tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39168292011-08-16T22:59:39.064-04:00We are spirits in a materialist world.Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comBlogger9201100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-40706608735771083132010-10-14T14:57:00.003-04:002010-10-14T15:03:40.099-04:00

This would be a great headline for The Onion if only the crack staff there had thought of it first. Rich Whitney is running for governor of Illinois. Alas, some voters will see the name "Rich Whitey".There are typos and then there are complete and utter catastrophes.The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled "Rich Whitey" on

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-82786264662847564502010-06-01T00:26:00.005-04:002010-06-01T00:33:20.500-04:00

Who is the bigger sucker?The fools who buy the books Kevin Trudeau touts on his infomercials? Or the advertising executives who sell him the time? Ladies and gentlemen, I present Mr. Peter Morton of the New England Sports Network.Dear Mr. Morton:As I write this, NESN is showing a Kevin Trudeau infomercial. Mr. Trudeau is peddling a book, which is noteworthy mostly because his 2004 settlement

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-46170564759366665452010-05-17T01:06:00.003-04:002010-05-17T01:22:22.155-04:00

Word comes that the Washington Post Company is trying to find a buyer for Newsweek, because it has been losing "tens of millions" of dollars annually.I know one way to save money! Make some cuts, and fast, on that Newsweek.com web site!A recent Newsweek "web exclusive" had the brilliant Ramin Setoodeh explain that [F]rankly, it's weird seeing [Sean] Hayes play straight. He comes off as wooden

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-66435414053101893602010-01-02T15:16:00.004-05:002010-01-02T15:34:45.983-05:00

Business Week asks, Should This Man Be a Banker?. The man in question is Stephen Ross, who founded the Related Companies development firm.Maybe he should, and maybe he shouldn't. But perhaps the regulators (not to mention the folks at Business Week ought to ask themselves why two companies which featured Stephen Ross in their executive suites are now either wothless or next to worthless.In

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-66361123997454529862009-11-30T14:04:00.003-05:002009-11-30T14:27:14.914-05:00

This might be the most damning thing Sarah Palin ever said. From The New Yorker's review of her memoir:When Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard editor and writer, asked Palin who her favorite thinker was, she replied, "You."She might be the only person in America, including Fred Barnes to think that way.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-38207181319945185662009-11-23T20:29:00.002-05:002009-11-23T20:33:01.461-05:00

How do you know when researchers have too much time on their hands? How about when they are implementing a real-world version of a quarter-century old video game?

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-34488253017294461012009-11-03T14:09:00.001-05:002009-11-03T14:12:22.536-05:00

Dear Newsweek:I was pleased that you asked Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu about the Iranian nuclear threat in your interview with him. But did you ask him about Israel's own nuclear arsenal? Surely one has a better appreciation of Iranian motives if one considers what Iranians consider to be Iran's external threats.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-77373002536416172142009-10-18T22:06:00.004-04:002009-10-18T23:36:41.476-04:00

Now thank God for the mediafor saving the dayputting it all into perspectivein a responsible way.(The Offspring, Stuff is Messed Up)One always hopes that someone given a weekly column in a respected news magazine would be wise, or at least would aspire to wisdom. Alas, many of those who actually have such columns are more than happy to play stupid semantic games with their readers. Jon Meacham

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-60670623306526624802009-10-16T22:33:00.004-04:002009-10-16T22:40:41.066-04:00

Catching up on recent copies of The New Yorker brought out this flabbergasting fact from Jon Lee Anderson's article on the gangs of Rio de Janeiro.Rio's police... kill more people than police anywhere else in the world; in 2008, they acknowledged killing eleven hundred and eighty-eight people who were "resisting arrest," or slightly more than three people a day. By comparison, American police

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-63883437159617790342009-10-09T09:36:00.003-04:002009-10-09T09:41:40.581-04:00

The surprise news that Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize resulted in at least one amusing juxtaposition.Among the critics of the prize are both Obama's conservative critics ("[H]e's the first to win it without having accomplished anything" from National Review Online) and... the Taliban ("He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan").That's only amusing until you realize how much of the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-1714028591115238432009-10-04T09:38:00.004-04:002009-10-04T09:48:28.056-04:00

If you have a 401(k) plan at work, you cannot help but notice the incessant cheerleading for equity investment from your 401(k) provider.But over the last 10 years, how good an investment have equities been? The answer is not that hot, even though the last two quarters have been quite good. As I have done before, you can see here the actual returns for five Vanguard mutual funds—their S&P 500

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-40074141877778277302009-09-20T15:13:00.003-04:002009-09-20T15:28:07.364-04:00

At least in Boston, labor unions do what the Democratic leadership can't—they can shun so-called Democrats who like to kiss the moneyed butts of insurance companies.Stephen Lynch, who won the special election to fill Joe Moakley's seat some years ago and has faced only token opposition since, had taken out nomination papers to run for Ted Kennedy's seat. But now it seems that he won't run after

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-37344914249802920982009-09-19T15:56:00.004-04:002009-09-19T16:13:55.433-04:00

Just how petty can a condominium board be? Let's find out.For children at the Room to Grow preschool in Tewksbury,... [t]heir playground is gone.After a yearlong battle between the school’s owner, Wendy Bowen, her landlord, and the board of managers that governs her building, the slides, swings, and climbing structures were taken down on Aug. 28."We've been in this location for 20 years, and the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-36415584188403746002009-09-18T16:16:00.003-04:002009-09-18T16:31:41.409-04:00

Every year, athletic teams at high schools and colleges are reminded in stark terms, that hazing of new players is intolerable.And every year around this time, when baseball teams make their last road trip of the year, we see stories like this one of the Boston Red Sox dressing rookie players up. Almost always, at least someone is dressed up as a girl. (It's so funny: the rookies are sissies!)

