From The Onion: Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack PITTSBURGH—A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at great risk for all-out destruction at the […]
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Cost Containment Woes
Kate did some digging into the relative price growth of Medicare and private insurance, and found some pretty amazing graphs. Then, coming across today’s news that Florida is about to radically restructure their Medicaid program, she writes: The real question, however, is why are we using the failed private market (see cost containment chart above) […]
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Busboys and Poets
This article on the uber-chic glory, the burgeoning, self-contained social scene, and the wildly awesome place that is Busboys and Poets gets it fully correct. The bookstore/bar/restaurant/performance space is an epicenter of cool. All you DC-denizens should go read it. And then you should go to Busboys and Poets where, most of the time, you’ll […]
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Drug Legalization Questions
One thing I’ve always wondered about drug legalization plans: how do you deal with new drugs? Is it simply assumed that whatever concoction some teenage chemist cooks up and finds a market for can be quickly absorbed by private producers and put in stores? Does it need to go through FDA testing? If it does […]
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Tax and Spend Republicans
As the Carpetbagger notes, the tax plan floated by Bush’s reform commission isn’t getting half the fire from Democrats that it’s getting from Republicans. It’s like a level of Contra over there. And not one of those early, wimpy levels, we’re talking scattershots and screen slowdown and epileptic seizures from all the tiny balls of […]
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The Incompetence Dodge
Victory, as John F. Kennedy observed, has a thousand fathers, while defeat is an orphan. Abandoning the orphan that is the Iraq War has clearly been a protracted, painful process for the liberal hawks, those intellectuals and pundits so celebrated back in 2003 for their courage in coming forward to smash liberal expectations and support […]
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Afflicting The Dry
Congress is back in session, and it’s gunning for the American poor. A revolt of House conservatives has persuaded that body’s Republican leadership to offset the increased federal spending going to rebuild the Hurricane Katrina–devastated Gulf Coast by reductions in Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs for the indigent. If things go according to plan, […]
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Rendering Health Punditry Obsolete
If things keep going down this road, all my raging against pharmaceutical patents and monopolistic practices won’t make a damn bit of difference soon, as all the drugs will be made on South Korea anyway.
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60 Short Minutes
As if the tale of Mike Wallace, Louis Freeh, and Bill Clinton weren’t strange enough, it turns out that there’s more to the story. A great deal more. In recent days, CBS and Wallace have taken a pummeling for granting Freeh, the former FBI director, airtime on 60 Minutes to criticize Bill Clinton without allowing […]
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The Colbert Report
I think Dana Stevens gets the trouble with the Colbert Report exactly right: Watching Colbert stretch his Daily Show character into a half-hour format sparked an impromptu reflection on the work Colbert has cut out for him. Jon Stewart may laugh at everything and everybody, including himself, but for the most part, we don’t laugh […]
