May 31, 2004
Slackernomics
As you know by now, my book, Slackernomics: Basic Economics For People Who Think Economics is Boring has just been released.
What is the book about? Well, as the jacket blurb says:
If you think economics is boring, then maybe you’ve been learning about it in the wrong places. The humorous, informal style of Slackernomics makes it easy to learn a wealth of information that you will find useful in business, politics, or regular daily life. From the basics of economics to current political controversies, Slackernomics cuts through the dull, boring economic arguments you’re used to hearing, and presents them in a lively, interesting fashion.If you want to know about the basics of investing, or trade, or how the government uses—and misuses—you money, Slackernomics will give you the basics. Slackernomics is a must-have book for anyone who wants to know how the economy works, but who doesn’t want to be bored to tears while learning it.
Slackernomics uses witty, fun—sometimes outrageous—examples to help you learn the basics of economics, and maybe get a few good laughs while doing it. By the time you’re finished, you’ll be able to speak about the economy as knowledgeably as any real economist.
And you’ll be just as wrong as they are.
But, that's just the boring old marketing hype. What really matters, of course, is what's inside. So, just for QandO readers, here's a little excerpt from Chapter 3: Savings and Investment.
StocksA stock is a share of ownership in a company. As a general rule, every company has stock, but many companies are privately held, which means that all the stock is held by a very small number of people. Privately held companies do not offer shares of stock to the general public. Publicly held companies, on the other hand, are companies that offer their stocks for sale to the general public. These are the companies in which you and I have the opportunity to invest.
When you buy a share of stock in a company, you become an owner of the company. As an owner, you receive a share of the company’s profits. But don’t let the idea of being an owner of the company go to your head. Most publicly traded companies issue millions of shares of stock. For example, in December of 1999, Microsoft had 5.16 billion shares of stock in the hands of investors.
Now, that is a lot of stock, so if you own 1 share of Microsoft stock, you don’t really have much ownership weight to throw around. You can’t drop by the company’s offices and make free Xerox copies. Frankly, owning a single share of stock won’t even prevent the Microsoft security guards from thumping your skull if you show up in Redmond and even hint at causing trouble. On the other hand, if you own 51% of the stock, you can borrow the corporate jet to fly out to Philadelphia for a cheesesteak just about any time you want.
Most of us however, don’t own a 51% percent of a company, so why would we want to buy a stock? Well, because there are some goodies that come with owning stock. First of all, stocks can pay dividends. The simplest way to define a dividend is that it is like an interest rate that you get paid for owning the stock. A company may set a dividend payment that stockholders receive automatically every quarter (every three months). The amount of the dividend is usually some small percentage of the stock price. That percentage is called the dividend yield. A stock which costs $1 per share and pays a dividend of ten cents per share has a dividend yield of 10%.
The amount of the dividend payment can actually vary greatly from company to company. For example, in December of 1999, the dividend yield of the nation’s 30 largest stocks averaged about 1.9%. At the same time, the dividend yield for the Philip Morris Company was 7.3%. So if the Philip Morris stock was worth $100 per share, you would get a dividend payment of $7.30 per share every three months. Dividends are paid out of the company’s profits. Some companies have such high and regular dividends that their stock is bought for this income alone. Some companies pay no dividends at all.
Stocks also pay earnings. Earnings are payments to the shareholders of the profits the company has made, after subtracting taxes and dividend payments. Every quarter, companies figure out how much money they’ve made in profits for the last three months, and they divide the money equally among the shares.
Sometimes, the company makes really great earnings. In one quarter of 1999, the reported earnings for Black Rock Incorporated were 182.44 per share. At the same time, the price of the stock was only around $19.00 per share! Some companies lose money, however. In that case, stockholders get nothing.
The price of a stock also can be an attraction. The price of a company’s stock may fluctuate quite a bit, and some companies fail completely. But as a whole, stock prices trend upwards. So if you buy a stock at $10 per share today, in five years it may be worth $25. Or it may be $3. The trick is to pick a company whose stock price will rise. This is called speculation.
In many cases, the stock of a company rises so much, that even if the company pays no earnings or dividends, the rise in the price of the stock makes it a very lucrative investment. To use Microsoft as an example again, the price of their stock in December of 1994 was about $7.50 per share. Five years later, the stock was worth about $95.00 per share. So in five years, your original investment would have gained 1,266%! Microsoft pays no dividends and the earnings are only $1.52 per share, but who cares? The price of the stock rose so high and so fast that it more than made up for the lack of earnings and dividends.
This high rate of price appreciation can also be matched by a high rate of price depreciation in stocks as well. Stocks can be very volatile, meaning that the price can rise or fall very quickly. If you invest in a company, the price might shoot through the roof when the company releases a new product everyone in the country wants. The price can collapse just as quickly when it is learned that the new product emits some previously unknown type of radiation that makes all male users impotent.
Because of this volatility, many investment advisors recommend that you never keep more than 5% of your investments tied up in a single company’s stock. Sure, this will prevent you from making huge gains when the company patents its new breast enlargement pills, but it will also protect you from large losses when Consumers Union learns that the company’s major product line explodes when exposed to children.
As you can see, it's not the run of the mill economics book. You can also see previous excerpts here and here.
So, If you've enjoyed what you've read of it so far, head on over to Barnes & Noble for your copy today!
May 30, 2004
My Book Is Out
(Review) My book is now available for purchase at Barnes and Noble
CLICK HERE to go buy it now!
May 28, 2004
Just in Time for Memorial Day
(Review) As we prepare to honor our nation's war dead this weekend--yes, there's a reason for Memorial Day beyond getting Monday off--Former Denver Bronco Reggie Rivers, whose father is a USAF veteran, writes this stirring tribute to our troops:
Our military is one of the last bastions of slavery in the United States. At the moment, our slaves are stuck in a combat zone, getting killed and maimed, and there's nothing they can do about it except hunker down and pray.Yes, our slaves signed up of their own free will, but most of them were as misled about their job as the rest of us were about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
So, really, the men and women who put their lives on the line for us every day aren't heroes. Just a pathetic buch of poor saps who were duped into it. Now they're totally at the mercy of Massa George in Washington.
So our kids get bombarded with formal and informal recruiting messages - and they sign up. One day, they find themselves sitting in a Humvee in Iraq, with their best friend lying dead on the floor next to them, and they suddenly realize the deception of their recruitment and the shackles of their slavery.They just want to go home, but they can't.
