tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37581452018-08-28T09:46:50.779-04:00Half the Sins of MankindPGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comBlogger2962125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-55945824879168216912012-02-04T15:59:00.002-05:002012-02-04T16:19:51.743-05:00The emphasis on private sector jobs is for two reasons.(1) Republicans frequently claim that a job on the government payroll isn't a "real" job, but mere make-work -- even if it produces useful goods or services, such as the roads and bridges built during the New Deal.(2) The austerity-driven cuts in public sector jobs, particularly at the state and local levels, have been a significant drag on PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-58943184756595092842009-10-23T18:20:00.002-04:002009-10-23T18:29:10.629-04:00Is Charles Krauthammer Truly Or Only Pretending to Be Thick As Two Short Planks? He concludes a rant against the White House's feud with Fox News (which is foolish of the Obama Administration, undeniably) with this: Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She's been attacked for extolling Mao's political philosophy in a speech at a high school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-37060611562446351012009-10-13T00:19:00.000-04:002009-10-13T19:35:06.961-04:00Medal of Honor to James Earl Ray While any transcript produced by Rush Limbaugh himself is suspect, I do think Jack Huberman may have been in error in his claim that Limbaugh at one point said, "You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed."The only person I can find who actually has said that James Earl Ray deserved the Congressional Medal of PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-2500231588473241982009-10-07T23:01:00.001-04:002009-10-07T23:01:01.710-04:00Slate Shake Although I find the demands for bridal virginity as appalling as Timothy Noah does, he's nonetheless being willfully stupid about why artificial hymens are considered a threat to conservative Muslim values. Pause for a moment to consider what these men are asking God to protect them from: a cheap, mass-produced insert that releases fake blood. It's the technical equivalent of a PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-29102594088226878882009-10-01T19:28:00.002-04:002009-10-01T19:40:28.011-04:00Amazon Oops Evidently there was some confusion about which "Sarah Palin in a partly-unzipped fleece against a blue sky with fleecy clouds" picture to use for the book cover.The one Harper-Collins picked is much more flattering, though it omits Palin's signature can-do up-do in favor of the softer style preferred by the GOP image consultants.PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-26844168501555105162009-09-30T23:43:00.000-04:002009-09-30T23:43:01.949-04:00Resolution: No More Betting I picked up a bad habit from my husband, which is to challenge people who are convinced they are right about something that is empirically provable (either now or in the future) to a bet. The habit is a bad one for many reasons, and on a practical level it hasn't always worked out even for my husband, as he's soon due to pay up on a bet he made with one of my friends PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-79058796690971261722009-09-29T23:28:00.000-04:002009-09-29T23:28:00.196-04:00You Pick Them Cherries, Girl A summer intern at the Wall Street Journal produced a fawning interview with Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry about how totally awesome Texas is, especially compared to California. It's all about as silly as you would expect from the above description, with some extra win in Gov. Perry's admiration for the elderly's opposition to government insurance, because "They like PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-24866130684088916972009-09-29T22:29:00.002-04:002009-09-29T23:03:56.490-04:00Countless Screaming Argonauts Christopher Beam trots out the standard "it's economically irrational to vote" argument on behalf of Meg Whitman, who currently seeks to be the Republican candidate for California's next gubernatorial election despite not having registered to vote until 2002. She's apparently been eligible since 1978, which makes the non-standard, Whitman-specific part of Beam's PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-21374902349730985022009-09-28T23:06:00.002-04:002009-09-28T23:06:00.571-04:00Gateway =/= Tunnel While Steve Chapman is right to call out the government on its sloppy use of statistics with regard to teen smoking, I don't think he makes a definitive case against the FDA's ban on non-menthol flavors in cigarettes. The question is not what teen smokers are smoking once the habit is established, but rather what they smoked when they first began smoking. I'm among the PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-29188716005817227802009-09-27T00:23:00.003-04:002009-09-27T00:55:04.969-04:00Is "Bill Wilson" a Name Associated with Jewish People? I am a little puzzled over the latest rightwing-generated dust-up, which is Americans for Limited Government's claim after ALG sent a mass e-mail under the name of its president, Bill Wilson, an NBC "Dateline" producer responded with "Bite Me, Jew Boy!"So far as I can tell from Googling, Mr. Wilson is not Jewish, and so the reply seems a PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-74447221313268971782009-09-21T00:52:00.000-04:002009-09-21T14:53:41.101-04:00What do the House and Senate health care reform bills say about an individual mandate? The WSJ has been running arguments about why health care reform legislation is unconstitutional if it includes an "individual mandate," on the premise that there's no commerce here that Congress would be regulating, and therefore it goes beyond even the broad reading of the Commerce Clause ("The Congress shall PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-66771938668847534932009-09-04T01:50:00.000-04:002009-09-04T13:02:45.821-04:00More Depressing Than the Birthers I'm glad I'm leaving the country for a few days, because the debate over the health care bill is really starting to get to me. I simultaneously can't seem to resist reading the news reports about all the stupid things people say and believe, that are blocking out the worthwhile questions about whether HR 3200 (the bill sponsored by Rep. Dingell that has passed PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-13925170408056516072009-09-01T05:11:00.002-04:002009-09-01T05:35:22.678-04:00We All Lived Through the 1990s, Right? I'm sort of puzzled by Virginia Democrats' excitement