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-48330593243225632092009-09-16T07:59:00.004-04:002009-09-16T08:02:50.548-04:00

A cookie recipe that calls for four ingredients and only a bit of sugar? Sounds intriguing. Until you get to the end of the accompanying article.I made seven batches and only two came out right. A couple of batches were as flat as sugar cookies, others looked good on the outside but weren't airy on the inside, and still another tasted right but were too smooth on top, lacking the distinctive

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-10992189240892197342009-09-15T07:13:00.004-04:002009-09-15T07:26:05.997-04:00

My Newsweek subscription lasts through 2010 and I know for sure that I'm not renewing it. (It was a gift from my late father-in-law.)There are lots of bad magazines out there, but why is Newsweek egregious in its own, Washington Post-owned way?Take the 8 June 2009 issue. Among the features are two worthy articles on the Guantanamo Bay detention camps: one on the difficulty of reforming

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-89000388681406964202009-09-07T20:15:00.004-04:002009-09-07T20:22:32.209-04:00

Well, what do you know?Joe Kennedy decided today that he would not run to fill the Senate seat vacated by his uncle, Ted Kennedy.I should note that Joe Kennedy held a House seat for six terms, from 1987 to 1999, but his tenure in the House was not a particularly stellar one. Were his last name not Kennedy, it would be difficult to say that he was better qualified than any of the current

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-39045082198632167712009-08-24T21:55:00.003-04:002009-08-24T22:05:27.931-04:00

Ever wonder why the print media seems moribund? Maybe it's not the media. Maybe it's the editing! Our latest case in point: Business Week, which is supposedly up for sale, may be showing why no sale has yet occurred. A recent issue talked about small airports so ineptly that it was noteworthy, even for the magazine that features the columnar stylings of Jack and Suzy Welch.In the past 18

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-87381309863403800742009-07-24T15:58:00.002-04:002009-07-24T16:04:25.831-04:00

It's "simple" and yet "effective": the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks.Lots of grammatical solecisms are not that hard to understand. Using "it's" instead of "its" is lazy, but the apostrophe has two different functions in English and getting them confused is not hard. Comma splices are often the result of not knowing when to use a semicolon, but English also allows a nominative

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-36929543056470189552009-07-20T20:54:00.002-04:002009-07-20T20:57:59.744-04:00

Just how bad is the used book business these days? A recent ad in The New Yorker leads one to booksbythefoot.com, which sells what you think they sell.While one can buy books in bulk from this outfit by subject, what they tout on their home page is mostly books of appropriate colors. Books have become just so much wallpaper.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-47438061444495675512009-07-12T23:48:00.003-04:002009-07-12T23:58:40.307-04:00

It's no surprise that Senator Ted Kennedy is not a well man; he was diagnosed with brain cancer in May of 2008. And perhaps it is news when he has the president convey a letter to Pope Benedict.But when the contents of the letter are kept private, which is sillier: publishing almost 1000 words in a newspaper of record about a letter whose contents are unknown, or being a purportedly smart

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-70892451056863112932009-06-27T17:00:00.002-04:002009-06-27T17:06:39.297-04:00

I understand that if you have dreams of a small chain of maternity stores where motherhood is considered a blessing, not a burden, then it makes sense in a lot of dimensions to have a name positively associated with motherhood. It is even better to have a name that has been associated with motherhood for several millennia.But I wonder if it makes much sense at all to pick as the name the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-60320865225727445032009-06-26T09:39:00.003-04:002009-06-26T09:44:11.349-04:00

Dear Verizon Brain Trust:Over the past 12 months, I have recieved at least 20 separate solitications in the mail for FIOS, your name for your high-speed internet service.If I were interested at all, I might have responded to one of the first 19 offers you made, not counting the constant blurbs on my phone bill.If this is what a Fortune 20 company uses to drum up business, then capitalism is in

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-35830778484259917432009-05-22T14:00:00.003-04:002009-05-22T14:12:07.351-04:00

This is what a supposedly liberal paper looks like. Jeff Jacoby is the house conservative for the Boston Globe's op-ed page, and when it comes to most things, there is only one way to think, the facts be damned.I suppose that I should be glad that the house conservative thinks that a two-state solution to the problem of Israel and Palestine is good, at least in theory. But I despair that he

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-45036068773512162792009-03-10T00:17:00.002-04:002009-03-10T00:30:25.854-04:00