Yes, one minute they're impressing the girls in their pretty white, blue, green or olive uniforms, and the next thing they know, they're shackled to humvees in a war zone. Why they're shocked--shocked!--to learn they may be called upon to go into combat.
And yet, oddly enough, when Massa asks them to re-enlist, they're doing so in numbers far above their units' retention quotas, the fools.
Yes, I can see how Memorial Day would be a fitting occasion for such an emotional tribute to the troops.
Cut and Run?
(Review)
Writing in The Nation, David Corn outlines the Kerry Campaign's thinking on Iraq.
There have been debates on Iraq within the campaign's foreign policy team. "For a while," says a senior Kerry foreign policy adviser, "the debate was whether it was better not to offer an Iraq plan. Now there's a continuing discussion on how to deal with the changing realities in Iraq." But there are no indications Kerry or his camp feels pressure to consider pulling out the troops. "It has been clear to everyone," this adviser says, "that cutting and running is not the right approach and that Iraq can't be an American-only operation, that we have to broaden the international role dramatically. But one question has been, how hard do you hit the president? And we also haven't engaged the issue of an exit date. That's politically difficult because it would look like cutting and running. Kerry has to establish he's steely enough to do the job."Another foreign policy adviser to the campaign notes, "most of Kerry's advisers want to get US troops out as quickly as possible. The issue is how direct to be. Perhaps there will be more political pressure for a pullout. I disagreed with him over his vote to authorize the war, but I've come round to thinking he has rather good political instincts about these matters." And while several Democratic foreign policy wonks outside the campaign have advocated setting a deadline for removing US troops, Kerry has not endorsed a D Day for disengagement. "It means," says Holbrooke, "hardliners get harder and wait you out. A hard date increases the chances of civil war. It's irresponsible."
So, which is it, a troop pullout or not? And, while we're on the question, why is the the first option of the Democratic Party always retreat or surrender? Hasn't it occurred to them yet that this inclination is the main reason why the electorate is so cautious about electing Democrats when national security is at issue?
And let's say we do just pack up our little red wagon and go home. How will the Democrats prevent the 2010s from being a repeat of the 1970s, but with suicide bombs?
Do they think that the response of terrorists to a retreat in Iraq will be to leave us all alone, now that we've learned our lesson?
May 27, 2004
Iraq's Next Government
(Review) Amir Taheri outlines the shape of the Iraqi government that will be taking over sovereignty on June 30. Happily, it appears that any temptation to set up a new "strongman" has been avoided.
Howard Dean v2.0
(Review) Former Vice president Al Gore, speaking before the "non-partisan" MoveOn.org PAC, seems to have firmly ensconced himself in the moonbat camp yesterday.
I would fisk the speech, but it can all be boiled down to one single topic. "It's W's fault." I did like this bit, though, about the whole Abu Ghraib mess:
The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.
Guess who is really responsible?
Uh-Huh.
I like the use of the word "atrocities". You'd think they shot 78 POWs at Malmedy or something. The word has a specific connotation, and it refers to something usually far more horrific than what happened at Abu Ghraib. It's perfectly legalistically correct to use it in the way Gore does, but it is somewhat dishonest in this context.
I do note with interest that Mr. Gore, and the Left in general, seem keenly concerned with the Geneva convention rights of the prisoners we've been taking. I have a suggestion, therefore.
Since these prisoners are almost exclusively non-military, partisan fighters, I suggest we apply the the full weight of Geneva Convention procedures to them. To accomplish this, we should create standing military tribunals to declare them to be unlawful combatants, then shoot them in the back of the head. All perfectly in accord with the Geneva Conventions.
That should make Mr. Gore quite happy.
May 26, 2004
Slackernomics Excerpt
The Good news is that my new book, Slackernomics is now in production. The bad news is that it won't hit BooksaMillion.com or Barnes & Noble for about 2-3 more weeks, and Amazon about two weeks after that.
In the meantime, though, here's another excerpt, taken from Chapter 3: The 800-pound Gorilla.
Regulation
Regulation is another important power of government. Compliance with federal, state, and local regulations costs businesses millions and millions of dollars a year. Some regulations are more trouble than they’re worth. But they all have to be complied with. Regulations are usually written in order to provide guidelines for complying with a law.
When congress passes a law, the language of the law is usually pretty vague. Let’s say congress wants to pass the Employee Coffee Break and Snack Act of 2004. Congress will say something like, “All employers shall provide tasty snacks to their employees during break periods.” That’s it. That becomes the law. But what kind of snacks should be provided? If you give a single Twinkie to each employee, can that count as their snack, or do you have to give them two? If one of your employees is a vegetarian, do you have to provide fresh produce? The law doesn’t say. That’s where regulation comes in.
Once congress passes the Employee Coffee Break and Snack Act, bureaucrats will descend from the Labor Department like a horde of locusts. They will write down precisely what constitutes a snack, how many calories a snack must contain, how often snacks must be served, whether or not a soft drink can be substituted for coffee during snacks, and a whole host of other issues. The legislation may be one or two pages long, but the Labor Department will issue a 300-page manual of regulations for implementing the act. It sounds silly, but that’s what the cabinet departments do. It’s how they justify their budgets.
If the regulations say a single Twinkie constitutes a snack, employers will get off relatively cheaply. If the Labor Department says that all employers must provide a choice of sweets, garden-fresh vegetables, beef jerky, and imported caviar on little wheat crackers with cream cheese, snack time at the office is gonna get expensive.
The regulations put out by the government are not laws. But if you break them, you’ll go to jail or be fined anyway. Because they implement a federal law, they take on the force of law, even though the regulations are nowhere mentioned in the actual legislation. That gives bureaucrats a lot of power, even though they are not elected, and don’t answer directly to the public.
Not all regulations are bad, of course. There are regulations that say businesses can’t store toxic waste around unprotected employees. That’s a good regulation. But some regulations are silly.
My grandfather was a contractor, and he used to build some large buildings. On one large job, workers were high up on scaffolding. Federal safety regulations required that the scaffolds all have safety bars around the edges so no one could fall off. Unfortunately, at one point during the construction, the safety rails were at exactly the height of the area where work needed to be done.
