I'm glad you asked that question

The questions we think Republican presidential candidates would love and hate to be asked tonight @ECONdailycharts pic.twitter.com/LY1SPV2axW

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) August 6, 2015

'In-flight announcements are not entirely truthful. What might an honest one sound like?'

'Welcome aboard', a classic from The Economist

Iowahawk up

"... today I stand proudly with my new friends of the formerly antiwar left in a mindlessly jingoistic salute to President Obama for an extralegal military assassination well done." --David Burge

Bears After Luckman: Monsters of the Middling

While I dig out my Jim McMahon Packer jersey, enjoy this QB retrospective by Mike Tanier in the Chicago edition of today's New York Times. Note: Jay Cutler not mentioned.

What's in Lady Gaga's meat dress?

Butcher Mark Cacioppo says "It's the cheaper end cuts - not including her." --New York Daily News

(via Althouse)

Figment Newton

Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press indulges in some levity.

Even though an asteroid would be farther than the moon, the voyage would use less fuel and be cheaper because an asteroid has no gravity.

Don’t call me a liturgist--a liturgist tells somebody when to start playing the guitars. --Rev. Robert Taft, S.J.


Over the span of decades, Wisconsin has become a national embarrassment, as drivers with six, seven, and eight DUI arrests continue killing citizens on our roads. For generations, the Legislature does nothing (in fact, in some areas of the state, driving with a beer cozy in one hand is part of the road test at the DMV.) --Christian Schneider


Recently, it’s become popular to believe that when a zombie loses its head, it dies. With today’s resignation of Fritz Henderson, the reanimated corpse of General Motors is testing that theory. --Edward Niedermeyer


What might be the results of an old media, or Newspaper bailout? Well, FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz's wife would likely stay employed, for one. --Dan Riehl (via InstaPundit)


Bishop Murray has learned well from his American brothers. Asked to explain why so many people think the Irish hierarchy engaged in a conspiracy of silence, he replies that "it's worth saying that the report also says that communication at that level was poor, in other words the individual auxiliary bishops did not know." Ah, yes: faulty record-keeping; poor internal communication. Sound familiar? There's more: "I would say that I hope we are all on a learning curve." --Diogenes


...there are two ways to deal with scientific illiteracy: take a long, hard look at the forces that repel so many from science, or throw up your hands and write people off as fools.

Michael Specter, a science and public health writer for The New Yorker, shows little interest in the first approach in his pugnacious new book, Denialism... --Darshak Sanghavi


...[Robert Wright's] Afghan anti-terror strategy eventually boils down to, in effect, 'Hey, we'll catch Al Qaeda's nukes when they arrive here in shipping containers.' --Mickey Kaus


(... a country may need to forget the disappointment that followed its last bout of euphoria before it succumbs to it again. It may be a decade or two before many people can believe in another New Jerusalem.) --"Bagehot"

Nearly unbelievably, Pontiac’s "officially official" demise will be even more depressing: a Mexico-built G3 Wave (neé Aveo) to be sold to a lucky Canadian. --Edward Niedermeyer


Lucky that they weren't more "compassionate" and didn't try to starve and dehydrate him to death. --Flexo comment at Althouse post on Man trapped in 23-year 'coma' reveals horror of being unable to tell doctors he was conscious


As Palin thrives on the ire of the left, so she does from the disdain of Republican leaders who, with a condescension rivaling the sexism they decry in liberals, belittle her as a lightweight or instruct her to eat think-tank spinach. --Frank Rich


Lt. Col. Tim Donovan says the detainees at Camp Cropper [in Iraq] needle the guards [U.S. troops from Wisconsin] about Favre's success as a Viking. --Channel 3000 (via WisPolitics)


Few people fight as savagely as humanitarians. --Nicholas D. Kristof


How would you feel if you were a gay man and a uterus was following you on the Internet? --Dan Riehl (via Kent at Althouse)


