This is so funny I cut out the update from the previous post and copied a bit of its other text to create a new post here.

This really is the howler of the day — Chris “I’m Incredibly Full of Myself” Bowers at MyDD, thinks the independent right-wing blogosphere is dead (”There Is No Right-Wing Blogosphere Anymore”):

I still believe this, only now I feel it has developed to such a degree that the right-wing blogosphere itself has been all but annihilated. Most major right-wing bloggers have now been incorporated into the established news media apparatus.

Two thoughts:

1. Locally, ask Paul Hackett how dead we are (yeah, we had help, but it all started with local blogs; besides, Rush is a five-days-per-week blogger who just happens to have a radio show. :–>).
2. You would think a “reality based” guy would at least look at the numbers. Bowers’ ignorance of blog traffic stats is even more stunning (if that’s possible) in this statement:
   

   In short, there is almost nothing in the way of an independent right-wing blogosphere operating outside of existing, established news media outlets. The days of the rise of Free Republic have long passed.

   Really?

   

   I mean, really?

   

   And compared to the leading lefty forum site:

   

   And a free bonus — Just one person’s conservative site vs. The Left’s Big Cahuna:

   

   If this is “annihilation,” let’s have more of it.
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   UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt also noticed Bowers’ hilarity, and therefore deserves his own comparison. Remember, this is just one guy and a very able apprentice compared to Chris “Mr. Big” Bowers aggregating operation at MyDD:

   

   Give it up, Hugh. You’ve been “annihilated.” It’s hopeless.

MARCH 24 UPDATE: Domenech Must Go
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“Pachyderms in the Mist: Red America and the MSM” is the opening blog entry of Ben Domenech, and it is an in-your-face wonder to behold:

This is a blog for the majority of Americans.

Since the election of 1992, the extreme political left has fought a losing battle. Their views on the economy, marriage, abortion, guns, the death penalty, health care, welfare, taxes, and a dozen other major domestic policy issues have been exposed as unpopular, unmarketable and unquestioned losers at the ballot box.

Democrats who have won major elections since 1992 have, with very few exceptions, been the ones who distanced themselves from the shrieking denizens of their increasingly extreme base, soft-pedaled their positions on divisive issues and adopted the rhetoric and positions of the right — pro-free market, pro-business, pro-faith, tough on crime and strongly in favor of family values.

Yet even in a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters, the mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist – an alien and off-kilter group of suburbanite churchgoers about which little is known, and whose natural habitat is a discomforting place for even the most hardened reporter from the New York Times.

It gets better from there, and takes no prisoners — Washington’s go-along get-along Republicans who have sold out their party’s core principles get an equal-opportunity tongue-lashing from Domenech:

On issue after issue, Republicans have given in to the wisdom of the MSM and the beltway talking heads instead of listening to their constituents and the conservative political base. On the size of government, on immigration and on issues of federal power, Republicans have adopted the same Washington strategies that doomed the Democrats in the 1994 cycle…..

His boss is The Washington Post. I said the Post, not the Washington Times.

Liberals are not pleased. David Brock whines at Media Matters.org: “When can we expect the Post to hire a partisan Democratic activist as a blogger to balance Domenech?” (Why do you need to? There are already hundreds in the newsroom. — Ed.) Greg Sargent at The American Prospect also seems to think The Post has no liberal blog representation, as if Dan Froomkin plays it down the center (from his post today about President Bush’s Cleveland speech — “Bush tried to explain. But in the end, what he provided was yet another example of what others see — and he doesn’t. That would be reality.” Oh yeah, no partisanship there.).

But here’s the howler of the day — Chris “I’m Incredibly Full of Myself” Bowers at MyDD, thinks the independent right-wing blogosphere is dead (”There Is No Right-Wing Blogosphere Anymore”):

I still believe this, only now I feel it has developed to such a degree that the right-wing blogosphere itself has been all but annihilated. Most major right-wing bloggers have now been incorporated into the established news media apparatus.

