Roundup

  • Ampersand has an excerpt worth reading from a letter Rachel Corrie wrote to her parents, shortly before her death. (Regardless of which side you take on Israel/Palestine, there is unarguably much suffering in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; Rachel Corrie first gave up comfort and then her life to do what she thought was right).

  • Via ArgMax, Forbes has a poll on the question “Which do you think is the best blog about the economy?” Right now, “None of the Above” is leading with 59% of the vote. Perhaps a sea of AB readers are protesting my exclusion from the list? (In fairness to ArgMax, his blog is much more closely focused on the economy than mine). And while we’re on the subject of ArgMax, read this “Do Deficits Matter?” post (if you don’t have time, the answer is yes).

  • Kos says it well: “In yet another stunning victory for Bush and his economic team, first-time jobless claims remained above the magic 400,000 mark for the fifth straight week. In the week of March 15, 421,000 lost their jobs. Even better news for Bush (and bad news for his enemy — the American working people) was the more salient 4-week moving average [also above 400,000]”. See this for more.

  • A lot of you have seen the Clear Channel Funded the Pro-War Rallies, notably the Atlanta one, stories moving around the web and Chicago Tribune. Credit to Digby who last Thursday (3/16) looked at a picture from one of the rallies and asked presciently “Where did all those exact same sized flags come from, anyway? Who paid for them?”.
  • I’m already very tired of hearing about “embedded” reporters. I believe that is code for “shown what the Pentagon wants them to see”.

  • Mortgage rates are up. Car and home buying–fueled by low rates–are two important sectors propping up GDP these days.

  • And if you didn’t read it before, read this post from yesterday.

  • Also, if you missed them, you should really see the re-captioned ready.gov safety posters.

  • Via Joe Conason, this BBC piece on Blix, who said, “We had made rapid start. We did not have any obstacles from the Iraqi side in going anywhere. They gave us prompt access and we were in a great many places all over Iraq…[the Americans] lost patience some time at the end of January or the beginning of February…I somewhat doubt that when (the Security Council) got the resolution last November they really intended to give under three-and-a-half months for inspections.”

AB