Internal Monologue

What Yglesias said: If you ask me, one of the most disturbing trends in American public discourse is the incredibly provincialism and solipsism of a lot of our policy debate. The idea that other countries are doing better than we are in various ways is totally off the radar. Instead, when foreign countries are mentioned at all you get stuff like this : “We have fundamental philosophical differences. We’re in an era of unfunded liabilities,” said John Culberson , R-Texas. “This stimulus is really a Trojan horse. It’s part of a plan that would turn the United States into France.” France! A country so impoverished that its citizens are fleeing in droves, washing up on our shores desperate to experience the good life as it’s lived in suburban Houston. I was reminded of that by this post from Tim Lee pointing out that broadband internet access in the United States is a lot better and cheaper than it was nine years ago so he “can’t get too upset about the possibility that in 2018 Ameri

From Global Nerdy , which I'm sure got it from somewhere else.

"We have this thing called impeachment and it's bleeping golden and we've used it the right way." -- Illinois state Sen. James Meeks (D), quoted by the AP , mocking former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's expletive-laden words as captured by the FBI on a wiretap. (From Political Wire )

This person is auctioning off her virginity . Allegedly, the bidding is up to $3.8 million. Question: How do we know she's really a virgin? For that much money, I can picture someone lying. Operations can be done to restore or fake a hymen. And I bet the cost of those operations is less than $3.8 million. And a hymen isn't really an accurate gauge of virginity in the first place: By the time you're 22 it's likely to have ripped for other reasons. Normally I think obsessing about whether someone is a virgin or not is weird. But she's making an issue of it by attaching a monetary value to it. I almost hope she's lying about it, that would make her more devious and clever and admirable. Question: Why would someone pay $3.8 million for sex with this person? Question: Does the person who bid $3.8 million actually have it? Are they bidding in good faith? Question: Assuming the deal goes through, will the buyer feel they got their money's worth? I've had so

Saddlebacking : Saddlebacking : sad•dle•back•ing \ˈsa-dəl-ˈba-kiŋ\ vb [fr. Saddleback Church] (2009): the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities After attending the Purity Ball, Heather and Bill saddlebacked all night because she’s saving herself for marriage. The term was coined by Dan Savage and his readers as a protest to Rick Warren's invocation at the Obama inaugural. (It didn't actually bother me too much, but so explicitly Christian! But we atheists have to endure that kind of thing quite often.) Anyway, Dan proposed several prospective definitions for "saddlebacking" in his Jan 14th column . Readers voted, and this definition won. So does this happen a lot? Do Christian teens really engage in unprotected anal sex so they can preserve their virginities? (Are both their virginities considered preserved? Or just one partner?) Or is saddlebacking just something that strikes the less puritanical amo

Via Ezra Klein : This is not good. Now some of this imbalance might be because they are showing Obama a lot. So they feel they have to show more Republican Congressfolk than Democratic ones. It's still a bit disturbing though.

I guess you can't teach Detroit : So, remember how we're going to dump billions and billions of dollars into the laps of the Big Three automakers, to rescue them from their own myopic decisions? And remember how automakers are suing the crap out of every state that tries to implement California's tailpipe emission standards? Remember how Obama green-lit the waiver for those standards yesterday, and how those standards are overwhelmingly supported by the public? Putting all that together, it occurred to New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert to wonder whether automakers will use that taxpayer money to fund their lawsuits against, um, taxpayers . So she contacted them, and the following day put up a second post: Yes . Yes, they are going to use taxpayer money to sue taxpayers. Bail out the people. Bail out the communities. Let the stupid companies fail. I hear there's global overcapacity in the auto industry anyway. At the very least, attach a bunch of strings t