Hey, let's see if I can tick off everybody today. First off, Ronald Reagan was right, you know:
Israeli interceptors have eviscerated the Iranian-supplied Hamas missiles heading for population centers. Chalk up an important strategic and technological win for missile defense.
This may not be WTF or even OMG, but it's certainly LOL:
By now, if lawyers haven't already taken notice, they should: Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit isn't a big fan of abbreviations, including acronyms. Today, the judge twice questioned the space-saving practice of shortening.
So, Dutch is a lazy, fat cat, so fat that he has trouble grooming in places. And I've been a bad dad who doesn't brush him as often as I should. So he gets clumps, and I asked the vet to shave them off during our annual-checkup visit on Saturday. The operation brought forth some strange sounds from the cat, which I captured with my phone video. For some reason, the sound dropped off sharply when I panned back to include a full view of the vet in the shot, so you can't hear some of the more other-worldly mews. Still funny, though.
Megan McCardle on men and women and "noticing inflation":
What could possibly go wrong?
Two sex therapists have sparked outrage in the Netherlands by calling for 'virtual' child porn to be legalised to relieve the urges of paedophiles.
I suspect this is right, so let's have no Twinkie panics, no Ding Dong withdrawal symptions, no Wonder Bread riots:
Hostess Brands, the maker of the iconic Twinkies snack cakes, may find a buyer when it heads to bankruptcy court today to liquidate the 82-year-old company, the company’s CEO says.
Finally one of them says in public what they all think in private:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Friday that Congress should stop placing legal limits on the amount of money the government can borrow and effectively lift the debt limit to infinity.
On Bloomberg TV, “Political Capital” host Al Hunt asked Geithner if he believes “we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling.”
Well this is a cheery thought -- human intelligence "peaked thousands of years ago and we've been on an intellectual and emotional decline every since":
Then-defense sercretary Robert M. Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn.
Our ancestors crossed oceans and prairies. They climbed mountains and carved homes out of the wilderness. They fought wild animals and wicked weather. And this is what their descendants have come to:
The Indiana Department of Labor is encouraging retailers to take precautions to ensure employees and shoppers are safe during "Black Friday" sales and other major shopping days.
From Ron Paul's farewell speech (full transcript here):
During part one of his farewell speech to Congress, Rep. Ron Paul insisted that the internet remain free, as it is an important alternative to the “government media complex.”
I really hope he's wrong, but history says he's right: "Get ready for higher taxes and no spending reform."
The Obama tax hikes would both be too much and too little--too much not to dampen already weak economic growth, too little to stop the rapid accumulation of debt.
The New York Times says editors and biographers alike are loath to condemn the new Petraeus biography even though the writer and subject were having an affiar, because "the rules in this area are so hazy." This highly irritates Walter Russell Mead, who observes:
The Muncie Star-Press editorial page is mighty pleased that that nasty extremist, Tea Party partisan Richard Mourdock lost by 6 percent to that paragon of moderate virtue Joe Donnelly:
A brave stand for human dignity in San Francisco!
Reuters) - Two dozen pro-nudity activists wearing little but their righteous indignation assembled on the steps of San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday to protest a proposed municipal ban on public nakedness.
Hey, ready for a new "well, duh" report on research that proves the obvious?
A new study finds that people who live close to a bar tend to drink more.
A group of Finnish researchers collected data from nearly 55,000 participants from 2000 to 2009. The study found that heavy and extreme drinking occurred when people lived about a half-mile away from the bar.
Guess they've got that pesky old murder-gang-drug thing solved in Chicago so that Mayor Rahm Emanuel can now concetrate on the really important stuff:
Time for Chicago's vending machines to chip up or chip out.
Sure-fire argument starter -- "The five most overrated presidents," who are: Abraham Lincoln, Frandklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt and (in a tie) Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama. Check out this paragraph on Lincoln:
Small confession: I occasionally check in on Guy Fieri's show on the Food Network, not because I'm a particular fan of the spiky-haired, wear-the-sunglasses-on-the-back-of-the-head cooking personality, but because the places he checks out of "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" are the kinds of local eateries it's fun to stumble across. But I have to doubt his food judgment after reading this savage New York Times review -- hell, it's an evisceration -- of his new Times Square Restaurant.
This ought to give Republicans pause:
President Barack Obama won a second term by taking the majority of swing states. But a closer look at exit polling data shows Obama lost the independent vote in most of those states over the last four years. Independents, who do not align with one political party or another, make up a fast-growing and coveted voting bloc.
