But He Stayed in the City

[Stupendous Man]

… and kept on changing clothes in dirty old phonebooths:

  • There's P.J. O'Rourke content at the Weekly Standard. He reviews Amy Chua's recent book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. He's not a fan:

    I gather Ms. Chua is a total bitch with her children, making them finish homework before it's assigned, practice violin and piano 25 hours a day, maintain a grade point average higher than Obama budget numbers, and forbidding them from doing anything they might enjoy, such as exhale.

    But being a male parent with a typical dad-like involvement in my children's lives--I know all of their names--I thought Battle Hymn was great. That is, I thought it made me look great. Not that I read the dreadful book, but I did buy each of my children a copy and inscribed it, "So you think you've got it bad?" What with three editions lying around because my kids would rather fool with the Wii than read, I admit I gave in to the temptation to skim.

    … you'll want to Read The Whole Thing.

  • In preparation for writing this year's Damn Big Check to My Federal Government, it's always cheering to read something like this:

    Congress has again failed to rid a temporary spending bill of language forcing NASA to waste $1.4 million a day on its defunct Constellation moon program.

    The original culprit is a Republican, Senator Shelby of Alabama. But he has way too many co-conspirators.

  • In related news, the great Kevin Williamson opines on the tax code that has me writing that DBC mentioned above, while (as a recent New York Times story revealed) the General Electric corporation managed to pay zippo. Nada. Squat.

    I'm the farthest thing imaginable from an eat-the-rich populist, but c'mon. Williamson's conclusion:

    The upside of the fiscal crisis that our country insists on marching toward is that it will give us the opportunity to enact radical reform of some of our most important institutions, and the tax code should be high on the list. A federal/state/local system that produces a $3.2 billion tax benefit for G.E. but taxes the pants off of poor people to fund useless schools that do their children very little good (and a great measure of harm, in many cases) is an unbearable burden. It has to go.

    That should be cut out and stuck to your refrigerator door. And also to the foreheads of every Senator and CongressCritter.

  • If you never heard about the GE tax thing, by the way, it's probably because your TV is stuck on stupid NBC News. You should get that fixed.


Last Modified 2022-10-05 5:38 AM EDT