What is your purpose?

Dumbfounded.  That’s my reaction to news that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation almost quadrupled its stake in stocks at the end of 2008, when the long market decline that started in fall 2007 accelerated. 
It’s not that I can’t understand the decision on investment merits alone.   But I’m not sure the defense of “check back in 20 years” [...]

The wide aisle

From Vanity Fair:
May 24, 2001 Vermont senator Jim Jeffords, a Republican, changes party, and control of the Senate shifts to the Democrats, making Tom Daschle the Senate majority leader and testing the administration’s public face of bipartisanship.
David Kuo, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: I went to a communications [...]

Instant classic

I had Villanova going to the Final Four but losing to Kansas, which should tell you that my bracket’s way busted.  The Wildcats’ win over Pitt was a great, great game.  From the moment Levance Fields hit a tying three-pointer late in the first half, there were 10 lead changes and neither team could open [...]

On language

In the wake of Michelle Obama’s memories of childhood teasing she took for talking “like a white girl,” great piece by G.D. at Postbourgie.

George and Marie

Back in the happy days:
The impression that he gives while munching on goat cheese salad in the corporate jet isn’t so much one of entitlement as much as a firm belief that material excess is a fitting reward for those who toil among Corporate America’s ruling elite. Yes, he has the $25 million townhouse in [...]

It was like I was Barack Obama

The President has set himself up for years of ribbing with his weak bowling game (not that I’m much better than he is at the lanes, if at all), and after his unfortunate offhand comment on Jay Leno’s show the other night he’s been challenged by Kolan McConiughey, a Special Olympian.
The White House needs to set [...]

Racism for dummies

An Old Navy commercial that aired during “American Idol” earlier this week left me dumbstruck.  And then, like countless other “shocks” whose impact in a media-saturated life is hard to trace, the commercial left my mind.  Probably took minutes.  For more than 24 hours I’d forgotten.  Fortunately Harry Allen not only took note, but wrote.  [...]

Worth a listen

I have no idea about their ratings, but Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield do a fantastic job with On the Media.  Imagine, professional interviewers asking sharp questions about how other professional interviewers do their job. 
It sounds like nothing else.
There’s plenty of media criticism out there, some more incisive than the rest, but On the Media is [...]

Real talk

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of [...]

Precedented

Some less-than-ancient history on marginal tax rates from hilzoy at Obsidian Wings.
In case you’re not clear on the concept:  http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm