Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death
Patrick Henry - The War Inevitable - the "give me liberty or give me death" speech, March 23, 1775. Always worth a re-read around this time of year [smith2004]
I got my bathing suit out of the laundry yesterday, and the tie string had pulled half-way out. Having nothing to lose, I threaded a straightened-out hanger through the tie string channel, pulled the tie string all the way out, tied it to the end of the hanger, and worked the hanger back out. Problem fixed. That's the first time I've done that. It was actually pretty easy.
Took the kids to see Men in Black II yesterday, while the wife went to a dog show. I didn't like it as much as the original, but it was funny. Not as funny as the lady in the row in front of us thought, but funny. Worth $6 (the matinee price at the theater I frequent).
Paul Craig Roberts at The Washington Times - Wake-up signals from Wall Street - trouble is coming, and not from terrorists. [lew]
One problem is the dearth of initial public offerings. For the past 18 months, initial public offereings (IPOs) have been averaging eight per month. When entrepreneurs are afoot, IPOs run eight per week or per day.
Where are the entrepreneurs? What is holding them back? Are they deserting the United States because of class-action lawsuits, high taxes, regulatory restrictions and global considerations? Are entrepreneurs stymied by the anti- business climate attributed to accounting scandals?
The Fed's magic has not worked. Policymakers should focus on finding a way to give incentivizes to entrepreneurs.
The missing stock market recovery could turn out to be a bigger crisis than terrorism for the Bush administration. Bridgewater Associates points out that foreign investors are heavily overweighted with U.S. assets at a time when financing the massive U.S. trade deficit requires about 75 percent of the capital exports of the entire world.
Jeff Head - Trodden Under, the second volume of the Dragon's Fury series, is complete, and is going through final edit/review of the final two chapters. Mr. Head expects it to be available through Amazon by the end of July. Yay!
Gun Tests via Enterprise Arms - Semiautomatic .308s: Pick L1A1s or M1As, not HK-91's - an April, 1999 article on choosing a semi-auto .308 caliber rifle. [battlerifles.com]
According to the U.S. Treausury Department's Public Debt to the Penny page, the U.S. has gone over $300 billion more in debt since last September. $6.124 trillion on July 2 vs. $5.807 trillion on September 28, 2001.