over publicizing Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell's graduate thesis (submitted in 1989 for a MPP and JD from Regent University). His blueprint for the coming decade was well on point, and indeed even prescient about some of the wackier fringes of the GOP into the 21st century. PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-62286410311979099842009-08-27T00:43:00.001-04:002009-08-27T15:41:25.261-04:00I Do Not Think It Means Only What You Think It Means In an article about "Mexican hot dogs" -- distinguishable chiefly for wrapping the dog in bacon before cooking it -- NYT writer John T. Edge refers to this style being even more popular in Tucson than in the rest of the country: In a dozen or more cities across the United States, these Mexican takes on the American hot dog are ascendant — fromPGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-19087568079944489142009-08-26T23:34:00.000-04:002009-08-26T23:34:00.141-04:00The Kind of Catholic You'd Expect a "New American Radical" To Be James Walcott links the Esquire profile of one Mike Austin, who until the article’s publication wrote the blog Return of Scipio. The profile holds Austin up as an example of "the New American Radical"; "he has called President Obama 'evil' and 'malignant,' and he believes, along with much of the hard-line wing of the Republican PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-66275001813925724752009-08-14T01:18:00.000-04:002009-08-14T18:03:43.702-04:00God and High School Because I haven't made a blog post out of IMing in a while. A friend (who will go by "DC") posted this on my Facebook Wall with the note, "gosh help us all..."DC: I sent you a youtube video that made me shake my head. I only saw the first 30 secs when they try to tell their friend that India is not in Asia.PG: Oh, there is a lot more to shake your head over. It was giving me PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-37118936402427994812009-08-13T15:48:00.001-04:002009-09-02T18:14:34.257-04:00This Is the Debate Conservatives Betsy McCaughey and Sarah Palin accused Ezekiel Emanuel of wanting to limit the medical care available to a child with cerebral palsy. Emanuel's brothers Rahm and Ari are well-known, but he also has an adopted sister -- who has cerebral palsy.PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-82719812367870041822009-08-13T00:04:00.000-04:002009-08-13T15:18:04.157-04:00High School I don't know which of my former classmates' actions on Facebook confounds me more:The guy who went to Tulane, failed out because he was partying too much, came back to the local college, graduated and took over his dad's successful insurance agency: Lou DobbsScott Davis is a fan.orThe girl I didn't know well in high school but accepted her friend request because I'm like that, and PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-35675647474843023982009-08-12T00:29:00.001-04:002009-08-12T21:09:46.595-04:00If I Say It, They Will Contradict Me I may have to abandon my long-held position that nobody sane will say there is anything racist in a criticism of Obama so long as it is a criticism that would have been made of a white president otherwise identical to Obama. Pretentious elitist, yep; tyrannical socialist, yep; liberal pansy Neville Chamberlain, yep. I had to take Philip Kennicott out of the "PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-57175501579958937572009-08-07T00:56:00.001-04:002009-08-07T16:25:26.544-04:00The WaPo Editorial Page Is Full of Fail This Week Today it's Michael Kinsley: You've probably heard by now that Harry and Louise have changed their minds. This fictional couple dreamed up by the health insurance lobby to stop the last attempt at health-care reform -- led by Hillary Clinton in 1993-94 -- is back on the air, declaring that reform is essential. A news release from the insurance PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-74072055609155681112009-08-06T02:35:00.001-04:002009-08-06T20:30:05.318-04:00Philip Kennicott Proves Himself the Exception A culture critic for The Washington Post, Kennicott appears to be the one person who does see something racial behind every criticism of Obama -- despite Kennicott himself being a white guy. During last year's campaign, he responded to Republicans' petty criticism of Obama's literal platform to accept his nomination at the Democratic Convention in a PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-11729626003062012622009-08-05T00:36:00.000-04:002009-08-05T23:33:44.689-04:00Why Latinos Might Be Angry About Sotomayor's Treatment Eva Rodriguez makes a perfectly unassailable point that Latino voters should not hold against Republican senators a vote against Sotomayor that is based on her legal philosophy ("due process or preemption or disparate impact analysis under Title VII"). What this neglects, however, is that not all of the opposition to Sotomayor that was statedPGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-65393913948673578462009-07-22T00:50:00.002-04:002009-07-22T11:11:37.412-04:00Or, Uh, The Base-Closing Commission? Ruth Marcus triumphantly ties together two of today's headlines in a single editorial: "If you're interested in how to get health-care costs under control, the case of the F-22 offers an instructive example. ... Which brings me to health care, and one of the most promising ideas for constraining rising costs: Get politics out of the decision making about how PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-89441730654996413192009-07-21T00:52:00.000-04:002009-07-21T20:55:17.403-04:00If You Prick Tom Cruise, Does He Not Bleed? Both the NYTimes ad and the publisher's website for the book Valkyrie by Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager (the last surviving member of a group that plotted to kill Hitler) most prominently feature the following endorsement: “von Boeselager’s story is far removed from the new and sanitized Hollywood take on the July 20 plot….[an] astonishing memoir.”- PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3758145.post-67830042653340074922009-07-20T00:31:00.000-04:002009-07-20T21:29:17.123-04:00Isn't This What You Wanted? This WSJ Law Blog post from last Thursday puzzled me: Republican senators are getting at a second bite at Judge Sonia Sotomayor this morning. Their cross exams so far are focused, once again, on the supposed disconnect between Sotomayor, the judge, and Sotomayor, the speaker. The tone has become noticeably chippier this morning, especially from Lindsey Graham (left) PGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com0