If it's winter, then you know we're overdue for yet another Jeff Jacoby column about the apparent absence of global warming. Last year's column came in January, during a cold snap. (Guess what Jacoby wrote when temperatures in Boston soared a week later. That's right: nothing.)Jacoby cannot abide the fact that there is a growing consensus that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-63426485923290806672008-12-27T10:55:00.005-05:002008-12-27T11:58:17.718-05:00

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has already told the Associated Press that it plans to drop the wire service in 2010, because of a large rate increase.The Star-Tribune's contract calls for a two-year notice, but I still suggest that the paper tink twice before it runs many AP stories. Apparently the Associated Press considers newspaper readers to be fools. The following story ran in the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-18115809370156446762008-11-07T22:33:00.003-05:002008-11-07T22:44:29.546-05:00

How badly off are Republicans in New England?When the new Congress meets, Democrats will hold every House seat of the 23 in the region. They will hold 7 of 12 Senate seats, and 2 of the remaining 5 Senators will be independents who caucus with the Democrats. They will hold only 4 of 6 gubernatorial positions, but all 12 state legislative majorities.And earlier this week, Barack Obama won every

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-65472016203918571522008-11-07T22:14:00.003-05:002008-11-07T22:16:34.146-05:00

An overextended military. The economy in shambles. But don't worry. A brash young reformer is about to set everything straight.Yes, Ted Rall saw the big picture back in July.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-46293509015999459752008-11-04T22:35:00.004-05:002008-11-04T22:40:14.426-05:00

William Bennett was just on CNN addressing the policies of a putative Obama administration. (Obama will have over 269 electoral votes once the four West Coast states report results.)Will he pull back the troops in 30 days, or 60 days, or 90 days? I bet he won't.Remember, when William Bennett places bets, he really places bets.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-62125333200023801652008-11-04T15:58:00.004-05:002008-11-05T06:16:30.457-05:00

The good folks at Talking Points Memo are chagrined to find that Sarah Palin would not reveal whether she voted for Ted Stevens for re-election as senator from Alaska. (Stevens has been convicted, but not sentenced, for taking bribes.)Of course Palin voted for Stevens. If he wins re-election then resigns, or wins re-election and is then expelled from the Senate, then Governor Palin gets to pick

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-86204022547818549462008-11-02T17:32:00.003-05:002008-11-02T17:44:36.939-05:00

What were the Boston Globe's crack sports editors thinking when they let loose this whopper on Page 2 of the sports section today? (Remember, this is the same Boston whose Celtics now have 17 world championships.)The Globe has a weekly feature entitled "What They Were Thinking" that presents the story behind an interesting photograph. And today, it describes Mark Joe taking a 3-point basketball

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-50139675913669509252008-10-31T16:46:00.006-04:002008-10-31T17:06:13.095-04:00

If you are lucky enough to be an American with a 401(k) plan at work, you have heard for years the continuing mantra that it is best to be in equities over the long haul. Bonds, never mind money market funds, are for losers who will never retire comfortably.Take a look at this link and click on "Growth of $10,000 chart view": it shows the return over 10 years ending on 30 September 2008 of

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-63039798227596027332008-10-31T16:09:00.004-04:002008-10-31T16:21:56.708-04:00

Jon Friedman wonders, with some justification, whether the New York Times is doing its readers a service by hiring Bono to write for its op-ed page.I have no idea whether Bono will do a good job, but hose readers already have to put up with the columnar stylings of David Brooks and Maureen Dowd twice a week, plus supposed economist Ben Stein every other Sunday. While I doubt that Bono is making

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-25216995507229206322008-10-31T16:04:00.003-04:002008-10-31T16:09:16.764-04:00

Lawrence Eagleburger served as Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush, and he is a prominent supporter of John McCain's candidacy for president this year.But his support of Sarah Palin is, shall we say, less than fervent."I don't think at the moment she is prepared to take over the brains of the presidency," he says. "I can name for you any number of other vice presidents who were not

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-3426869535540071092008-10-31T14:59:00.003-04:002008-10-31T15:03:48.452-04:00

John McCain is having trouble getting traction this year, even though he is running against a Republican dream candidate: a black man from Chicago.and one reason is that the Republican message—that everything is fundamentally okay with the way that our capitalist society works just does not fly. For decades, a significant majority in this country want a more even distribution of wealth, at least

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-91393293652423436852008-10-28T20:21:00.003-04:002008-10-28T20:46:08.723-04:00

In North Carolina, we are told that some voters may mistakenly omit a vote for president this year because of a quirk of the state ballots. Here is what the Charlotte Observer told us about the way voting is done there:Unlike in many states, a straight-party vote in North Carolina does not cast a vote for president. A ballot expert says the split makes it more likely that voters—especially new

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-45996209233700555442008-10-26T23:02:00.003-04:002008-10-26T23:20:14.352-04:00

And sometimes, the folks at Barron's publish something so wonderful that you wonder if they are going to start clamoring, if not for revolution, then at least for a wholesale overhaul of the political and economic system in America.This weekend featured a reminder that, w while mainstream politicians praise small businesses as if they were the apotheosis of all that is right with the world, the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-47435489388719285632008-10-26T21:50:00.005-04:002009-06-27T18:15:10.568-04:00

