Noble Act or Political Assassination?... (Derrick Jackson). Noble Act or Political Assassination?... (Derrick Jackson) [Common Dreams]

While it is nice to see brutes taken care of, I still have doubts that the course we took to kill the two brothers will help us in th elong run. I do not feel safer because these guys are gone and it will now take a lot of convincing to make the Iraqis really believe we killed the right guys. Why am I reminded of Waco? A government foul up where waiting would have been better than riding in shooting. Where the wheels were set in motion for the destruction of the Oklahoma building by our own homegrown terrorist. Were we so driven to get another couple of face cards that we did not fully explore the possibilities? I do not know and we are sure to never find out.  9:53:47 PM    

Hacker code could unleash Windows worm. A hacker group releases code designed to exploit a widespread Windows flaw, paving the way for a major worm attack as soon as this weekend, security researchers warn. [CNET News.com]

I am so glad I do not use Windows.  9:38:50 PM    

Shafting, Not 'Supporting,' the Troops. The morale of thousands of troops in Iraq is at an all time low, yet the GOP-controlled Congress 'supports the troops' by rolling back military benefits. [AlterNet]

Pretty typical. Our government has a history of reducing benefits for members of our armed forces. But usually they wait until AFTER the war is over.  9:36:41 PM    

The Durability of the Social-Insurance State.

Peter Lindert thinks hard about just why it is that the high-tax high-benefit social-insurance states of the twentieth century appear to have managed to redistribute income and provide enormous amounts of social services and social insurance without suffering any measurable penalty in terms of their rates of economic growth. He may well be right. It's certainly worth thinking about:

Why the Welfare State Looks Like a Free Lunch: The econometric consensus on the effects of social spending confirms a puzzle we confront in the raw data: There is no clear net GDP cost of high tax-based social spending on GDP, despite a tradition of assuming that such costs are large. The paper offers five keys to this free lunch puzzle. First, the costly forms of transfers usually imagined have not been practiced by real-world welfare states. Second, better tests confirm that the usually imagined costs would be felt only if policy had strayed out of sample, away from any actual historical experience. Third, the tax strategies of high-budget welfare states are more pro-growth and less progressive than has been realized. Fourth, the work disincentives of social transfers are so designed as to shield GDP from much reduction if any. Finally, we return to some positive growth and well-being benefits of the high social transfers, and suggest how democratic cost control relates to budget size.

[Semi-Daily Journal]

So a high tax high benefit social-insurance state is not necessarily the road to ruin? This is an article worth reading.  9:22:21 PM    

BBC: "A US music industry crackdown on internet music 'pirates' has sent subpoenas to allegedly unwitting parents and grandparents, court documents have shown." [Scripting News]

I am sure this will continue to endear the music industry to its fans. Go after Grandma! Don't you fell all warm and fuzzy? This is all about intimidation and scare tactics. I hope some of these people countersue for the costs. This just deomnstrates how out of control this industry is.  9:14:10 PM    

InfoWorld: Gates: Longhorn is 'a bit scary'. Longhorn, the next version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows desktop operating system, will be so different from its predecessors that users may not like it right away, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said Thursday. [Tomalak's Realm]

But what if you don't like it now?  9:12:03 PM