URLs du Jour

2012-10-09

  • refrigerator pickles Your R-rated article for the day is at McSweeney's: "Craig’s Artisanal Pickles Philosophy", as set forth by Craig, of Craig's Artisanal Pickles. As it turns out, Craig is kind of … well, judge for yourself (via an excerpt relatively PG):

    [O]ur philosophy gives us a tremendous advantage over our artisanal competitors, shackled as they are by obsolete notions of “Right” and “Wrong.” We donate nothing to charity, instead reinvesting all profits into our intimidatingly massive stockpile of shotguns. We have no qualms about genetically modified organisms, so our flocks of Craig’s Pre-Brined Turkeys are a huge hit at Thanksgiving. And all of our products contain a lot of nicotine.

  • If you go there, you have my permission to ignore the "reasons to re-elect Obama" link that McSweeney's is putting at the top of pages these days. Unless, like Mike Riggs at Reason, you want to make fun of the whole sometimes-cultish, sometimes high-schoolish enterprise. Here he tees off on Reggie Watts, who actually typed, referring to Obama: "He has the power of three eagles."

    Critics of Team Blue have compared Democratic support for Obama, particularly in the face of his authoritarianism, to support for a cult leader. But belonging to a cult means studying your leader's teachings and practicing effective proselytization. Watts, and the other celebrities who have written for 90 Days, 90 Reasons, do neither. With the exception of "free" health care, they can't seem to name (much less explain) anything Obama has done, or anything he plans to do. Hell, they don't even quote him. Instead, they describe how he looks and what his hobbies are, and how awesome it is that he has time to pay attention to them. Obama is a popular kid, and people like Watts are voting for him as if he were running for student body president.

    Four weeks to go, and I'm sure things will only get sillier, nastier, and crazier from here on out.

  • Jay Bhattacharya takes down the LA Times "fact checker" who denies that Obamacarea's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will have no effect on patient care.

    The media "fact check" business is incredibly tiresome given how pedantic and downright inaccurate it is, but I wanted to weigh in on this one before it hardens.  The LA Times somehow thinks that the ACA (aka Obamacare) will have no effect on determining what care patients can get, and consequently dings Romney for saying it will.  There isn't a single honest health economist out there who agrees with the LA Times on this one.

    This via Michael F. Cannon of Cato who notes

    I am not aware of a single fact-checker who has grasped that basic point. Not PolitiFact, not the Associated Press, not FactCheck.org, not The Washington Post‘s Fact-Checker, not this Washington Post health reporter.

    It's an observation we've made before: when "fact checkers" are too unqualified/lazy to judge facts, their default position is to buy into Obama Administration spin.

  • Which reminds me: new article from Iowahawk. 'Nuff said.

  • My lovely and talented sister, who lives in Iowa, reports the odd combination of amusement and outrage there that (believe it or not) doesn't have anything to do with politics: Arby's brought out a TV ad with an ex-NYC detective narrator reporting the devastating, nasty truth about competitor Subway: their sandwich meat is sliced in … gasp! … Iowa .

    Which, the commercial implies, might as well be an Upton Sinclair slaughterhouse based in Mordor.

    The outcry forced Arby's to abjectly apologize to Iowans, and alter the wording of their commercial.

    Even better: the Huffington Post article that reported all this contains the following correction:

    CORRECTION: This article originally identified Iowa as the "Buckeye State." In fact, Ohio is the Buckeye State, and Iowa is the Hawkeye State.

    Moral: coast-dwellers can be pretty out of touch with flyover country.