US President Bush's library burned down yesterday.

Both of his books were destroyed.

The real tragedy is he has not finish coloring them!

An oft-repeated cliche is how Neville Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler in 1938 in the Munich conference. By doing so, Chamberlain caused Czecksolvakia to be swallowed by the Nazis, and World War II ensued.

Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times writes about how this repeated mantra in today's politics is the wrong lesson learned, and details several cases from recent history of how this is indeed not the case, and that it can cause more harm to "be tough".

Although Dilbert is a US cartoon strip, and this refers to "President", it applies so well for Dalton McGuinty.

After breaking many election promises by raising taxes, he justified that as "leadership".

Statistics Canada released a report on 2004 income of Canadians, and if you make $89,000, you are among the top 5% earners in Canada, numbering 1.2 million.

These are 75% male, mostly aged 45 to 64, and married.

Compared to the US, one would need to make $165,000 to be among the top 5% there.

What is surprising is that the top 0.01% made $2.8 million each, a third of which were in the effective tax rate of 40%. Some paid as little as 10% in taxes, and 100 of those top 0.01% paid no taxes at all, due to tax deductions such as business losses and gifts to the Crown

The US Dollar is losing value fast,
compared to other foreign currencies. This is due to many factors, the most recent of which is the credit crisis for housing mortgages in the USA. The long term ones is the debt for financing the invasion of Iraq, and the ongoing cost associated with that.

According to a recent poll, more than a million Iraqis have been killed since the 2003 invasion by the US.

Via Opinion Business Research (ORB).

Not attending DrupalCon has its benefits, here are some, which were cheerfully discussed on IRC #drupal yesterday by those "left behind".

Ossama Bin Laden, head of Al-Qaeda, appeared in a video posted on some sympathetic web sites. This is the first time in 3 years he has done so.

Noting that he looks more youthful, Western media has noticed his shorter trimmed bird, and less grey hair compared to before.

Moreover, Radio Free Europe analyses certain aspects of the video message, including:

This is yet another example of an email scam claiming that you won a prize.

In order to lower suspicion, they mention that there are no tickets to buy and only your email is used. This is to preempt the question: "how can I win a lottery when I did not buy a ticket?"

From: emones deprts <estonmeskromes@web.de>

Dear Beneficiary,

An almost-intact house in the Manitoba town of 550 just west of
Winnipeg being thrown several hundred metres through the air before disintegrating and falling to the ground ... seconds later, a large van is seen whirling through the air; it was later found in a distant field

That is really powerful ...

Via CBC.