Barron's is certainly an odd beast until you think about it a bit. There is a lot of the old lean-Republican trope in its editorial pages, but there is also a good amount of fair coverage of corporate misdeeds. And the latter is particularly useful to lefties, even those the typical Barron's readers simply want to avoid getting fleeced any more than they have to.Anyway, here is an exemplar of

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-38870099608427178452008-10-26T18:49:00.004-04:002008-10-26T19:07:34.099-04:00

One might expect that with all of the time that George Bush has spent in Crawford, Texas, that he would have strong ties to the community and a few close friends there. As this New Yorker essay notes, neither seems to be true.The plainspoken Dubya—who cleared brush, drove a pickup, and, by implication, was rooted in rural America and red-state values&#8212&#8212and a Republican front-runner for

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-29184028867438497102008-10-14T19:12:00.003-04:002008-10-14T19:15:46.018-04:00

The next time the Republicans extol Sarah Palin's foreign policy experience because one can see Russia from parts of Alaska, consider this: what part of Alaska can one see Russia from?Little Diomede is an island with a population of 147. There is no running water or sewerage. And Big Diomede island was so important to the Soviet Union (and is so important to Russia) that it is uninhabited.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-7690543842825496582008-10-14T18:57:00.003-04:002008-10-14T19:12:05.425-04:00

It was indeed discouraging to hear that delegate at the Republican National Convention this summer had reduced the case for offshore oil drilling to a mind-numbing chant.Since voters say they care most about energy, and since [Sarah Palin] governs an oil state, she spoke about it at length. She scoffed at Democrats who oppose drilling for oil on the ground that it won’t solve all America's energy

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-87974135712302110272008-10-05T15:43:00.003-04:002008-10-05T15:58:40.983-04:00

Last week, General Electric announced that Berkshire Hathaway would make a $6 billion investment in General Electric. The financial press reported this in two ways, both correct in their ways.One slant was that the investment represented a vote of confidence in General Electric by Berkshire Hathaway and its Chief Executive Officer, Warren Buffett.The other slant was that Berkshire Hathaway was

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-31301839802406199002008-09-24T23:56:00.003-04:002008-09-25T00:02:59.455-04:00

John McCain says that he is suspending his campaign to help negotiate a bailout of American financial institutions.McCain is not on the Senate Banking Committee, the members of which one might expect would be doing the heavy lifting in the Senate.Moreover, in September 1944, when Nazi troops were desperately attacking Allied positions in the Battle of the Bulge, Franklin Roosevelt managed not to

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-49330875569653530762008-09-20T09:02:00.003-04:002008-09-20T09:08:32.038-04:00

By now, most Americans know (whether they want to or not) that as Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin tried to get Mike Wooten fired from his position on the Alaska State Police. He and her sister had gone through a nasty divorce, so her dislike of him was hardly surprising.But what is surprising is her letter of recommendation that she wrote while still Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Do note that she

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-41317166321628558272008-09-06T18:34:00.005-04:002008-10-31T15:19:17.592-04:00

Now it seems that the 40-year American experiment of having government-sponsored enterprises swim in the waters of the stock markets is over, at least for now. (Fannie Mae was an arm of the federal government from 1938 until 1968, when the Johnson administration privatized it to get its debt off the government's books; Freddie Mac was formed in 1970 in essentially its current form.)The impetus

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-2385227099335817012008-08-18T10:40:00.002-04:002008-08-18T10:52:58.731-04:00

John McCain famously claims that he told his Vietnamese captors only the names of the 1967 Green Bay Packers starting lineup when his prisoners asked for the names of the men in his squadron. One might expect that a true football fan might know that sort of thing (although it seems odd that he would be a fan of a football team from a small town in Wisconsin).In McCain's best-selling 1999 memoir

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-71963308040821979812008-08-08T14:15:00.003-04:002008-08-08T14:27:47.042-04:00

Conservatives generally hate Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the huge quasi-governmental agencies in the United States that backstop a good chunk of the residential mortgage market. After all, markets never prove wrong about anything as simple as mortgages, so the government should just butt out.Markets, of course, fail often enough that even Americans believe that the government should step

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-50537433738536273612008-07-12T08:14:00.004-04:002008-10-31T17:07:41.311-04:00

If you want an exemplar of the difference between theory and practice and the financial markets, consider what Alan Abelson writes in his Barron's column (behind the paywall) this week:[T]he roof fell in on housing and the curtain began to come down on the jolly times for Freddie and Fannie. Today, they own or guarantee 45% of all U.S. mortgages, or a cool, $4.8 trillion worth. Looking at their

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-54925683963184593492008-06-17T22:51:00.002-04:002008-06-17T23:01:04.960-04:00

Supposedly GM crops were supposed to to solve all sorts of annoying resource problems. Increased yields were supposed to help poor countries. Golden rice was supposed to cure Vitamin A deficiency.Alas, golden rice has never been a commercial priority. And it seems that biotechnology companies are not really interested in increasing yields of what poor countries really need: staple crops.What

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-68097385538039378692008-06-12T22:25:00.003-04:002008-06-12T22:47:42.768-04:00

I understand why the affluent want to call themselves middle class. Some even think that their very cushy lifestyle is the norm. But supposedly knowledgeable observers should be pointing out what the real situation is.Business Week profiled a few affluent families and how the possibility of tax hikes (or the expiration of the Bush tax cuts) might affect them and their lifestyle. The first is a

