Why does Hillary hate the Democratic Party?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

a) Because the Clintons, Bill and Hillary alike, are out for themselves, not their party.

b) Because, while she was once the sure-thing nominee, the party has decided to go with Obama, who is ahead according to every meaningful metric.

c) Because she's been trying to change the rules in the middle of the race and the party won't let her.

d) Because the very sensible compromise approved by the DNC today regarding Florida and Michigan isn't what she wanted, which was whatever would benefit her the most at Obama's expense.

e) Because of all of the above.

Answer below, at end of post.

**********

I don't have much to say about today's DNC decision to seat all of the Florida and Michigan delegates at the convention, each with half a vote, as I have already addressed the issue at length here and here. (See also Creature's post on the day's events.)

I suppose it was necessary to find a way to seat the two delegations -- from two key states, which is key (would the DNC have worked out such a belated compromise if the controversy had involved, say, Rhode Island and Idaho?) -- and, indeed, this was probably the best resolution to the compromise the DNC could have reached. Essentially halving the results in Florida makes a lot of sense, given that none of the major candidates campaigned there. Hillary was pushing for a more favourable resolution in Michigan, where she was the only major candidate on the ballot, beating "Uncommitted," but, in the end, the DNC rightly found a way to seat the state's delegates without penalizing Obama.

Here's how it works out in terms of pledged delegates:

Florida: Hillary 105, Obama 67

Michigan: Hillary 69, Obama 59

Hillary picks up a net total of 48 delegates. As each delegate will have half a vote, this works out to 24 delegates/votes at the convention.

Which means, of course, that Obama is still ahead. According to the AP, the delegate totals are now:

Obama: 2,052

Hillary: 1,877.5

The new magic number is 2,118. Obama needs 66 delegates to reach that number. And he can reach it over the next few days, with the last primaries set for Puerto Rico tomorrow and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday.

**********

Needless to say, the Clintonites aren't happy, and one of the top Hillarylanders, Harold Ickes, who is actually a member of the party's Rules Committee, suggested that the fight would go on.

Yes, Hillary and her people are insane, delusional, and destructive of the Democratic Party and its hopes for November. To call them sore losers is a massive understatement.

And it's not just Hillary and her people, it's her supporters, too, many of whom took to the streets against the DNC. TNR's Eve Fairbanks reports:

Howard Dean may hope that the "healing will begin today," but two blocks away from the northwest Washington Marriott where the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting right now to try to figure out Florida and Michigan, the Hillary protesters are occupying an utterly alternate (and healing-free) universe: a universe in which one of the big lawn rally's speakers yells that the Democratic Party no longer is in the business of "promoting equality and fairness for all"; in which a Hillary supporter with two poodles shouts, "Howard Dean is a leftist freak!"; in which a man exhibits a sign that reads "At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen" and shows Dean whipping handcuffed people; and in which Larry Sinclair, the Minnesota man who took to YouTube to allege that Barack Obama had oral sex with him in the back of a limousine in 1999, is one of the belles of the ball.

*****

Has it come to this? We tend to assume the Hillary camp's hot rhetoric--that Obama's less ready than McCain to be commander-in-chief, that the DNC in Florida is like Mugabe in Zimbabwe--is studied, purposeful, that they can't really believe it. That may be true at the Lanny Davis level, but by the time it trickles down to Hillary's most grassroots supporters, it becomes deadly serious.

I suspect (hope?) that most of Hillary's supporters aren't like this. I suspect (hope?) that most of them will put aside whatever lingering anger and frustration they have and vote for Obama in November.

The simple fact is, their candidate lost. Hillary lost.

It was a long, tough, and sometimes bitter race, but that's just the way it is.

With high-ranking Hillarylanders like Ickes and Lanny Davis still pushing for a fight, however, and with so many Hillary supporters refusing to put aside their anger and frustration, and, it seems, unwilling to vote for Obama (and prepared to vote for McCain, whether out of spite or because they really do prefer McCain to Obama, as crazy as that is), I'm not sure that simple facts about the way it is are enough to put an end to this madness.

