I wonder if Norah O'Donnell, or her employers at MSNBC, are feeling any kind of embarassment at her exposure as a brainless news-reader/non-threatening eye candy figure.

How friggin' hard is it to research stuff like this -- or to know that Canada has no Labour party?

Cripes.

Posted at March 3, 2008 10:21 PM in response to Goolsbee Tale Becomes An International Incident, Incites Verbal Brawl In Canadian Parliament!

"....except the hatred of Blacks and Jews was then the coin of the realm. Now the coins are the Clintons!"

Is this for real? Two white, bourgeois career politicians (Bill didn't start out bourgeois, to be fair) are now the equivalent of blacks in the Jim Crow South and Jews in the 1930s? Seriously?

Next thing you know we'll be hearing about how the Clintons are the Jews of liberal fascism....

Ben Cronin

Posted at January 28, 2008 6:03 PM in response to Teddy Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, Toni Morrison -- and me!

Daniel Greenbaum -- Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion were not so much about "taxes" as they were about backcountry/agrarian resentment of cosmopolitan-Atlantic ports.

For actual info on this, check out Robert A. Gross, ed., IN DEBT TO SHAYS.

If you don't want to get into a major historical analysis, then don't use historical examples and arguments!

Ben Cronin

Posted at January 9, 2008 9:01 PM in response to At the Times Op Ed Page, the Plot Sickens

I don't think this is inside ball, but then again I'm from New England, and have been disappointed to see the Shaheens (whom I had known previously in positive lights) engage in such skullduggery on Hilary's behalf.

It went too far, davai, because it is an attack on the past actions of a candidate rather than for pragmatics of electability. Also especially rich, or at least telling, since Mrs. Clinton's husband managed the mother of all BS lines when he "did not inhale"; honesty vs. prevarication, which sums up the Obama-Clinton dynamic fairly well.

Also, good for Reed, as a somewhat insider, for (not so?) subtly telling the Clinton people to go blank themselves on this one. It's not just lefties who are sick of them.

Ben Cronin

Posted at December 12, 2007 8:17 PM in response to Billy Shaheen Goes Too Far

"the twenty year assult [sic] on anything to do with sex and the body by feminists, as well as an all out attack on male sexuality....."

Because neither sex, the body, nor male sexuality are at all prominent in our culture.

I'd write more, but am going to have to go check out that new flick where Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a porn star before I renew my MAXIM subscription (with the self-same Gellar on the cover!)

As the kids say, Spring-Break-Woo!

Posted at November 20, 2007 12:20 PM in response to Boobs, Losers and Loose Boobs

Everytime I return to the home of Charlie on the MTA (now the MBTA, for Mass. Bay Transportation Authority -- gotta love those reminders of the colonial past!) I am amazed by how inferior my Boston "T" is to the New York Subway. The trains are slower (partly because so much of Boston is filled-in marshland with architectural treasures built on top, meaning you can't go too fast or you'll hit the foundation of some H.H. Richardson church), dirtier, and some neighborhoods -- especially black Roxbury, or the immigrant parts of Sommerville -- are not serviced at all. And forget about the bus system; it's got a record of being on time exactly 1% of the time.

Also, JohnW1141, you'd be interested to know that in place of tokens, we now put money on "Charlie Cards" and stick them in the slot instead -- named after the eponymous character of the song. They seem to confuse the hell out of everybody over 20.

Still, I was in Detroit recently, and I'll take the option of some public transit over the Motor City's total lack of any options whatsoever.

Ben Cronin

Posted at November 9, 2007 1:32 PM in response to Question for Paul Krugman: Why Does the DC Metro Suck?

King Phillip's War was 331-332 years ago, not 240.

Ben Cronin

Posted at November 8, 2007 8:27 PM in response to The Primacy of Politics or: How Al Gore Would Have Saved Us

"There is clearly a need for some miitary interaction between the United States and key African nations, primarily in a supporting role in the development and deploymentn of regional and international peacekeeping forces that can deal with deadly conflicts in the Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere."

I'm not so sure the need is so clear. Maybe we can just help defray costs and prevent genocide; or, maybe, we should leave the world alone. I'm pretty conflicted on this one.

Ben Cronin

Posted at September 21, 2007 3:24 PM in response to What About Africa?

If I recall, Lisa Schriffen on NRO's "The Corner" posted a particularly egregious piece of sexist criticism. I think Yglesias noted it. Not sure if it came before the "Meet the Press" segment, however.

Ben Cronin

Posted at July 31, 2007 6:29 PM in response to The Hillary Cleavage Issue and What We Can Do About It

If the WSJ goes, the answer's simple: The Financial Times.

Sure, they're neolib free-traders to the core, but they're also British, which places them to the left of center in today's American political spectrum (even if they are kind of Tory-lite by U.K. standards), their world news, especially the Europe page, is excellent, and their editorials and opinion pages are, unlike the WSJ, not batshit insane and actually somewhat engaging and interesting. Gideon Rachman in particular is pretty good, as is Phillip Stephens, though a bit too Blairite for me.

On the other hand, Wolfgang Munchau's most recent column about private equity/financial markets/labor in the German economy are almost always pretty dry, but, at least, reality-based. And John Kay is a twit.

But on the whole it's quite a good paper.

Ben Cronin

Posted at May 11, 2007 9:30 AM in response to Disquiet and Worse about Murdoch