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-74190721463862947892008-06-12T19:19:00.003-04:002008-06-12T19:24:02.697-04:00

In a generally muckraking article about how banks use a supposedly fair but actually biased arbitration system to screw consumers, Business Week uses stark figures to show just how biased the system is.Others argue that NAF [(National Arbitration Forum)] umpires make calls that put debtors at a disadvantage. In March, Dennis J. Herrera, San Francisco's city attorney, sued the firm in California

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-43658247167607871382008-06-04T01:40:00.005-04:002008-06-04T01:56:37.752-04:00

Just how bad in quality control at Microsoft?If you save the following code (from August 2007) in an HTML file, it fatally crashes Internet Explorer. And the code is very basic: the first half defines a default style of relative positions, and the second half puts an input box in a very rudimentary table. And the brain trust in Redmond has not fixed this, despite dozens of weekly "updates" to

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-80088427023043633182008-06-04T01:28:00.004-04:002008-06-04T01:40:01.384-04:00

The British often have good political instincts, and not just the idea of a six-week election season. No, as a Daily Kos diarist notes, the best British political ideas often come from unexpected areas, such as this meme straight from Doctor Who two years ago:Six words. Six. Don't you think he looks tired?

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-34491034829573692792008-06-04T01:17:00.002-04:002008-06-04T01:26:49.233-04:00

Republican Jim Ogonowski last year came within a few thousand votes of winning a special election to fill Marty Meehan's Congressional seat. So he decided to use that moral victory as a springboard to challenging incumbent senator John Kerry.There is only one problem: Ogonowski will not be on the primary ballot because he came up 30 signatures short of the required 10,000 signatures.Unable to

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-67568036480786896812008-06-02T00:06:00.003-04:002008-06-02T00:21:38.881-04:00

The folks at Gatorade have been featuring sports heroes in a series of commercials for the sports drink, accompanied by part of the first song from Carmina Burana.When the music you quote is moaning about the inevitability of Luck and Fate, it sort of detracts from the idea that a particular drink will help you overcome what those medieval drinkers were drinking about.O Fortunavelut lunastatu

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-81696566982485183062008-05-30T12:51:00.003-04:002008-05-30T12:59:10.121-04:00

Apparently, the Boston Globe, under orders from World Headquarters in New York City, has made some cuts to save money.One of them is to replace the conservative op-eds normally served there with a op-ed-writing computer program. Here is what the program, Jeff Jacoby 2.0, produced two days ago."When you stand for your liberty," Bush told the world's prisoners of conscience in 2005, "we will stand

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-69007554080155071632008-05-27T19:33:00.003-04:002008-05-27T19:53:46.189-04:00

it was refreshing to read Josh Marshall's take on an article on the New York Times on the Israel problem.[I]f Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak were running for president in the US, they might not be deemed sufficiently pro-Israel to be acceptable in the American mainstream....I won't take the time to recapitulate the whole article. But you should read it because it covers a basic

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-63589101385897272902008-05-27T19:11:00.003-04:002008-05-27T19:31:05.567-04:00

When the California Supreme Court ruled that the California Constitution required the state to offer marriage to gay and lesbian couples, it did not take long for Jeff Jacoby to roll out his usual screed against gay marriage. The first part is the slippery slope that gay marriage will inevitably lead to.In American law, certain conditions of marriage have always been nonnegotiable. A marriage

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-73613103592351214362008-05-21T00:36:00.003-04:002008-05-21T01:08:12.697-04:00

How incompetent is the Massachusetts Republican Party? If it were a minor-league team it would be the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, only with a worse record. If it were a television network, it would be the CW, only without "America's Top Model" on its schedule.In October 2007, Republican Jim Ogonowski narrowly lost a special election to replace outgoing Democrat Marty Meehan—he won 45% of the vote,

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-20828001535519080192008-05-18T16:11:00.003-04:002008-05-18T16:31:32.505-04:00

How do you know when your local newspaper columnist is a third-rate hack? One way to tell is how quickly the right-wing memes of the moment make it into print. Case in point, Jeff Jacoby of the nominally liberal Boston Globe, with this gem from today. Last week, Bush tried to argue that the Democrats were appeasers, and like clockwork, the little bird emerges from the hole in the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-1053966967179892312008-05-16T23:35:00.002-04:002008-05-16T23:39:48.408-04:00

This is a good thing for sport, even if Oscar Pistorius is unlikely to run fast enough to qualify for the Olympics.Pistorius, who had both legs amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old due to a congenital disorder, was cleared on Friday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to use his prosthetic carbon-fibre limbs to compete in able-bodied events.He can now attempt to qualify for

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-66486859738447219232008-05-14T16:55:00.003-04:002008-05-14T17:04:11.386-04:00

When you have a blog with literally dozens of readers (and you know who you are), it can be a humbling experience to see some of the drivel that sometimes comes out of your much more successful counterparts. And I try to remember that structure does matter, that politics and economics are more than just some abstract notions of how "rational actors" supposedly act.Today, at Eschaton, aimai wrote