Hopefully -- hopefully -- Hillary will do what she needs to do and bow out gracefully once the primaries are over with the votes in Montana and South Dakota next Tuesday.

**********

Answer: e (obviously).

Why does Obama hate religion?

By Creature

Some interesting news coming from AMERICAblogs' Jacki Schechner. She says Senator Obama has resigned from his Chicago church. I guess it was just one too many outspoken pastors to deal with politically. I'm not sure how much this helps (though, I do think it helps a little) seeing as how Obama's detractors will still scream about him sitting in pews for 20 years without protesting the crazy. For some that narrative will never die.

Update -- Lynn Sweet confirms: Obama no longer believes in god.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Florida and Michigan in the balance

By Creature

I'm watching the DNC committee meeting and I'm finding it strangely compelling. Whatever the outcome, I'm sure outrage will be had and lies will be spun. Our democracy hangs in the balance. Or not.

Update: Florida gets its full delegation seated at half value. Even Harold Ickes is on board. It's a shame the Clinton supporters in the audience are not

Update II: Ickes is not going down quietly on Michigan. Hillary Clinton has reserved her right to take Michigan to the credentials committee. We are fighting until Denver. Oy.

Update III: Michigan is to be fully restored with one half vote. Clinton gets 69 delegates and Obama gets 59 delegates. The Michigan democratic party is on board, yet the Clinton folks are not. They will be belligerent to the end (just like their McCain-heckling supporters).

Update IV: I guess what really matters here is not what the Clinton's do, it's that they have lost (the primary and their control on the party). The Michigan/Florida debacle is settled to everyone's liking except for the Clinton camp. It's over and in all likelihood Barack Obama will clinch the nomination Tuesday night.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

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Understanding Your FBI

By Carol Gee

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is 100 years old this year. To commemorate the occasion the website features the story of the violent death of Bonnie and Clyde, folks who came from my current neck of the woods.

Prowling around the FBI website turned up some interesting finds. First was the page for the National Security Branch. National Security Letters made the news last March. Breaking news yesterday regarded the formation of a Northern Virginia Public Corruption/Government Fraud Task Force. Let's hope that they can give us some genuine protection before the big elections in the fall.

Around the Internet -- The search term "fbi" returned 57,600,000 entries, including - of course - Wikipedia's. I feel sure that the FBI has someone assigned to monitor the Wiki site to assure accuracy, given that they had 28,576 employees in 2004. The FBI seems almost ubiquitous. And we are told that every single one of them is out there to protect us in some way.

Just so you can't say you didn't know -- The 2008 Republican National Convention is September 1-4, in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. -- Depending whether you inside or outside of the fence at the Republican Convention, this news will hit you from opposite psychological directions.

If you are a Democrat you need to know from Discourse.net,* (5/26/08) that the "FBI [is] Recruiting Infiltrators for GOP Convention Protesters." To quote:

This gets complicated. According to - City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul), Moles Wanted, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is recruiting people to infiltrate anti-GOP protest groups in the run-up to the upcoming Republican convention.

The law is clear that police may attend public meetings undercover to see what people are up to. And of course undercover operations in private settings are also legal, although there should be guidelines as to when they are appropriate. And of course it’s good citizenship for private citizens to report crimes when they witness them.

Republicans have been informed,via the Top Ten questions section of the convention website, to quote Number 5, emphasis mine:

How will people who live and work in the Minneapolis – Saint Paul area be affected during the week of the convention? Detailed planning for a major event like this is obviously very important - and I want to assure you that we will have comprehensive transportation and security plans in place. . . Most convention guests will be transported to and from official events using mass transit, mainly in the form of buses, which will minimize the number of vehicles using the roadways during the event.

Security plans formulated after September 11, 2001 did not, in my opinion, include nearly enough protections for civil liberties. And that is where the United States lost its way. This story from (5/27) Dissident Voice* on torture makes it clear that torture was known about and eventually condoned at all levels of government, including the FBI, from early on in the Bush administration. The FBI did speak up or a time, but they were no match for the rest of the group.