If the rails were removed on the side of the scaffolding where the building was, the workers could do the work, and they couldn’t fall because the building was there. If the rails remained on that side, the work couldn’t be done. A safety inspector from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration came on site and ordered that the rails be put back on the scaffolding. My grandfather tried to explain the problem to him. They showed him that it would be impossible to fall off of the scaffolding on that side. They showed him that work on the building would never be finished unless the railing came off on the side next to the building. He didn’t care. He wanted the regulation strictly enforced. For the next few days, every time the safety inspector came by, the safety rails were put back on and all work stopped until he left.
The regulation was a good one overall. After all, no one wants workers to be taking accidental swan dives off of 50-foot scaffolds. But sometimes you can take a good thing too far. In this case, the regulator held up construction for nearly two whole days, just so that the site would be in compliance when he came by.
Magnify that by every regulation in the books, enforced on every business in the country, and you can see that regulation adds a lot to the cost of doing business.
One of the most outstanding examples of regulation gone haywire was the now defunct zero-emissions mandate that the states of California, Massachusetts, and New York placed on the major auto manufacturers in 1995. At the time, those states decided that in 1998, 2% of the cars in that the auto makers offered for sale in those states must emit no pollutants whatsoever. By the year 2007, 10% of all cars offered for sale were to be zero-emissions vehicles. If the automakers did not produce those vehicles and offer them for sale in those states, they will be banned from doing any business at all.
Legislators gave several environmental reasons for supporting such a mandate. First, they said, it starts with coverage of only 2% of the cars the auto makers sell. Besides, it makes the air cleaner, and helps clean up the horrible smog problems in LA and Boston. It also conserves fuel, and provides an incentive to conservation by vehicle owners. And without a legal requirement, the auto makers simply wouldn’t do it. The car makers have resisted every attempt at environmental and safety regulation since seat belts. Therefore the mandate is required to force car makers to help clean up the air. Without it they will probably do nothing.
But let’s look at this from a purely economic point of view, and try to see how easy it would be for the car makers to sell these vehicles. Let’s take GM. According to the mandate, they were required to offer 30,000 zero-emissions vehicles for sale in California in 2007.
The only technology currently available that emits no pollution is electric technology. The only batteries currently in use that can be mass-produced for the type of power load these electric cars will need is the good old lead-acid battery and a new type of battery called the Nickel-Metal Hydride Battery.
GM has had an electric vehicle research division for decades, and this is the best they’ve got after 30 years of research. Oh, sure, they’re fooling around with hydrogen power cells, and solar energy, and flywheels, and a host of other stuff. But batteries of one type or another are essentially it as far as technology that is ready to go off the shelf, as it were.
That means that General Motors was going to have to design—and in fact, they eventually produced—an electric vehicle powered by lead-acid batteries. It was called the EV1. Much like the zero-emissions mandate, the EV1 is now defunct, too.
Notice also that the word “defunct” keeps cropping up in relation to this regulatory boondoggle.
First the car had to be designed and produced. Since no one had ever made an electric car before, that meant a vehicle had to be designed from scratch. With the exception of body shape, an electric car has very little in common with a gasoline-powered vehicle, so it can’t be produced on a regular assembly line.
That means a new assembly line had to be designed and built, too. So, before the first car rolled off the assembly line, GM had to spend several million dollars just getting ready to produce the first EV1. Because this is a totally new type of vehicle, entirely new production machines had to be built, so the company couldn’t even save money by using existing engine assembly lines, or drive train assembly equipment. Everything had to be brand new.
Then, GM had to figure out how much to sell the car for. And this is where the hard cold bottom line starts to make electric cars look less attractive.
Let me sidetrack for a minute. Let’s say you want to make a new widget. Now you have to set up a factory to make these widgets. Let’s say it costs a million dollars to build your new widget factory, buy the materials, and hire the labor to make widgets.
The price you charge for your widgets is going to depend in large part on how many widgets you make. If you only make one widget, you’re going to have to sell it for one million dollars, just to break even. If you make a million widgets, you can sell them for one dollar apiece. But to avoid losing money on your widget-making business, you have to recover that million-dollar expense for building the factory, or you have to shut the doors and go home.
Now, back to GM. The company spent about $300 million in designing the cars and production facilities. To get that 300 mil back, GM had to price the car at about $30,000.00 just to break even on they price they get from dealers. But the dealer is going to want to make some money on the car, so add about 10% and you come up with the price you’ll pay in the showroom. GM’s Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price was $33,995.00 for the EV-1 with the lead-acid batteries, and $43,995.00 for the Nickel-Metal Hydride version.
Let’s say you bought the cheaper version with the lead-acid batteries. Let’s take a look at what your 34 grand got you: An electric vehicle has a maximum range of about 100 miles between recharges. That is assuming optimum driving conditions on a level surface, without using the radio, air conditioning, windshield wipers, headlights, or any other electric device in the car. A recharge takes about 8 hours. Every three years or so, the power of lead-acid batteries runs down, so all 27 batteries have to be replaced. That costs about $3,000.00. The maximum speed of the vehicle was around 60 miles per hour. And there were very few places to charge these cars outside the home, meaning that you really couldn’t go very far away from home.
Would you pay $33.995.00 for this car? Remember the cool Pontiac Bonneville we talked about in chapter one? If I was buying a GM product, and was going to spend that kind of money, I’d buy the Bonneville.
There were a lot of people inside and outside the auto business who thought those electric cars were just going to gather dust in the showrooms until the car companies could both improve performance and bring the price way down.
By the way, what would have happened to GM if nobody wanted to buy the car? Or if GM didn’t sell all 6,000 cars it was supposed to offer in 1998? Under the mandate, GM would have had to suck up its losses and put another 9,000 electric cars on showroom floors in 1999. By 2007, GM was supposed to have 30,000 electric cars available for sale whether people wanted them or not.
Or, they could decide not to offer any of their products to the 43 million residents of California.
The car manufacturers tried to put a good face on it. I talked to Chrysler’s head of zero emissions cars in 1995. He told me that Chrysler would do what it had to under the law. If Chrysler had to sell the cars, it would sell them. Chrysler sales people were the best in the world, he assured me. After all, they sold the K-Car for five years, didn’t they?
Well, good point.
In the end, though, the zero-emissions mandate failed. In the real world, all the laws and regulations in the world can’t force a technology into existence if the science isn’t there. So the mandate died a quiet death.
GM was still out 300 million bucks, though, weren’t they? One wonders what productive use that money could have been put to without trying to conform to an impossible regulatory mandate.
Blatant Commercialism
There's a reason I haven't done much blogging this week. I'm working full-time on a new project. And, because I'm a raging capitalist it's designed to make me money.
