Holy cow. I've been griping and griping about the federal government, and it turns out I should be grateful to it for doing states such a big favor:
President Obama's economic stimulus package, more formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, offers state governments a number of unprecedented opportunities, but none more important than in the area of health care.
The flag won't be flying at half-mast at the Morris compound today:
Robert Strange McNamara, the former secretary of defense whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died early this morning at age 93.
[. . .]
So, even the "plain people" can be seduced away from tradition and lured to the Good Life:
The great increase in discretionary income spawned a "keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality," says Mervin Lehman, 39, an Amish father of four who says he was making more than $50-an-hour and working up to 60 hours a week as an RV plant supervisor before he was laid off in November.
Most of the stuff I've read about "Public Enemies" makes it sound either like another Hollywood romanticization of criminal thugs or a boring biopic without much character or depth. But Roger Ebert liked it a lot more than most of the other critics seemed to:
The opening Wednesday of "Public Enemy," the new movie with Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, seems to be renewing Hoosiers' fascination with the romanticism of Depression-era gansgters. This AP story captures the flavor:
People writing about the newly released Nixon tapes seem to be focusing either on his creepy abortion views (they foster permissiveness and break up the family but are sometimes necessary, "like when you have a black and a white or a rape") or else Watergate and all the intrigue surrounding the Saturday Night Massacre. But this is what I found really disturbing:
Those of us who argue strongly and often that the Constitution is about immutable principles rather than evolving standards are obligated to wince (metaphorically) in public when a case comes along that gives the other side (Supreme Court justices should care about people, not just the law!) some ammunition. This is me wincing:
The best technological news of my lifetime is that "1984" turned out to be wrong. The totalitarian thugs have not had control of ever-more sophisticated means of communication, with which they can keep an eye on all of us and even rewrite history to keep us in line. The information revolution hasn't strengthened the oppressors. If anything, it's helped liberate the masses. Remember way back in 1991, when the fax was cutting-edge technology?
I'm so old-fashioned that I like the occasional historical reference in news stories, even if it takes up a little of the wwwwwh nuts-and-bolts space. I thought I was going to get one when I saw the headline of this story -- "Caesars Palace declares victory: Pres. Obama sleeps there again" -- and read the first paragraph:
Has anybody ever gotten more out of brief moments at sporting events than milk producers through the Indianapolis 500? (Possible exception: the "I'm going to Disneyland" crap at the end of Super Bowls.) This year, Hooser Ag Today even trots out an "Indianapolis Motor Speedway historian" to tell us happened that one fateful year when an Indy winner balked and didn't drink his milk:
