Is Wall Street the Symptom . . . or the Problem?

It seems like whenever the news is good, the stock market tanks.  Unemployment down?  Stocks plummet.  Wages up?  Stocks plummet.  Orders for durable goods up?  Stocks plummet.  New home starts up?  Stocks plummet.  And now the new administration gets a stimulus package stuffed with tax cuts through the senate . . . and stocks plummet. […]

Only the Little People Pay Taxes

First of all, Barack Obama needs to replace Rahm Emanuel: discovering that Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Killefer were tax cheats was his job, and he failed to do it.  He certainly wouldn’t be my chief of staff any longer. This whole rich-people-don’t-pay-taxes thing has got to stop.  We’ve been having our noses rubbed […]

Paul’s DVD Reviews: Now with Stars!

The Counterfeiters (2008) When Germans of the current generation face their past, they do it with utter honesty. For all the Hobbesian bleakness inherent in this movie’s subject — “continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” — there’s a weak ray of triumph at […]

Bread & Circuses (Updated)

Is it just me, or does anyone else think this Hero Pilot stuff is spinning out of control?  I dunno, it hits me as wrong.  Mawkish, lowest common denominator, on-display-for-your-beer-guzzling-delectation wrong. I’m surprised Sullenberger’s going along with all this.  It’s like Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: real pilots don’t strut around like peacocks when they […]