This.

Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.
- Adam Smith

Last night My Bloody Valentine played the Aragon theater, two blocks from my apartment. I didn’t attend, primarily because I’ve been informed professionally that I cannot afford to lose any more of my hearing (I’m not being facetious either — about the professional advice or the loudness of MBV shows; they’ve been recorded at 132 [...]

I don’t know about you, but this is now stuck in my head.

So I’ve just returned from Providence, RI, where an IHS conference on social change was held at Brown University. Stars of the show included the ever-lucid Will Wilkinson (recently in the news himself) and Claremont Professor Paul Zak, who received during the conference a Drudge Report link heralding a “childbirth wonder drug that can ‘cure’ [...]

Once, the Democratic Party bestrode the nation, a colossus of consensus and community. But there was a catch. Michael Kazin and Julian Zelizer tell us that
before the reunited Democratic Party can start to make a forceful case to the nation, it will have to [...] equal what was perhaps Franklin Roosevelt’s greatest political success: to [...]

In his American Conservative review of Matt Yglesias’ new book, Heads in the Sand, Austin Bramwell contends that, “[i]n the end,”
it is unclear whether Yglesias seeks anything more than an internationalist fig leaf for the policies he happens to prefer.
So what if he does? As my long trail of blog crumbs reveals, I have deep [...]

There are now large numbers of Republicans and Democrats alike who want Hillary Clinton to go for broke. I notice Sonny relates to us the latest ingenious hail Mary plan coming out of Camp Clinton. Never have so few fought so desperately for so little. At Slate, Timothy Noah hefts the hammer of reality and [...]

I think “when Hillary Clinton entered ‘No Spin Zone’” may soon appear in the dictionary beside the word “desperation.” — K-Lo, The Corner
Picturing wattled old Hill and Bill (O’Reilly) side by side, getting foundationed, patted, and powdered before launching into whatever unholy schtick they’ve planned makes for about as nightmarish a vision as I can [...]

It’s Grand Theft Auto IV (that’s “Four”, not a heroin reference). Nick Gillespie reports:
As sales mount for the game, now set in New York-like “Liberty City” and (hopefully featuring a whore-banging, money-laundering, hypocritical pol a la Eliott Spitzer), expect the protests to mount against the game, which has somehow helped add to generally lower crime [...]

I almost forgot about this. There’s now a book that teaches kids how not to fear their new Plastic Post-Op moms. Rod Dreher no likey:
What kind of message is this sending to little girls? That if they don’t like their bodies, that if their physical appearance doesn’t conform to current physical ideals, that they should [...]