Guest Editor

Robert Fredericks is the guest editor today.

Photo courtesy of moodaholic.
Haitian-Building
Original article "The Marines have landed in Haiti—again. They’ve been there many times before, not in the aftermath of an earthquake, but in the chaos caused by warring factions and rulers destroying infrastructure and terrorizing the population."
Friday, On The Subway, With The New York Times
Original article "When is a withdrawal not a withdrawal? When you will leave behind 'no more than 50,000 American forces', according to someone named 'Senior Obama administration officials' who, judging by the number of quotes he plants across the daily papers is a regular Gabby Gus."
Irish Collection Society Wants Hotels To Pay Performance Fees For Music Played In Guest Rooms
Original article "[Phonographic Performance Ireland Ltd] is claiming that since the hotel provides radios and televisions in the guest rooms, they need to pay a performance right fee on the usage of those devices."
Taking The Tenth
Original article "Washington is out of control. It does as it likes, without restraint.... We have no influence over them, no way of resisting. Except, perhaps, to ignore them."
Facebook Stands Up To UK.gov's Cyberbullying
Original article "The Home Office has half-heartedly claimed victory in its effort to strong-arm Facebook into publishing a child protection 'panic button' on its users' profiles. In fact, the government has been given an embarrassing lesson in rationality by the leading social network."
Bernanke Says Large Bank Bailouts ‘Unconscionable,’ Must End
Original article Ha!
‘Jihad Jane’ And The Politics Of Fear
Original article "Far from ‘keeping America safe’, the elite’s depiction of the US as fragile and at-risk makes even lonely weirdos seem like a deadly threat."
The IMF, The EMF And All The Worthless Money In Between
Original article "There are those (me) who think that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a huge load of worthless, corrupt crap, not only because their dismal record pretty much shows that they are miserable failures, but because that is the way things always end up when someone is given power and money in huge amounts, or even in moderate amounts."
US Military Pushed For Closure Of CIA-Saudi Website
Original article "Despite objections from the Central Intelligence Agency, US military computer experts dismantled the online forum after commanders raised concerns that extremists in Iraq were using the site to plan attacks on American forces, the Post wrote, citing unnamed former US officials."
The Law-makers' Fallacy
Original article "There’s a connection between the demand to criminalize mephedrone and Tim Loughton’s call to prosecute more teenagers for having sex. Both fail to see what the law does. The law does not ban things - at least not directly - but rather changes incentives. And these changes might not have wholly desirable effects."
It's (Past) Time To Free The U.S. Mail
Original article "If not for the implicit guarantee, à la Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that the taxpayers will make good its losses, the USPS would have declared bankruptcy long ago."
The Credulous Media
Original article "I always wondered what kind of 'sudden acceleration' would leave the guy time to call 911 on his cell phone and ask for help, while doing nothing else to stop his car."
Douglas Adams: Parrots, The Universe And Everything
Original article Video filmed May 2001.
The Homeless Wonderer
Original article By Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
Caffeine
Original article A photo blog.

In the DVD player: Welcome to Macintosh (recommended), I Will Never Forget You (recommended), Frontline: Black Money (recommended), The U.S. vs. John Lennon (interesting), Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (strongly recommended), Jericho, Season 1 (strongly recommended), The Hurt Locker (intense, recommended), My Flesh and Blood (should see), The Guardian (recommended), Frontline: Ten Trillion and Counting (recommended), Frontline: The Madoff Affair (MUST SEE), Taxi to the Dark Side (MUST-MUST SEE), Frontline: Hand of God (MUST SEE), The Tunnel (recommended), Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (MUST SEE), Defiance (strongly recommended), Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda (MUST SEE), The Heart of the Game (highly recommended),Downfall (highly recommended), Frontline: Inside the Meltdown (recommended), White Light, Black Rain (strongly recommended), Rendition (highly recommended), Religulous (recommended), The Ground Truth (highly recommended), I.O.U.S.A. (highly recommended), The Wire, Seasons 1-5 (highly recommended); see recommended movies 

On the nightstand: Wall Street Revalued by Andrew Smithers and Anatomy of the Bear by Russell Napier

