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When I see the $170 million Inaugural celebrations, I am reminded of “Belshazzar the king of Babylon. [He] made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand. While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God...

Being listed in fourth place for Time magazine's "Person of the Year," as Sarah Palin was for 2008, sounds a little like being awarded the Order of Purity (Fourth Class). But it testifies to something important. Though regularly pronounced sick, dying, dead, cremated and scattered at sea, Mrs. Palin is still amazingly around. She has survived more media assassination attempts than Fidel Castro has survived real ones (Cuban official figure: 638). In her case, one particular method of assassination is especially popular -- namely, the desperate assertion that, in addition to her other handicaps, she is "no Margaret Thatcher." Very...

Madoff's firm sent clients performance statement riddled with inaccuracies and other suspicious signs that should have raised red flags.......a Nov. 30 performance report suggests Madoff's outfit purchased Apple at $100.78 on Nov. 12. However, even accounting for a usual 3-day settlement period, the stock never traded at $100 a share.....trading range was between $90.01 and $92.43..... Others note Madoff used outmoded bookkeeping method to record performance data, and that his presentation, lacks details...... "These look like statements from the mid '90s..." said attorney Ross Intelisano, who's been retained by Madoff clients..... The lack of transparency is surprising since Madoff was...

Some wag dubbed the Prius the "Pious," for the smug self-righteousness of its greener-than-thou owners. CNBC ran a segment this morning highlighting an even pricier form of conspicuous green consumption: the installation of geothermal wells in Manhattan as an alternative form of HVAC. Narrating the segment, CNBC's Bertha Coombs observed "for many, it represents bragging rights in the pursuit of green luxury." That segued to a clip of New York magazine's Jesse Oxfeld explicitly making the conspicuous consumption point. View video here.

As if the mainstream media's dumpster-diving campaign against Palin isn't galling enough, the conservative elite's casually dismissive attitude toward the brightest GOP star from Alaska may be even worse. Washington insiders' common mantra is "readiness." Colin Powell dismissed Palin as not "ready to be president." Kenneth Adelman, forgetting the governor is already above his pay grade, patronizingly declared her "not close to being acceptable in high office." Their disdain is rivaled by some East Coast conservative pundits. New York Times columnist David Brooks declared Palin "a cancer," and Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker called her "clearly out of her league."...

If there's one thing Texans are serious about, it's pickups. But a Frisco man says his truck is being targeted simply because his homeowners association doesn't think it's classy enough. Jim Greenwood said he never dreamed his HOA would have a problem with his new Ford F-150 pickup. Then he received the first of three notices threatening him with fines. "Mr. Greenwood, you're violating a subdivision rule that prohibits pickup trucks in your driveway," the notice reads. Stonebriar HOA rules allow several luxury trucks on driveways, including the Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Avalanche, Honda Ridgeline and Lincoln Mark LT. But most...

http://www.thestreet.com/video/index.html?bcpid=1078966384&bclid=1137812485&bctid=1420178886

ROTFLMAO!!

When Tracey Carter asked one of the hosts at West Hartford's new Cheesecake Factory restaurant how long the waits were on a Friday night, she couldn't believe her ears. Two hours. Three hours. Sometimes longer. "I was shocked. Three hours? I never dreamed someone would wait three hours," said Carter, a Hartford resident who recently dined at the crammed-to-the-rafters restaurant. "I could drive to New York and get a fish sandwich in that time." True, but anyone who'd decline to cool their heels would miss out on one of Greater Hartford's most popular new activities: the waiting game at Cheesecake...

We don't want to knock our fellow journalists. Like them, we see how tempting it is to establish one's class bona fides by sneering at the Conservative party's sponsorship of a NASCAR Canadian Tire series vehicle. Or, better yet, by having anonymous "observers" do it for you, or claiming on a news page that there is an unspecified "buzz" of controversy in the air. Nothing could be easier, and nothing says more clearly "this byline does not belong to the kind of person who likes to spend a day watching a guy turn left 800 times." Rest assured, scribes, we...