Those of you who are regular readers of The Review know that I do Web Hosting, and, what may be less known, I do the web hosting for this very web site.
For the last several days, I've been building a new web site, and because I'm a raging capitalist, it's designed to make me money. Eventually. Maybe.
But this isn't a commercial plug for it, as much as it is a little bit of catering to the geek-interest crowd. I'm building this site as an ASP.NET e-commerce site to sell high-res pictures on the web. For those of you who do web design, you know that finding royalty-free pictures can be a pain, unless you're willing to shell out $500 to photos.com.
So, I've been building this site. It's all ASP.NET with a SQL Server back end. It allows users to browse photos by category, or to search by keyword.
I don't have a lot of pictures up yet, only about 120 or so, but it's enough for you to see how it works, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
All the photos were taken by me, or by my significant other, The Lovely Christine.
By the way, I just picked up the new Sony DSC-F828 8-megapixel Digital camera. It takes MemorySticks or CompactFlash cards, and has the new RGBE color chip. You can get 261 photos on a GB CF card. I highly recommend it, if you're looking for a very nice digital camera, but aren't willing to shell out $1500+ for a digital SLR and a couple of lenses.
The 828 has a 28-200 7x manual zoom "Carl Zeiss" T* lens, and has a digital zoom that goes up to 31x at lower resolutions.
Photography has long been a weakness of mine, and over the last 20 years, I've collected enough cameras and equipment to choke a horse. It's jones worse than China White. When I was a young A1C in the Air Force, taking home a grand total of $741 per month, I still managed to pick up a Yashica FX-7 and a couple of lenses (which I still have). No electronic stuff, no autofocus. All manual.
I used to go out with 36-exposure rolls of film, and a notebook just to take pictures of stuff, and note the shutter speed, lens, f-stop, etc.
Fortunately, The Lovely Christine is a bigger shutterbug than I am, so I can get a photo safari going at the drop of a hat, simply by mentioning the possibility to her.
Anyway, all the pictures on the new web site are pictures we've taken, and we're undercutting photos.com by 50%.
Of course, they have about 500,000 photos to our 1,000 or so, but, maybe this'll add a couple of bucks a month to the bottom line.
Anyway, the web site is still in beta. It consists of only about 6 pages:
The default page (default2.aspx)
The Category Page (photos_categories.aspx)
The Search results page (photos_keywords.aspx)
The photo Details page (photo_details.aspx)
an Error page (errorpage.aspx), that comes up when there are no photos in a search or category
A Fulfillment page that delivers pictures after you return from the credit card processing routine.
I'm very happy with the way it works. Now, all I have to do is edit another 1,000 photos, and add them to the database. Yeeha.
May 25, 2004
"Let it Ride..."
David Brooks comments in the New York Times that George W. Bush is gambling his presidency, and the short-term fate of the nation, on a peculiarly American idea: the idea that everyone wants freedom. 
We tested that belief at the end of World War II in Germany and Japan, creating democratic states in both places that have weathered every storm thrown at them for the past sixty years. And so the Bush Administration believes that we can do the same in Iraq.
And why shouldn't they believe it? That is, after all, the American Orthodoxy. All men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, etc., etc.
The trouble is that we don't really know if it's true. I sure seems to be if you look at the example of post-communist Europe. Or the increasingly less Red China. And so, we hope that the yearning for freedom is a universal human desire.
But, we really don't know for sure. Perhaps the Iraqis will feel that religious allegiance means more to them than political pluralism. We simply don't know.
And, so, George W. Bush is doing the political equivalent of putting it all on 17, and spinning the wheel.
And, frankly, it's a gutsy move. As John Pohoretz points out, Bush, faced with bad polls and incipient panic in his own party, looked the country in the eye last night and decided to stand pat. If he loses, he loses it all. But if Iraq turns out like he predicts, not only will he win, the election will become a Bush lanslide.
This tells me at least one good thing. It means that people are identifying with the importance of our success in Iraq. And they think it's important enough to jettison Bush over it if he doesn't appear to be getting it done. This implies that a President Kerry [shudder] would have to toe a fairly thin line in his policy there, too. We've invested too much in blood and treasure to simply shrug our shoulders and walk away, like...like...Ted Kennedy walking away from Chappaquiddick.
May 20, 2004
Slackernomics: Excerpt 1
As you may already know, my book, Slackernomics, will be out in a very few weeks. As of this morning, I gave my approval for the final proofs, and it's now headed for production. In order to drum up a little enthusiasm, I've decided to post some excerpts occasionally, to give you a taste of the book. So, with that in mind, here comes the first one.
This excerpt is taken from Chapter 5: Heathen Foreigners
THE CONCEPT OF TRADE
You see the names everywhere: Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Philips, and Mercedes. And even if you don’t see the names, you see other signs. The tag in your T-shirt says “Hecho en Mexico”. The stuffed toy you want to buy for your child has a tiny little “Made in China“ tag. Everywhere you look, stores are full of foreign goods. Even when you go to the grocery store, even fruit has little “Product of Argentina” stickers plastered to it.
It’s the work of foreigners, sold openly on our streets!
And it’s, as Martha Stewart used to say, before her unfortunate run-in with the US Government, a Good Thing, too. Nations that engage in trade with one another end up richer than nations that limit trade.
It might be hard to believe that, given what you often hear on the news. The headlines scream, “Nation’s Trade Deficit Worse Than Ever”, or “US Firms Sending Jobs Overseas”. In such an atmosphere, it might be hard for you to understand why trade between nations is good. You might even think that restricting trade would help improve the economy.
I would agree with you, but you’re wrong.
The guy who first figured out why you’re wrong lived 200 years ago, and his name was David Ricardo.
The Theory of Comparative Advantage
Ricardo was an English economist who lived from 1772 to 1823. He was one of the greatest of the early economists. His primary contribution to the field of economics came when he realized that different countries do some things better than others. In fact, after studying the subject, he came to the conclusion that even if one nation does everything better than every other country, it still helps everyone to engage in trade.
How could that possibly be?
Ricardo‘s explanation was that even if every country made good products, some countries would have a comparative advantage at making them over other countries. To prove his theory, he used the examples of port wine and wool
Britain made lots of wool. There were sheep galore in England. Every farm had whole herds of them. Why they were practically the national animal. Even in the cold and barren Scottish Highlands, farmers kept sheep. Britain was practically the sheep capitol of the world.
