Smoking Ban Update Some good comments on my earlier smoking ban post. So I did a bit of Googling and I found this Reason article (Reason is a Libertarian/Objectivist magazine). The Reason article does a good job of showing why this result makes no sense. For example, The American Heart Association attributes 35,000 heart disease […]

Scary Rumsfeld’s statements on Iran and Syria are a few days old now, but in case you missed them, here’s one: “These deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces. We consider such trafficking as hostile acts, and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments,” Rumsfeld said. And there are […]

You Almost Have to Admire… …such single-minded (or simple-minded?) devotion: “Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes,” the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, blithely told CongressDaily. From a NY Times editorial yesterday. AB For the “more important” category, might I suggest winning? Fewer casualties? Paying for the war?

You must take a look at this picture. As Digby would say, this picture is “Another example of why homeschooling by idiots is a very bad idea”. I could make some point about how it’s logically incorrect to take the dumbest or most extreme member of a group and project their idiocy onto the entire […]

More Bad News Just yesterday, I said that unemployment increases tend to follow slowdowns in the manufacturing sector. Now today, the new unemployment figures are out and they are worse than expected (coming in at 445,000 instead of the anticipated 410,000 new jobless claims). In this case, these numbers are related to past slowness in […]

If it Sounds to Good to be True Then it probably is. Kevin Drum (CalPundit) points to a CNN story, Study: Smoking ban cuts heart attacks; Trend shows heart attacks down by half. Here’s the big quote from the story: Now, about eight months after Dr. Richard Sargent first noticed the trend, both doctors are […]

This is Bad Economic News Factory orders fall 1.5% in February; Manufacturing sector remains sluggish as factories hold out for further developments in Iraq war. Quoting: Orders for durable goods — items such as cars and appliances meant to last three or more years — fell 1.6 percent, a bigger fall than the previously reported […]

More Rumsfeld, Meyers, and “The Plan” Rumsfeld and Meyers had a press conference today (transcript here). AB

In Honor of Mr. Cheney Today There’s this from the Press Gaggle: Q. So you think that his [Vice President Cheney] prediction could still pan out that the Iraqis wouldn’t fight? MR. FLEISCHER: I assure you, the Vice President does not say things lightly. So when the Vice President says something like that, he has […]

Orcinus found a Great Quote It’s sufficiently appropriate for the current times that I’ll lift it entirely from Dave: “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency […]