The latest on the auto bailout talks

This is a fascinating take by Steven Pearlstein on the proposals put forth by the Big Three this week.
The way Pearlstein frames it you can almost envision three men hoping to woo a woman on an old-style, behind-the-curtain television dating game.
GM is saying, “I’d do anything for you.  I’ve already bought your wedding ring and told my family [...]

Only on the Internet

Rick Reilly is sharp, sometimes brilliant, but he’s gotten a bit too clever for me.  I stopped reading him regularly at least a few years before he moved from Sports Illustrated to ESPN.
But I never would have thought to do the analysis that Josh Levin at Slate did, fully uncovering at least one of Reilly’s writerly tics.
Levin reports:  [...]

To walk and chew gum at the same time

I hope it’s lazy language, not lazy reporting, that this Wall Street Journal article puts forth on Barack Obama’s second press conference this week.  Obama introduced his choices for director and deputy director of his Office of Management and Budget, saying, “When we are facing both rising deficits and a sinking economy, budget reform is not an [...]

“Mad Men”

Good show.  I’m almost through with the first episode.

Real quick

You might have known that Charles Stone III, creator of the Whassup commercials as well as the tremendous spoof above, directed Black Sheep’s “The Choice is Yours.”  I didn’t.

Lavar Arrington’s career wasn’t that bad (three Pro Bowls) but it seems like he could have done so much more.  Off the [...]

Joe Biden makes 90 seconds seem like an eternity

I like him for VP.  Seriously.  But my man just keeps talking, and talking.  It’s evident twice in this video, whose star nonetheless is young Damon Weaver.  From the four-minute mark peep Biden’s long-windedness while Damon is straining to hold the microphone above his head.  Little man is going to need a serious shoulder massage.

The Ron Clark Academy shows well

Never heard of it before a few minutes ago.  But the publicity machine is going full-tilt.

White girls named Ashley

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight with a gem.

Brandon McClelland and hate crime

 

Takes five weeks or so for the national news media to pick up the story of a man whose body was discovered torn apart by the side of a road.   The man was Brandon McClelland, 24, of Paris, Texas. 
That’s the same Paris where Shaquanda Cotton received a seven-year sentence for pushing a hall monitor in high [...]

Where real Americans live

This is the first mainstream story I’ve seen about Barack Obama as a true product of the big city, a rarity among Presidential contenders, as I noted a while back.
The United States long ago became an urban-suburban nation, with two-thirds of the population now residing in its 100 largest metropolitan areas. Yet recent presidents have [...]