It’s probably not wise to ask why sheep were so popular with farmers, so let’s just accept that they were.
Spain, on the other hand, also had sheep. And fine, silky sheep they were, too. But what Spain really had was a fine wine product called Port. Not only was it tasty, but it could get you liquored up real good. And the English, in addition to their sheep, really loved Port. In fact, it is said that, after drinking enough Port, the English love of Port and sheep would intersect disturbingly, but let's not go there.
The British could probably make Port. After all, British agriculture was the glory of the civilized world. The climate in Spain was warm and sunny, and was better for growing grapes but, in point of fact, Britain had far more arable land than Spain did. Even with a worse climate for growing grapes, the amount of land available for grape cultivation was far higher than that of Spain, so, in all probability, Port production in England would be higher than that of Spain.
Britain, on the other hand, being rather damp and gray, had produced magnificently wooly sheep. Spain’s sheep, while, of course, handsomely furred, weren’t quite as shaggy as the good old English sheep. Spain could produce wool, but it would take longer, or would require significantly more sheep to make the same amount of wool clothing, blankets, and what have you.
So, Ricardo wondered, if Britain could make both wool and Port, and make more of it than the Spaniards could, then why buy all that hooch from Spain? And, for that matter, since most of Spain was sunny and warm, why couldn’t they produce their own woolen jackets? After all, they wouldn’t even need as many of them, or make them as thick and warm. That way, England and Spain could both produce their own Port and wool, and they wouldn’t have to trade with one another at all.
To answer that question, let’s say the England can make both wool and Port wine better than Spain. In fact, let’s say that, in the course of a week, England can produce 1000 bottles of Port or 2000 wool jackets. Spain, on the other hand, can only produce 500 bottles of Port or 1,000 wool jackets. Whether it’s Port or wool, Britain can make more of it. Britain has an absolute advantage in both areas.
Now, let’s assume that people get equal pleasure out of a tasty bottle of Port or a nice, snug jacket. If both Britain and Spain spend half their time making jackets and the other half making Port, then, at the end of the week, the results of their respective production will look like this:
| Country | Jackets | Bottles of Port | Total Units |
| Britain | 1000 |
500 |
1500 |
| Spain | 500 |
250 |
750 |
| Total Units: | 2250 |
||
But, what happens when Britain decides to concentrate on making jackets, and the Spanish stick to Port? In that case, the production totals look like this:
| Country | Jackets | Bottles of Port | Total Units |
| Britain | 2000 |
0 |
2000 |
| Spain | 0 |
500 |
500 |
| Total Units: | 2500 |
||
Spain has a comparative advantage in the making of Port wine, while Britain has a comparative advantage in the production of jackets. Even though Britain is better at making both products on an absolute basis, both countries can produce more if they concentrate on the areas in which they have comparative advantage, and simply trade with each other to get what they want.
And there’s still enough Port for everybody to have wine-tasting parties with button-nosed coeds.
See, everybody wins.
More Blogging
(Review) As you should know, I am now blogging regularly at the QandO Blog, rather than blogging here exclusively. I have some very good posts over there, and so do my fellow bloggers McQ and Jon Henke.
You should go there right now and put it on your regular bookmarks list.
Why we fight
(Review) Bill Bennet describes the difference between us and our enemies.
It is this set of lists, these reasons--and not the abuse of a handful at Abu Ghraib--that caused Abu Zarqawi and his band of thugs to slaughter Nick Berg. They know what America is doing, and they know that if America wins this effort, they and their fascism will be finished. They targeted Nick Berg because he was an American--and possibly also because he was a Jew; and they would have killed him whether the Abu Ghraib story was published or not. How do I know? I know because the Abu Ghraib story was not disseminated when these barbarians burned, stomped, and hung our contractors in Fallujah. I know because the Abu Ghraib incidents hadn't even happened when Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl suffered exactly the same fate as Nick Berg in February of 2002. And, I know because Abu Ghraib was in the hands of Saddam Hussein on 9/11, when bin Laden and his allies killed, murdered, slaughtered 3,000 of us. We encourage their wrath by our existence, not by our actions.One must judge this democracy--ours--as one must judge any country--democracy or not: in its totality, and in its mean. Not in its extreme, and not in its aberration. Although we should be proud of how we are treating our aberrant soldiers, with accountability and due process and punishment, I agree with what the late Pat Moynihan said. He asked then, and we ask now: "Am I ashamed to speak on behalf of a less than perfect country? Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do. Have we done obscene things? Yes, we have. How did our people learn about them? They learned about them on television and in the newspapers." And we put our criminals—whether in uniform or not—on trial.
They are barbarians clamoring at the gate of civilization, and we have to stop them.
May 19, 2004
Back up
It appears my computer is back in business. It wasn't a virus that had me knowcked out, it was a particularly nasty bit of adware. I downloaded Ad-Aware 6 and it appears to have solved the problem.
Being wihtout a computer for this week has been a huge pain, especially since I'm supoosed to be working on a project. Hopefully, I am back up now.
Problems
Well, since, I've been back blogging has been light, hasn't it? But, it's not my fault. My computer appears to have been infected with either a virus or a particularly nasty bit of spyware/adware. Even though I'm running the most current version of McAfee, A scan, in either DOS or windows doesn't find it.
As soon as an internet connection is established, about 20 copies of Internet Explorer open up in the background, and use 100% of my system resources, at which point I am locked up.
I wish I knew who did this to me. Whoever they are, they're due a massive ass-kicking.
May 16, 2004
Quite a charming fellow
On my last night back east, I got to drive down to Fredericksburg and meet Jon Henke, the proprietor of the fine QandO blog, where I have also begun blogging.
We met at Outback steak house, at about 5:45. After dinner, we stepped outside and sat on a park bench to chat for a while. The next time I looked at my watch, it was 11:00pm!
Jon is a very nice, charming, and witty guy, and the time we spent talking about...well...everything under the sun was the best part of my trip. He's just a great guy, and I feel privileged to now be able to call him my friend.
What I Did This Summer
Well, I'm back from the nation's capitol, and I come bearing gifts. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time sightseeing, and, of course, I had my digital camera with me. So here are some highlight photos of the trip.
Here is the capitol building. I have to admit that the original picture doesn't look quite this good. There's a lot of Construction going on in the District, and the capitol was no exception. So, I had to Photoshop out a huge construction crane that was spoiling the picture.
This is the Jefferson Monument, seen from across the Tidal Pool.
