Monthly Archives: August 2012

Clint Eastwood debates a chair: It’s sort of like a very slow Red Skelton routine, if Red Skelton thought maybe a chair would tell Mitt Romney to go fuck himself, and also if Red Skelton were a shameless panderer.

You can read about it here. I had nothing to do with this, of course. But still.

Oh, shit. The FDIC agreed to accept nearly $5 million in cash to retire $15 million in Bain’s debt – an immediate government bailout of $10 million. All told, the FDIC estimated it would recoup just $14 million of the … Continue reading →

Michael Lind tries to imagine a conservative movement that really wants American businesses, rather than the investor class, to succeed. E.g., The devastation of American industry by foreign mercantilism need not be of concern to individual investors, as long as … Continue reading →

Henry Blodget lays out the history of the U.S. economy and taxation over the past half-decade or so in a set of really compelling graphs. The first part is about taxation — who pays, how much, and how it all … Continue reading →

Yesterday I equivocated slightly in defending Paul Krugman from Bjørn Lomborg’s accusation that Krugman was exaggerating the effects of climate change in the U.S. I shouldn’t have. Krugman was right. New modeling by Aiguo Dai, published in Nature: Climate Change, … Continue reading →

It’s bad enough I can’t enjoy the world’s most delicious chicken sandwich anymore. Just lay off the ill-informed commentary and sing “Texas Women” already. (Can’t enjoy anything good anymore, grumblegrumblegrumble….)

Juan Cole has a funny little list up called “Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others.” It’s pretty good. 10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, … Continue reading →

Saudi Arabia, attempting to develop an economy that goes beyond mere mineral wealth, has succumbed to the inevitable. It’s letting women join the workforce… in a predictably peculiar fashion: Saudi Arabia has a problem: The Persian Gulf kingdom has an … Continue reading →

“Let us have a real debate about the costs and benefits of government spending programs. The attitude that smugly denigrates the public sphere while applauding the private one is misguided.”