Events

For the record: The existence, or quantity, of any photos of the President shaking Jack Abramoff's hand, is totally irrelevant. As Josh Marshall points out, Abramoff was the #1 most-connected guy in Republican fundraising during Bush's first term. So it's unlikely that Bush didn't know him, regardless of what either says on the subject. Haven't we had enough of this already? One president lies about extra-marital sex, the other about helping his friends steal billions and kill thousands. One gets...

First, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has a great column today (sub.req.): [The President's] breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence. And that's the real problem. That's where you'll find the mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence. ... [T]he plain truth is that he is the worst president in memory, and one of the worst of all time. Second, I've been ambivalent about the Times charging $49.95 per year to read most of its content, but I think more and...

A man enters a bar and orders a drink. The bar has a robot bartender. The robot serves him a perfectly prepared cocktail, and then asks him, "What's your IQ?" The man replies "150" and the robot proceeds to make conversation about quantum physics, string theory, atomic chemistry, etc. he customer is very impressed and thinks, "This is really cool." He decides to test the robot. He walks out of the bar, turns around, and comes back in for another drink. Again, the robot serves him the drink and asks him...

First, Palestine's Fatah government has resigned after Hamas has apparently won yesterday's ellection, following several years Fatah of inaction and corruption. I suppose that means we can look forward to several years of Hamas inaction and corruption, with an occasional terrorist bombing thrown in every now and then. Hamas, you may remember, is dedicated to the annihilation of Israel. Reactions from Israel were restrained, for now: Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert scheduled talks with senior officials...

Anne and I were discussing this morning how January is our least-favorite month. Apparently Cardiff University, Wales, professor Cliff Arnall agrees: Arnall found that, while days technically get longer after Dec. 21, cyclonic weather systems take hold in January, bringing low, dark clouds to Britain. Meanwhile, the majority of people break their healthy resolutions six to seven days into the new year, and even the hangers-on have fallen off the wagon, torn off the nicotine patches and eaten the fridge...

The BBC reported last week on a new workplace rule at a firm in Germany. The firm, which until recently had a staff of 16, forbade complaining or whinging in the workplace, on pain of immediate firing: [E]mployees have a clause in their contracts which states: "moaning and whinging at Nutzwerk is forbidden... except when accompanied with a constructive suggestion as to how to improve the situation." Ramona Wonneberger, chief executive of Nutzwerk, came up with the idea. She claims that "negative energy"...

I've asked Yak, one of the friends I mentioned Sunday, to give us his two cents. He gave us a couple of bucks and said "keep the change." And just before posting this, CBS and Time Warner announced a merger. Interesting, no?   I think the first idea I need to reinforce is that I am not a Democrat and do not embrace the hope that if Democrats can "take back" the federal government, this should in turn "take back" America. I do not believe there is a fundamental difference between Republican and Democrat...

Canada yesterday elected a minority Conservative government, sending Liberals home after 12 years in power. The Conservative leader, now Prime Minister-elect, Stephen Harper, has no plans to privatize the Canadian health system, nor to open up the country to a flood of immigrants from the south. But he is closer to the U.S. than outgoing Liberal PM Paul Martin was, a fact which crippled Harper's last run in 2004. Also at issue were some of the same social questions we're fighting over down here: Martin...

Another thing government does better than business: make businesses play nicely with each other. Cable companies and telephone companies are fed up with the free Internet because they have to carry it on their backbones for free. So they're looking for ways to charge for use, including creating premium access for a fee. One of the easily foreseen ways this "premium access" could manifest, as the Washington Post reports, looks like this: [Y]ou may one day discover that Yahoo suddenly responds much faster...

"[I]t has been a nervous year, and people have begun to feel like a Christian scientist with appendicitis."—Tom Lehrer We live in a nation founded by a conspiracy. A group of committed, passionate, and intelligent men met in secret for years, plotting and scheming, until finally they took arms against their own country and set up a radical left-wing government that subsequently became the model for the rest of the world. Grandchildren of those revolutionaries tried to do what they believed was the same...