Quickies

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





Don Draper, where have you gone?

A glass of something fizzy over lunch with an American executive now means sparkling water. The three-Martini lunch fell into decline in the 1970s, the victim of sober economic times that demanded clear-headed executives, and also of political pressure: Jimmy Carter made it an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign. Morgan Stanley’s New York bankers, for example, were instructed to avoid the drinks cabinet except when entertaining European clients (who could hardly be expected to make it through the day without a snifter). Many modern contracts expressly forbid the consumption of alcohol.

After years of having an occasional beer with lunch on a Friday, say, our organization instituted a zero-tolerance policy on booze. It certainly would appear that the kill-joys have beaten booze entirely out of the American work place.

Was it Oscar Wilde who said: work is the curse of the drinking class?






You may not have heard of George Lakoff but he is an academic and the architect of the President's "You Didn't Build That" campaign battle cry.

Sir Charles of DooDoo Economics has an excellent take-down, here, of a piece he wrote for The Huffington Post.

As you will see, Lakoff is firmly in the camp that our individualism springs forth as a result of the efforts of the collective. There is no starker contrast to the ideals of freedom and individual liberty and initiative than what is represented by this guy. We commented to Charles as such:

The contention that we don't become "individuals" until we build enough roads and bridges or something would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

It confounds me that the ideas of someone who is so ignorant of our founding documents can inform the philosophy of this country's president.

Be sure to check out Sir Charles' site and pick up some cotton while your there.






We know it's the dog days of August but... dude.

The shocker among all the films was Rocky Mountain Pictures’ political documentary 2016 Obama’s America which opened July 13th in very limited release and expanded into theaters across America this weekend. It wound up in 4th place Friday and 8th place for the weekend. That’s stunning because it was playing in 2/3 fewer theaters across North American than the other wider release films. (See below for more details). Due to its hot pre-sales, the pic proved frontloaded which explains why its ranking started out #1 and then fell steeply by end of Sunday. But the doc’s new cume of $9.2M makes it the #1 all-time biggest-grossing conservative political documentary, besting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’s $7.7M. And the 6th all-time biggest political documentary behind liberal docs by Michael Moore and Al Gore.

It's coming after you, fat boys!




And speaking of cotton:

Also related: from Iowahawk: "Paul Ryan represents Obama's most horrifying nightmare: math."


Math wins. Math always wins.






W.C. Varones has some thoughts on a readers' poll from the San Diego Union-Tribune asking them to pick the five greatest Americian Presidents.

We won't give it away but the readers also picked the worst Presidents: Obama, GW Bush, Nixon, Carter and LBJ.






How about a visual?

Yep.



Totally related:

Seagate Technology Plc (STX.O), maker of hard drives and storage devices, has agreed to pay $90.3 million for the former manufacturing plant and headquarters building of bankrupt Solyndra LLC, which was financed by a controversial government loan, according to bankruptcy court documents.

Seagate's offer will be considered an initial bid, or "stalking horse," which could be topped by a competing offer of at least $1 million more when an auction is held, according to court documents filed late Wednesday. A hearing to set the terms and date for the auction and declare Seagate's offer the stalking horse has been set for September 24.

Solyndra's Fremont, California, building cost more than $300 million and was completed in 2010, according to prior court documents.

How can we be blamed for piling-on Solyndra when they keeping giving us this 30 cents on the dollar awesomeness?



OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.


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