Anthony Bourdain - A Foodie After My Own Heart

He digs MSG.

Paul Volcker Takes it Personal

One telling anecdote from a great talk.

One of the saddest days of my life was when my grandson – and he’s a particularly brilliant grandson – went to college. He was good at mathematics. And after he had been at college for a year or two I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. He said, “I want to be a financial engineer.” My heart sank. Why was he going to waste his life on this profession?

A year or so ago, my daughter had seen something in the paper, some disparaging remarks I had made about financial engineering. She sent it to my grandson, who normally didn’t communicate with me very much. He sent me an email, “Grandpa, don’t blame it on us! We were just following the orders we were getting from our bosses.” The only thing I could do was send him back an email, “I will not accept the Nuremberg excuse.”

Maybe The GOP Should Run Rick Santelli

This is actually a pretty articulate takedown of the mortgage bailout plan....lots better than most of what one sees coming out of the Republican caucus. The passion doesn't hurt.

The more I see of the bailout stuff the more I fall back to my original position.....let everyone fail. Expand the safety net,if need be. But don't attempt to resuscitate the corpse of the real estate bubble. Recessions and even depressions are a part of capitalism. We wouldn't be suffering from economic pneumonia now if we hadn't been so intent on using cheap credit and easy monetary policy to avoid catching recessionary colds for the past twenty years. Our debt problems will be catastrophic soon, if they aren't already, and will make for much larger structural changes than anything a depression could do.



UPDATE: Unfortunately, K-Lo thinks he has candidate potential too, whcich is pretty irrefutable evidence that this is a really bad idea. Plus, when you listen to Santelli a second time he starts to sound a little more like Howard Beale in Network.

My David Broder Problem - And Ours

Courtesy of the comments section at Balloon Juice, we are reminded in the wake of the Judd Gregg debacleof Atrios's definition of "High Broderism":

We normally think of "High Broderism" as the worship of bipartisanship for its own sake, combined with a fake "pox on both their houses" attitude. But in reality this is just the cover Broder uses for his real agenda, the defense of what he perceives to be "the establishment" at all costs. The establishment is the permanent ruling class of Washington, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as "centrism" even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way."

Nancy P. looks pretty savvy at the moment, no? Judd Gregg, who New Hampshire has long known to be a whore of the old school, fumbling for your wallets and watch before you ever hit the sack, reveals this bipartisan nonesnse to be the Chimerical Questing Beast it truly is.

Zhenya Gay

Mr. Door Tree, who blogs at Golden Age Comic Book Stories, actually covers a hell of a lot more ground than just comics. It's really one of the best spots on the web for just about all forms of twentieth-century illustration. For example, here is a very Lynd Ward-like expressionist series by Zhenya Gay illustrating De Quincey's Confessions Of An Opium Eater.

His blog is like Chocks Multi-Vitamins....you should have some every day.

CNN's Tony Harris - No Scold Like An Old Scold

Is there anything more pleasant than watching a CNN anchor come completely unglued on air? I don't think so. While it lacks the sheer entertainment value of seeing Anderson Cooper perform while dead drunk, viewing Tony Harris wax indignant over the moderately clever "Read A Book, Nigga" video probably was more valuable, at least in terms of demonstrating the utterly conventional and humorless mindset prevailing at "America's Most Trusted News Network".

Lux Interior, Dead At 62

I hadn't realized he was quite that old, to be honest. How time flies (or Flys, in this case). I was a fairly early adopter, being hooked on their Gravest Hits EP. Sex and drugs were always a little bit better with The Cramps on the stereo. Great live show,too.