*Hat tip to"betmo" for the *items. I always appreciate that she knows so well what I like.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

The end, or three more months of sour grapes

By Creature

Democratic consultant Chris Kofinis sees Senator Clinton riding a pony into the sunset:

"After June 3, you're going to see a wave of superdelegates beginning to go Obama's way," said Democratic consultant Chris Kofinis, an aide to former U.S. Sen. John Edwards during his presidential bid this year.

"And when Sen. Obama reaches the magic number, whenever that is, Sen. Clinton is going to do what every Democrat will do -- acknowledge he is the Democratic nominee and help unify the party to defeat John McCain in November."

I will be very surprised (and willing to eat a ton of crow) if Sen. Clinton does what every Democrat will do. See, technically the magic number isn't reached until the votes are counted on the convention floor, and since Senator Clinton has been running on technicalities for months, I do not see her stopping now.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

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HARVEY KORMAN (1927 - 2008)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to "The Carol Burnett Show" and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in "Blazing Saddles," died Thursday. He was 81.



Korman died at UCLA Medical Center after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago, his family said. He had undergone several major operations.

"He was a brilliant comedian and a brilliant father," daughter Kate Korman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "He had a very good sense of humor in real life. "

A natural second banana, Korman gained attention on "The Danny Kaye Show," appearing in skits with the star. He joined the show in its second season in 1964 and continued until it was canceled in 1967. That same year he became a cast member in the first season of "The Carol Burnett Show."

His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks' 1974 Western satire, "Blazing Saddles."

"A world without Harvey Korman — it's a more serious world," Brooks told the AP on Thursday. "It was very dangerous for me to work with him because if our eyes met we'd crash to floor in comic ecstasy. It was comedy heaven to make Harvey Korman laugh."

On television, Burnett and Korman developed into the perfect pair with their burlesques of classic movies such as "Gone With the Wind" and soap operas like "As the World Turns" (their version was called "As the Stomach Turns").

Another recurring skit featured them as "Ed and Eunice," a staid married couple who were constantly at odds with the wife's mother (a young Vickie Lawrence in a gray wig). In "Old Folks at Home," they were a combative married couple bedeviled by Lawrence as Burnett's troublesome young sister.

Korman revealed the secret to the long-running show's success in a 2005 interview: "We were an ensemble, and Carol had the most incredible attitude. I've never worked with a star of that magnitude who was willing to give so much away."

Burnett was devastated by Korman's death, said her assistant, Angie Horejsi.

"She loved Harvey very much," Horejsi said.

After 10 successful seasons, Korman left Burnett's show in 1977 for his own series. Dick Van Dyke took his place, but the chemistry was lacking and the Burnett show was canceled two years later. "The Harvey Korman Show" also failed, as did other series starring the actor.

"It takes a certain type of person to be a television star," he said in that 2005 interview. "I didn't have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. ... Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I'm fine."

Brooks tapped Korman's kinetic comic chops often, including roles in "High Anxiety," "The History of the World Part I" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."

"I gave him tongue twisters because I knew he was the only one who could wrap his mouth around them," Brooks said. "Harvey was such a good solid actor that he could have done Shakespearean drama just as well and easily as he did comedy."

Brooks described Korman as a "dazzling" comic talent.

"You could get rock-solid comedy out of him. He could lift the material. He always made it real, always made it work, always believed in characters he was doing," he said.

Korman's other films included two "Pink Panther" moves, "Trail of the Pink Panther" in 1982 and "Curse of the Pink Panther" in 1983; "Gypsy," "Huckleberry Finn" (as the King), "Herbie Goes Bananas" and "Bud and Lou" (as legendary straightman Bud Abbott to Buddy Hackett's Lou Costello).

In television, Korman guest-starred in dozens of series including "The Donna Reed Show," "Dr. Kildare," "Perry Mason," "The Wild Wild West," "The Muppet Show," "The Love Boat" and "Burke's Law."

