China, Japan, and the US

As usual,  Jonah Goldberg brings clarity to the confusion sewn by left media pundits from all over.  His thoughtful  piece highlights the interdependency of the world's leading nation states and debunks the notion that competition among those states in the world economy is a zero sum game, and finally, highlights the conditions that lead to growth and maximum economic performance on the part of  an individual country's economy.  Not bad for one short article.

GM farce

The bailout of the unions and favored political allies of the Democrats by the bailout of GM has established a destructive and perhaps ruinous precedent for American business and businesses.  The way this bailout was conducted was ridiculous.  Now Obama is claiming victory as GM showed a profit and is conducting an IPO.  Good luck.
a couple of quarters of profitability does not constitute a trend.  Once the huge cash infusion (50 billion) wears off and the company has to operate on the basis of its own cash flow, we'll see, won't we now?  As this article points out, the real problem here is the precedent and the trampling on bankruptcy laws and the rights of bondholders that the administration trashed.  F****** thugs and socialists!

Hagia Sophia

Here we have the c. 600 Hagia Sophia, minus the minarets which were added by the Ottomans when they converted this remarkable and splendid ancient Christian basilica to a mosque.

This is truly one of the most stunning sites in Instanbul.  Having visited this site several times, one is always struck by the grandeur of the building and the loss of its uniqueness as a Christian Basilica once the Ottoman's exercised the typical Moslem intolerance toward non-Islamic religions.  Forcing this magnificent Christian building into something it was not intended to be resulted in the loss of priceless murals, which were plastered over in the 15th century, and the loss of several other features unique to Christendom  and the basilica building genre.