OK, I don’t claim to be an expert in Arabic, or even a dilettante. But I’ve heard multiple pronounciations of “Umm Qasr.” Fox folks have been putting the accent on the second syllable. It seems to me that a syllable that doesn’t even have a vowel of its own doesn’t deserve an accent–the emphasis should be placed on the “Qas” part.

Am I right?

I just discovered, via a google of “Transterrestrial.”

It’s Betty Ragan‘s, a self described “insane science fiction fan” who, for what it’s worth, recently lost a stepfather, and it’s worth a look.

The Australian has an on-line shortened version of the piece that Ramesh Ponnuru wrote on the Anglosphere in this month’s print edition of The National Review. It’s worth a read for those who aren’t subscribers to TNR.

Fox News just did a little segment at the end of Brit Hume’s show comparing and contrasting Bagdad, Kentucky with Baghdad, Iraq.

Here’s one other way that they’re similar.

My Fox News column is up, in which I make the case that the Hitler analogy for Saddam is not only not “extreme,” but appropriate.

Chicago was struck by a meteor shower. One of the fragments came through the roof of a house.

Some of the Marines are going to need some additional emotional support when they come home. They’re being forced into firefights with children. Just one more reason that this evil regime must be consigned to history forthwith.

Seriously.

Yesterday, according to the WaPo, the Senate voted to halve the President’s tax cut proposal. Has anyone seen the actual wording of the amendment?

I ask because the government really has no power to increase or decrease tax revenues with any precision. All it can do is prescribe rates. It’s like a video game controller that can change velocity, but can’t control the cursor position directly. All estimates of revenue from tax rate changes are just that, and the discussion about the size of a tax cut is a fiction, because in reality no one knows what the true implications of a rate change will be–it’s too dependent on things like the future state of the economy and changes in peoples’ behavior that might result from the change.

So, just how did the Senate propose to limit the tax cut to a specific dollar amount? Was it like declaring pi to be three by fiat?

Saddam Hussein was given a key to the city of Detroit in 1980.

Saddam Hussein was given a key to the city of Detroit in 1980.