Sitting here trying to force myself to do taxes (they don't know how to spend our money!) and using Ricochet as a wonderful diversion. But I couldn't have anticipated your tour this afternoon -- what a lovely thing to find and thank you so much! Felt like a mini vacation, and I have always been fascinated by big trucks. Really cool for a tax-avoidance afternoon in gorgeous sunny Savannah! Happy Easter to you.

I started working as a reporter at age 22 in 1969, and in the normal course of doing our jobs we rarely if ever swore, and certainly never in the presence of women. Men alone was something different, but there was a standard to which we generally kept. One day in the early 80s I called a client, a woman on a national account at one of the big 4A NY ad agencies. I'm sure she was feeling her oats because she'd just been promoted to a job that at that time would have been dominated by men. After maybe two minutes with her on the phone I had heard no fewer than ten swear words including the f, the c, the s, some multiple times. It took my breath away frankly, and from that day I vowed to work at not swearing -- not to point out others' swearing but just to keep my own slate a little cleaner. Try it. It is a fine exercise and eventually becomes a pattern.

Sorry. the (dis) Honorable Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who abandoned a drowning Mary Jo Kopechne (a probably 22-year-old intern or Hill staffer) after he plunged his Olds into the drink on Chappaquiddick, a smaller island that is part of Martha's Vineyard.

When I worked for  Commerce back in the 80s I confess to having champed at the bit, for having to stay in "government rate" hotels but there was nothing we could do about it (correctly).

On another side of the same coin, the program I was running required me to appoint an  agency for the national ad campaign we were running, and we had to open the contract first to minority-owned companies. I spent a year spinning wheels with two-bit shops who lacked the qualifications required. After begging, pleading, and filling out hundreds of pages of added paperwork, I was allowed to open the search to non-minority firms, we awarded the contract and the program was a success. The compromises I would have had to make in hiring the minorities would undoubtedly have led to an inferior program and the ten million we spent truly would have been wasted. 

It is the classic case of bigness and bureaucratic control  screwing things up -- the rules we had to use to hire an ad agency were no different to those that would have been required to purchase cruise missiles. It was a life of absurdity.

Who agrees with me that our true despair ought to be grounded in the lack of intelligent, forceful response to this appalling thuggery by our candidate(s)? Romney should be sounding like Rush or Mark Levin; instead he sounds like McCain. We are standing by and being polite while a mean-spirited over-hyped bully is virtually daring us to do anything about it.

We shall have no one but ourselves to blame if this creature manages to get another term. Let's just stop all the talk and draft Paul Ryan or Christie or someone with the cajones to stand up to this vile creature.

Oh, and just possibly Judge Bork took his title idea from Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Slouching Toward Gomorrah is the title of a book by the Honorable Robert Bork -- oh would that he had not been trashed by the Oldsmobile murderer!

Given that Lady GaGa spoke at Harvard recently, I am inclined to believe this is a real "lecture." But it was headed by a Lampoon logo so maybe, perhaps, maybe oh I hope so -- we an imagine it's a spoof. If it's not, we're even more lost than I thought.

Couple it with Obama's disgraceful performance yesterday, and I guess we'd all be better off just having a good solid cry.

Uh, Mitt, had you heard it's a COMMUNIST COUNTRY? Had you compared the level of liberty against that of our allbeit beleaguered Republic? Good God, man, can you possibly be this naive?

I despair of November.

Dear Jim and all your family -- God bless you. It is faith that sees us through these earthly tragedies, and your calm is an inspiration. We ache for you and trust that good will come out of this particular ill wind. We know it will! I am praying for the pets you mentioned, as well.

Oh this is so terribly sad. This man was a true crusader for us; one who was fearless and stood against the insanity. I feel a deep personal loss despite that I never met him. I recall his near-comical striding to the podium on the day he exposed Anthony Weiner.  But Andrew was a serious  man who broke stories no one could have imagined. We will miss him but we must step up with the kind of courage he always demonstrated. God bless his family and Rest in Peace dear Andrew, you earned it!

I heard him mention Ricochet and wondered, "How long before the site is overwhelmed?" I waited 30 seconds and tried to login here and it was down. It is amazing the power of talk radio, and particularly Rush. Makes me realize we must not get sleepy and let those Marxists implement their "fairness" doctrine by another name, right under our noses. They can't be happy that such power exists outside of their control.
I think today may be the day Ricochet changed. I hope it is good change. Let's all vow to keep it as honest and friendly as it has always been. 

The Middle East and North Africa are rife with pharmacies that sell Zithromax and tens of other antibiotics OTC. In Saudi Arabia barely trained "pharmacists" really pushed the heavy antibiotics - probably because the margins were good. I happened to be caught in a maelstrom of periodic bacterial infections resulting from a root canal gone wrong. It was horrible because I'd really needed the killer bacteria at first but soon it became a true dependency -- when I would finish a course the infection would gradually return which then led to more antigiotics.
So there is more than one way freely dispensed antibiotics can be abused. Ultimately the bacteria spread into my heart, causing life-threatening congestive heart failure. I survived, but no thanks to the cavalier attitude about these important but tricky medications.
Caveat emptor. And thank God for the internet. 

Some time ago I was put in charge of the operations of a retail food company, across Europe. Although Greece was not among my territories, France and Belgium were. I needed to hire some decent executives in many of the `countries, and the reckoning we used to create an offering package was Base Salary plus 130% to cover "social charges."

I had to terminate a do-nothing alcoholic based in Brussels, who for ten years had been living his life off his company Amex card. No one had dared fire him, given what it too would cost. It ended up at, in Pounds Sterling, around 250K (or US$375K) to get him gone. As the only American involved in the operation, I questioned these numbers but everyone shrugged it off as "the way things are." This was 30 years or more ago, and I remember wondering how the "system" could survive. The chickens truly are coming home to roost.

Antoine Twaddle -- Pure Dickens. I suppose if you think about it, the level of societal or political awareness among the average urban chap in Dickens' time would be no higher than that of our Antoine of 2012. Still very depressing. 

Lovely comments, James.

This is one of those moments when I wish Rob Long could clone himself. We just don't have the basis of talent in "the business" to guarantee any kind of fair treatment to a heroine of Margaret Thatcher's stature.

Meryl Streep also participated in that tiresome Tony Kushner's Angels in America travesty some time ago. Didn't she also serve as the spokesperson when that phony alar fiasco was promulgated?.

As to Mama Mia, it was the premise (trampy Mom not knowing daddy's identity) that turned me off the most.I still love two or three Abba songs.

But alas, no, I'd say the Baroness is in for a bumpy ride on this one.