First Looks category archive

From ye olde country.

On Pennsylvania’s on favorite promoter of gambling halls.

I wonder how much of Ed Rendell’s support for casino gambling comes from his notion that it is a painless cure for ailing tax revenues (it’s not–think how much money gamblers have to lose so that casinos and racetracks can pay those taxes governments want so much) and how much comes from his love of a bet?

Very pretty swimming round . . .

Well, geese, actually.

For contrast, here’s picture taken from about the same position about three days ago.

And a detail from today:

in which he espouses an excellent idea.

If Ed Rendell must force casinos down Philadelphia’s throat, put one in the S. S. United States.

Afterthought: Apparently the favorable reception surprised him.

Great balls of fire:

“That building went up so quickly that we knew it had to be an accelerant in there,” Loyle, 82, said yesterday in front of the charred Loyle Lanes Bowling Center, a local landmark that would have celebrated its 50th anniversary Feb. 10.

Investigators yesterday confirmed Loyle’s suspicions about the Jan. 11 blaze and shocked the community with news that a business rival, the owner of the only other bowling alley in Cumberland County, had been charged with arson.

A geologists explains the Haiti Quake at Scientific Blogging.

Sauce for the goose.

This really is overreacting to a twit.

The CairnGorm Mountain ski centre in the (Scots–ed.) Highlands will be closed for the day – because of too much snow.

After a two-day blizzard, the operators have had to bring in huge caterpillar vehicles and snow blowers to try to clear the approach road and the slopes.

Climate change deniers, don’t get your hopes up. Extreme weather is a predicted result of global warming as changing temperatures disrupt established weather patterns.

(with apologies to Santayana) are Republicans:

This is why the GOP in its current state cannot be allowed to govern. There is for them . . . no disaster so great that it can penetrate the armor of received wisdom that passes for the best of “conservative” thought by our friends across the aisle. If you don’t need to prove what you know is true, then there is no reason to check to see if the policies that flow from that “knowledge” actually, you know, work.

(snip)

The GOP approach to public life has not changed in a generation: lower taxes, less regulation. That’s it. But, as everyone with a pulse knows, we tried that for the Bush years. It left us, as we know, with a catastrophic economic crisis, an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich, wars dishonestly begun and incompetently managed and all the rest.

Up the road aways, there has been one of those periodic kerfuffles about self-important blowhards inflicting meaningless empty invocations on an inattentive public opening public meetings with prayer.

A summation from a letter to the editor.

This is the warship that was built with steel salvaged from the World Trade Center.

At least it’s still under warranty:

Less than three months into its operational life, the dock landing ship New York must undergo repairs to replace faulty engine parts, the Navy said.

You can’t make this stuff up:

The Siemens (institutionalized corporate-level international bribery–ed.) case, which was announced in December 2008, resulted in the largest corporate fine ever paid, $1.6 billion to authorities in the U.S and Germany. The investigation struck terror in the hearts of business executives in the U.S and Europe who came to realize that they faced both the prospect of huge criminal and civil fines and that they might also go to jail if it could be shown their employees or agents engaged in overseas bribery.

Yet, as traumatic as such cases are for private companies, defending against them have become enormous profit centers for lawyers and accountants.

The legal fees for the Siemens defense alone, handled by Debevoise & Plimpton L.L.P., based in New York, were in the hundreds of millions.

Why can’t the stuff they sell in American grocery stores taste like the real thing?

Via Susie:

Q. What’s the difference between a cow and 9/11?

A. Rudy Giuliani never learned to milk a cow.

One of the finest persons I have been privileged to know and to work with.

More here.

My weekend has fluwn away.

Addendum:

72 hours of feeling like a truck ran over me.