Playing on Pandora or in iTunes: Times Like These (acoustic version) by Foo Fighters

 

Economics for Dummies
8.14286
Paul Hein 2010-03-15 03:00
Exclusive to STR I don’t want to deceive you: I am not going to present a sort of Economics 101 for the benefit of the economically illiterate. In fact, I am myself among that number, never having studied economics. What I am suggesting is that, in the current financial crisis, economics is, in my opinion, somewhat irrelevant. It may be dumb to think that there is an economic solution to...
Suckers!
9.5
tzo 2010-03-15 03:00
Exclusive to STR In a (nearly) parallel universe, portions of recent history are recorded as follows:   late 19th century-1934 Saudi Arabia's currency is called the Petro, and it is backed with oil, such that one barrel of oil equals 20.67 Petros. All taxes and payments to the Saudi government must be made in Petros. World markets utilize the Petro, a way to deal in oil without actually...
Quake
6
Jim Davies 2010-03-15 03:00
Exclusive to STR Among the welter of news reports about the recent tragedy in Haiti, I noticed a couple that were quite perceptive. As it happens, they both broke surface on the PBS News Hour.   One came a few days after January 12th from David Brooks, the Hour's token conservative. He observed that a slightly more severe earthquake had hit San Francisco and Oakland in 1989, which brought...
We're All Irresponsible Now
7
Emiliano Antunez 2010-03-15 03:00
Exclusive to STR On Wednesday, January 27th, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, delivered his first State of the Union message to its citizens (and “illegal” aliens), all three hundred million plus of us. Besides all the usual empty rhetoric, platitudes and clichés, there was a sentence in Mr. Obama’s speech that was very telling of his audacity and...
Twenty-one Reasons Why Statism Is a Radical and Radically Incoherent Theory
9.75
Jakub Bozydar W... 2010-03-10 04:00
Exclusive to STR Upon encountering the claim that some non-statist doctrine (e.g., anarcho-capitalism) is practically unsafe due to its radical character, it is worthwhile to point to the glaring radicalism of every form of statism. Having thus suggested, however, that it is not radicalism per se that is a problem with any given socio-economic doctrine, it is even more worthwhile to underscore...
Does Obama Hate Black People?
0
Manuel Lora 2010-03-09 04:00
Not even an earthquake in a very poor country is enough for the federal administrators to show compassion. The Obama regime will make no change to its immigration policy in light of the utter devastation in Haiti. The Coast Guard will interdict those trying to enter the U.S. illegally by sea. Only those with special circumstances will be granted special permission: orphans who have ties (not just...
Eminent Domain and the Free Society
0
Alex Schroeder 2010-03-05 04:00
Exclusive to STR Eminent domain has long been a contentious issue in American politics. The United States Constitution, under the Fifth Amendment, grants the government the authority to legally seize private property. It stipulates that such a seizure is warranted if the property will subsequently be used to serve the “public”. Moreover, the property owner must be justly compensated...
Creeping Totalitarianism
8.8
Alex Schroeder 2010-02-01 04:00
  Exclusive to STR   In the past decade, public smoking bans in America have become increasingly commonplace; governmental efforts to institute such bans often prove successful, primarily because the majority of Americans do not smoke. In other words, the majority can only gain from such legislation. Supporters reason that they should not have to inhale second-hand smoke every time they...
Timing Is Everything
8.66667
Bill Butler 2010-02-01 04:00
Exclusive to STR Time preference is an economic concept that compares time in relation to an individual’s need for material gratification. Time preference is a comparison, not a measurement. Time preference is immeasurable because it is, by definition, subjective. That is, each individual has a different time preference and each individual’s time preference can change...
Valor and Discretion
9
tzo 2010-02-01 04:00
Exclusive to STR   Once upon a time I worked a second shift job and regularly walked home from the train station during the later hours of the evening. One night as I was making my way home, a police cruiser pulled up alongside me and the officer asked me where I was headed. I said I was going home, and he then asked me where that might be. I gave him the name of my street, and with that he...

 

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