This is the Lincoln Monument seen from the new World War II memorial
This is a very nice shot of the interior of the Lincoln Memorial.
The Smithsonian Castle. Very nice grounds, with exquisitely manicured plants and flowers.
The Vietnam Memorial. I have to say, I don't like this monument very much. I find it depressing. One gets the sense that this is a monument to an embarrassing mistake, and a cause for sorrow about how we lost our way. Of course, my view on Vietnam was that we lost our way when we decided to abandon the country, and eventually a good portion of Southeast Asia to the Communists. Our retreat there chagrined many inhabitants of the region, briefly, before the commies killed them.
The Washington monument is visible from nearly anywhere around the District. The building codes in DC prevent the building of tall structures, so the city's skyline is dominated by the Washington monument and the Capitol dome.
This is the South Lawn of the White House, seen from about halfway across the Ellipse. This is as close as I could get that day, because something was going on, as you can see from the people at the base of the building. So the Secret Service uniformed police and the Park Police had sightseers pushed way back. Fortunately, I have a pretty good zoom lens.
This is the New World War II Memorial. It isn't quite finished yet, and they'll be closing it this week to finish it up, before they open it officially next week during the National WWII Reunion. But it's very inspiring. And long overdue.
This portion of the memorial is a panel full of stars, with each star representing, I believe, 1,750 Americans killed in WWII. Look closely. That's a lot of stars. Because I am a big softie, I started getting a little choked up here.
Thanks to another photographer who happened to be on the scene, I have a picture of me, in front of the Capitol.
So, even though it was a very busy week, I at least got to have a little fun, and got to bring home some memories.
May 14, 2004
And, we're back...
Finally! I am home again. This has been the longest blogging hiatus since I started this blog over two years ago. Unfortunately, I couldn't get reliable internet access while in Washington DC.
I'm also too tired to write anything more right now. I suspect blogging will resume again in fairly short order.
For now, however, I'm off to bed. It's only 9:30 in San Diego, But I'm on DC time, so it's after midnight for me. And I've been up since 6:00am.
May 07, 2004
Nonfarm Payrolls
I just wanted to add a few observations about this morning's non-farm payrolls, a subject Jon already addressed. The bad thing about being a West Coast blogger on an East Coast blog is that you're tail-end Charlie when it comes to timely observations.
In any event, a couple of things come to mind when looking at the table of data. I think this release put the Fed in an interesting position vis a vis Monetary policy. Not only have we seen three months of job growth, with the last two months coming in well above expectations. (Today, for example, the consensus expectation was for a number around 165K.)
Additionally, if you look back at 1Q GDP, which itself increased by 4.2% on an annualized basis, you see that Gross Domestic Purchases Prices increased by 3.2%. The Consumer Price Index's core rate, which excludes the volatile food and energy components, has also been up ever more sharply. The Jan reading was 0.2%. Feb was 0.3%. Mar was 0.5%. So, we're seeing some disturbing signs of increasing inflation at the same time as we're seeing larger than expected increases in employment.
At any other time, it would be a given that the Fed, with short-term interest rates at historical lows, would be moving to increase rates steadily over the next several months.
This is, however, not any other time. It is an election year. The Fed is usually quite cautious in election years about the direction of interest rates. On balance, I think the Fed has to move in the direction of tightening, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them hold off as long as they can.
And there's at least some minimal reasoning they could use to do so. The average workweek still stands at 33.7 hours, which, in contrast to the strong employment growth of the last two months, still suggests relatively weak labor demand. It's a bit counterintuitive, really. "No, we don't really require new workers. But we are hiring twice as many as expected." Weak labor demand and strong job growth. Go figure.
But, as I said, that's a pretty flimsy reasoning to hold off on interest rate increases. So, despite the Fed's usual reluctance to tighten policy during election years, the overall numbers suggest that such a policy move looms in our near future.
May 04, 2004
Blogging Hiatus
Blogging will be fairly light for the next two weeks. I just received my galley proofs for the book! That makes me happy, but it also means that I now have to re-read this stupid book AGAIN, because I have to proofread it.
After about 30 times or so, I got kinda sick of reading it. Especially since I had to write it first.
Anyway, that will take up the next few days. Next week, I may not be able to do any blogging at all, since I'm leaving Sunday for Washington DC, and won't be back until Friday night.
But, to keep you interested briefly, the cover of the book appears below:
Relieving Past Glory
(Review) John Podhoretz writes that the New York Times' Seymour Hersch's fixation about the activities at Abu Ghraib is a reflection on Hersch's desire to relive his biggest Vietnam triumph.
Describing the military's internal investigation of Abu Ghraib as "an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing" - which Hersh does in this week's New Yorker - is code language. It suggests that the failure was not the moral lapses of the few but the collective actions of the nation in Iraq.For Hersh, this is quite literally an effort to return to old glory: He made his career almost 35 years ago by uncovering the Vietnam-era massacre at My Lai.
Just as William Calley, the monster-in-charge of the My Lai atrocity, tried to defend himself by suggesting he was only doing what he had been told or trained or taught to do, so too are the thugs of Abu Ghraib blaming their superior officers and the U.S. war effort in general for failing to train them in the rules of the Geneva Convention.
Sorry: You don't need the rules of the Geneva Convention to know you're not supposed to torture people.
Yeah, I gotta say, that really irks me. These guys got caught red-handed, and their first response is to cry, "I didn't know! I wasn't trained!"
Really, that's odd, because, by the time I was old enough to enlist, I pretty much already knew you couldn't torture, beat, or kill prisoners. Why, I had a pretty good idea that forcing them to pose for gay parn would be a pretty bad thing to do as well. Gosh, I don't know where I picked that up. I have no idea how I figured that out.
Except that I lived in the United freakin' States where it's obvious that kind of stuff is illegal.
Senator Jeff Bingamon (D-NM) was on Good Morning America yesterday, frothing at the mouth about how all this Abu Ghraib stuff is the fault of the "military's culture".
Huh.
Well, unlike Senator Bingamon I actually served in the armed forces for a decade in the 80s and 90s, and let me tell you, the culture didn't condone that at all. In fact, the culture I was exposed to as an SP was, if you screw up, we;ll send you to jail. That message was pretty loud & clear. The military, frankly, is one of the few places left in American society where there's no toleration for this sort of crap at all. Military authorities come down like a ton of bricks on infractions of this type. I know. I've seen it happen.
