Good news. I love successful covert operations.
UPDATE: For some reason, this reminded me: I remember I once heard somebody say that the “Spy” fiction genre just wasn’t the same after the Soviet Union collapsed, because real-world covert operations stuff was no longer as important.
I’ve always assumed that it was because our spies and secret agents can work better when no one’s writing movies or books about them.
Anyway, it’s good to hear about things like this.
New jobless claims fell, and durable goods orders rose, though not by much.
Good. I’m starting to think a full-blown recovery may be at hand.
Via Drudge Report: A computer glitch caused police to repeatedly raid an innocent couple’s home.
This sort of thing is why people are sometimes a tad suspicious of the government’s ability to properly handle any additional power.
As the economic recovery takes hold, it makes sense to suppose that market equilibria will go back to where they were before the crisis hit in late Summer of 2008.
In other words; the return of high gas prices. Remember, $4.00 a gallon gasoline had dominated the headlines until mid-September of ’08.
In many ways, this is actually a worse problem then the huge recession. High gas prices lead to “stagflation”, which causes both unemployment and inflation to rise. Normally, there is thought to be a trade-off between the two.
Well, dear readers, it took a lot of work, but you and me and a “series of tubes” have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Last year, I came in a close second to Obama for my many years of not being George W. Bush.
Says GOP Senate candidate Curtis Coleman:
“Embryonic stem cell research is taking the concept of taking a life and using it to conduct experiments so we can temporarily extend somebody else’s life. Let me tell you what I just described. I just described what the Nazis did to the Jews in the death camps of WWII.”
And yet again, we find that a government program is being compared to Nazi Germany. As Godwin’s law implies, every person and thing in politics gets compared to Nazis in general and/or Hitler in particular eventually. Here is an interesting examination of this phenomenon. As the author of that piece notes: “Everyone calls everyone a Nazi when they want to win a debate.”
I suppose it’s good that everyone is still so horrified by the atrocities of the Nazis that they keep worrying about it. Still, I can’t help but wonder if, as Godwin warned, this trivializes the magnitude of their crimes.
I will close with a quote that is often attributed to Senator Huey Long:
“When Fascism comes to America, it will be under the name of anti-Fascism.”
On The Daily Show, Newt Gingrich falsely claimed Richard Reid was an American citizen.
The “Shoe-bomber” and “Underwear-bomber” cases are very similar, yet Republicans are oddly reluctant to admit it.
From Wikipedia: “Kurt Westergaard is a Danish cartoonist who created the controversial cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb in his turban.”
I’d say that the idiot attacking him with an ax did a good job proving the point of his cartoon.