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-19480681465680417632008-05-04T21:44:00.003-04:002008-05-04T21:55:29.308-04:00

Hallmark is advertising its new recordable Mother's Day cards on television, what with Mother's Day coming in seven days and all. The cards allow you to record a 10-second greeting before playing an apparently appropriate song.The commercial features a young woman who sends her mother a card that plays "Unbelievable" by the group EMF (see the card in question at this page).I see nothing wring in

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-30033298248521588492008-05-04T19:50:00.002-04:002008-05-04T19:57:17.869-04:00

The New York Times every so often puts together a truly wonderful graphic, and today's illustration of what makes up the consumer price index is one of those every-so-often occasions. It is to pie charts what homemade lemon meringue pie is to those monstrosities that McDonald's passes off as apple "pies."And it shows, in detail, the amount of work that goes into approximating the complex space

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-5775764084037085002008-05-03T00:47:00.003-04:002008-05-03T01:07:28.644-04:00

(Alas, this ad is not online, so there is no link to the advertisement per se.) Barclays has a bunch of exchange-traded funds called iShares and a recent ad in Business Week and most likely other publications included this smarmy prose.Imagine a world without market timing, trend chasing or irrational investing. Now that's a world we should all want to be a part of.Here's the problem.The iShares

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-89053281758939666672008-04-30T11:02:00.003-04:002008-04-30T11:15:40.092-04:00

At some point the chattering classes will wake up and realize that the so-called liberal media has an awfully soft heart when it comes to neo-conservatives. One case in point is the Book Review section of the New York Times. This is supposedly an exemplary purview of the so-called liberals—a weekly rundown of important books by important authors and, of course, reviewed by important authors.Two

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-25253667668123209932008-04-29T20:21:00.003-04:002008-04-29T20:24:17.855-04:00

This excellent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article by Theodore Postol and George Lewis explains, in detailed fashion, why missile defenses, particularly the kind bandied about by the Bush administration, are doomed to fail.Why the United States has spent tens of billions of dollars on this boondoggle is an exercise left to the reader.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-16263554962294456332008-04-29T19:41:00.003-04:002008-04-29T19:57:08.438-04:00

Here comes John McCain's flack, with a simply splendid idea to solve the American care crisis.Republican John McCain wants to change how people get their health insurance, shifting away from job-based coverage to an open market where people can choose from competing policies.McCain said Tuesday he would offer families a $5,000 tax credit to help buy insurance policies. Everyone would get the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-46012311217197466222008-04-28T02:19:00.002-04:002008-04-28T02:30:09.066-04:00

At Eschaton, Atrios writes that talk of capital gains tax hikes ought not to worry the middle class, although the pundits will surely say it will.With talk of raising the capital gains tax in the air, you're going to hear a lot of conservatives and mainstream media folks blather on about how much this kind of thing is going to be so bad for the "middle class" or "even working folk" because

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-51660421543972131362008-04-26T08:20:00.003-04:002008-04-26T08:43:16.841-04:00

In a story about parking in Boston and the utter lack of accountability to the supposed limit on commercial parking spaces, we find the following sentence:Suffolk County, which encompasses most of Boston, received a D grade last year from the American Lung Association in its "State of the Air" report, which showed seven days of unhealthy ozone levels.I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-73179459546970241172008-04-19T23:12:00.004-04:002008-04-19T23:18:36.061-04:00

I hate daylight savings time.Not because it is a hassle, but because I feel poorly enough in the winter when it is dark in the morning and dark in the afternoon and not all that light in between. When daylight savings time starts, the light in the morning that I was starting to appreciate is now a whole hour later—and it takes several more weeks of dark mornings for me to recover my (relative

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-66997388683472375462008-04-19T22:51:00.002-04:002008-04-19T23:08:02.789-04:00

This is what happens when neither reporters nor editors have any idea how to check the alleged facts in their stories.Earlier this week, the Boston Globe led its Food section with a story on a local company that makes the ersatz fruit slices that are particularly popular during Passover. Alas, there are at least two bizarre mistakes in the piece that make one wonder whether anyone at the Globe

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-65256636739118115162008-04-13T12:10:00.004-04:002008-04-13T12:36:58.938-04:00

An impassioned reader asks the Boston Globe why the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA is not considering expanding the heavily used garage at Alewife station."Re: 'Desperately seeking parking' [March 30] and the complaint from William Elliott of Acton about his problems finding a garage, the T's Joe Pesaturo is misstating the facts if he says the reason for no increase in the size

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-37527576686961093932008-04-13T11:44:00.002-04:002008-04-13T11:49:22.479-04:00

The lead article of one of the sections of the New York Times last week touched on one of the defining issues of our generation. Yes, the problems that rich New Yorkers have when they try to garden at their upstate summer homes are surely worthy of almost two whole pages in the newspaper, although some might wonder why the editors relegated this concern to the "Escapes" section.To ... ardent

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-42409998591221059782008-04-05T19:18:00.003-04:002008-04-05T19:25:50.886-04:00

I meant to post this fascinating article from Barron's Online about that supposed paragon of intellectual rigor, Alan Greenspan.At most institutions of higher learning, doctoral theses are available to the public for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that they are supposed to advance the understanding of one or more problems in a particular field. But when your name is Alan Greenspan,

