Who would have ever predicted the downfall of Eliot Spitzer and Dickie Scruggs in the same week?
And who's left? Peter Angelos (massive contingency fees on asbestos suits) is busy running a baseball team into the ground. Some of Radley Balko's favorite Mississippi forensics people may be #1 by default now.
John Edwards is a dark horse, as is Michael Bloomberg.
This post gave me a chance to see this ending (which I think I'd actually never seen before).
Adam Morrison: Even sadder than I'd have guessed.
Gus Johnson: I claim to like him as much as anyone, yet this particular game he overdid it.
If you ask me, it's immoral to play a concert on land controlled by the People's Republic of China and NOT yell "Tibet!"
Don't expect me to follow the 2008 Summer Olympics. If you choose to do so yourself, take a least some small portion of the time you think about those Olympics to ponder the atrocities routinely committed by the host.
This video became a lot more entertaining when I started playing this oldie-but-goodie at the same time.
Unsettling insight about John McCain from TNR. He's still the least bad (in my opinion) of the three plausible next presidents, though he does have his warts.
But wow: "Some economists favor higher tax rates and others prefer lower tax rates, but none would oppose a tax cut and then oppose its repeal simply because it had already been enacted."
Am I really the only person who understands that people have rational expectations about things like marginal tax rates, and that when you're making decisions that would be affected by future tax rates, the intuitively obvious point of comparison is the present (not the past)?
The same logic used by the repeal-the-Bush-tax-cuts crowd could be used to say "No, we're not raising your taxes, just restoring them to what they were in 1980 before all that Reaganomics schtick."
I agree with Eugene Volokh that the wording quoted here is ridiculously unhelpful.
As Eugene says, "either the kid knows about sex, in which case the best option is to explain this bluntly to him (especially since he's likely to hear something about it elsewhere, so it's better that he get the straight dope -- coupled with relevant moral commentary -- from you); or he doesn't know about sex [...]".
If the latter, I think "he paid people to be his friend" is close to the least bad way to put it.
"[John McCain's] new position is that he's for making the Bush tax cuts permanent simply because he never wants to vote for a tax increase. But if these tax cuts were a bad idea, why should they be continued?"
--E.J. Dionne
For good or bad, I think a lot of people have planned their futures on the implicit assumption that tax rates would stay what they are. If we're going to be all bleeding-heart about people who couldn't understand the fine print on their mortgage contracts, then we have to give a lot of benefit of doubt about how rational that assumption actually is.
The rest of Dionne's column is precious.
The three examples he gives of "all the issues on which they disagree with McCain" are "his commitment to continuing the occupation of Iraq indefinitely," the aforementioned tax cuts, and "his opposition to government-sponsored universal health coverage."
If those are the litmus test points then -- 3 for 3! -- I am decidedly not a liberal.
(How many presidents in a row have committed to continuing the occupations of Germany, South Korea, et al, indefinitely?)
And am I supposed to have heard of that anti-Catholic guy? It strikes me that a lot more people have at least heard of Louis Farrakhan, and know exactly how he feels about Jews.
Quoted for truth, and because the same thing that bugged me also bugged Tyler Cowen. The Clintons set a trap and Obama fell right into it.
(At least two of which strike me as grasping at straws.)
The leap of logic: A governor is in a scandal. Didn't the Clinton administration also have scandals? Apparently Spitzer will turn the general public against the Clintons by reminding us that scandals exist?
I find your ideas intriguing, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter: It's not that Orlando Patterson is wrong, so much as that he can't possibly be right or wrong just from being so random. This kind of scholarship seems incredibly easy, to the extent that it pulls things out of one's own nether regions.
Sinbad! Surprisingly this is the least weak of the three links (all three of them via Instapundit).
In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, "We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady."
Say what? As Sinbad put it: "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'"
It's probably irrational to think of silly stories like this as a valid reason to favor one candidate over another. And yet, just as I was about to find Obama ideologically unacceptable (mainly the free trade thing), Bill had to go pull a weasel move that reminded why I'd go to great lengths to keep that particular couple from getting back into power.
(If you play Diplomacy -- I tried it once; I was terrible but I understand the general flow of the game -- imagine the situations in which it would(n't) make sense for someone to offer you a deal that gave first place to that person and second place to you. I mean sure, they might offer it anyway, but there are times where an offer like that deserves a scornful guffaw.)
