I believe what McCain and Graham were really saying was:

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Hey Zuckerberg! Why the long face?

Here's what's going to happen.  Write it down, and refer back to it in a few years:

Obama will leave this debt time bomb for his successor.  When it explodes, the press will all say that Obama's successors have squandered his legacy of fiscal responsibility. Everyone will believe it, with the same level of unthinking acceptance they give the proposition that Franklin Roosevelt saved America from the Great Depression.

You can't explain it to the idiots. They're idiots, duh.

I've never heard a better rubuttal of Obama anyway than, "You lie!" More timely, too.  Let's skip the ritual rebuttal and go Code Pink in the Chamber.  Or at least withhold the applause altogether.

I'm not sure the issue is always intro- vs. extro-.  I am a confident public speaker; I actually enjoy getting up in front of a crowd and working a room, when I have something to say.  I have fairly high standards for when it is worthwhile to open my mouth, and I don't do so unless it's time to lead and/or contribute. I am also from Wisconsin, and grew up with the Midwestern notion that what our coastal brethren call reasonable self-promotion is just plain bad manners. Restraint is, I think, a virtue.

What really seems to distinguish our time is the utter shamelessness with which those who have no distinction, no talent, no achievements aside from fame itself, constantly put themselves forward, and how this has become the very definition of success.  Our public life, our academy, our business and economic activity has become dominated by phonies and self-promoters, empty suits and empty suites.  Perhaps this is the inevitable result of a regime of political correctness in which it is bad manners to inquire into someone's distinctive gifts and achievements, and in which self-esteem is the highest value.

That should be "worked", but of course I can't edit.

Hey, wouldn't it be nice if the content editor world on the iPad? Just sayin'.

Rock star: fast track phony leaving messes for the actual workers to clean up, as she ascends the corporate ladder

Pivot: impulsively change direction, with no more reason than lay behind the original trajectory

Client-facing: momentarily acknowledging that we have actual, you know, customers

Sacrifice: something to be given up, without choice or discussion, by the person not speaking.

I read the article, and I believe he worked for Verizon.

Had Bob been the owner of a contracting company doing programming for Verizon on a statement of work, he could have done exactly the same thing and no eyebrows would have been raised. He probably would have charged the company more money, though.

If he was able to get good quality offshore work done promptly at reasonable prices, he must be quite good.  That's not always easy.  He really should go into business.

The cat videos are stupid, though.

From Hayek's Road to Serfdom:

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.

I prefer "Imperial Government". Let's call it what it really is. With its thousands and thousands of imperatives we must all follow, its imperious tone and manner, its courtiers crowding the glittering capital seeking favor and advantage, what is Washington but the center of a North American imperium, extending from one sea to the other?

The Woman in Black.  Very well made horror film which is also, until the last sixty seconds, a perfectly executed Hero's Journey tale. Then the screenwriter said, "Hey, I'm really bored with this millennia-old archetype of a perfect story, and I'm a clever Hollywood screenwriter, so I'll stomp all over the the formula in the name of doing something different."

Left the audience looking goggle-eyed at each other saying, "Huh? What? Did he just do that?"  Feh.

Don't jump, George! Don't jump!

First, I would be willing to make a cash contribution in excess of my yearly membership, much as NR asks people to do.

Second, might I suggest one of those social media raffles where you enter people into a drawing for something of value in return for posting to Facebook and tweeting all their friends with a subscription link?  You could give away something tangible, like an iPad (after first making sure the Ricochet posting editor actually works properly on that platform, hint, hint), or you could offer something really valuable like a tete a tete with famous Ricochet contributors, or a guest appearance on the podcast, or an all-expenses-paid trip to the second Obama inaugural.  (Kidding about that last one.)

As many have noted, having to endure a second Obama term without Ricochet is like having dental surgery without anesthetic. I hope it won't come to that.

Vegas! Yes!  I just came back from there, and they have these trucks that go up and down the Strip with photos of scantily clad your women, and the claim that "Hot Girls Want to Meet You Now."  Imagine the Flukemobile going up and down the strip with that Ashton-in-a-bob photo, larger than life, proclaiming, "Hot Strategist and Activist Wants to Meet You Now!"   Call before it's too late!

Does the price include the cheap motel room?