me: “So.  You maybe wanna cuddle together on the couch tomorrow and watch some football?  Me and you, some wine, some cheese, a summer sausage…” new rimless glasses: “Actually?  I kinda already have plans.  But how ‘bout I call you later this week?”

I disagree with many of the conclusions Brendan O’Neill draws in his Reason piece, “Is Our Empathy Killing Us?”, but his premise is quite interesting, especially insofar as it addresses a few points I’ve been thinking on recently:

From “Panic in Iraq,” Norman Podhoretz, Commentary, Jan 2006: Like, I am sure, many other believers in what this country has been trying to do in the Middle East and particularly in Iraq, I have found my thoughts returning in the past year to something that Tom Paine, writing at an especially dark moment of the American Revolution, said about such times. They are, he memorably wrote, “the times that

me: “I don’t want to freak you out or anything, and I realize this all happening very quickly—but I really do think I’m falling in –” new rimless glasses: “– Shhhhhhh.  Let’s don’t, okay?  Just relax.  Enjoy the moment.”

—Yeah, yeah, I know.  But cut the little fella some slack, would you?  In addition to spending last night keeping me company in the ER, the poor bastard’s got a few troubles of his own, having borrowed $6300 from the local Wop loanshark to buy his way into a high-stakes poker game, where he lost everything when some preternaturally lucky dead-toothed Brit—drunk on Thomas Hardy Ale and farting like a

1.  Thanks so much to Brian Timm for the extended cut DVD or Lords of Dogtown; for my money, this film was criminally underrated by critics.  It has a great, washed-out street look, and a grittiness that perfectly matches the story of the Z-Boys.  Thanks also to Paul Deignan for the Paul Verhoeven Collection – Limited Edition (The 4th Man / Turkish Delight / Katie Tippel / Business Is Business

In just about any debate between conservative war supporters and liberals in the anti-war camp, the following question arises from conservatives, who—to be fair—often use it as a kind of rhetorical trump card to put liberal Dems on the defensive:  “Do you think the world would be better off or worse off if the U.S. military had not taken action in Iraq and Saddam Hussein were still in power?” Surely,

Nope, not anywhere in my fridge.  Though I did find a hank of leftover chorizo which I plan to fry up, stuff into a pepper jack omelet, and wash down with my first beer of Friday directly after filing this report. Too early for beer?  For you civilians, sure.  But we field journalists are nothing if not salty and hard.  And a little bit twisted.  Like Bavarian-style sourdough pretzels.  It’s

From the WSJ [subscribers only]: Just when you think Congress can’t possibly be more destructive, the Members surprise you again. Their latest doozy is a backdoor windfall profits tax on oil companies that was stuffed into the Senate budget reconciliation before Thanksgiving. […] A windfall profits tax is the ultimate act of economic masochism because it taxes only domestic production, while imports and foreign oil subsidiaries bear almost none of

Steve Green answers Matt Welch’s Reason Hit and Run piece on paid PR “journalism” in Iraq, which yesterday took issue with several “apologias” (including my own) for the US propaganda efforts.  Writes Welch: There’s a reason, aside from international treaty, we no longer use nerve gas on enemy lines, or napalm on villages, or atomic bombs on cities—world reaction would cause more negative consequences than whatever “positive” gains could be