Eliot Spitzer caught up in prostitution ring.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!
He has previously claimed to be "a fucking steamroller." Citation is an exercise for the reader.
This article is almost a complete waste of space.
"[V]eterans have shown even less interest in protesting the war than has the public at large. This is largely the legacy of the end of the draft."
Ya think?
(The best part of all is that when he finally gets around to the one sentence that should have been his entire article, he casts it as the answer to a loaded rhetorical question rather than to the real question. ("shunted aside"?!).)
Oh, and people aren't generally "interested in protesting" things they don't actually oppose. To answer my own question (as posed in this post title), you can write two pages instead of one sentence if you're begging the question (taking for granted that the Iraq war should be universally opposed) through your whole piece.
BONUS SLATE VAPIDITY (this time the vacuity is actually by a reader):
"A reader of my Election Law Blog asked me whether anything could be done to stop [Rush] Limbaugh's [pro-Hillary] comments, which have the potential to distort the outcome of the nomination process. The short answer is no. Much as many people would like Rush Limbaugh to be quiet, the First Amendment certainly bars any attempts to prevent him or anyone else from urging a vote for or against a candidate for virtually any reason."
--piece about the Democratic primary
So we have freedom of speech in this country? Sweet. Good to know.
Even though I flatly disagree with Rush's premise that we'd be better off with Clinton as the Democratic nominee (even at that, the second guessing is pretty strong), I think it's hilarious that these liberal journalists think that Republicans are crossing over solely because some talk show host told them to.
...and it's not even noon yet.
KFOG's 10@10 (for the year 1986) followed up "Manhattan Project" with the Run DMC Feat. Aerosmith version of "Walk this Way."
Then in honor of the 35th anniversary of Dark Side of the Moon I listened to a bunch of Dub on YouTube. And finally as inspired by Cooch, the full-length version of Brass Bonanza.
Go Whalers! I never really knew you, and I'm not sure if I'd ever heard Brass Bonanza before, but as team songs go I highly approve.
What kind of Republican manages to lose Denny Hastert's old seat? Jim Oberweis, that's who. I remember hearing about him when the Senate primary was about to happen for Peter Fitzgerald's seat (obviously now better known as Obama's seat). Now that I remember who he is, I'm utterly unsurprised he lost.
Bill Foster becomes the first Democrat to represent my parents in the House since James R. Jones. In between there were Jim Inhofe, Steve Largent, and of course (after the move) Hastert.
By contrast I've in the past 10 years been "represented" by Joe Kennedy II, Tom Lantos (RIP! - I meant to post a tribute but never did), Nancy Pelosi, Ellen Tauscher, and now Fortney Stark. (You can call him Pete if want.)
Pretty good typo find (March 6 entry).
I had a roommate a few years ago who had a character in Everquest that spent all its time baking. Since the idea was to sell these baked goods at a profit, I guess you could call this "investment baking." (Same roommate had a different character whose defining feature was "pacifist necromancer.")
I did not know until this morning that Rush (the Canadian prog band, not the talk show guy) had a song about the Manhattan Project.
It would be tempting to claim that this is the most interesting song that I previously didn't know existed; however, I'm sure there are a lot more incredibly good songs about whose existence I'm still ignorant.
May I form a Rush tribute band and do eight-minute songs about mundane tasks like making a peanut butter sandwich?
"RED STRAWBERRY RIVER, FLOWING ON THE BREAD!"
A novelization of Garfield: The Movie. Is this book, as distinct from the comic strip anthologies, better or worse than the Scrabble Home Game that's based on the TV game show rather than on Scrabble proper? And compared to this particular book, can Jim Davis take credit for writing graphic novels?
Also, a novelization of Shrek 2.
And finally, Yiddish for dogs.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
Gosh, I wonder whether the authors of this article wanted the reader to draw a specific alarming conclusion. That last sentence I quoted is of such dubious value (especially compared to the first) that it amounts to an indirect strawman.
If you care about parts per trillion (even parts per billion) then here's a nasty thought: Do you have any idea how much fecal matter you've touched today, you disgusting person?
(Fecal matter is a surprisingly apt description of the linked article.)