Quickies

A round-up of articles, columns, news items and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.





Awww... Obama iconographer Shepard Fairey is bummed that Hopenchange isn't quite working out as planned.

Next time you hear the tea party = wingnut refrain, please bear in mind that the reason that Fairey and those of his ilk are so disappointed is because the Obama agenda did not advance further.

You'll never guess who Thomas Friedman is writing about...

Studying China’s ability to invest for the future doesn’t make me feel we have the wrong system. It makes me feel that we are abusing our right system. There is absolutely no reason our democracy should not be able to generate the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things — democratically — that China does autocratically.

If it walks like a duck...





They sold us Porkulus, in large part, on the promise that no less than $40 billion would be spent on "infrastructure" upgrades/improvement/new projects. To date, we have spent a grand total of $2.4 billion just as Porkulus is winding down.

And as long-time readers of this blog know, we're still wondering what the hell ever became of that $286 billion Highway bill that was signed into law by President Bush back in 2005. Remember the Bridge to Nowhere?

Guess those shovels weren't quite so ready.




First, they came for the cigarettes...

The Wall St. Journal on the taxation of cigarettes and then tax-evading smaller cigars and which yielded the unintended yet entirely predictable consequence of higher tobacco consumption.







We suppose this is what they mean by public financing of political campaigns.

General Motors Co. has begun to once again contribute to political campaigns, lifting a self-imposed ban on political spending put in place during the auto maker's U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring last year.

The Detroit company gave $90,500 to candidates running in the current election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show.

The beneficiaries include Midwestern lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who have traditionally supported the industry's legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.).

Guys... November 2nd. Just sayin'.





Chief advisor in an administration that raised more money than any campaign in history whining about... all the money Republicans are raising.





Ines Sainz... yeah, her...



... actually was not the one who filed the harrassment complaint against the New York Jets a few weeks back but rather it was the AWSM (Association for Women in Sports Media). As we are familiar with the work of the insufferable Christine Brennan, we should've known better. This revelation comes on top of Sainz penning an article regarding the whole affair titled, "My September 11 in New York"... which we are not even going to link to.

Somehow, the Jets players just don't seem so villainous anymore.