Note to GQ's editor: It's OK to clash!

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TimesSelect, Still Gaining Strength! Literally hundreds of new paying subscribers last month! 1,700 to be exact. Gawker's Choire Sicha calculates the full immensity of this new revenue stream, which appears to be enough to cover several minutes of Thomas Friedman's expense acount. .... 5:55 P.M.

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Reader P.D. makes an interesting prediction about another consequence of the immigration crackdown in California:

Besides cheap labor, illegals increase demand for homes, drive up prices, and bestow an average of a 10% per year increase into the property tax coffers.  Compounded, that's...a lot of money.  So much easier for Fabian [Nunez, Democratic legislative leader] than convincing the voters to give them a tax increase!  Another way that open borders appeals to the right and the left.

I therefore predict a huge tax shortfall, ala [ex.-Gov.] Gray Davis, in about a year. [E.A.]

P.D. could be right! And if she's right she could be right for states other than California as well. ... Kf takes no position. I already have my hands full  predicting a tight labor market and rising wages for the unskilled. I'm sticking with that one, despite the recent jobs report. ... 2:21 A.M.

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If CBS' hiring of Katie Couric was all about damaging the NBC Today show (rather than boosting the CBS Evening News) it's working. Today "has lost about 360,000 viewers" in the past year, including 12% of women aged 25-54. ... 2:07 A.M.

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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

UnBangled: A Russian garage takes parts from a 1970s Volga sedan and sticks them on a new BMW M6. It's arguably an improvement. ... 3:15 P.M.

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