Pun Salad

… I got wings on these fingers trying to tear it apart:

• Not that it matters, but I've pretty much transferred my browser allegience from Mozilla's Firefox to Google's Chrome.

  Why? Pretty much just one reason, and that's TPGoogleReader, a Swiss Army Knife for anyone using Google Reader. As near as I can tell, Firefox has nothing like it.

• One side effect of Google Reader: satirical articles from the Onion get dropped into the feed at random. So when the headline is (for example) "Final Minutes Of Last Harry Potter Movie To Be Split Into Seven Separate Films", there's that few seconds of doubt before you see the source. Really? Wouldn't put it past 'em.

• Roger Simon reviews David Mamet's new book, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

  Mamet certainly made up for lost time. Barely ten pages into his book, you know this man has read, and thoroughly digested, the major conservative works of our and recent times, from Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman and on to Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele. And he is able to explicate and elaborate on them as well as anybody.

  Whoa. I think I'll see if I can fool the University Near Here's Library into getting a copy. Then maybe seeing if Mamet's eligible to run for President.

• For GOP liberty-lovers trying to make up their mind between Gary Johnson and Ron Paul, Matt Welch, Reason editor, provides your go-to URL today. Lots of further links to more information and opinions.

  When it comes to the premature, shoot-your-own-darn-self-in-the-foot game of Ron Paul or Gary Johnson?, I'm squarely in the Jesse Walker camp-"for now, let them double-team all the authoritarians on the stage."

• And if your blood pressure is dangerously low, or you need to remember why business-as-usual should not be an option, or you need a reminder of how dishonest politicians and their corporate pals can be, Conn Carroll looks at the numbers behind the recent Chrysler $7.6 billion "loan payback". Bottom line:

  So, to recap, the Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so that it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is currently only worth $5 billion.

  Gosh, it's almost as if they want to bamboozle taxpayers.