At a time when wealthy Westerners buy Fairtrade chocolate and fruit because they love the thought of eating earthy stuff produced by back-broken Africans, at a time when buzzphrases like ‘sustainable development’ are used to justify hard labour over economic progress in the Third World, and at a time when we are frequently told by greens that our greedy habits of consumption are bringing about the fiery and flood-ridden end of the world, it seems pretty clear that the Mother Teresa-style celebration of poverty has not a patch on the contemporary secular elevation of the eco-life. --Brendan O’Neill (via Arts & Letters Daily)

Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
- ObamaCare bills: 2
- Palin book: 11
--James Taranto


"'I think it's safe to say there is no safer place for children today than in the Catholic Church,' said Bishop Blase Cupich of South Dakota, who presented the John Jay researchers to the other 230 bishops." --David Gibson
I think it's safe to say that there is so safer place to say "there is no safer place for children today than in the Catholic Church" than at a meeting of the USCCB. --Diogenes


GM "says it will begin to pay back U.S. loans." But of course it's paying back that debt to taxpayers with money from ... taxpayers. --Mickey Kaus


Meet Khalid Kelly, a former Dublin altar boy now undergoing weapons training in Pakistan, with the dream of killing British soldiers (ye can take the boy out of Ireland...). --Rod Dreher


If pro-lifers have a House majority, as Rep George Miller says, how come the press never got around to telling us? --Howard Kurtz (via Terry Mattingly at Get Religion)

"Please stop reading me."

And when the radical priest
Come to get me released
We was all on the cover of Newsweek
--Paul Simon

Iowahawk Special Guest Opinion, by the three-week old Newsweek magazine. From the pile at your dentist's office.

I've done some soul-searching recently, and have been thinking about what I really want in a committed reader. That's why I'd like you to fill out the following short compatibility survey...

(via Midwest Conservative Journal)

Mid-Atlantic mind

if [Simon] Schama doesn’t come from a strictly European perspective, let’s just say he comes from the realm of enlightened High Thinking that exists where The New York Review of Books reaches out and air-kisses The London Review of Books. --David Brooks

Pontiac R.I.P.

Pontiac was like the polite, quiet middle child who ran away to California in the early sixties, became a huge star, crashed in 1970, and played the county fair nostalgia circuit ever since. In between repeated bouts in rehab. --Paul Niedermeyer, General Motors Death Watch 246, at The Truth About Cars

Hollywood musicals rarely have perfect pitch

You'd think a Lerner & Loewe musical starring Gene Kelly couldn't possibly fail, but only if you haven't seen Brigadoon. Long a favorite of those who prize unintentional hilarity, it's worth checking out on the off chance that you're contemplating filming an overly quaint story about an enchanted Scottish village on a Hollywood soundstage, where everything from the villagers to the last wee bit o' heather appears to be made of plastic and rented by the hour. --Joanne Weintraub, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 1, 2009

The Weaseling Begins

Robert Farago with Bailout Watch 385 at The Truth About Cars, February 10, 2009

The Detroit News reports that GM and Chrysler are working furiously behind the scenes to extend the March 31 government deadline re: meeting the conditions of their $13.4b bridge loan to nowhere bailout buffet. Surprise! The American automakers’ inability to take responsibility for their actions may be true-to-form, but that doesn’t make it any less nauseating. Nor does the News’ coverage of the company’s weaseling, which put the “sick” in “sycophancy.”

Some textualist you turned out to be!

Ann Althouse speculates on what President Obama was thinking after Chief Justice John Roberts botched the oath of office.


Update: On further review, Randy Barnett determines Both the Chief Justice and the President Flubbed the Oath. Orin Kerr then notes The Significance of the Flubbed Oath.

The answer to the question, "How many former editors of the Harvard Law Review does it take to administer the Presidential oath properly?" is "More than two."

Update 2: Who said no do-overs? Oath Is Administered Once Again, Jeff Zeleney, The New York Times, January 21, 2009

Snark Attack

Adam Sternbergh at New York, December 28, 2008, review of Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation, by David Denby

consider the oft-made but pertinent point that postdebate commentators reside in “Spin Alley.” When we live in a world where professional analysts on TV can be trusted to simply say what they actually believe, then I think we’ll find that snark will start to turn its own volume down.

"Life Without Bubbles."

It's a Paul Krugman column. I was worried Michael Jackson's chimpanzee had died. --Ann Althouse