We have our little spats from time to time, but we always kiss and make up before the neighbors start to wonder.

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Jim Hoagland thinks the sizzle is more filling than the steak.

Idiot.

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Daily Pundit Bill Quick has sunk his teeth into a real live evolving story.

We

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Link via Drudge.

Now it’s WorldCom in the crosshairs.

WorldCom has uncovered what people close to the company describe as a massive fraud, inflating a common measure of its earnings by more than $3.8 billion over the last five quarters. The company late Tuesday confirmed its intention to restate its earnings and said it had notified the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Kids, it’s official: The ride is gonna be rough, and it might not even be one for the brave. If you’re day-trading and working on movement, you might do OK — if you’re much, much smarter and luckier than the average bear.

If you’re invested for the long term, you really have no choice but to stay in.

Everyone else is going to take some pretty serious losses, methinks.

That’s how the markets works. That’s how people learn. That’s how bad methods get fixed. That’s how things get better. Eventually. In the meantime, there’s going to be a lot of clamoring by a lot of stupid people for Washington to do a lot of very stupid things.

Take a deep breath. Don’t panic. Don’t listen to the stupid people.

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Michael Kelly is no Pollyanna. Not only does he approve of the President

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George Will is pleased, too.

President Bush’s Monday statement was the most clearsighted U.S. intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in the 35 years since the 1967 war, and perhaps in the 54 years since the founding of Israel. It enunciated a policy that makes eventual peace at least conceivable, and meanwhile frees the president to pursue the global anti-terrorism agenda articulated in five other speeches in the past year.

Also in the Washington Post, David Broder looks at. . .Republican gubernatorial chances. Come back with that stuff in October, Broder. You know, once we

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Tom Friedman is still reporting from Iran and still making sense. When not talking domestic politics or Israel, this isn

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I could have sworn I left my link to the new Maureen Dowd silliness around here somewhere.

I guess you’ll just have to check around somewhere else.

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Saudi-controlled Arabia is now banning products using the Star of David. May I suggest Intel start burning a little star into its computer chips? And that Ford replaces their blue oval with our little blue pointy friend? How about Sony televisions with a little Israeli flag in the corner, blotting out the ever-present CNN logo?

I don

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Look, I love the Constitution. Really. I think John Adams was a political genius equal to Jefferson, Machiavelli, Aristotle, or the sum total of English Common Law.

But I love our greenbacks, too. And the new designs are ugly enough without printing excerpts from the Constitution on the flipside.

Bring back the old money, please.

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Soundly beaten in 1945, Germany gave up claims not just to Austria and the Sudeten, but Silesia and Pomerania, too. Just as thoroughly pounded that same year, Japan gave up her dreams of conquest, and seems happy with Russia owning the long-disputed island of Sakhalin/Karafuto. After Napoleon was handed his balls at Waterloo, there

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I

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Out of character, the Guardian has two pretty decent analysis pieces today.

This one looks at how Palestinian terror strengthened the hand of Administration hawks, while killing Colin Powell

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Hey, I made the Top 100 again at Weblogs.com. And all I had to do was bust my ass all day.

And loved every minute of it, of course.

UPDATE: Today wasn’t a record day for hits — but it was in the top five, I think.

2,800+ visitors. 5,850+ page views. And without a link from Glenn or Lileks or Andrew or any of the biggies.

Cool. Thanks.

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Being both an architectural photographer and an international skating judge, my cousin Brett Drury gets to travel a lot.

Recently, he was flying over his old digs here in Colorado, and managed to snag a couple snapshots of the Hayman fires.

If you’re a flatlander, let a more experienced eye tell you what you’re seeing. In this first picture, what you should see is an endless view of jagged granite, so seemingly huge that the entire planet must be made of shear cliffs and the occassional icepack. Above, a sky so blue you’d think your L.A. sunset had been turned upside down.

In the second picture, the huge gray-white smear on the left side isn’t clouds; it’s smoke.

