Pun Salad

… and he caught me in the fog:

• The New York Times interviews close-personal-friend-in-my-imagination Dave Barry, with pictures of his home, including his toilet. You don't want to miss that. If you've ever wondered about Dave's writing technique:

  Writing Technique: Get coffee. Stare at the screen. Write a bunch of things that aren't any good. Then comes that moment when I'll say, "That's still not any good."

  Great minds think alike: that's very similar to my blogging technique.

• Jonah Goldberg asks: What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama? Key quote:

  … Yes, Obama's agenda is socialist in a broad sense. The Obama administration may not have planned on seizing the means of automobile production or asserting managerial control over Wall Street. But when faced with the choice, it did both. Obama did explicitly plan on imposing a massive restructuring of one-sixth of the U.S. economy through the use of state fiat--and he is beginning to do precisely that.

  Can't say we weren't warned.

• David Boaz notes that there's an important difference between "pro-business" and "pro-market," as exemplified by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Congressional Scorecard. He quotes Tim Carney:

  Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a "taxpayer hero" according to the National Taxpayer's Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.

• Bruce Schneier has some fun with Ally Bank, which invites its customers to come up with both secret questions and answers, with the idea that a bank employee, in order to verify your identity, will read your secret question to you over the phone to see if you come up with the corresponding secret answer. Suggestions:

  Q: Do you know why I think you're so sexy?
  A: Probably because you're totally in love with me.

  Q: Need any weed? Grass? Kind bud? Shrooms?
  A: No thanks hippie, I'd just like to do some banking.

  I'm not sure they thought that through.