Two thoughts:

1. Ask Paul Hackett how dead we are (yeah, we had help, but it all started with local blogs; besides, Rush is a five-days-per-week blogger who just happens to have a radio show. :–>).
2. The Washington Post Company is surely tired of stock charts that look like this:

Oh, and Mr. Domenech, consider yourself blogrolled.

A Sunday Toledo Blade editorial suggested a possible cure for the difficulty in recruiting Election Day poll workers:

IN AN effort to make the voting process a civic pleasure instead of a problem, Jill Kelly, Lucas County’s elections director, has come up with a sensible plan for increasing the availability of well trained poll workers. Why city and county officials aren’t eager to put the program into effect is a puzzlement.

Ms. Kelly’s plan calls for allowing local government workers to act as poll judges on Election Day without having to sacrifice vacation, personal days, or other paid time off in order to perform this badly needed public service.

It wouldn’t mean a free day off work for public employees who volunteered as poll workers. They would be required to undergo the normal three hours of training, help prepare polling places the evening before Election Day, and put in at least 14 hours supervising voting. For their work, they would receive the nominal sum of $95, or $105 if they served as presiding judges.

This seems like a sensible solution to the continuing lack of poll workers, which is being felt not just in Lucas County but in virtually every other county in Ohio and across the nation.

Senior citizens, who once provided the bulk of poll workers, now seem less enthusiastic about the job. Some are computer-phobic in this era of touch-screen voting machines, while others are increasingly likely to be out of town when elections roll around in the fall and spring.

In just the month before last November’s election, Lucas County unexpectedly lost the services of about 500 workers who had signed up, leading to a shortage of trained personnel to help voters at the polls.

I don’t like the answer.

Let’s start with the obvious: Many, if not most, public workers get perks that those in the private sector can only dream of, among them “personal days” and “accumulated sick time.” I be willing to go as far as letting public employees burn a personal or sick day to work at the polls, but that’s it. Many public employees build up embarrassing numbers of personal and sick days by the the time they retire anyway.

Second, the pay is ridiculous. Civic duty is fine, but for roughly 18 hours of work, poll workers end up getting what works out to be $5.50 or so an hour and a brutally long day. Bumping pay up by 20% or so wouldn’t cost that much, and would go a long way towards not only recruiting more people and reducing the no-show rate.

Finally, in Toledo, of all places, I’m pretty sure there should be no shortage of available poll workers on Election Day. At least as of a few years ago, UAW workers at Ford and GM got Election Day off with pay (it must take all day to vote, you see), and I assume they still do. The Toledo area has at least one significant Ford plant (now Visteon, I believe, but the union contract is essentially the same). GM just announced a big expansion of its transmission plant in Toledo. I know less about Chrysler, but would think that UAW workers at the huge Jeep plant there also get Election Day off with pay. This is not a very smart situation for the “Big Three” car companies to be in while their foreign transplant competitors don’t observe the same practice, but as long as it’s in place, there are a lot of people not working on Election Day.

That’s a pool of probably 20,000 poll workers who are already getting a paid holiday. I would suggest that Lucas and surrounding Metro Toledo counties make attempts to recruit from those ranks first.

At least, if you go far enough into the article I’m not the only one who thinks this is questionable at best:

House to sweeten pot to lure retailer
Piggyback sales tax dangled as incentive

By JIM PROVANCE
BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU
March 18, 2006

COLUMBUS – Sporting goods super-retailer Bass Pro Shops would get back 75 cents of every $1 paid in county sales taxes if it locates in Wood County – or anywhere else in Ohio – under a bill expected to clear the Ohio House next week.

The tax incentive would last 10 years or until the Springfield, Mo., retailer recoups its investment in land, buildings, and equipment, whichever is shorter.

The language is narrowly tailored so that it could apply only to a minimum $50 million investment of a retail/tourist attraction like a Bass Pro or Cabela’s. It also includes a Dec. 1 deadline for the retailer to commit itself in order to take advantage of the tax break.

The language was added this week to a mid-term budget correction bill, providing one piece of a package that northwest Ohio officials hope will attract an “impact facility” to the area.