Korman and "Carol Burnett" co-star Tim Conway continued working together into their '70s, touring the country with their show "Tim Conway and Harvey Korman: Together Again." They did 120 shows a year, sometimes as many as six or eight in a weekend.

Korman had an operation in late January on a non-cancerous brain tumor and pulled through "with flying colors," Kate Korman said. Less than a day after coming home, he was re-admitted because of the ruptured aneurysm and was given a few hours to live. But he survived for another four months.

"He fought until the very end. He didn't want to die. He fought for months and months," said Kate Korman.

Harvey Herschel Korman was born Feb. 15, 1927, in Chicago. He left college for service in the U.S. Navy, resuming his studies afterward at the Goodman School of Drama at the Chicago Art Institute. After four years, he decided to try New York.

"For the next 13 years I tried to get on Broadway, on off-Broadway, under or beside Broadway," he told a reporter in 1971.

He had no luck and had to support himself as a restaurant cashier. Finally, in desperation, he and a friend formed a nightclub comedy act.

"We were fired our first night in a club, between the first and second shows," he recalled.

After returning to Chicago, Korman decided to try Hollywood, reasoning that "at least I'd feel warm and comfortable while I failed."

For three years he sold cars and worked as a doorman at a movie theater. Then he landed the job with Kaye.

In 1960 Korman married Donna Elhart and they had two children, Maria and Christopher. They divorced in 1977. Two more children, Katherine and Laura, were born of his 1982 marriage to Deborah Fritz.

In addition to his daughter Kate, he is survived by his wife and the three other children.

Associated Press Writers Alicia Chang and Raquel Maria Dillon contributed to this report.

101-Year-Old Woman Gets Driver's License Renewed Until 2011

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida woman who is considered to be the world's oldest driver got her license renewed until 2011.

Lillian Cox, 101, said she has been driving since 1915 and continues to travel around Tallahassee in her 1984 sedan.

"They're surprised that I'd get a driver's license at 101," Cox said. "But I have four more years."

Local 6 showed video of the woman driving around a neighborhood.

"I'm sure I look (101 years old) but they don't let me know that," Cox said while driving around a neighborhood.

Cox has been invited to the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

She said she hopes the show picks her up in a limo.
WATCH VIDEO NEWS STORY HERE

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Rachael Ray, Dunkin' Donuts, and the bigoted lunacy of Michelle Malkin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You want insane? This is insane:

Dunkin' Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

The coffee and baked goods chain said the ad that began appearing online May 7 was pulled over the past weekend because "the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee."

In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms.

Take a look at the image. Do you find it offensive? If so, how?

Oh, because Rachael Ray's scarf looks like a keffiyeh? And because such Arab headdresses, worn by men, are offensive? Did that even cross you mind?

Well, it crossed the "mind" of at least one bigoted right-wing lunatic, Michelle Malkin, who claimed, in response to the ad, that the keffiyeh "has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad."

Right, sure. And of course Rachael Ray -- she of 30-minute meal fame, she who has introduced EVOO, yum-o, and delish to our culinary lexicon -- is so easily mistaken for Yasser Arafat or your generic al Qaeda beheader.

It's a fucking coffee ad! For Dunkin' Donuts!

In point of fact -- if I may respond to Malkin's bigoted lunacy from the perspective of, you know, reality -- a keffiyeh is a common piece of clothing of many variations. Yes, Arafat wore one and it become, in a way, associated with Palestinian nationalism, and, no, Malkin isn't the first to link it to jihadist terrorism, but, as a University of Chicago anthropologist put it, in response to Malkin's response to the ad, "making an association between a kaffiyeh and terrorism is just an example of how so much of the complexity of Arab culture has been reduced to a very narrow vision of the Arab world on the part of some people in the U.S. Kaffiyehs are worn every day on the street by Palestinians and other people in the Middle East -- by people going to work, going to school, taking care of their families, and just trying to keep warm."