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-32485483903826804742008-04-02T09:36:00.003-04:002008-04-02T09:40:08.231-04:00

I think that I know the ending of this one. Financial institutions tell everyone that they really, really know what they are doing. Then they foul up, egregiously. And taxpayers wind up bailing them out.Just some more detail from the WSJ: Mortgage Securities Back Fed Loan to Bear Stearns.The securities backing a $29 billion Federal Reserve loan to Bear Stearns Cos. consist primarily of "

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-90032631435119108322008-03-25T15:16:00.003-04:002008-03-25T15:23:44.521-04:00

The local broadsheet has, today, a fascinating article about a college student who successfully memorized the first 3,141 digits of pi. I say that's impressive—I decided that the first 45, ending in 69399, were good enough for government work.The online version explains how he does it.When memorizing numbers, [James] Niles-Joyal, 22, does not simply repeat the digits over and over. Instead, the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-27895330670510545012008-03-23T00:31:00.005-04:002008-03-23T00:56:54.542-04:00

It was only a matter of time before some bright corporate type stole the idea of recent tax policy to use as its marketing strategy.Why should Congress and the White House have a monopoly on giving free things to folks who do not need free things? (For an example of what Congress likes to do, note that in 2005, over 56% of long-term capital gains in the United States were reported by those with

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-7652143787725759422008-03-16T16:36:00.004-04:002008-03-16T16:53:41.952-04:00

Why is this claim about genetically modified (GM) rice so familiar?Genetic engineering also helps achieve other goals of the organic farming movement. By reducing the use of pesticides and by reducing pests and disease, it can make farming more affordable and thus keep family farmers in business and assure local food security. It can also make food more nutritious: In 2011, plant breeders expect

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-88275566051811250542008-03-09T17:18:00.003-04:002008-03-09T17:24:38.599-04:00

Mark Feeney, in today's Boston Globe writes the following aside in his article about children's cinema:(How much does the existence of Eddie Murphy's Donkey character in the series owe to the title quadruped in "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble"?)Let's see. Donkey, in the Shrek movies, is a glib, annoying, wise-ass whose original owner tries to sell him for a few coins, and whose natural family is

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-8001737192611317382008-03-02T19:24:00.003-05:002008-03-02T19:47:46.608-05:00

Pity the poor Massachusetts Republican. A good year is a year in which they contest perhaps three-quarters of the seats in the legislature, and win one-quarter of those. The traditional bogeymen of politics do not work—voters seem unconcerned about gay marriage, welcoming of immigrants, and unworried about the black underclass.Indeed, in a special election to be held on Tuesday, the Republican

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-37325151965836171032008-03-02T14:43:00.003-05:002008-03-02T15:06:20.251-05:00

What can one say about a man so devoted to small government and private enterprise that his talk show, with fully 1504 episodes, appeared on the Public Broadcasting Service. (I mean besides pointing out to Americans that their tax dollars helped subsidize William F. Buckley's collection of fine liquor.)It is certainly fair to point out that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, National Review

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-77708190661351996402008-03-02T14:34:00.002-05:002008-03-02T14:42:43.199-05:00

Right now, the online Encyclopedia of Life is more skeleton than full-bodied specimen, but the plan for now is to expand it to 1.8 million full pages over the next 10 years. (Right now, only 25 pages have all planned features. Check out the creators' plans.) And, much to the consternation of the acolytes of the Church of the Market, it is free, as in covered by one of the Creative Commons

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-27201239526971115892008-02-18T09:27:00.003-05:002008-02-18T09:40:02.778-05:00

Jeff Jacoby has managed to spin out four skeptical articles about global warming in the last year, including a recent one in which he crows about how warm December 2007 was.Now comes news about January 2008 in Australia.Australia experienced its hottest January on record this year, with the dry continent heating up as part of the global warming process, the bureau of meteorology said

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-62958866541292052182008-02-13T00:02:00.003-05:002008-04-26T08:44:13.093-04:00

Paying creditors "ten cents on the dollar"? What ever happened to balanced budgets and other supposed niceties of fiscal conservatism? For Rudy Giuliani, a balanced budget will only be part of the Administration That Never Will Be.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-46670176800264771322008-02-12T14:54:00.000-05:002008-02-12T15:27:31.373-05:00

What is extraordinarily puzzling about newspapers nowadays is where the straightest talk about labor issues will be.Sports reporters are not always the most objective sources of news, but an assiduous reader of the sports pages will get detailed and generally accurate news about labor relations in almost any sport, from baseball and football to hockey and soccer.Similarly, the writer's strike

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-17102059476268002532008-02-11T21:25:00.000-05:002008-02-11T21:44:07.243-05:00

It bears repeating. As I mentioned last week, bad weather does not significantly reduce voter turnout, especially when voters care about either voting in general or about the election in question.So why do stories about the Maine caucuses mention high turnout and bad weather like they need potent emulsification to exist together?The turnout was high at many caucus sites, despite harsh weather.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-60782919181011766012008-02-11T10:14:00.000-05:002008-02-11T10:51:49.825-05:00

