If you are interested in issues related to jobs moving out of the US go check out this Daniel Drezner post. Lot’s of links to more posts and related info plus good stuff in the comment thread.
Drezner appears to believe that this is not as big an issue as many are making it out to be. Make up your own mind.
Oh, and check out The Acorn’s discussion of this Wired article. You will find a wealth of additional commentary on outsourcing and India here as well.
Modulator’s 20,000th visitor arrived today (per Sitemeter). Regular readers will remember that number 10,000 arrived on October 31, 2003.
The first 10,000 took 179 days and the 2nd 10,000 only 88 days. I like that doubling rate but would be pleasantly shocked to see the next doubling (to 40,000 visitors) occur in 88 days but I do want to see happen faster then the first 20K.
Oh, and visitor 20,000 was a referral from SashaCastel.com. I don’t know whether it was Sasha herself, another member of her group or some other wandering reader. Anyway, thanks for stopping by.
And, thank you to everyone else who has taken the time to visit.
I have had little to say about the current democratic aspirants and probably won’t say much more until there are fewer to deal with.
However, anyone supporting a national ID card in this age of MATRIX and the PATRIOT ACt deserves a hot poker applied to some tender area of their anatomy.
Dean Campaign site:
I will nominate federal judges with outstanding legal credentials, records of professional excellence, and demonstrated commitment to the constitutional principles of equality, liberty, and privacy.
Fifteen months before Dean said he would seek the presidency, however, the former Vermont governor spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh co-sponsored by smart-card firm Wave Systems where he called for state drivers’ licenses to be transformed into a kind of standardized national ID card for Americans. Embedding smart cards into uniform IDs was necessary to thwart “cyberterrorism” and identity theft, Dean claimed. “We must move to smarter license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally read at vital checkpoints,” Dean said in March 2002, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “Issuing such a card would have little effect on the privacy of Americans.”
Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs–and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on
A national ID card seems to be contrary to any meaningful idea of liberty and privacy.
Via Metafilter.
Well, how about when it hires lawyers to write disclaimers like this that you must agree to before posting comments.
The terms aren’t so out of line…not that much different from what I think most of us, without writing them down, would expect. But, really, if you need a lawyer to blog you might as well stop now.
Via untelevised.
In November 2003 w told us:
�Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty,�
This is a noble sentiment and one that would go far toward making the world a safer place if followed.
But how, then, does w explain his support for this saddam clone:
ILHAM ALIYEV was inaugurated as president of the oil-rich Muslim country of Azerbaijan three months ago after an election condemned by international observers as blatantly fraudulent. When members of the opposition tried to protest, they were brutally beaten by police. There followed a massive, nationwide crackdown in which more than 1,000 people were arrested, including opposition leaders, activists from nongovernmental organizations, journalists and election officials who objected to the fraud. More than 100 remain in prison, including most of the senior opposition activists.
Check out this report from Human Rights Watch for details.
Perhaps all this is consistent with w’s undertanding of what it means to do things for human rights.
Via Randy Paul.