THE “COMFY-CHAIR REVOLUTION” gets a mention in the L.A. Times.

21 BLOG ENTRIES ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS: This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up.

UPDATE: The permalink doesn’t seem to be working, but you can see it here — just scroll a bit.

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY is reportedly on the upsurge at Harvard, MIT, and other liberal Northeastern schools. Of course, it had nowhere to go but up. An interesting story, though.

BUSINESS WEEK has an interesting article on globalization and India:

This techno take-off is wonderful for India — but terrifying for many Americans. In fact, India’s emergence is fast turning into the latest Rorschach test on globalization. Many see India’s digital workers as bearers of new prosperity to a deserving nation and vital partners of Corporate America. Others see them as shock troops in the final assault on good-paying jobs. Howard Rubin, executive vice-president of Meta Group Inc., a Stamford (Conn.) information-technology consultant, notes that big U.S. companies are shedding 500 to 2,000 IT staffers at a time. “These people won’t get reabsorbed into the workforce until they get the right skills,” he says. Even Indian execs see the problem. “What happened in manufacturing is happening in services,” says Azim H. Premji, chairman of IT supplier Wipro Ltd. “That raises a lot of social issues for the U.S.”

No wonder India is at the center of a brewing storm in America, where politicians are starting to view offshore outsourcing as the root of the jobless recovery in tech and services.

I’m not surprised.

BLACKFIVE has a list of things you can do to help our troops.

IF YOU BUILD IT, they will cheat. I think that’s pretty close to a law of human nature.

THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE appears to be crushing the morale of America’s enemies.

JAILED CHINESE BLOGGER LIU DI, the “Stainless Steel Mouse,” has been released. That’s excellent news.

ADAM YOSHIDA is a Harvard blogger with some interesting observations on the war.

DEMONSTRATIONS IN KOREA seem to be getting out of hand.

DALE AMON: “The day will come when Iraqi police and government take over everything… and very soon afterwards a large number of Baathists will turn up dead.”

Or, even more horrifying, left alive to face this.

UPDATE: Well, these guys will be spared the horror, anyway.

MICKEY KAUS disagrees with the Howard Owens defending-Hillary post I quote below, observing:

If Hillary had gone to Iraq and flat-out blasted Bush, that would have been fine by me. The problem is she smarmily wanted to have it both ways, pretending her trip was in part a morale-building visit to the troops while she griped about the mission the troops were on.

Read the whole thing. (Emphasis in original).

UPDATE: Now Bill Herbert is saying that Kaus is wrong and Owens is right.

No wonder Hillary is such a polarizing figure!

IS ANTI-ZIONISM ANTI-SEMITISM? Emanuel Ottolenghi explores the question in The Guardian.

GUN PERMIT APPLICANTS ARE INCREASINGLY WOMEN, according to this report from the Nashville Tennessean:

Since 2000, the percentage of gun-carry permits issued in the state to women has risen steadily from about 10% to almost 20% of those issued so far this year.

No one is exactly sure why. The reasons given vary from a growing interest in sports shooting among women to the belief that men — who are the majority of gun owners — rushed in to get gun-carry permits when they became more easily available in 1996, while women gradually gained interest. . . .

While the number of women getting permits may be slowly leveling off after rising for a couple of years, several women contacted said they had recommended getting handguns to their female friends.

I don’t find this particularly surprising.

UPDATE: Regional differences remain, and some women are unhappy with the more restrictive laws in some states.

I’M AWARDING THIS DETACHMENT of the Retail Support Brigade a Unit Citation. In fact, I’m creating a whole new award, the Order Of The Mad Pony, for conspicuous dedication.

UPDATE: Another retail heroine!

HOWARD OWENS IS DEFENDING HILLARY CLINTON — and he’s got a point. It’s also worth looking at this speech by Hillary in support of the Iraq war authorization. Excerpt:

Over eleven years have passed since the UN called on Saddam Hussein to rid himself of weapons of mass destruction as a condition of returning to the world community. Time and time again he has frustrated and denied these conditions. This matter cannot be left hanging forever with consequences we would all live to regret. War can yet be avoided, but our responsibility to global security and to the integrity of United Nations resolutions protecting it cannot. I urge the President to spare no effort to secure a clear, unambiguous demand by the United Nations for unlimited inspections.

And finally, on another personal note, I come to this decision from the perspective of a Senator from New York who has seen all too closely the consequences of last year’s terrible attacks on our nation. In balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I know that I am.

Indeed. (Link via email from Tom Maguire, who inexplicably didn’t blog this himself).

THE GREAT UNRAVELLING: “Protesters turn on Jesse Jackson during rally.”

STUDENTS FOR WAR is calling for military action against North Korea. This seems a bit premature to me. Of course, I would have said the same thing about invading Afghanistan in, say, 2000. So what do I know?

MY LIMITED HOLIDAY BLOGGING has caused me to ignore the momentous happenings in Venezuela. But Miguel Octavio has the big events there covered.

BLOG-IRAN is a pro-Iranian-freedom collective of blogs and more.

THE DEEDS BLOG, from a CPA worker in Baghdad, has a firsthand report of Hillary Clinton’s visit.

HERE’S MORE on the Iraqi anti-terror demonstrations. These seem to have been poorly organized — Zeyad, who was very excited about the prospect of demonstrating on December 10, didn’t know about them, and isn’t sure if this means the December 10 ones were cancelled or will still happen. But it’s certainly a bit of good news.

The BBC story, sadly, puts “terrorism” in scare quotes. Jeff Jarvis links other coverage.

IRAQI SCIENCE: Howard Lovy observes:

Whether Iraq had a nuclear weapons program just before the U.S. invasion will be debated for decades to come, but there is one indisputable fact that should be dealt with in the short term: Iraq’s science community is now one of the country’s richest untapped natural resources.

Very interesting post.

IRAQI BLOGGER THE MESOPOTAMIAN has comments on Bush’s Iraq visit:

Yes GWB, though the visit was brief, it was very meaningful. We know that you have come, not as the President of an invading nation, but as the friend who wishes to renew commitment to our people, and as long as your intentions are what you have repeatedly said (and we don’t doubt your sincerity), the land and the hearts welcome you.

It gives us pain that the visit is so short and that the masses cannot in the present circumstances come out to give you the welcome that you deserve, but the day will come, the day will come (God’s Willing). Yes the day will come when the millions will come out to welcome the best friend that the Mesopotamian people have ever had, and he will be amongst the most devoted and allied people that America will ever have.

The bones in the mass graves salute you, Avenger of the Bones.

Wow. Meanwhile, Tacitus rounds up some other reactions to Bush’s visit.

UPDATE: I think that these are the bones he means.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Apparently, meanwhile, the folks at Counterpunch need lessons in remedial time-telling. Er, among many, many other things. Bill Whittle, on the other hand, can tell time — and do the math.

IRAQI BLOGGER ZEYAD has comments on Bush’s visit (“To tell the truth I’m still shocked to this moment that he took the risk to come here. I used to like him before, but now I admire the guy.”) and a report on anti-terror demonstrations in Baghdad today. Iraqi blogger Omar has a longer report on the demonstrations.