Unqualified Offerings

Stuff I bought and didn’t buy this week . . .

Of the various Democratic complaints about the “stolen election of 2000,” the one I hands down found hardest to credit was the baseless claim that all those people in Palm Beach County couldn’t possibly have meant to vote for Pat Buchanan. The argument rested on sloppy generalization – “Palm Beach County is home to many [...]

Ban the Ban is a grassroots DC group fighting a proposed ordinance that would ban smoking in all DC restaurants and bars, regardless of the wishes of their owners and patrons. It’s pretty obvious that anyone who wants to open a nonsmoking bar, club or restaurant may do so. This is about force.
By the way, [...]

One of my poet pals sent around this passage from “The Excellency of the English Tongue,” by Sir Richard Carew, who died November 6, 1620:

Againe, for expressing our passions, our interiections are very apt and forcible: as findeinge ourselues some-what agreeued, wee cry Ah ; yf more deeply, Oh ; when we pittie, alas; when [...]

As you know, a characteristic, quadrennial ritual of our republic is upon us: breathless speculation, in the face of logic and what is now a lengthy history, that one of the major political parties is heading for a brokered convention. Kevin Drum, who has links to the latest incarnation of the popular (among reporters) delusion, [...]

Useful article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today, based on a new Bureau of Labor Statistics survey:

The comparisons — available in the federal government’s latest annual compensation survey — seem to defy logic. But experts say that’s because people overestimate the role that local cost of living factors play in determining wages.
The fact is, they say, [...]

“In an interview with 13 News Wednesday night at a Grand Valley State speaking engagement, Nugent put his odds of running for Governor at 50/50.” So says the website of WZZM 13.