The language in the bill is project-specific and does not limit the tax break to Wood County’s Rossford site. The county has been pitching the 1,500-acre Crossroads of America area between I-75, the Ohio Turnpike, and U.S. 20. Toledo also has aggressively courted Bass Pro, one of the top boat retailers in the nation, for its Marina District riverfront.

But several economic-development officials – including Jim Russell, a senior vice president of Marina District developer Pizzuti Cos. of Columbus – have said it is unlikely the outfitter will locate there.

Bass Pro is seen as a retailer that will draw people to the region.

“People only need to go to Dundee, Mich., to see what Cabela’s has done,” said Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green). Cabela’s, another sports outfitter, is the No. 1 tourist attraction in Michigan. It attracts more than 6 million people a year, more than twice the number who go to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum. It’s helped to attract other businesses “and has really put Dundee on the map,” he said.

“This isn’t good public policy,” said Zach Schiller, senior researcher for Policy Matters Ohio, a nonprofit research group in Cleveland that focuses on the economy from a lower to middle-class perspective.

“Giving tax breaks for retailing, in general, is something I’d want to stay away from,” he said. “For one thing, is it really going to generate enough business conceivably to be worthwhile, to pay for the additional public services, for the extra people, and the extra traffic on the roads?

“How will it affect other retailers?” he asked. “I’m not a close student of this industry in northwest Ohio, but I’m sure there are existing retailers that sell these products. What if Cabela’s decided to locate in Bowling Green? Are we going to give them the same treatment so that this continues on forever?”

The break applies only to a county’s “piggyback” sales tax. In Wood County, that’s the penny-on-the-dollar the county adds to Ohio’s 5.5 cent tax. Lucas County’s “piggyback” is 1.75 cents.

The language is so specifically drawn that, in order to qualify, the retailer must invest at least $50 million, reserve at least 10 percent of its square footage for educational or exhibition activities, and create at least 150 “full-time equivalent” jobs.

I’ve been to Dundee, and I’m not at all convinced that the project has been the panacea for the community that it’s being touted as, especially if that project involved incentives (oh, but Cabela’s has done fine, thank you very much). And I think the questions about the impact on other retailers of a subsidized project are legitimate. It’s one thing for a place like Wal-Mart to put higher-priced stores out of business in a free market; it’s quite another for that to happen while the government is subsidizing the aggressive competitor.

This seemed to be an issue to throw out to S.O.B. Alliance member Newshound, which I did. Here’s his response:

(Wood County) is just a hop and a skip away from here – and yes, it is a boondoggle ….. Toledo and Wood County are fighting over Bass Pro Shops and throwing incentives left and right that they’d never even consider giving a local business looking to expand.

The entire tax incentive strategy for gaining new businesses has gotten way out of hand.

I would add another question: If it’s such a good idea, why wouldn’t a Bass Pro or similar outfit just come in and build without the incentives?
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UPDATE: Here is the e-mail I sent to Representative and Ken Blackwell’s Lt. Gov.-designate Tom Raga:

Mr. Raga,

There is no reason such a subsidy/abatement is necessary.

If Bass Pro or any other business wants to set up shop and compete on a level playing field against other establishments, fine. But there’s no reason for the state to be helping counties pick winners or losers.

This is horrible tax and fiscal policy, and I trust you’ll vote to strip the provision relating to it out of HB 530. If you don’t, it will make me seriously question why Ken Blackwell chose you, and in turn why I should choose him.

UPDATE 2: Scott Pullins blogs the Ohio Taxpayers Association opposition here.

PREQUEL: S.O.B. Alliance member NixGuy had a nice post on this topic last night (but I had it scheduled for posting first, really, didn’t I, EUR? — Ed.), including great descriptions of the barriers employers face in ridding themlselves of marginal employeers.
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Hundreds of thousands of French twentysomethings and their organized labor sympathizers who are marching, demonstrating, inflicting mayhem, and even threatening a general strike because they don’t want jobs where their employer has the right to fire them without cause in their first two years of work. Let’s assume for the moment that they are legitimately worried about their long-term economic well-being. I know, it’s a stretch, but stay with me.

