While contemplating Korean fried chicken and Korean tacos . . .

• It’s time Californians withold their taxes from the state. I guarantee I could find a million government programs to cut to solve the “budget impasse.” Treatment for drug abuse programs? Junkies can get clean on their own dime.
• If my child told me he wanted to become a politician when he grew up I’d know I failed as a parent. I would weep all the days till my death.
• I just met our new neighbors (they moved in about four months ago). He’s a pastor. He’s a hip pastor. Seems like a nice guy, but he’s a hip pastor. Somehow that offends me more than the usual brand of lying clergy. Religion is slavery.
• Last night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica was probably the most intense episode since the first, “33.” Wow.
• I’m proud to be a denier.
• Credit may be damaged, but homeowners can rebuild it. And by renting something they can afford, instead of the McMansion they cannot, homeowners are most likely to have some money left over each month that they can save toward a down payment on a house they can eventually afford.

Yes, Korean fried chicken and Korean tacos . . . I know you’re jealous.

Yes:

Indeed, now the masters were beginning to find that they were, after all, the servants of the very forces which they had set in play, and that nature is inherently ingovernable. They were soon to be drawn along ways not of their choosing, trapped in a magnetic field, as it were, by the same forces which unwind the tides at the moon’s bidding, or propel the glittering forces of salmon up a crowded river—actions curving and swelling into futurity beyond the powers of mortals to harness or divert.

And methinks few enough consider beyond the powers of mortals . . . 

Out of the mouths of fools:

An angry U.S. senator introduced legislation Friday to cap compensation for employees of any company that accepts federal bailout money. Under the terms of a bill introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, no employee would be allowed to make more than the president of the United States.

The lunatics really are running the asylum.

What a pity that Gary S. Lawson, Abraham and Lillian Benton Scholar and Professor of Law at the Boston University School of Law, is a member of an ever-dwindling minority:

Possibly the single most important intellectual figure in the New Deal was James Landis. He was a member of the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission and one of the principal authors of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. . . .

In his book, Landis frankly acknowledged that the rise of the administrative state was inconsistent with the Constitution:

‘The insistence upon the compartmentalization of power along triadic lines gave way in the nineteenth century to the exigencies of governance. Without too much political theory but with a keen sense of the practicalities of the situation, agencies were created whose functions embraced the three aspects of government.’

(more…)

I’ve been a fan of La Quercia for quite some time; since that first taste, I haven’t bought imported prosciutto. From the NY Times:

In 2001, La Quercia (“oak” in Italian) was born. [Herb] Eckhouse, a Harvard social-studies major in the ’60s, spent four years studying prosciutto-making. The couple would move their Volvo wagon out of the garage to weigh and salt legs, then age them in their guest bedroom. The first official prosciutto was shipped from their state-of-the-art plant near Des Moines in September 2005. Early on, the food writer Jeffrey Steingarten declared it the best prosciutto—domestic or foreign—he had tasted.

You may find something romantic about eating prosciutto in Parma, but I’d rather save my money for Provence and chow down on some spectacular prosciutto Americano whenever I choose.

A mistimed (some would say moronic) tackle in the penalty box by Lucas Leiva on 82 minutes and poof! there goes Liverpool’s season, dropping to third after the 1 – 1 draw away to Wigan.

So much for No. 19 in 2009.

In A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley famously wrote:

. . . [I]t was my destiny—unlike that of my father, whose fate it was to hear the roar of the crowd—to sit in the stands with most men and acclaim others. It was my fate, my destiny, my end, to be a fan.

I thought so, too. Today, however, I stop being a fan.

John Updike has died.

I don’t know if there’s been a character more uniquely and universally American in literature than Updike’s Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Rabbit’s life should be required reading for all yanquis.

Updike on literature:

I don’t feel that we have the merger of serious and pop—it’s gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they’re less comfortable with the written word. They’re less comfortable with novels. They don’t have a backward frame of reference that would enable them to appreciate things like irony and allusions. It’s sad.

And, finally, Rabbit on dying:

“Well, Nelson . . . all I can tell you is, it isn’t that bad.”

Let’s hope it wasn’t.