But, then, such reality is lost on the Malkins of the world, those who associate not just a piece of clothing but much of Muslim life with terrorism.

But this assumes that the scarf Rachael Ray is wearing in the ad is actually a keffiyeh. It isn't. It's a fucking scarf!

Now, all this happened several days ago. Since Malkin's complaining, Dunkin' Donuts has dropped the ad. Malkin has praised the company for the move, but, as a once-frequent consumer of its products (I went to college in the Boston area), and as one who prefers reality to bigotry-based lunacy, I'm appalled.

And my friend Steve Benen, updating the story today, gets it right -- right in the title of his post: "Dunkin’ Donuts caves to the right’s fear of clothing accessories." And he reminds of just how offensive Malkin is, she who actually compared the keffiyah to a KKK hood, as if all Arab men are akin to white supremacist lynchers.

"I think I need a scarf to keep my jaw from hitting the floor," says our Capt. Fogg over at The Impolitic.

Alas, it's just more of the same, the all-too-predictable same, from Malkin and her right-wing ilk.

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To Libby

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Be well, Libby. Our thoughts are with you.

-- all of us at The Reaction

The backpedal begins

By Carl

I'm not sure who is in charge of "message" in the Obama campaign, but this smacks of silliness:

WASHINGTON — With his experience and leadership credentials under sharp criticism, Senator Barack Obama and his advisers are trying to clarify what has emerged as a central tenet of his proposed foreign policy: a willingness to meet leaders of enemy nations.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, sought to emphasize, as he and his aides have done continually over the last few days, the difference between avoiding preconditions for talks with nations like Iran and Syria, and granting them automatic discussions at the presidential level.

While Mr. Obama has said he would depart from the Bush administration policy of refusing to meet with certain nations unless they meet preconditions, he has also said he would reserve the right to choose which leaders he would meet, should he choose to meet with them at all.

Let me get this straight: after six months of chiding from Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Dodd, Richardson, and now, John McCain, someone in Barack Obama's campaign finally woke up at 2 AM a couple of nights ago, slapped his forehead and said "HOLY SHIT! "NO PRECONDITIONS"???? WHAT ARE WE, IDIOTS?"

Now, "no preconditions" means "no preconditions," unless you are putting preconditions on the word "preconditions". Sort of like, "Depends on what your definition of 'is', is."

Apparently, it didn't really mean "no preconditions".

This is a rookie campaign being run by highly inexperienced operatives, and I can almost bet that by Denver (if not, after), Obama will be asked to make some serious changes to his senior staffing.

Or, to put it in flip flop terms, he was FOR appeasing Iran BEFORE he was against it:

This week, Mr. Obama said that he was still considering meeting with Iranian leaders, though he would not necessarily guarantee a direct meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“There is no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad before we know that he is actually in power,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “He is not the most powerful person in Iran.”

Last week, Mr. Obama offered a similarly nuanced explanation about meeting with President Raúl Castro of Cuba, saying he would do so only “at a time and place of my choosing.”

The caveats belie the simple answer Mr. Obama gave during a debate last summer, when the issue was first raised in a major public forum. Without hesitation or qualification, Mr. Obama said he would hold direct talks with America’s enemies, drawing strong and immediate criticism from his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” asked Stephen Sixta, a video producer who submitted the question for the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate.

Mr. Obama, the first candidate to respond, answered, “I would.”

Several aides immediately thought it was a mistake and sought to dial back his answer. But on a conference call the morning after the debate, Mr. Obama told his advisers that he had meant what he said and thought the answer crystallized how he differed from his rivals.

“I think that it is an example of how stunted our foreign policy debates have become over the last eight years that this is an issue that political opponents try to seize on,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on Wednesday. “It is actually a pretty conventional view of how diplomacy should work traditionally that has fallen into disrepute in Republican circles and in Washington.”

