Unqualified Offerings

Yglesias has been doing request threads and I thought I would try it too, largely because I think nobody will actually make any requests and I’ll finally have that unambiguous signal that I should stop blogging. Regardless, the floor is open.

By Mona
At AoTP I wrote about the wackiness at AP vis-a-vis copyrights, and it seems that entity is getting even more bizarre in the face of unhappy reaction. That wire service is proposing a fvcking schedule charging bloggers per word excerpted:
The pricing scale for excerpting AP content begins at $12.50 for [...]

By Thoreau
In an effort to make people hate cops, our good comrades at the Ministry for State Security decided to get new uniforms that look suspiciously like cop uniforms.
This couldn’t possibly be an effort to puff themselves up and make themselves look more like authority figures rather than the bottom of the bloated barrel that [...]

By Mona
[Addendum: After the blogs started asking for contributions, the amount at the link in last graf has hit $105K $110K $120K+ in just a few hours 130K+ 138K+ as I go to bed at 12:40 a.m. EST. If poor moi can send a small bit, so can most of you.]
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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer [...]

By Thoreau
As great as it is that housing will be affordable for me even farther inland than my current location, there are still some downsides. Like drought. Fortunately, the Onion has a roundup of all the wonderful things being done to fix this problem. My favorites are “Gardeners must haul their own [...]

By Thoreau
The LA Times reports that housing prices are falling fastest in the areas with the longest commutes from LA.  This makes perfect sense in a time of gas prices that are high and likely to remain that way.
We’re seeing the first adjustments to what are likely to be permanently high gasoline prices.  I don’t [...]

The American Red Cross is out of money (its disaster-relief fund) and is borrowing to continue its flood-relief work in the Mississippi Valley. It’s possible to donate to either the national organization or state chapters.