-keep-moving-higher
"All of the atrocities and murders that have thus far come to light from the hellish pit of the Bush gulag are the direct responsibility of the 'Principals,' the inner circle, the Privy Council, the Star Chamber of the real American government: the 'National Security State' that operates outside all law, all oversight, all constitutional legitimacy."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1480&Itemid=135
"One might think that given the experience with the USA PATRIOT Act and many other abuses of power, Congress would be leery about giving this president his biggest blank check yet to suspend the Constitution. But that would be naive. The new law was put in place in response to the debacle of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. There was no evidence that permitting a president far more power would avoid future debacles, but such a law provides a comfort blanket to politicians. The risk of tyranny is irrelevant compared with the reduction of risk of embarrassment to politicians."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0801c.asp
"Attorney General John Ashcroft, obviously disturbed as he and his cabinet colleagues discussed specific torture practices, stated that 'History will not judge this kindly.' I don’t agree with John Ashcroft on much, but on this point he proves a master of understatement. The seniormost members of the Bush cabinet sat, plotted, advised and directed the implementation of war crimes. And that’s exactly how history will view it."
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002830
"Yoo boldly asserts that the president’s power during wartime is nearly unlimited. For example, he argues that Congress has no right to pass laws governing the interrogations of enemy combatants and the commander-in-chief can ignore such laws if passed, and can, without constraint, seize oceangoing ships. The memos also argue that military operations in the United States against terrorists are not subject to the Fourth Amendment requirement for search warrants or the Fifth Amendment requirement for due process."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2164
"According to the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, almost 5 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in their country. Over 2.4 million fled their homes for safer areas within Iraq, up to 1.5 million were living in Syria, and over 1 million refugees were inhabiting Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and Gulf States. This torrential refugee flow has slowed in recent months, but not because the situation inside Iraq has been improving. Instead, it's slowed because Iraq's neighbors have become so overwhelmed they've begun to close their doors. Iraqis now require a visa to enter both Syria and Jordan and are not allowed to work legally in either country."
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5136
"What is it with the Israelis? Why do they have a predilection for murderous tyrants? What seems, at first, like a pattern of sheer moral perversity may be broken down, in specific cases, into discrete economic, strategic, and diplomatic objectives. Yet one has to be astonished – and more than a little horrified – at the complete amorality that guides the Israeli government's actions around the world."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12675
"Since it is presidential campaign season, we will inevitably be treated to the usual discourse about tax cuts. Some candidates will call for tax cuts, undoubtedly as a way to bribe voters into voting for them. Others will resist the call, undoubtedly in fear that their favorite government program might not receive desired funding. In actuality, all the tax-cut talk will be rather meaningless, especially for advocates of liberty."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0712a.asp
"Wow! The Fed deliberately created so much money and credit, for so long, totally distorting the economy of the United States and the world into a grotesque, twisted, cancerous monstrosity so that the entire financial system is choking to death on the poison of un-payable debt loads, and now this same Federal Reserve is going to get MORE powers to create MORE weird distortions and more inflation in the money supply and more inflation in consumer prices like food? Yow! We are freaking doomed!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG040908.html
"When no one else seems to care about these issues, we promote research and publish books that consider this topic from every angle. If you were going to reduce all these efforts to a single phrase, it would be, it's the government's doing. And the answer in a single phrase is, let the market, not government, manage the money."
"The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or 'unintended.' Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.html
"Autism, the fastest-growing developmental disorder in the nation, strikes at least 1 in 150 children. It has no cure; stories of 'recovered' children are the exception and fuel for a heated debate over how — and even whether — children should be treated. But parents such as DiFucci, who have watched their children regress into autism (and then make stunning improvements after undergoing alternative and mainstream therapies) are promoting the controversial idea that autistic symptoms can be improved."
