A Little Light Sunday Snark For Your Delectation — Outsourced Edition.

This letter to today’s Times nailed it, IMHO.  Mr Samuel Reifler of Rhinebeck, N.Y. (one of my favorite town names, for some reason) writes: The bizarre behavior of Gil Meche, who gave up $12 million because he “felt bad” about taking money he had not earned, is a slap in the face to those toilers [...]

Quote of the Day (The Philosophical Underpinnings of Galtian Fail–Historical Division) + a touch of self promotion

I’m reading a really good book, right now, a new biography of Adam Smith, titled, naturally enough, Adam Smith:  An Enlightened Life, by Nicholas Phillipson.  I’m only about a quarter of the way through it, so I can’t give a real review, but so far it is a model biography:  well written, smart, learned without [...]

Might As Well Get This One Out Of The Way Early in the Superbowl Hype Fortnight

Consider this a diversion from real life.  Still a downer, a bit, (or perhaps just a PGO).  But at least it’s guaranteed Bachmann-free.  Give me that…. As a born-and-raised Bay Area kid, I grew up on Brodie, Stabler, Lamonica, Plunkett — and then the glorious experience of watching Joe Montana.  Steve Young was the lagniappe.  [...]

Annals of the Village: Mickey Edwards edition.

This is so far from being important to the state of the Republic that you can treat what follows as a kind of duty-of-care post: it won’t add anything much to what we already know about the way the Villagers play, but we have to keep pointing and smirking as much as possible.  Naming and [...]

Once More Into Comcast’s Breach:* KO’s KO Foreshadows Cable on the Canvas?

Cross posted at Balloon Juice Amidst the gnashing of teeth over the suspicious coincidence of Comcast’s take over of NBC and Keith Olberman’s disappearance from the air, my first reaction was, who cares?  Or rather, who really will notice? That’s because I’ve been feeling, without much evidence, that cable blather is reaching a diminishing returns [...]

Why Can’t Life Be More Like Reservoir Dogs?

Cross posted at Balloon Juice The Tucson shootings have produced the predictable results:  as ever when faced with mass murder, deep thinkers like Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, along with armchair warriers from all over are arguing that the solution to gun violence is more guns in the hands of untrained fantasists. As Tim F. pointed [...]

Decline and Fall Open Thread (Starbucks subvariant)

Belatedly cross posted from Balloon Juice With the news that the new “Trenta”* size Starbucks will offer exceeds the average volume of the human stomach, I (a) gain the opportunity to say I’m not dead yet to this (very spiffy, suddenly) community… …and more important, have an excuse to post a couple of really juicy [...]

Belaboring the Obvious (Or, why oh why does the GOP hate America so?)

Cross posted at Balloon Juice Here’s the shorter of everything that is going to follow from here:  if you are looking for death panels, to a pretty damn good approximation you can find one in the Republican caucus of the US House of Representatives. What follows is a retelling of what we all already know:  [...]

I Hope Erick Erickson Lives A Long and Miserable Life Afflicted By At Least Six of the Ten Plaugues*

Cross posted at Balloon Juice I’m working on a longer post on the question of causation, madness and murder, but I have to stop that for a moment of sheer rage. Y’all know that I’m a bit squeamish in my language here — the way I write f**k and all that — but let me [...]

Weimar Politics in AZ

Cross posted at Balloon Juice What do we know about assassination as a political tool? It works.  Not always, but enough. It can be effective even if the assassin is truly a lone gunman, truly crazy, utterly denuded of membership cards or explicit links to more formal political groups. It achieved the desired goal for [...]