Catching My Eye: Morning A Through Z

I find the tit-for-tat going on in much on the political blogosphere over the presidential contest completely inane. Other than none of the other African dictators wanting to do anything about the Zimbabwean dictator however much his inept leadership injures their respective countries’ economies and people there isn’t much international news right at the moment other than the continuing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and there haven’t been any really new developments on either front.

I haven’t done one of these in quite a while so here are a few posts, selected from the great blogs on my blogroll, that really deserve your attention:

• Amba pens a rhapsodic ode to the making of carp roe salad that you really owe it to yourself to read (whatever your feelings on carp roe salad).

• Start here at Democracy Arsenal and then traverse the links in that post to the other entries in this interesting discussion of America’s grand strategy.

• Callimachus notes that, until relatively recently in the nation’s history, the only federal official and, consequently, the direct experience with the federal government, with whom most Americans had contact was the local postmaster or postmistress. Offhand I’d say that began to change in the 1930’s and really changed when withholding tax was introduced as a revenue-enhancing measure during WWII. A really great post.

• Fester at Newshoggers considers whether the gambling industry isn’t maturing and speculates on how the industry’s declining (or cyclic) revenues will affect city and state governments. This is just the kind of one step ahead, connecting the dots sort of thinking that I like.

• Richard Fernandez posts on China and the maritime order.

That’s the lot.

4 comments… add one
  • Dave — thanks for the hat tip. My worry is if the gaming industry is a maturing industry with few untapped markets (which seems likely given the massive build-out of the past 15 years), it is just another consumer discretionary industry with its attendant cyclical flows while state/local officials are counting on acyclical cash flows. This could truly screw Pittsburgh which is my primary hook.

  • I’ve been chary of gambling as a source of public revenues for that and a host of other economic and social issues.

  • reader_iam Link

    The Quad-Cities (IA-IL) would be vulnerable to that as well, I believe.

  • I think it’s true of quite a few municipalities and states, reader_iam.

    FWIW we are regular visitors to the Quad Cities. We visit there every Mother’s Day, regular as clockwork (Scott County Kennel Club dog show).

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