According to reports, a trendy Chicago suburb voted “the sexiest suburb in America” may be on the verge of banishing from its venues of commerce those not conforming to arbitrarily contrived body aesthetics. Lane Bryant, a retailer known for marketing clothing to full-sized women, has been denied the opportunity to open a store in a development called “The Village Of Oak Park”. Before the hypercapitalists decide to slit my throat as they are wont to do whenever anyone dares to question a decision made by big business, it must be noted that the decision to deny Lane Bryant the retail...

The problem with most writing about cities is that people go out and say, "Here's what I like." And the corollary to that is usually, "This is what cities ought to be." Urban historians have tended to share The problem with most writing about cities is that people go out and say, "Here's what I like." And the corollary to that is usually, "This is what cities ought to be." Urban historians have tended to share ... Urban history traditionally has been about elites at the very center. It's an almost exclusive focus. How can academics be so uninterested in...

See for example this thread first. The strangest news this year by far Involves a change at NPR Their sponsor--don't jeer:Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer! Is their next step to feature NASCAR?!!

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Leading the world's wealthiest and probably most famous university sounds like the plummiest job in academe -- with a staff, a house, and a half-million dollar salary among the many perks. But running Harvard isn't easy. Neil Rudenstine, school president from 1991 to 2001, was forced to take leave of absence for exhaustion in 1994. His successor, Lawrence Summers, announced Tuesday he would resign June 30 after a tumultuous five years, his ambitious agenda to get Harvard's territorial undergraduate and professional schools on same page done in by faculty revolts and brusque management style. Harvard-watchers inside...

Affluent, well-educated liberals were in -- a "new elite," as The Washington Post termed it. Party regulars, officeholders and blue-collar Democrats were out. New York, a union state, had only three union members as delegates, though it had at least nine members of the gay liberation movement. No farmer was a member of the Iowa delegation. Only 30 of the 255 Democratic members of Congress were selected as delegates. A full 39 percent of delegates had attended graduate school. Over a third of the white delegates were classified as secularists, compared with 5 percent of the general population. The reformers...

WASHINGTON – John Marshall is widely revered as "the great Chief Justice," but before joining the Supreme Court in 1801 he had never served a day in judicial robes and lost the only case he argued at the high court. Earl Warren had worked for 18 years as a prosecutor and was three times elected governor of California. But he had no prior judicial experience. Nor did William Rehnquist, Felix Frankfurter, and Louis Brandeis...

Bill Maher Passes Gas in America's Face By Debbie Schlussel It's crotchety liberal "comedian" Bill Maher's dream come true. And the rest of America's nightmare. American gas prices have reached near-European levels. Thanks to rising prices imposed by OPEC coupled with shut down oil drilling in America's Hurricane Katrina-stricken Bayou, we are suffering the absurd reality Maher has selfishly wished on us in years of insane ranting. Thanks, Bill. On an August 2003 episode of his HBO show, "Real Time," Maher said this: "Stop whining about gas prices. It's good that it costs a lot. . . . It's also...

Thanks for playing, now get the hell out. This was the message sent loudly and clearly Sunday by the slightly less than 100,000 fans that had traveled from all over the most powerful country in the world to see what is supposed to be the greatest auto racing series on the planet. Take your giant transport planes and your Kevlar-coated motorcoaches and your big fancy remote control cars and go drive them elsewhere. Formula One racing has always been a hard sell in the United States, despite the fact that facilities elsewhere can't seem to build enough grandstands to contain...

Have pity on Barbara Walters. Barbara Walters is, after all, Barbara Walters. And Barbara Walters should not be made to suffer the gross indignity of flying in first class while a common woman breast-feeds her baby. Barbara Walters for those few of you left on the remote islands of Fiji who don't know who she is is a world-famous, Very Important Person. She has, according to her official bio, "arguably interviewed more statesmen and stars than any other journalist in history. She is so well known that her name and a brief biography is (sic) listed in the American Heritage...

Oh those posh Brits. Those accents. That wit. "We've always had a cultural inferiority complex with regard to the Brits," Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Nunberg says, "that they speak correctly and we don't. We even say we 'use the queen's English.' And why should that matter to us?" Just such intellectual Anglophilia may be what's behind a virus that's infecting American media these days: Britspeak. We have become a nation of journalistic copycats, betraying perfectly good American idioms along the way.