WHY NOT A windfall profit tax on authors?
Archive for 2008
June 10, 2008
DAVID BYRNE AND XENI JARDIN on BoingBoing TV.
DOG BITES MAN: Lamberting.
ERIC ZORN: Let’s clarify the Obama-Rezko deal.
RED WINE: Is there anything it can’t do? “Recent reports suggest that red wine is a potent force in increasing lifespan, and a new study offers still more good news for wine drinkers. A glass a day, whether white or red, may reduce the risk of developing the nation’s most common liver disorder, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.”
Note: Drinking a bottle a day will not make you five times better than a glass . . . .
JOHN MCCAIN WILL visit Colombia. “McCain’s visit will surely emphasize the proposed free trade deal between the U.S. and Colombia that has stalled in Congress. But a stop in Bogota will also allow McCain to press another, more central, issue in his campaign: Obama’s willingness to meet unconditionally with hostile foreign leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.”
RON PAUL plans his own convention.
RON BAILEY: “The Lieberman-Warner-Boxer cap-and-trade climate change bill disappeared from the Senate last week, but not before certain senators uttered, let’s just say, some untruths about what its effects on energy prices would have been.”
IT WASN’T BY ACCIDENT: How the polar bear became famous.
JEFFREY HIRSCH on Employee Collective Action in a Global Economy.
SLANDERING JOE LIEBERMAN?
MORE OF THE SAME: “President Bush and European allies on Tuesday threatened tougher sanctions to squeeze Iran’s finances and derail its potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Bush said the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran would endanger world peace.” This never seems to work, does it?
READING THE TEA LEAVES at The Mudville Gazette.
IN THE MAIL: Rob Walker’s Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. I suspect his analysis applies to political candidates, too.
Plus, from Barbara Ehrenreich, This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation.
Knoxville, Tennessee.
IN IRAQ, a surge of optimism.
MAJOR JOHN TAMMES: So how was your morning?
WELL, THIS IS GOOD NEWS: Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits. It appears, however, that the threat was always exaggerated, probably for a combination of political and funding-related reasons.
AMERICA’S NATIVE CRIMINAL CLASS: Now extending beyond Congress to include staffers? “A former congressional aide admitted in court proceedings that his wife received unreported payments from an arms-control group with ties to top security officials in the Russian government, according to several people involved in an inquiry of a former congressman. The aide worked as chief of staff for former Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican.” And note the nonprofit/NGO angle.
MORE ON PREDATORS IN SUBURBIA:
Last summer, Kerry Beaudry heard yelping from her German shepherd, Holly, and went outside to investigate. What she found still gives her chills. A small, mangy creature was on top of Holly, digging its claws into the scruff of her neck and gnawing at her face.
“I had never seen anything like it,†Ms. Beaudry recalled. “I didn’t know what it was. It kind of looked like a fox. But it was very, very ratty looking and had fangs and claws. It was creepy looking, but not that big.â€
The animal was a fisher, a weasel-like predator of the deep woods that was saved from extinction in the Northeast and Midwest and has migrated into suburban backyards.
The small, sleek animal has cultivated a reputation as a ferocious killer of small pets, including cats and chickens, putting animal owners on edge.
Okay, it’s not as exciting as David Baron’s mountain lions, but it’s the same phenomenon at work.
A DARK CORNER OF EUROPE, PART II: Another report from Michael Totten.
LAURA BUSH defends Michelle Obama’s patriotism.
UPDATE: I’m getting lefty email on this, so I’ll just point out this Michelle Obama defense from several months ago. I don’t take my cues from the Bush Administration — and, alas, it’s obvious that they don’t take their cues from me, either . . . .
REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.