"We have immigration because we want immigration. Liberals favor immigration because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy and international and all, and from a genuine streak of decency. Conservative Republican businessman favor immigration, frequently sotto voce, because they want cheap labor that actually shows up and works."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/TacImmigration.shtml
"The record of government bailouts of private financial institutions in the 1930s, of Continental Illinois Bank in 1984 (which cost $8 billion) and of the entire U.S. savings & loan industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s (which cost $125 billion) teaches that emergency loans keep weak institutions alive just long enough for their problems to increase. Bailouts encourage more risk-taking and eliminate the freedom to fail that is just as essential to a free-market economy as the freedom to succeed."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2165
"The world money supply is growing faster than the production of "stuff," resulting inevitably in less purchasing power for all currencies. How much longer this is sustainable is hard to say, but the odds increase every day that foreign holders of dollars will come to believe that the U.S. government is willing to sacrifice the dollar, and then they will begin to unload dollars in earnest. There are signs of this happening already, with the Chinese and others using their considerable dollar reserves to buy up large natural resource deposits, even shares in U.S. corporations. In other words, tangible items."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-9910.htm
"The fear is that when the public finds out what is really going on, they’ll draw the logical conclusion that the banking system is insolvent, which it probably is. ... it all began with eliminating the basic standards for issuing loans to credit-worthy applicants, the straw that broke the camel’s back. ... The bottom line is, whether the nation is headed into a deflationary spiral or not, all of the Fed’s tools are inflationary. Rate cuts, auction facilities or covert monetization all weaken the currency and levee an unfair tax on savers and people on fixed incomes. Unfortunately, these people have no voice in government, so we can’t expect their interests to be fairly represented." [I don't believe the US has had anything approaching laissez faire, nor that standard gov't regulation would have helped, but still this piece has insight.]
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/fed-up-bernanke-joins-g-7-to-stem-global-financial-meltdown/
"But it's not just carbon emissions that pose a potential problem, and it's not just Europe that's feeling a biofuel-induced hangover. The United States, for example, spends close to $11 billion a year on ethanol subsidies. By encouraging the planting of biofuels at the expense of other crops, these subsidies pose a serious risk to the world food supply."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125911.html
"The only reason the Bush administration has decided to conduct a trial for Mohammed, the alleged terrorist mastermind of the attacks on September 11, is because they feel confident in the outcome. It's a slam dunk. There's no chance that the perpetrator of the biggest act of terrorism in American history (against America, that is) will be found innocent. Bush thinks a Mohammed conviction will be a vindication for his kangaroo courts (Military tribunals) at Guantánamo Bay as well as reinforce the belief that the president has the inherent right to arbitrarily imprison anyone he chooses if he brands him an enemy combatant. It is a cynical power-play meant to increase presidential authority while further undermining fundamental legal protections."
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04082008.html
"While Bush, McCain, and the rest of the war chorus tout signs that the surge is working, it has become clear that by the end of the year, there will be more U.S. troops in Iraq than were there before the surge began. This, by administration standards, is success."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0804b.asp
"Besides demanding Iraq War money with no withdrawal timetables attached, the Bush administration has insisted on another kind of 'blank check' – war spending that has more than doubled in four years while evading serious congressional oversight because it’s wrapped in 'emergency' appropriations bills – a study says."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/041108a.html
"The Department of Defense reports that sailors and Air Force members are carrying out many different missions in Iraq, from traditional duties in the air and sea to construction jobs, medical operations, civil affairs, custom inspection, security and detention operations. Most are promised non-combative roles in Iraq, but many have found themselves to be in harms way once they arrive."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/that-other-military-draft/
"Funding the war had at least two aspects. There was the Allied debt to Morgan that had to be covered, along with direct American expenditures. Building and mobilizing an American Expeditionary Force requires money that for political reasons can only be partially provided through overt channels of appropriation. Conscripting kids and rushing them through boot camp, then packing them sardine-style into ships for the voyage overseas, then trucking them to rat-infested trenches, then hauling them out when they’re dead, maimed, diseased, or finished killing -- all of that and much more requires funding that only a central bank, with its surreptitious form of theft, can provide without political repercussions."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/smith/smith3.html
"It might sound odd coming from a libertarian, but I wish the Pelosi-Reid Democrats had more in common with Franklin Roosevelt. Not the Franklin Roosevelt who occupied the White House from 1933 to 1945, but the Franklin Roosevelt who aspired to the White House in the election of 1932."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125921.html
"One of the great achievements of the hippies is that they have never been a part of either faction [left or right] in terms of ideology, sexual or otherwise. Although they are capable of a social cohesion at times, under certain specific circumstances (from a good party to a political action), hippies are firm believers in the individual's right to private property and will fight any timber corporation to prevent encroachment on it."