But for the Blame America First crowd, something fundamental is always messed up with America. It can never be a matter of a few people losing control, or being poorly supervised. No, for them it's always about deeply seated pathologies, and basic faults of our culture. That's really the trouble with utopians in general. "If it isn't perfect, it must be irreparably stained."
Yeah, you'll make a lot of progress with that as your guiding motto.
Blogging at QandO
(Review) Here's what I've decided to do about the whole QandO/The Review blogging merger. I am going to blog here. I am also going to blog at QandO. Sometimes I will cross-post on both blogs. Sometimes, I won't. Some days I will blog here a lot. Some days I will blog there.
So, If you like what I do here, you'll have to go over there to see the rest of it.
More Perspective on Abu Ghraib
(Review) Victor Davis Hanson writes that everyone needs to keep what happened at Abu Ghraib in perpective.
American soldiers are not ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Kuwait or executing Kurdish civilians, crimes that in the past went largely unnoticed in the Middle East. So far the alleged grotesqueries are more analogous to the nightmares that occur occasionally at American prisons, when rogue and jaded guards freelance to intimidate and humiliate inmates. The crime, then, first appears not so much a product of endemic ethnic, racial, or religious hatred, as the unfortunate cargo of penal institutions, albeit exacerbated by the conditions of war, the world over.
And, of course, as always needs to be stressed, we punish, rather than condone such behavior whenever it is uncovered.
Not Fit to Be the CINC
(Review) John O'Neill, who took over command of the swift boat PCF-94 after John Kerry's early departure, doesn't think much of his predecessor.
Since 1971, I have refused many offers from John Kerry's political opponents to speak out against him. My reluctance to become involved once again in politics is outweighed now by my profound conviction that John Kerry is simply not fit to be America's commander in chief. Nobody has recruited me to come forward. My decision is the inevitable result of my own personal beliefs and life experience.Today, America is engaged in a new war, against the militant Islamist terrorists who attacked us on our own soil. Reasonable people may differ about how best to proceed, but I'm sure of one thing--John Kerry is the wrong man to put in charge.
John Kerry, it seems to me, made a bit of a strategic mistake by placing so much emphasis on his service in Vietnam. I guess he felt he had to do so, in order to try and combat the view of so many Americans that the Dems have turned into pacifist jerks.
The trouble is that it opens up more questions than it closes, because Kerry was so deeply involved in VVAW when he got home. A lot of Veterans hated the VVAW, and considered them traitors. Additionally, the fact that Kerry got out of Vietnam in four months is another sore spot with veterans who had to put in a full 12, despite being wounded a lot more seriously than John Kerry.
It seems to me that now, with many veterans coming out against Kerry so strongly, that he might have been better off to be a little less strident about his service there.
Hot gay action at Abu Ghraib
(Review) Jed Babbin writes at NRO that the reserve MPs who were caught up in the...uh...hijinks at Abu Ghraib should pay a steep price for what they did.
We have to handle this right. The courts martial should be open to any media that want to attend--even al-Jazeera--and the perpetrators' names dragged through the mud. Those who are guilty should be imprisoned for as long as the law allows. No plea bargains, no deals--just the max. As a result of their actions, these few have dishonored their country and every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine who now serve. And they have created a firestorm of anger at the American presence in Iraq that reaches all through that country and the whole region. The damage they have done will reverberate throughout the process of forming the new Iraqi government. By trying the perps publicly and quickly, and imposing the harshest sentences possible, we can begin to repair the damage.
I have some pretty complicated feelings about the firestorm this has created.
Oh, sure, Babbin's right, we have to throw the book at these morons. They've dishonored the uniform, their fellow soldiers, and the reputation of the United States. At any other time, in any other place, these guys might've gotten off with lighter sentences than the ones they'll eventually receive. But they stepped on their...swords pretty badly with this one.
Indeed, I'm inclined to tack on a few extra years for sheer stupidity. "Hey, let's make the prisoners engage in a little homosexual petting. And let's take pictures of ourselves giving the thumbs up while they do it!" Maybe prison can get these morons isolated from the gene pool before they reproduce.
And the whole gay aspect is kind of...odd. Now, I understand that Muslims are kinda fanatical when it comes to homosexuality, so there is an argument that this kind of humiliation has a special psychological undertone when used against Muslims.
But look, the explicitly homosexual nature of the humiliation is something that's not completely unknown in the military. I mean, I spent a decade on active duty as an MP and an Air Base Ground Defense specialist. And, whenever you investigate military hazing incidents, something involving making lots of fit, handsome young men get naked always seems to crop up, for some reason.
I'm certainly not casting aspersions on anyone. I'm just saying.
Still, it seems to me that much of the uproar is a tempest in a teapot. In the former Iraq, and, indeed, in a the Arab world in general, prisoners are not just homoerotically humiliated; that's, in fact, the least of their problems. Prisoners are really tortured, in very painful ways, and in places like Syria or Iraq, bumped off in a variety of imaginative ways. Remember the industrial plastic shredders? Uday and Qusay thought they were really keen.
Indeed, people who commit crimes like this in the Arab world are routinely lionized:
Palestinian fiends mercilessly gunned down a pregnant Jewish settler and her four terrified little girls in their station wagon yesterday as the family headed to protest Israel's planned Gaza Strip pullout.After riddling the car with gunfire on a road leading to Israel, the two terrorists then ran up to the vehicle and coldbloodedly pumped bullets into each of their victims' heads to make sure they had finished the job, Israeli police said.
One of the gunmen also shot the swollen belly of the eight-months-pregnant mom at point-blank range.
"At first, we thought we could do something to save the mother, but it was too late," one distraught Israeli settler said.
"The children were already dead, with bullets in the head. Little children. I don't know, I really don't know," the man said.
Killed were Tali Hatuel, 34, and her four daughters: Meirav, 2, Roni, 7, Hadar, 9, and Hila, 11.
Rescuers found the dead baby still strapped in her car seat, just above a blood-soaked children's book that had fallen on the floor.
Not a peep of concern about this from al-Jazeera, of course. No, no, the humiliation of Arab men is far more important. They'll gleefully broadcast terrorists hacking the head off of Danny Pearl, and they'll willingly serve as Osama bin Laden's PR mouthpiece, but the routine, murderous repression of the Arab world? Hardly worth a mention, really.
Arab "Human Rights" organizations are now foaming at the mouth. Too bad they didn't see their way to show equal concern over the inhabitants of the Syrian village of Hama, when Hafez Assad razed it to the ground and murdered its inhabitants.
