Limited, Inc.

Dope. Limited Inc has passed the thousand hit mark. We probably passed it a while ago -- we only put a site meter on this page a month after we started it. Of course, the site meter also reads our own visits to the page, so subtract that from the total, add the unknowns that might have visited here, and we figure the sum is close to a thousand. If we had money, I guess we'd have the more sophisticated meter tool that would discount our visits, and make useful statistical chop suey for our marketing department, and suggest fabulous ways to promote ourselves. And would even, in its spare time, write these damn posts. Unfortunately, as noted in a previous post, we are going through a bit of a famine. In terms of money. In terms of lack of money. In terms of not being paid for our work. In terms of thinking that maybe, all the checks that should be winging our way crossed with anthrax soiled mail, and have been thrown away. So we can't afford another site meter, or even a pair o

Remora Steven Glover in the Spectator discusses what we didn't know and when we didn't know it in Afghanistan. Points for dispassion -- the current fashion in punditry seems to require that the writer bark, whine and growl on the page, and finally pee on his foes, all the better to show you his convictions. This has arisen from the point-counterpoint tv format for mixing together ideas and viewer interest, I suspect. Glover remarks that the press almost universally gave the Northern Alliance no chance, and credited the Taliban with a great, mystifying resilience. Both of those positions have been overturned by circumstances. He also claims that the bombing was much more efficient than the anti-war side gave it credit for being. The latter is the only part of his article with which I have a problem. To assess how good the bombing is, one would have to get through the great blank thrown up by the American military. Actually, one would also have to have the desire to get t

Remora Gretchen Morgenstern's column this morning begins with the impressive run up in the stock market. She notes, as Rob Walker at Slate did on the 15th , that the market is up 20% over its post 9/11 low. Here's a quote that is at the heart of her article: "James Paulsen, chief investment officer of Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, is of two minds on the recent rally. "Part of me says, how often does an equity investor have everybody from the Bank of Japan, the United States Congress, the European Central Bank and the Fed working day and night to get equities up?" he asked. "That's a hugely bullish thing to bet against. I don't disagree we're going to get a bounce and the recession will end, but I wonder how strong the recovery will be." Mr. Paulsen is particularly concerned about the financial position of American consumers, many of whom have binged on borrowing and now face unemployment. Even though mortgage rates fel

Remora The question of the day, reader, is what ever happened to Maureen Dowd . The Maureen Dowd of the ancien regime, circa 1999, was, to use a reviewer's phrase (one of those phrases that emerge, in the last minutes before the review has to get off in the mail, from the lumber room of previous blurbs, blurbs which the reviewer has vowed never, ever to use, which the reviewer has said to himelf, in the depths of the reviewer night, the midnight hour, the hour of ghosts and conscience, at least I have never written a word that could be mistaken for something written by Roger Ebert -- Limited Inc has been there, child) compulsively readable. Or at least her compulsions were our compulsions. Dowd had some kind of x-ray power she could turn on the Clintons, with all their bumptious sex and it takes a village sweet talk. There's a kid's game called Battleship -- it is still being sold out there, I believe, in the mall universe into which Limited Inc so rarely ventures. In

Remora Another article about Bush's ties with the bin Ladens, this time in In These Times (which is going to be publishing a review of mine in the next week. Okay, Limited Inc is biased towards these guys. In these Times? Hey, greatest little lefty mag in American, if you ask us). The story would be uninteresting if it claimed, as others have claimed, that the Bushes have financial interests in common with the bin Laden family's interests. This, to my mind, is a rather sleazy guilt by association technique. Rosalyn Carter was once photographed with the Reverand Jim Jones, but that doesn't mean she was privy to the Guyana Punch Bowl massacre. I don't think the left should make semi-racist background noises about Saudi financiers. If you are an Arab with money, you aren't necessarily dirty. I am rather shocked at how easily the progressive mind can embrace that stereotype. More interesting is the description of Bushypoo's ties with BCCI, the notorious