Normally, that line of cloud running horizontally along the top would be just that — a horizontal line. Everything under that bottom edge is nothing but smoke.

Now, assuming the plane is at 33,000 feet, and the mountain range runs from 8,000-14,000 feet, you’re looking at anywhere from 19 to 25 thousand feet of smoke.

That’s more than three or four miles of soot and ash, straight up.

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The good folks at World Wide Rant inadvertantly let me know that the amazing James Randi is on the web and updating often. So, they get a blogroll down there in Tequila Shots, and a big thanks.

Also, Andy lives here in Colorado and Tom is a Tom Waits fan. So they can’t suck, right?

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Our own N.Z. Bear (no relation to Fozzie) has uncovered more evidence that Colin Powell is no longer a voice in formulating Middle East policy.

You read it here first. Or at least pretty close.

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A vast majority of the US public might think we’re losing the war on terror right now, but Indepundit Scott doesn’t agree.

I

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Go to my search function, select “comments” for where to search, then search for “Dean.”

He’s one of our regular comment contributors here, and one of the best. Today he must have doubled my knowledge of Chinese politics, while dispensing maybe a small fraction of one percent of what he knows. And he does this kind of thing day after day.

And, yes, I am trying to flatter/bully him into starting his own blog. Again.

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Rand Simberg finds all the juciest Idiotarian quotes, so you don’t have to.

Any plan that pisses off the EU, brings Jack Straw over to the forces of Light, gives Israel some breathing room, and scares Arafat, Syria, and the House of Saud, by definition has to be good.

Anyway, go read Rand. He found a bunch of good stuff today.

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We now have a Finnish warblogger. Welcome, Teemu.

If you’ve heard Finland in the news at all lately, it’s probably thanks to this little trivia: Five million Finns export more manufactured goods than every single Arab nation combined. Odd trivia? Their language is more closely related to Hungary’s Magyar than Swedish.

I always did like Finland. Owned first in part by Sweden, then in whole by Russia, they always maintained their distinct identity. Stalin’s Red Army took months to cut through Finland’s Mannerheim Line — and they never did manage to subjugate the country.

Let’s see if Teemu Lehtonen us made of the same stern stuff.

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On second thought, maybe soccer does have a couple things going for it.

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Found this quote over at Tony Pierce a moment ago:

San Francisco is the ex-girlfriend you can

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Coolblogger Eric Olsen has a real radio show at a real radio station. As a service to his listeners, Eric webcasts his show.

Or at least he used to — the fools at the US Copyright Tribunal just shut WAPS off the web.

Here’s the whole story.

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Found this at Sue Lizano‘s place.

Maybe it’s Santa Cruz, or maybe it’s my dirty mind.

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Just what are the Palestinians really trying to accomplish, anyway? Joe Katzman might just have the answer. He also adds an eighth item to Ralph Peters’ famous Seven Signs of Loser States.

If you’re not reading Joe’s stuff, you’re missing some of the deepest analysis this side — or any side — of Steven Den Beste or Eric Raymond.

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Microsoft is working on a combo Ultimate TV DVR/Xbox game console. The device would replace your VCR, DVD player, and Playstation, all in one black (and, I assume, green) box.

It’s a nice concept, but who are they going to sell it to? Early adopters already have their TiVo. Harcore gamers bought their Xboxes for Christmas. The market Microsoft should be aiming for is Just Plain Folks — who don’t need some $500 dollar gizmo replacing their already paid for VCR and game console.

Get the price down to $300 — the original retail for the Xbox — and maybe Redmond will have something big. Maybe. It still sounds a bit like a toaster with a built-in garage door opener; cool but useless.

PERSONAL NOTE: The last game console I owned was a Atari Super Pong back in ’76 or ’77, I think. My household missed the Atari craze because I was too busy trying to beg, borrow, or buy a VIC-20, then a C-64. So last fall I went and bought myself an Xbox. Four words: Dead Or Alive III. Oh, fifth word: boobies.

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