THIS sounds like good news: “U.S. companies are gearing up to create jobs at rates not seen since the height of the 1990s boom, a survey released Tuesday showed, adding to evidence that job growth will keep the U.S. economic recovery rolling.”
Archive for 2004
June 15, 2004
MARYVILLE (AP) — As the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment moves out, Blount County is sending a way for them to message back home.
Mayor Beverley Woodruff loaned a half-dozen laptop computers and a laser printer to the Blount County squadron of the 278th. The soldiers were also given 25 digital cameras to keep.
Cool.
AS I’VE MENTIONED BEFORE, I’m against torture. Megan McArdle has an interesting post on the subject in response to an interesting post by Mark Kleiman.
I find it hard to respond to these things in terms of cost-benefit. My law school mentor Charles Black once said that of course you can come up with scenarios — the classic ticking-nuclear-bomb example — where torture might be justified. And you can be sure that, in those cases, if people think it’ll work they’ll use it no matter what the rules are. But there’s a real value to pretending that there’s an absolute rule against it even if we know people will break it in extraordinary circumstances, because it ensures that people won’t mistake an ordinary remedy for an extraordinary one.
I also think that the rather transparent effort to use this against Bush — often by people who think nothing of cozying up to the likes of Castro, for whom torture and murder are essential tools of governance — has caused the Abu Ghraib issue to be taken less seriously than perhaps it ought to be.
UPDATE: Useful thoughts on why torture is a bad idea, from Brian Dunn.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here.
LT SMASH says that the “new” Zarqawi memo isn’t new.
MAKING MILLIONAIRES: “North America is turning out more millionaires than the rest of the world combined.” It’s something we’re good at. Cool.
Many U.N. employees fear reprisals from their bosses if they step forward with information on the Iraq oil-for-food scandal or report other allegations of corruption, according to a shocking internal survey released yesterday.
A recent poll of 6,086 employees and managers released on the U.N. Web site revealed that the staff has little faith in the world body leadership’s commitment to ethics and integrity and that most believe that when allegations of wrongdoing surface, they are not properly handled.
The survey, conducted by an outside consulting firm for the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight, also revealed that a large plurality of the staffers feel unprotected from reprisals for reporting violations because the United Nations does not have strong enough whistleblower protection and is run by an “old-boys network.”
Sounds about right to me. And this scandal is much bigger than Enron. So what are we going to do about it?
CRYPTO-EXPERT BRUCE SCHNEIER tries to decipher the story about Chalabi and the Iranian codes.
MICHELLE MALKIN writes that Paul Krugman is lying when he says that Ashcroft hasn’t convicted any terrorists, and provides a long list of . . . convicted terrorists as proof. Will the New York Times run a correction?
Meanwhile Stephen Green has other problems with Krugman.
SLATE’S BOGUS “BUSHISMS” AND LAME “KERRYISMS” are the topic of a new item on Spinsanity by Ben Fritz. These features have done more to diminish Slate than either Bush or Kerry, in my opinion.
ECONOBLOGARAMA! This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up.
THOSE WHO REMEMBER the great cookware pricing discussion may be interested to know that I bought a couple of cheap Cuisinart pots to use on the grill outside — and they’re very good, in spite of the ridiculously low prices. Go figure.
UPDATE: A fellow blogger sends an I told you so post regarding the Cuisinart.
MISUNDERESTIMATED? Charles Rousseaux thinks that Bush’s vision on space is much grander than is generally realized. I certainly hope that Rousseaux’s rather positive assessment is right, but I’m not nearly as optimistic.
TIM CAVANAUGH IS STAKING OUT A BOLD POSITION:
It doesn’t matter how much gas costs, how poorly things are going in Iraq, what new torture memos surface, or whether there are new terror attacks inside our borders. John Kerry hasn’t got a whore’s chance in a convent, Bush is going to kick his ass all over the United States, and when we see the results in November, the idea that anybody ever thought Kerry had a prayer will seem as quaint and absurd as the brief flurry of “excitement” for Dukakis (or was it Kakdukis?) back in Old ’88.
As I say, bold.
UPDATE: Here are some earlier thoughts of mine on Bush’s vulnerability. I don’t view Bush’s prospects nearly as favorably as Cavanaugh does. But then, he’s been in the tank for Bush all along!
ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, Kerry’s “misery tour” seems likely to flop, at least to me. As I said a while back, this campaign is like a World Series between the Cubs and the Red Sox.
THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE offers a very nice photo essay.
ALL TOMORROW’S MEDIA: Interesting point:
When U.S. policy was at its best, it refused to give the titans of one technology control over the next technology that came along. For example, the Post Office was not given control of the telegraph; Western Union did not control the telephone; and AT&T was locked out of radio. The lessons for us now, when the masters of old technologies, such as the movies and recorded music, want to control Internet technologies, should be obvious.
Indeed.
THERE’S LOTS OF INTERESTING STUFF over at EconoPundit.
Meanwhile, Ann Althouse has multiple posts on the Newdow decision, and Dean Esmay has a suggestion for discouraging terrorists that clearly falls in the “what would Bugs Bunny do?” category. I think it’s worth a try.
MORE ON AGING AND EXTENDED LIFESPANS: Here’s an interesting Slashdot thread about the Methuselah Mouse Project and related items. But this post is my favorite bit:
Whenever the subject of interfering with nature / the divine plan comes up, I refer to this response which I heard one day in an interview: the single development in recorded history which has most vastly extended lifespans was the invention of the toilet… yet you don’t hear people going around debating the morality of having toilets.
This reply is pretty funny.
OUTDOOR LIFE praises gay blogger.
IRAQIS RESCUE AMBUSHED CONVOY: Via BlackFive.
FRANCE reportedly faces an African quagmire in which it has lost the trust of, well, everyone.
ARTHUR CHRENKOFF has an interesting survey of how media are spinning the European elections.
REGISTRATION-REQUIRED NEWSPAPER SITES: Jeff Jarvis notes a growing controversy. Here’s the advice I offered them a while back. Doesn’t look like they followed it.
DIGITAL SLR WARS: Here’s a review of Canon’s latest offering. However, given its near-$4500 price tag even at a discount, I think I’ll stick with my D70. Meanwhile, here’s an interesting item from Technology Review on how this stuff works.
TALKING PIGS AND JETSONS CARS — via the blogad on the right, I just watched this flash ad from the AARP. I’m a lot less skeptical about social security privatization than they are (in fact, I’m cautiously in favor of it) but the cartoon somehow kept making me think of James Lileks. And I’ll endorse any policy if the AARP will make sure it delivers a Jetsons-style flying car.