This headline is currently on the Boston Globe's web site: Temperatures near 20 below.Really? The temperature here was 9°F this morning, and I would not expect 30-degree differences between one part of the Boston area from another. A hint to the problem is the headline of the article itself ("Bitter winds push temperatures near 20 below"). While winds might bring cold air into a region, the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-7367331158323179472008-02-09T10:44:00.001-05:002008-02-09T10:50:23.126-05:00

Some folks in Natick, Massachusetts just don't understand what all the fuss is about. How could anyone object to treating Native Americans as mascots?A year ago, it seemed that the Natick Redmen would soon take the field for the last time. The School Committee voted to dump the name - and the silhouette of a Native American in a feathered headdress that some teams and local boosters have adopted

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-56467026214677726032008-02-07T13:04:00.000-05:002008-02-07T13:30:50.356-05:00

if reports like this one are correct, then Willard Mitt Romney's quest to be president is over, and he will have to fall back on becoming God of His Own Planet someday.What puzzles me is not how much money this supposedly savvy businessman wasted, but how often he would use the same jab at his opponents—that they had not held real jobs in the private sector—without someone noting something that

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-18353396285645102182008-02-05T17:01:00.001-05:002008-02-11T21:24:47.045-05:00

It is primary day in Massachusetts and it has rained off and on all day. And this means that the local media are playing up how the weather will affect turnout.The gray, gloomy rain that had soaked early primary voters stopped this afternoon when storm clouds moved south. The dry weather is predicted to last until after the polls close at 8 p.m., which may give turnout an extra bump in an

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-68493648409865124642008-02-04T00:06:00.000-05:002008-02-04T00:19:42.360-05:00

How obvious was it that George Bush was playing Congressional Democrats for patsies when it came to invading Iraq? Obvious enough that Lincoln Chafee, not known for being the brightest bulb in the Senate light show, though that it was obvious.Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against prosecuting the war. :The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-79378946743441548072008-02-03T22:30:00.001-05:002008-02-03T22:32:36.727-05:00

If American unions had guts, they would be reshooting this Australian video scene for scene.Alas, the full impact of the clip depends on remembering why Life of Brian was such a funny film. And Americans hate to admit that anything that makes fun of religion is funny.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-18927382644512162412008-02-03T22:20:00.000-05:002008-02-03T22:23:27.247-05:00

Somehow I knew that this was the kiss of death."I exchanged emails yesterday with Tom Brady, and he’s a friend," former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney told reporters today. "And I wish him the very best and I wish the team the very best."Well, that worked really well. I have the feeling that Tom Brady is going to let Willard Mitt's calls go straight to voicemail from now on.

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-50746659431995640752008-01-30T14:11:00.001-05:002008-01-30T14:23:12.996-05:00

Now that George Bush will be leaving office in 2000, Ralph Nader is very helpfully reminding us of how he got there. Yes, Ralph Nader now has an exploratory committee for a 2008 presidential run.Let us instead weigh the possibility of pulling together half a million dedicated citizens collectively rising up off our couches and organizing a ground force in every Congressional district in the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-27175472698593260952008-01-25T16:32:00.000-05:002008-01-25T17:58:38.291-05:00

Every man, every man for himself. Big Science. So said Laurie Anderson a generation ago. And Big Pharma is showing today just how knackered the American health care system is. The profitability of a drug has very little to do with its efficacy. Marketing to consumers leads to gross overuse of marginally useful drugs. And doctors, who one might think might be able to afford to be objective,

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-50402514925546520332008-01-24T22:42:00.000-05:002008-01-24T22:47:02.730-05:00

I thought that deporting citizens was supposed to be something that only failed states were supposed to do. But when the ruling party operates under the premise that government is a bad thing, then it has no incentive to run the government efficiently.After he was arrested in Colorado on a minor drug charge, [Thomas] Warziniack told probation officials there wild stories about being shot seven

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-41714952125292141352008-01-24T22:20:00.000-05:002008-01-24T22:35:53.839-05:00

Now there's a shock. Did anyone really think that just $15 billion would somehow avoid the financial train wrecks now known as Ambac and MBIA?America's biggest mortgage bond insurers collectively need a $200 billion (£101 billion) capital injection if they are to maintain their key AAA credit ratings, a figure that dwarfs a plan by New York regulators to put together a capital infusion of up to

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-54098221236204080902008-01-24T10:03:00.000-05:002008-01-24T10:14:07.331-05:00

I can imagine how Willard Mitt Romney would run his campaign, should he win the Republican nomination—besides running like crazy away from his given first name, the commandment about honoring thy mother and father be damned.Mitt Romney: strong on defense. Mitt Romney: for secure borders. And so on.So it is with more than a bit of glee that I report that for the second time in six months, the

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3916829.post-31325221423607147422008-01-23T20:06:00.000-05:002008-01-23T20:26:25.769-05:00

What a sinecure it must be to be a conservative columnist at a so-called liberal newspaper. If you write the most ludicrous things, it is so very difficult to get fired, for the bosses as so afraid of being red-baited, even today.So it must be in Boston, where the Globe keeps printing the nuanced and illuminating prose of Jeff Jacoby. One of his latest columns laments that the Bush

Tim F-Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923342216452341386noreply@blogger.com