If so, they ought to look at how US college graduates, obviously predominantly in their 20s and just entering the full-time career market, are faring (HT hiatused EU Rota):

Best job market in 5 years for grads: report
Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:35 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. college graduates are facing the best job market since 2001, with business, computer, engineering, education and health care grads in highest demand, a report by an employment consulting firm showed on Monday.

“We are approaching full employment and some employers are already dreaming up perks to attract the best talent,” said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

In its annual outlook of entry-level jobs, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said strong job growth and falling unemployment makes this spring the hottest job market for America’s 1.4 million college graduates since the dot-com collapse in 2001.

The firm pointed to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers which showed employers plan to hire 14.5 percent more new college graduates than a year ago.

The survey also found higher starting salaries this year. Graduates with economic or finance degrees will see the biggest gain with starting salaries up 11 percent to $45,191, while accounting salaries are up 6.2 percent, business management salaries up 3.9 percent and pay for civil engineers 4.3 percent higher.

But Challenger said graduates should not assume the improved labor market will guarantee everyone a job.

Ah, but there’s the rub. French twentysomethings would rather wait years for a guaranteed job (with much less mobility) than just get on with it and start working and building a resume. One suspects that the generous French social-welfare benefits system makes that decision easier, whereas the US has no safety-net fallback for a perfectly healthy college grad holding out for the perfect job (except moving back in with the folks, I suppose).

So French unemployment stays stuck at about twice the level of the US, while hundreds of thousands of people in their prime working years gripe about the very possibility of having to work under non-guaranteed conditions.

Sort of explains our diverging economies, doesn’t it?
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UPDATE: This BBC report says that the national strike is set for March 28.

WELCOME INSTAPUNDIT READERS! Thanks to Glenn for the link, and intense apologies to all for the slow server response (I think the problem ended at about 4PM ET). I’ve cut the number of posts per page to two until the Instalanche plays out. Believe me, something will be done about this in the next couple of weeks.
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Venture Capital Money Is Flowing Like Water…. In Silicon Valley, and Entrepreneurs Aren’t Even Asking for It!

It will be interesting to see whether news of this outpouring of venture money, which as you will see is truly remarkable, gets out of the financial pages in The So-Called Mainstream Media.

Remember the gloom and doom several years ago as punditeers said that Silicon Valley would never be the same again?

Somebody forgot to tell the investing community.

A free article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal says that unsolicited venture dollars are flowing into Silicon Valley start-ups — Even if you’ve known that the economy is in pretty good shape, you’ll be shaking your head in near-disbelief as you read this:

Silicon Valley Start-Ups See Cash Everywhere
Through ‘Pre-Emptive Financing,’ Venture Capitalists Shower Firms With Cash, Stake an Early Claim

The market for high-technology start-up businesses is so intense in Silicon Valley that some companies are being showered with millions of dollars from investors — without even asking for it.

It is a phenomenon called “pre-emptive financing,” and it has become more common in the past several months.

The question is whether venture capitalists are moving too quickly, funding risky, untested start-up businesses — just as they did during the heady, and ultimately unsustainable, technology-stock boom of 1999 and 2000.

Pre-emptive financing happens when a venture capitalist seeks out a promising start-up business and offers it money out of the blue, before the company tries to raise a second or third round of cash. If the offer is good enough, in theory, the venture investor will snag a piece of the company quickly, thus avoiding a costly bidding war that could erupt later once the company says publicly it is looking for cash and attracts several suitors.

Such bidding wars are increasingly common these days and have pushed up prices investors pay for stakes in some start-up companies. The median valuation of venture-funded start-up businesses — the amount investors think these companies are worth — soared to $15.2 million in 2005, from $10 million two years earlier, according to research firm VentureOne, a unit of Dow Jones & Co., which publishes The Wall Street Journal. Venture capitalists typically take stakes in small, private-sector companies, hoping for a payout later through a company sale or an initial public offering of stock.