http://www.counterpunch.org/hatch04122008.html
"The second episode in a series about the early social history of The Well, an influential early virtual community."
http://vlog.rheingold.com/index.php/site/video/john-coate-and-the-early-days-of-the-well/
"The curtain cannot fall on the Bush years soon enough. The sheer destruction has been unbearable for those with healthy human consciousness. We have witnessed the invasion of two countries – and the silent, smirking nod given to the invasion of a third – leaving cities leveled, towns wasted, and lives lost in uncounted thousands. The economic price we will pay is only just becoming visible through the rising smoke and ash, while eight years of power-lust and lawlessness have left our hard-won human liberties buried beneath the rubble."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/goyette2.html
"This hearing underscored why public support for the war has steadily eroded, to the point that 60 percent of the American people want a specific timetable for withdrawal. It has exposed the paucity of the War Party's arguments, giving even members of the president's own party, such as Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar, a platform from which to ask the one essential question everyone at those hearings (except for John McCain and Joe Lieberman) tried to get Petraeus and Crocker to answer, and that is: where does it end? When does it end?"
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12663
"Once again, in reporting to Congress, General Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker highlighted 'progress' in Iraq without discussing the price Iraqis are paying for the war and occupation of their country."
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5139
"I still vividly remember my father’s face — wrinkled, apprehensive, warm — as he last wished me farewell fourteen years ago. ... As I hauled my one small suitcase into a taxi that would take me to an Israeli airport an hour away, my father stood still. I wished he would go back inside; it was cold and the soldiers could pop up at any moment. As my car moved on, my father eventually faded into the distance, along with the graveyard, the water tower and the camp. It never occurred to me that I would never see him again."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/no-checkpoints-in-heaven/
"Imagine your Future Self, going about your disease-free, chemically-enhanced life in 2015. Yes, you have a jetpack and yes, you own a robot, but the key question is how much bandwidth will you need to watch your IPTV, browse your favorite Web 4.0 sites, download your (legal) P2P content, and video conference with your robotophobic mother-in-law? And will it be available?"
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/fiber-broadband-future.ars/
"IBM Corp. began shipping high-end computers Tuesday built around the fastest chip on Earth, a microprocessor that can carry out up to 5 billion instructions per second, surpassing the speediest competing processors built by rivals like Intel or Sun Microsystems."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/09/BUBI10258F.DTL
"Calling the situation 'untenable' and describing Windows as 'collapsing,' a pair of Gartner analysts this week said Microsoft must make radical changes to the operating system or risk becoming a has-been."
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1870375122;fp;16;fpid;2
"Gold remains the only standard by which the global financial system’s currencies can uniformly be measured throughout history, and is indeed the most basic and reliable benchmark of value for everything from commodities to T-bills."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/71528-the-gold-standard-can-t-live-with-it-can-t-live-without-it
"Boris Pasternak's novel, Doctor Zhivago, is best remembered for its star-crossed love story and its sweeping panorama of the Russian Revolution – themes amplified in David Lean's 1965 film version, a beautiful travesty which has largely supplanted the book in the public mind. But within his conventional narrative of shattering passions and historic upheavals, Pasternak subtly diffuses a deeply subversive philosophy that overthrows power structures and modes of thought that have dominated human life for thousands of years. Yet remarkably, this far-reaching, radical notion is based on one of the most humble concepts and lowly words in the Russian language: byt."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1483&Itemid=135
"Sometimes something would be required that I could do, and I did it. Sometimes when I didn’t know what was required, I still felt the requirement. Whatever I did never felt like enough. Something I knew was large and great would have happened. I would be aware of the great world that is always nearby, ever at hand, even within you, as the good book says. It’s something you would maybe just as soon not know about, but finally you learn about it because you have to."
