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On Those '78 Minutes of Summer'...
... in Seattle, and the Round-the-Clock Inferno everywhere else. Several readers from the Puget Sound area wrote in response to their homeland's distinction as the coolest spot in the Lower 48. (Below,...
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Request for Reader Help: Has Your Gmail Been Hacked?
I mentioned several months ago that, soon after we returned from China, my wife's Gmail account had been hijacked, with surprising ripple effects, and that I'd be writing more about the episode later....
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David Leonhardt of the NYT
There's only one downside to the news that David Leonhardt (right, NYT pic) will become the new Washington bureau chief for the New York Times: presumably it means that he will do less writing on his...
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Last Installment (Probably) on Obama: Chess Master or Pawn?
We've had about enough of this, but one more installment seemed appropriate, given tomorrow's last-ditch negotiations at the White House and this little indication of the larger Third World on the...
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The Washington Post Owes the World an Apology for this Item
Read it and weep. On the Post's site Jennifer Rubin first quotes the Weekly Standard, in a rushed item about the Norway horror:>>We don't know if al Qaeda was directly responsible for today's...
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A Norwegian View on the 'Mutation of Jihad'
A Norwegian friend whom my wife and I have known since he came to the U.S. for graduate school in the 1970s writes about the events in his homeland. Note the difference between his concern about and...
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Time for a 'This is Bullshit' Speech?
Years ago I saw this headline in The Onion: "AMISH GIVE UP. 'This is Bullshit,' Elders Say."It may be time for President Obama to give a "This is bullshit" speech about the debt-ceiling negotiations....
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Time for a Break: WTF Beer?
OK, enough policy for a while. I have been neglecting the beer, aviation, running, language, tech, and China beats and will try to catch up. Lots in the queue, but let me start by noting the arrival of...
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The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling
It's this one, from yesterday's New York Times. Click for a more detailed view, though it's pretty clear as is.It's based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and...
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Great Moments in Speechwriting
You can sort of figure out what John Boehner meant with his immortal line just now, "The bigger the government, the smaller the people." Government is the enemy, Americans stand tallest when standing...
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Another Chart for Your Debt Ceiling Discussions
Yesterday I mentioned the New York Times chart on sources of the budget deficit, which dramatized the contradiction many House Republicans prefer not to face. As the figures demonstrated, the Bush-era...
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The U.S. as 'Lethal Laughing Stock'
Yesterday I mentioned that governmental paralysis over the debt ceiling -- a wholly artificial construct* being addressed with mainly incoherent arguments** -- was already turning the strongest,...
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At Last! Good News on the Boiled Frog Front
Who says it's always depressing to read the newspapers? It turns out that frogs actually like being in lullingly warm water.... At least in certain circumstances: Thanks to Carol Reiter of the Merced...
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Five Reasons the House GOP Is to Blame
Many Republican readers have written to ask why I have posted "partisan" charts, like the one after the jump, that use data from the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere to show that tax cuts over...
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Great Moments in Headline Writing
And a sign that not all of the news out of Washington DC makes you want to jump off a bridge: No more Fat Albert! For pro sports fans in the DC area -- where the two area baseball teams are perpetually...
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Now For Something More Enjoyable
Our experiment in self-government is hitting a rough patch, the FAA has halted airport-repair projects around the country (and allowed the airlines to pocket the fees they're not paying to the FAA),...
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'Al Qaeda in Norway' Reaction: Toadyism and Hypocrisy
I have put off doing this, since my observation of online disputes is that the only winners are people who stay out of them. But in the week since the horrific murders in Norway, three lines of...
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Proud of August 2!
I've always had a perverse pride in being born on August 2. Middle of summer, so when I was a kid often my friends weren't around for birthday parties. But the weather was always warm, and often my...
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Gary Hart, With a 'This is Bullshit' Speech Draft
(See update below.) As I mentioned several times last year, especially here and here, I think former Senator Gary Hart can claim a better record of being right about national-security issues, over a...
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The Nauseating Debt-Ceiling 'Solution'
I agree with Matt Miller: (needless) disaster averted, decline embraced. >>So this is what we've driven the global economy and America's credit rating to the brink for? ...This is the best the...
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