The trend puts many start-up companies in the driver’s seat. “I’ve had several [venture-capital] firms come to me long before we were looking for money,” says Jason Goldberg, chief executive officer of Seattle online job-search concern Jobster Inc. His company, after getting unsolicited calls from two venture firms last year, raised $19.5 million in additional financing much earlier than it had planned. Young companies in wireless communications, computer games and consumer Internet services are big targets for pre-emptive funding calls these days.

It all highlights how desperate some venture capitalists have become to find homes for the huge amounts of cash they have raised, and how few companies there are that really deserve their money. Last year, venture-capital firms raised $25.2 billion from investors, the most since 2001, and they are struggling to put all that money to work.

….. Some investors are so eager to one up each other that they don’t even bother to find out who to call at promising start-ups. A Pasadena, Calif., home-improvement Web site, Done Right, operated by a company called Perform Local Inc., received an email in January from a well-known investment firm inquiring about putting cash into the company. Paul Ryan, Done Right’s chief executive officer, says the missive wasn’t sent to him or to his executives — it landed in a general corporate email inbox. Mr. Ryan wasn’t put off by the impersonal plea: “We’re having very good discussions with [the firm] right now,” he says, declining to name the potential investor.

The one part of the article that I believe is all wrong is the analogy to the dot-com bubble that burst in 1999 and 2000. This is totally different, and the author should have known better. Venture capital (VC) money, which is all that is discussed in the article, is meant to fund start-ups and early stage companies. If the VC folks lose their shirts, well, it’s part of the high-risk game they play.

No, the problem with the dot-com bubble was that so many of these companies went public while they were still in their start-up and early stages. The stock-investing public got duped (and, yes, lured in by naked greed) into taking on levels of risk not normally associated with owning listed stocks. The normal rules of thumb, things like having a track record of sustained and well-above-average sales and earnings growth for at least three years (preferably five), got totally thrown out the window. Heck, some of the dot-com public start-ups barely had generated any revenue at the time they went public. Truth be told, I believe that the many of the VCs knew darn well that they were dumping dogs on the public as they took their money and ran. But, the investing public was dumb enough to buy in.

So, we’re not heading back to the irrationally exuberant stage — yet. When the VCs are the ones taking the early-stage risks, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Let’s hope that the memories of NASDAQ 5000 falling to NASDAQ 1200, and the 99% haircuts many dot-com stock prices took (even the companies that survived), are still fresh enough in the public’s mind that these companies have to actually prove themselves before getting into the public-equity market.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about renting space out in a San Jose office building and putting in a phone with a forwarding number just to see if I can get the VCs to call. Don’t tell them I’m from Ohio.
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ADDENDUM: Let’s not hold back here — One of the reasons the Silicon Valley revival has as much steam as it does is the reduction in federal taxes on capital gains that were part of the Bush tax cuts in 2003.
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Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
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UPDATE: S.O.B. Alliance member Large Bill points to an OpinionJournal.com piece from Sunday in which House Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who represents part of the Bay Area, talks of reducing some of the worst excesses of Sarbanes Oxley. Although her language is vague, this is no accident; when the VCs in the general area she serves want to cash out and have their companies go public, it will be less ruinously (and in my opinion, pointlessly) costly to do so, and better for the overall economy of that region. It would be nice if she would extend the logic of reducing burdensome taxes and regulations to other areas, but we shouldn’t hope for too much.

UPDATE 2: Kevin at Pundit Review rounds things out with a lot of other good information about a dramatic increase in Hispanic-owned businesses, loans to minority-owned enterprises by the Small Business Administration (I’m not a fan of SBA, which is a topic for another time, but this increased lending activity is an indicator that entrepreneurship is ethnically diverse), minority home ownership, and increases in real disposable income. The point: The prosperity is not happening for just few nerds in the Bay Area who happen to be in the right place at the right time, it’s occurring virtually across-the-board. It would be nice if the Democrat/liberal portion of the population, and their Mainstream Media spokespeople, recognized it.

UPDATE 3, March 24: Better late than never — On Wednesday, Spacetropic came across an article that says “industry is underserved by experienced technologists.” I have some anecdotal evidence that would support that.