But, of course, the real difference isn't that our soldiers do bad things occasionally and theirs don't. The real difference is that when our soldiers do bad things, we clap them in chains for a couple of years, reduce them to the lowest enlisted grade, make them forfeit all pay and allowances, then give them a Bad Conduct Discharge as a lovely parting gift when they get out of prison. When it happens in the Arab world, it's policy. When Palestinians pop a cap into a 2 year-old little girl's head, they're freedom fighters.
That kind of hypocrisy is just a little hard for me to stomach.
The Arab world wants to pretend the actions of the MPs at Abu Ghraib are somehow indicative of the character of our soldiers. In truth, what is indicative of our character is that those soldiers are about to get royally boned for doing what they did. And that's as it should be. But it's cynicism and hypocrisy of the highest order for the Arabs to get their noses all bent out of shape over crimes that aren't a tenth of what they routinely ignore--or celebrate--in their own culture, and what we punish in ours.
Idiots and Leftists--but I repeat myself--over at Democratic Underground give us this little tidbit.
During a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Martin last week, Bush said, "A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we'd accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." Funny that he should say that just days after CBS showed a shocking report on conditions at the Abu Ghraib Army prison facility in Iraq, including disturbing photographs of prisoners with wire taped to their genitals, prisoners stripped naked and made to pile on top of one another, and prisoners who were forced to simulate sex acts on one another.
Let's see, on one hand, we have Iraqi mass graves containing tens of thousands of innocent people, and rapists employed by the state to rape Iraqi women as an instrument of policy. On the other hand, we have some morons forcing Iraqi prisoners to pretend to have gay sex, and who are preparing for their Article 32 preliminary hearings even as we speak, and whose commanding general has been removed from command for cause.
Why, the similarities are just uncanny.
Comment Spamming
OK, this is getting ridiculous. It seems like every time I try to post this last week, something comes up and kills my ability to do so. Either I've been too busy, or sick, or something.
Now, it's comment spamming. I am getting deluged by spam in mu comments. So, today, I've got to obtain a spam prevention tool for my comments, and get that set up.
Cripes, what a pain. So, I guess that today, blogging won't proceed until I get that taken care of.
May 02, 2004
I'll bet they're real happy they invited me
(Review) If you go on over to QandO, you'll see they've got a whole new look.
They have it because the first thing I did upon logging in at their invitation was to accidentally destroy their web site template. So I've spent all Sunday rebuilding their web site.
Yeah, right about now they're thinking I'm a hot addition to the crew.
It's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
(Review) I'm a pessimist. Always have been. I don't see the glass as just being half-empty, I also believe that evaporation is continually emptying the glass. Sure, it's negative, but I'm rarely disappointed. And I am often pleasantly surprised.
So, when I see a situation like the one in Fallujah, I expect things to go as badly as they possibly can.
The Belmont Club's Wretchard has a little different idea. He sees things surrounding the Fallujah mess a bit differently than I do. Just start at the top and scroll down. He's got a lot to say.
I hope he's right and I'm wrong.
May 01, 2004
Crossblogging
I am going to try a little experiment. As you may have noticed, a "Posted by" message now appears under the title of each post. In the past, I dispensed with this little item, because I was the only one posting here.
This may change, at least slightly. QandO's Jon Henke and I have been discussing the idea of some sort of blog merger. But, there are obstacles. For my part, I don't want to give up The Review. I've put over two years into this blog, and I want to keep it. Jon feels the same way about his blog.
So, what to do?
I've invited both Jon and his fellow blogger McQ to post here if they wish. Jon has extended the same offer to me. So, perhaps you'll see some cross-posting on both blogs. Or maybe nothing will come of it. I don't really know.
It's wierd how attached you get to running a blog. It's like your little child, and you don't want to do anything to upset it.
Neo-Libertarian
Jon Henke of QandO blog emails me:
By the way, a fellow I know is involved with the Republican Liberty Caucus, and (I believe) has coined the phrase "neo-libertarian". Essentially, a hawkish and politically pragmatic libertarian. I descrive it as "Lockean ideals in a Hobbesian world". It occurs to me that the term "neo-libertarian" would be a good desciption of you and I - in fact, of a great many of the right-of-center people in the blogosphere.
That sounds like a pretty good term. One of the things that really irks me about the Libertarian Party is how cranky they are about foreign policy, which is to say, they really don't have one. To them the foreigners are suspiciously heathen, and the best thing we can do is ignore them 'til they go away.
Unfortunately, as Jon writes, we live in a Hobbesian world. That kind of ostrich-like behavior doesn't work in a world where fanatics fly planes into skyscrapers. The world is what it is, not what we'd like it to be, and all the UN Commissions and EU conferences you can shake a stick at won't change it.
America, for better or worse, has economic and security interests at stake all over the world. We tried it the Libertarian way for a long time. We got a wake-up call in 1916 when the Germans were so impressed with out neutrality that they offered Mexico a chance to get the Southwest back if they'd join Germany in a war against us. Then, in 1941, our pleasant neutrality was shattered, along with the bulk of our Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Clue: Neutrality isn't always the safest option. Ask the Belgians. They were neutral in August of 1914. And in May of 1940.
So, I'm a libertarian, sure. Right up to the water's edge. Then, all the sudden, I morph into Teddy Roosevelt.
Blog Roundup
So, what's going on in the blogging world? Here's a sample:
Stryker has a few choice words for the Baghdad Prison guards that have bought disrepute on America. Some of these words are unsuitable for family viewing.
Tacitus is extremely pessimistic about the results of the Fallujah uprising.
John Hawkins comments on the whole Ted Koppel/Nightline deal.
John Rogers is thinking about guns and civilization.
Cori Dauber is wondering exactly how gullible reporters are. And she's also wondering what happened to their editors.
Daniel Drezner comments on George Packer's Mother Jones article about blogs.
Hoystory is confused, now that Joe Wilson says that Iraq maybe did try to buy uranium from Africa.
Jeff Goldstein is a genius.
Captain Ed takes a look at John Kerry's campaign and wonders, "Are the vultures circling?"
Cold Fury has the perfect catch-phrase for the Democrat's election year arguments: Senility on Parade.
David Adesnik is getting tired of being surrounded by idiots.
Steven den Beste contemplates The Truth with a 4,360 word essay. Which, for him, is pretty short, really. Where does he find the time?