Top contender for Jerk of the Year so far:
Top contender for Jerk of the Year so far:
This is what they call a "compromise" in Washington:
Cut through the fog, and here’s what to expect: Taxes will go up just shy of $1.2 trillion — the middle ground of what President Barack Obama wants and what Republicans say they could stomach. Entitlement programs, mainly Medicare, will be cut by no less than $400 billion - and perhaps a lot more,
[. . .]
Where, oh, where are the rugged women of yore who stood toe-to-toe with men and demanded respect and equal treatment? Today,we have the likes of Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who demanded that we all pay her $10 a month for birth control pills and now in the running for Time magazine's person of the year:
Hey, my alma mater is famous again. No, not for the Letterman-Oprah gabfest. It's a court case to answer the burning question, "Who's the boss around here anyway?"
This really won't be that much of a fight:
Supporters and opponents of gay marriage are already squaring off in a battle over whether to amend Indiana’s constitution that could stretch until voters decide the issue in November 2014.
Voter approval of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington probably isn't quite the tipping point some people are claiming it is. Two states isn't even a regional trend, let alone a national one. These remarks by Indiana's State Police chief are more significant:
This seems like a waste of time:
Marine Corps Pvt. Lazzaric T. Caldwell slit his wrists and spurred a legal debate that’s consuming the Pentagon, as well as the nation’s top military appeals court.
I certainly think he'd be a better choice than Susan Rice:
So, President Obama, you need a new Secretary of State to replace Hillary Clinton, but you don't like any of the choices sitting on your desk? You think Susan Rice deserves it and would do a great job, but she comes with too much controversy? You feel you owe John Kerry a favor for helping you in the campaign, but wonder if he'd fit right on your team?
Newark Mayor Cory Booker said he and a Twitter follower will try living on food stamps for at least a week.
The Associated Press on bad-word patrol:
The Associated Press has nixed "homophobia," "ethnic cleansing," and a number of other terms from its Style Book in recent months.
Well, thank goodness cooler heads prevaied, eh?
During the height of the Cold War, U.S. officials debated whether to detonate nuclear bomb on the moon in order to send a message to the Soviet Union, the Asian News International reports.
The boys in the band have become old men. Should the old men shuffle off the stage, or should their critics shut up?
For the "well, duh" file:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Gun-related violence has fallen steadily since 2006 in Virginia despite record firearm sales, according to a university professor's analysis.
"Despite"? How about "because of"? Bad guys already have their guns. "Record firearm sales" means we're getting more of them. Arm the right people, crime "falls steadily." Why is that so damn hard to understand?
Connie Schultz is a former Cleveleand Plain Dealer columnist who is now syndicated. I heard her on NPR yesterday, being asked about a recent column in which she urged Clark Kent to give newspapers one more chance instead of going through with his decision to leave the Daily Planet and start a blog. She gave one of the most spirited defenses of our profession that I've heard in quite a while:
Hey, be careful out there -- "10 Black Friday Dos and Don'ts." Here's No. 8:
Congressional negotiators, trying to avert a fiscal crisis in January, are examining ideas that would allow effective tax rates to rise for the wealthy without technically raising the top tax rate of 35 percent. They hope the proposals will advance negotiations by allowing both parties to claim they stood their ground.
Uncomfortable truth of the day: The further away we get from 1984, the closer it seems:
A Texas high school student is being suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip.
Well, what do you know? I agree with PETA for once:
It’s a White House tradition with a century and a half of history behind it, but PETA is asking the White House to skip it this year.
A truly great "Take this job and shove it!" moment:
BANGOR, Maine — Citing a longstanding battle with upper management over journalistic practices at their Bangor TV stations, news co-anchors Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced their resignations at the end of Tuesday’s 6 p.m. newscast.
Actually, I haven't noticed this much myself:
In the hours after Sandy made landfall, noted online wits doffed their aloof masks and hung their heads in solidarity; those who seemed insufficiently somber got chastised. The key word of the storm became hunker—a term that nearly oozes honey glaze and cocoa. “Much of the seen-it-all and isn’t-it-dumb seemed to leak out of my Twitter stream,” the media critic David Carr wrote a couple of days later.