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/03/0081443
"THE BIG 5-OH ... Oh boy ... 50 trips up to the Attic ... who woulda thunk."
http://unclewarrensattic.blogspot.com/2008/04/uncle-warrens-attic-50.html
"Weird Tales set itself apart from other pulps by always going one step deeper into the freak zone. Stories dealt with aliens, witches, and mutants. Covers often featured devils making love to ladies, monsters menacing beleaguered ingenues.... Now the venerable, perverted, brilliant magazine is celebrating its 85th birthday in style."
http://io9.com/378613/celebrate-the-85th-anniversary-of-weird-tales
"D0nnie's gone, and we don't know where he went. But, whatever. He deserves a tribute or sumthing."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNL7FututQ
"A new survey reports that healthy sex should last 3 to 13 minutes, but Stephen knows better."
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=165055
"[W]e ... are truly, truly toast. And not the good kind of toast where the edges of the crust are just starting to turn dark brown and the whole slice is a uniform, golden color, but the other kind of toast when every crumb of bread is burnt black, little flames are licking up at the edges, and all the smoke alarms in the whole freaking house are blaring 'Bleeeep! Bleeeep! Bleeeep!'"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG041108.html
"Media speculation is rampant over what exciting action sequences and romantic subplots the hikers may be experiencing if they are still alive."
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/plight_of_missing_hikers_will
"Liberals, and those further to the left, are often better than libertarians when it comes to their understanding of desirable outcomes. Too many vulgar libertarians view even the expression of dislike for pollution, worsening income inequality, and the like, as prima facie evidence of statism. As I quoted Arthur Silber in an earlier post, liberals can provide some of the context for a contextual libertarianism. But libertarians also have a context of their own to provide. Libertarians can point out the ways in which government has been a contributing factor to many of the evils that liberals object to. They can point out all the cases in which big business has been the prime mover behind the interventionist state, using “progressive” rhetoric to sell it to the public."
http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/04/10/common-ground/
"In any case, other people's cultures and values are perceived as a threat to our own, and as the cause of war and instability in the world. And selfishness could be greed, but it also could be lust, gluttony, or some other vice. Those who complain about a 'corrupt' culture are really complaining that other people are just too selfish."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2908
"On the face of it, there is no obvious reason why making the world a few degrees warmer would be a bad thing. Yet many people regard global warming not merely as a random element that might make things better or worse but as something obviously bad and obviously worth going to a lot of effort to prevent."
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/04/global-warming-hidden-assumption.html
"We often suppose that but for the words or deeds of a particular “great man,” the course of history would have been different. But where there is one fool, there may be another."
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=73
"I'm totally pro-choice about abortion rights, drug use, ice-cream flavors and sexual practices. So, in my life, there have been times when I've enjoyed promiscuity, other times when I've enjoyed celibacy, and currently I'm enjoying monogamy with my wife, Nancy, not because of any wedding vows we took--obviously, marital vow-taking has never prevented adultery--but rather because it's my choice."
http://www.counterpunch.org/krassner04092008.html
"Understand = under + stand.. stand under??? Huh???"
http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/04/11/understand/
"There are plenty of words in Inuit, or Eskimo, describing our red-breasted harbingers of spring. What's a little disturbing is how the myth of the robin persists, when it is so easy to find the truth."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9327
"I'd feel a lot better for the long-term health of the tech sector if this deal were taken off the table .... Here's where Microsoft's past as arrogant corporate jerks comes back to haunt the company."
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