50 states’ changes in GDP, jobs, and home prices in 2008

The Atlantic links a WSJ chart which it then graphs (above), showing the varied impact of the recession on all 50 states.

North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Texas, Hawaii, and South Dakota all managed modest increases (1.9-.2%) in home prices, while California real estate insanity exacted a ferocious toll not only within its own borders (-25.5%), but also in the neighboring California refugee destinations of Nevada (-28.2%) and Arizona (-20.6). Florida, of course, traditionally always jumps on board any real estate collapse and also came in the top ranks of disaster (-24%).

The Guardian is repeating whispers heard around nomadic campfires near the Khyber Pass.

The CIA is equipping Pakistani tribesmen with secret electronic transmitters to help target and kill al-Qaida leaders in the north-western tribal belt, in a tactic that could aid Pakistan’s army as it takes the battle against extremism to the Taliban heartland.

As the army mops up Taliban resistance in the Swat valley, where a defence official predicted fighting would be over within days, the focus is shifting to Waziristan and the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.

But a deadly war of wits is already under way in the region, where tribesmen say the US is using advanced technology and old-fashioned cash to target the enemy.

Over the last 18 months the US has launched more than 50 drone attacks, mostly in south and north Waziristan. US officials claim nine of the top 20 al-Qaida figures have been killed.

That success is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed “chips” or “pathrai” (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination.

“Everyone is talking about it,” said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. “People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it.”

According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.

Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. “There are body parts everywhere,” said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike.

Declan Walsh reports on 5:27 audio

Freelance writer, quondam blogger, and (according to IMDB) miscellaneous film crewman & producer Guy Cimbalo tried for sophisticated risque humor Playboy-style and came across more like a stalker with misogynist derangement syndrome.

His list of CWILFs (not surprisingly) led with cute and vivacious little Michelle Malkin and, rather unkindly, altogether omitted Ann Coulter. I guess Ann Coulter is just too much woman for Cimbalo, even in an exercise in journalistic Onanism.

1. Michelle Malkin

2. Megyn Kelly

3. Mary Katharine Ham

4. Amanda Carpenter

5. Elisabeth Hasselbeck

6. Dana Perino

7. Laura Ingraham

8. Pamela Geller

9. Michele Bachmann

10. Peggy Noonan

Jimmie, at Sundries Shack, produced the response title juste: I Don’t Know Guy Cimbalo, but I’d Enjoy Punching Him in the Mouth.

And it didn’t take very long at all, once Cimbalo’s limp effort attracted comment, for Playboy to decide the whole thing wasn’t really worth defending, and they simply hit delete.

Doubtless an amusing take on lust for attractive conservative female commentators from a conflicted liberal perspective could be written, but this one wasn’t it.

Michael Barone rejects the craven advice so commonly being circulated these days urging the GOP to move toward the center.

I think Republicans today should be less interested in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center. Here I mean a different “center” — not a midpoint on an opinion spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets.

This center includes the Treasury, with its $700 billion of TARP funds voted last fall to purchase toxic assets from financial institutions and used instead to quasi-nationalize banks and preserve union benefits for employees and retirees of bankrupt auto companies. It includes the Federal Reserve, which has been vastly increasing the money supply. It includes a federal government whose $787 billion economic stimulus has so far failed to lower the unemployment rate from where the government projected it would be without the stimulus package.

To govern is to choose, as John F. Kennedy said, and those in charge of these new centralized institutions are making choices that inevitably favor some and hurt others. Unsurprisingly, the politically well connected tend to get the favors. Banks forced to take government money are now blocked from paying it back and in the meantime must direct funds where the government wants them to go.

Chrysler and General Motors bondholders have their property redistributed to the United Auto Worker retiree health-care fund (how the retirees help the companies make cars profitably is left unclear). Stimulus funds go to state governments with lavish contracts with public employee unions. And out of every dollar that goes to a union, a certain number of cents make their way to the Democratic Party.

Read the whole thing.