Even after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called his position naïve, Mr. Obama refused to shy away from it, at times speaking explicitly in terms of a potential meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

In other words, it would give Ahmadinejad a lot more credibility with the world community than it would with the US government and would do more for Iran than it would do for America, which is an awful way to go about diplomacy, which has long been defined as the art of letting someone get your way.

Now, at no time during this or any subsequent debate or Q&A on this point has Obama ever amended this statement: attack the conventional way of diplomacy and "no preconditions" to meeting world leaders.

So apparently, Senator Obama has come to his senses and joined the "reality based" community of conventional realpolitik!

Now if only the Democratic Party would come to its senses...

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The unbearable banality of David Brooks

By non sequitur

Let's begin with what's really important here: myself. I've changed my nom de blog from jeffaclitus (or whatever it was the last time I posted all those months ago) to non sequitur. He not busy being born is busy dying, Only he who changes stays akin to me, etc.

I haven't posted much in the past year or so, but I couldn't resist a quasi-public forum to ridicule this column by David Brooks. Brooks's basic argument is that nerds have gone from pathetic wedgies-in-waiting to confident cultural icons.

But even as “Revenge of the Nerds” was gracing the nation’s movie screens, a different version of nerd-dom was percolating through popular culture. Elvis Costello and The Talking Heads’s David Byrne popularized a cool geek style that’s led to Moby, Weezer, Vampire Weekend and even self-styled “nerdcore” rock and geeksta rappers.

Hey, thanks for alerting us to the existence of Elvis Costello and David Byrne. Oh, but wait--Vampire Weekend! Uh-oh, someone knows a kid in college. But what about the Decembrists? Are they not nerd enough or not cool enough? Or did they just not show up in Brooks's frantic googling of "cool nerds"?

The future historians of the nerd ascendancy will likely note that the great empowerment phase began in the 1980s with the rise of Microsoft and the digital economy. Nerds began making large amounts of money and acquired economic credibility, the seedbed of social prestige. The information revolution produced a parade of highly confident nerd moguls — Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and so on.

Yeah, you're right. No one has ever made fun of someone who knows a lot about computers. Certainly not Bill Gates.

But the biggest change was not Silicon Valley itself. Rather, the new technology created a range of mental playgrounds where the new geeks could display their cultural capital. The jock can shine on the football field, but the geeks can display their supple sensibilities and well-modulated emotions on their Facebook pages, blogs, text messages and Twitter feeds. Now there are armies of designers, researchers, media mavens and other cultural producers with a talent for whimsical self-mockery, arcane social references and late-night analysis.

I never thought I'd say this, but we're looking at the poor man's Tom Friedman. Where Friedman parades a long-list of well-known and well-placed people he "was just talking to at Davos," all reiterating the same twenty-year old platitude about globalization to which Friedman's devoted his column (and which he delivers with all the breathless enthusiasm his 90 IQ can muster), Brooks just lists a series of, well, not-very-recent technological and internet developments, apparently thinking that this shows him to be astonishingly au courant (what is this "Facebook" of which you speak?). Because nothing says "I know all the cultural trends" like suggesting an intrinsic link between text messaging and nerdery (or geekdom). Who's the purest embodiment of nerd chic you know? Idk, my bff jill?

Then there's Brooks's description of these new "cultural producers with a talent for whimsical self-mockery, arcane social references and late-night analysis." I mean, come on. I don't know anybody like that. I mean, I'm certainly nothing like that...just because I blog under the name "non sequitur" and have already made snarky references to Vampire Weekend and the idk girl...

They can visit eclectic sites like Kottke.org and Cool Hunting, experiment with fonts, admire Stewart Brand and Lawrence Lessig and join social-networking communities with ironical names.

Seriously, this line made me laugh out loud. Oh, those kids, with their ironical names. And their experiments with fonts. In my day it was mind-altering drugs, but hey, times change.

There's really not much point in quoting and mocking the rest of the article. My favorite part comes at the end; it's a line set off from the rest of the article, written in italics: Paul Krugman is off today. It almost reads as an apology. In any case, it should.

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