To your list of world’s most dangerous jobs, you might want to add: Iranian nuclear scientist. The New York Times is reporting that two Iranian nuclear scientists were targetted for assassination, by persons unknown, today Monday, Nov. 29 and one of them, Majid Shahriari was killed when a car bomb that had been attached to his moving vehicle was remotely detonated. Shahriari’s wife was wounded as was the wife of the second scientist Fereydoon Abbasi, whose car was also targetted. Abbasi survived. Read more »

The votes have been cast, the results are in, and your television just lost its last reason for existing. If there were a plug on your TV similar to the plug in your bathtub that could be pulled to drain out all the glamour and gooodness in life, then that plug would have been unceremoniously pulled last night when teen pregnancy advocate Bristol Plain was finally voted off the most important talent show in America: Dancing With The Stars. Despite being the best bad dancer in the nation who gets better with every show (but is still, on the whole, bad) a nefarious cabal of un-elected judges pushed Bristol aside and instead took it upon themselves to hand the prize over to Jennifer Grey, a Hollywood insider whose only redeeming virtue is that she’s a talented dancer. The star-chamber judges clearly did this because they hate Bristol’s mother Sarah, for not aborting her son Trig when she had the chance. Readers will recall that Palin instead rushed back to Alaska on a 3 hour flight from Texas as soon as her water broke and there was a danger that the child might suffer the indignity of being born in the “lower 48” –thus making him an “untouchable” according to Alaskan Separatist Party lore. At any rate, if you’re still with me this far: Gawker has video evidence of Bristol losing (which I can’t see at work because it’s blocked, but which I’m sure is awesome heartrending).

It is obvious to me that the Irish-British model is the way of the future, and the only question is when Germany and France will face reality: either they become Ireland or they become museums:

-Thomas Friedman, in 2005

Here is a staggering fact: right now, as I write this, every single citizen of the Republic of Ireland owes foreign creditors over $535,000.00.

How did this happen in a nation that free marketers from the CATO instutute to Thomas Friedman were just recently holding up as a model of 21st century economic development, and whose laissez faire policies were held in stark and favorable contrast with the Social Democratic welfare states of Germany and France?

Hery Farrell at Crookerd Timber thinks he knows: the genesis of the Irish economic catastrophe lies in the country’s corporate tax rate. More speficially, Farrell finds fault in Ireland’s low corporate tax rates: Read more »

If you’ve ever ventured beyond the dank and musty walls of your university’s medieval manuscripts collection and interacted socially with at least three other people who can’t read Latin, then you probably know a “car guy“. And if you ask this car guy what he’ll be doing tonight at 10:00, chances are he’ll reply with something along the lines of: “Not sure… can’t make my mind up as to whether I should take a chance on the new Top Gear America or spend the evening playing Gran Turismo instead” (other possible answers include: watching Bullit for the 60th time, laying fiberglass, or doing donuts in the mall parking lot). Read more »

“Hehe ya grabbin your ass huh? I just puked! Eww and I thought you exiting this conversation. And good idea Jon! You’ll be as successful as my baby daddy. And actually, I do work my ass off. I’ve been a single mom for the last two years…”

–Bristol Palin, arguing on Facebook with critics of her mother’s new reality TV show and referring to Levi Johnston, without any apparent irony, as her “baby daddy.”

Joe Miller, the Tea Party backed, would-be Senator from Alaska is down by more than 10,000 votes against write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, and there are just a few thousand more votes left to count. This figure is doubly significant given that the sum total of votes in that election was in the neighborhood of 200,000. It’s very unlikely Miller can overcome this lead absent a shocking legal ruling that would invalidate more than 5% of all votes cast in the election. Read more »

The irony is delicious: a Freshman GOP representative who ran on a platform opposing the Federal government’s plan to expand health care insurance coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans is incensed that his new Congressional health care plan will not take effect for 28 days after his swearing-in:

Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in. Read more »