Free Links:

• From the branch of government that brings you legislation without being a legislature:
  Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner is still upset that mere senators, congressmen, and citizens were lookin over her hallowed shoulders:

  Last week, O’Connor used a speech at Georgetown University to attack pro-life lawmakers who sided with Terri Schiavo’s parents in their efforts to prevent their daughter’s euthanasia death. She claimed a Congressional effort to have federal courts review the case was a first step towards a dictatorship.

  What a bunch of hyperbolic blather. Good riddance, Sandy.

• Is This a Trend Yet?

  

• John Fund has been following the story of the 4th-grade educated former Taliban Propaganda Minister who was allowed to enroll at Yale. So should you. One excellent question I read somewhere but can’t recall where: Why didn’t Yale consider a talented woman from recently liberated Afghanistan instead, instead of someone who was harboring Osama bin Laden when September 11, 2001 attacks were carried out?
• Being a Wrong Leftist Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry — Gateway Pundit has a great rundown of what politicians opposing the Iraq War were saying just before it began three years ago. I have small excerpt to add from the Columnist Division on that topic (bold is mine):
  

  These are the last days of relative calm before we start bombing and massacring hundreds of thousands of people and in so doing enter into what many believe will a very long, drawn-out, insanely expensive, volatile, destabilizing, completely unwinnable war …..
  Uh-huh.

Lunchtime Assignment:

• (Warning: Foul Language Is in the Pictures at These Links) Visit Zombietime’s gallery of pictures from a third-year Operation Iraqi Freedom anniversary protests (yeah, plural – go there and see why) in San Francisco that the WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as The Mainstream Media) don’t want you to see. If you still have time, go to Michelle Malkin’s mostly pictorial chronicle of the fizzled March in DC.

If you skip over the Positivity Posts everyday, DON’T skip this one.

No one would question the family of Matt Maupin if they turned inward as they wait and pray for the return of their son who was captured in Iraq nearly two years ago.

But they haven’t done that. The Army Times reports that they’ve been thinking of other soldiers’ families, a lot:

Two more Maupin computer labs dedicated in Iraq
Captured soldier’s parents have donated 90 computers with Web cams

CAMP ANACONDA, BALAD, Iraq — Troops at Logistical Support Area Anaconda on Feb. 14 dedicated two 24-hour computer labs on behalf of Sgt. Keith “Matt” Maupin, the only soldier still listed as captured in the war on terror.

Maupin’s parents, Keith and Carolyn Maupin, of Union Township, Ohio, donated 90 computers with Web cams to help deployed troops stay in touch with loved ones.

The computers are now being used in three Matt Maupin Computer labs, the first of which opened at the Blackjack Education Center in September.

The new labs, located at the east and west Morale, Welfare and Recreation facilities, complete the project.

“Today’s dedication brings Mr. and Mrs. Maupin’s dreams to fruition,” said Staff Sgt. Matthew Stegmann of Missouri’s 35th Area Support Group at the dedication of the computer lab in the MWR East Center.

“Today, fulfillment is achieved by the friends and family of Sgt. Maupin because today Mr. and Mrs. Maupin are enabling service members, currently stationed at LSA Anaconda, to make communications with friends and family members.”

“With each strike of the key someone is sending someone else a message that ‘I’m OK, I’m safe, I’m alright’ or ‘I’m not OK and need support,’” she said to a group of about 50 service members who had come to honor Maupin at the MWR East dedication.

“And we can thank Sgt. Maupin’s mom and dad for making that happen for a lot of soldiers in the way they wanted it to happen for their soldier.” Halstead added that she applauds Maupin’s parents for “never giving up” hope. She also said that she carries a photo of Maupin in her notebook to remember him.

Read the rest of the article, and that’s an order.

Sometimes when we see what how our soldiers conduct themselves, and what they endure to ensure our freedom, we find ourselves asking “Where do people like this come from?” In Matt Maupin’s case, it’s pretty obvious.

This family deserve Matt’s return, and I hope you’ll join me in praying that it comes soon.
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Porkopolis has been covering the Matt Maupin situation more closely than I have, and he much more information in various posts if you want to learn more.