Jun
2
2009

URLs du Jour

2009-06-02

  • Please make believe I wrote this Bill Simmmons essay on the plight of Mr. David Ortiz, because it expresses exactly how I feel, only Simmons is way more knowledgable and a much better writer.
    Whatever the case, it's clear that David Ortiz no longer excels at baseball. This has been banged home over and over again for two solid months. It's ruined the season for me thus far. The best way I can describe Fenway during any Papi at-bat is this: It's filled with 35,000 parents of the same worst kid in Little League who dread every pitch thrown in the kid's direction. There is constant fear and sadness and helplessness. Nobody knows what to do.
    Yeah. (Via AmSpecBlog.)

  • Barackrobatics in action, as noted in the WSJ:
    "What we are not doing -- what I have no interest in doing -- is running GM," Mr. Obama said in yesterday's bankruptcy announcement. "When a difficult decision has to be made on matters like where to open a new plant or what type of new car to make, the new GM, not the United States government, will make that decision."

    The President is so busy not running GM that he had time the night before to call and reassure Detroit Mayor Dave Bing about the new GM's future location. GM is being courted to move its headquarters to nearby Warren, Michigan. And Mr. Bing told the Detroit News that he had received a call Sunday evening from the President "informing me of his support for GM to stay in the city of Detroit with its headquarters at the Renaissance [Center]."

    (Via Hit & Run.)

  • Your Sotomayor URLs du jour will lead you to a good essay from Richard Epstein that describes how the GOP could (but probably won't) thoughtfully oppose her nomination. And Thomas Sowell has not one, not two, but three columns examining the laughable claim that Sotomayor's "Latina" assertion was taken "out of context."
    In Washington, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification" when people realize what was said.

    The clearly racist comments made by Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the Berkeley campus in 2001 have forced the spinmasters to resort to their last-ditch excuse, that it was "taken out of context."

    If that line is used during Judge Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings, someone should ask her to explain just what those words mean when taken in context.

    That would be must-see TV.

  • Lore Sjöberg is back writing at Wired, just in time to enlighten you about Nebulous Internet Disease. Which you probably have. And which I probably caught from you.
    There are more than 2,000 recognized symptoms of Nebulous Internet Disease, but most sufferers only exhibit between two and 50. The most common are dry mouth, sore throat, runny nose, excessive salivation, fatigue, sleeplessness, change in sleep patterns, lack of change in sleep patterns, areas of raised skin, intermittent nausea, sore joints, anxiety about the length of this list of symptoms, tics, twitches, spasms, fear of spiders, the unshakable feeling that you forgot to do something but can't remember what it is, back pain, chest pain, neck pain, armpit pain, a fleeting sense of well-being and genital freckling.
    Heh. He said "genital".