I’ve spent the last four hours trying to find Tunch, who got out somehow, and I just give up. I have driven the neighborhood multiple times, looked everywhere, left food, and I just do not know what to do. I am beyond panic. If he comes home, it is of his own volition and there is nothing I can do.

The fat bastard.

*** Update ***

I sat outside like a deer hunter with multiple food traps. I finally caught him. Next time I am not freaking out and walking the neighborhood- I’m putting down food. Here he is downing the treats:

And yes. I cried. I am such a damned loser.

Here’s something I sometimes think to myself….I often read that so-and-so is a reasonable person and that his or her ideas should therefore be granted some kind of prima facie credence. Will the whole “reasonable person” trope eventually go away? How is it different from ad hominemism in reverse?

Consider this an open thread.

Steve Benen on the rest of the media’s (minus Jacob Weisberg) bizarre defense of Fox News:

But let’s put all of that aside and focus on a point too many observers don’t appreciate: the line between Fox News’ personality-driven primetime hosts and Fox News’ “reporting” doesn’t exist. This isn’t a network that does legitimate journalism during the day, and then let’s GOP clowns run wild at night—this is a network that acts as the arm of a political party and a cog in a larger partisan machine all day.

[....]

Josh (Marshall) added, “If you actually watch Fox News with any regularity it’s hard to see any point to discussing the fact that the station operates more or less openly as a wing of the GOP.” And yet, now that the White House has shown the audacity to note this plain fact, the pushback from other media figures is pretty intense.

For Ruth Marcus and others, the problem isn’t that Fox News is making a mockery of modern journalism; the problem is that the White House has acknowledged reality. The establishment, I’m afraid, is complaining about the wrong party here.

There are lots of reasons for why mainstream journalists to would side with Fox on this one. There’s the fact that it’s always good to take an irrational right-wing position to prove you’re not teh librul. There’s the need to defend fellow real journalists like Chris Wallace and Brit Hume from the vituperative, foul-mouthed blogging hordes. (EDIT: if you can’t tell this is snark….)

But I have to wonder if there’s something else at work here too: the possibility of having to work for Murdoch some day. It’s an article of faith among a lot of journalists that Murdoch is a super-brilliant businessman whose genius will transcend the economic crisis that is destroying the news business, that he will somehow take declining ad revenues and make declining-ad-revenue-ade. Better to be on his side, just to be safe.

Maybe I’m being too cynical. But I think that’s part of the dynamic here.

According to the NYT City Room blog:

A federal judge on Tuesday revoked bail for Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is facing conspiracy and fraud charges. Judge Stephen C. Robinson of Federal District Court in White Plains said Mr. Kerik could not be trusted to honor the consent order that prohibits any involved party from revealing confidential information pertinent to the coming trial…

Before revoking the bail of Mr. Kerik, Judge Robinson described him as a “toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance, and I fear that combination leads him to believe his ends justify his means.”

“He sees the court’s rulings as an inconvenience,” Judge Robinson said, “something to be ignored, and an obstacle to be circumvented.”

Of course, this is no doubt good news for President McCain, but is it also good news for Governor Guiliani?

Why does this hippie want to undermine the sanctity of marriage?

(via)

Way to be, Max:

Fewer middle-income families would qualify for tax credits to purchase health insurance, under a little-noticed change to the Senate Finance Committee health bill made just before the markup began in late September.

Under the bill, eligible individuals and families with annual incomes of between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line would receive tax credits to cover the cost of insurance purchased through state exchanges. As part of a package of managers’ modifications, Finance Chairman Max Baucus changed the definition of income from “modified adjusted gross income,” or AGI plus investment interest, to simply “modified gross income.”

That is a departure from the way all other federal tax credits are calculated, and it means when determining eligibility for the credit, the IRS would have to disregard a household’s usual above-the-line deductions, such as for individual retirement account contributions and college tuition.

It really is awesome how these guys think- make everything more complicated, save very little, and screw the folks who need the help while mandating they buy insurance. About the only thing missing is mandating they give up their first born. Well played, President Baucus!

There seriously are days I think half the Democrats in the Senate are Republican moles.

This is the final week, and we are only 200 votes behind right now, so go vote.

And yet another study pointing out what we all already know:

At 678, California has the nation’s largest death row population, yet the state has not executed anyone in four years.

But it spends more than $130 million a year on its capital punishment system—housing and prosecuting inmates and coping with an appellate system that has kept some convicted killers waiting for an execution date since the late 1970s.

This is according to a new report that concludes that states are wasting millions on an inefficient death penalty system, diverting scarce funds from other anti-crime and law enforcement programs.

“Thirty-five states still retain the death penalty, but fewer and fewer executions are taking place every year,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “But the overall death row population has remained relatively steady. At a time of budget shortfalls nationwide, the death penalty is turning into an expensive form of life without parole.”

I just don’t think the folks at the Death Penalty Information Center understand how important it is to some people to be allowed to kill. It is such a priority in manly Texas that sometimes they kill innocent people for the hell of it.

I know Attaturk has named Richard Cohen America’s Concern Troll, but his latest effort today really cements the lifetime achievement award.

When wingnuts attack:

I spotted Scozzafava later as she was walking to the parking lot, and asked her: ” Assemblywoman, do you believe that the health-care bill should exclude coverage for abortion?” She didn’t reply. I asked her twice more. Silence.

After she got into her car, I went to my car and fired up my laptop to report the evening’s events.

Minutes later a police car drove into the parking lot with its lights flashing. Officer Grolman informed me that she was called because “there was a little bit of an uncomfortable situation” and then took down my name, date of birth, and address.

“Maybe we do things a little differently here, but you know, persistence in that area, you scared the candidate a little bit,” Officer Grolman told me.

“[Scozzafava] got startled, that’s all,” Officer Grolman added. “It’s not like you’re in any trouble.”

But is that really what happened? Not according to a Scozzafava aide who wrote Ben Smith:

Agree or not with Dede Scozzafava’s positions, she should still be afforded a basic level of respect. Asking tough questions is one thing, but acting like John McCormack did tonight shows a complete lack of decency. This self-described reporter repeatedly screamed questions while our candidate was doing what she is supposed to be doing: speaking with voters (remember, those who will decide this election?). And then this “reporter” followed the candidate to her car, continuing to carry on in a manner that would make the National Enquirer blush. That’s the truth, but maybe that doesn’t matter to your readers.

These morons spent the whole summer fighting for the right to pack heat at political events, and then are surprised that when you chase a politician screaming at them to their car, they might call the cops. I’m not surprised McCormack, who apparently was hired by the Weekly Standard to make Goldfarb look smart by comparison, wouldn’t understand that. But for the rest of us, we call that self-preservation and common sense.

From the shit you can’t make up file:

Dr. Daniel E. Fass, another chairman of the event who lives surrounded by financiers in Greenwich, Conn., said: “The investment community feels very put-upon. They feel there is no reason why they shouldn’t earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don’t want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown.”

Those poor babies.

NSFW, unless your boss is a hardcore otaku:

H/T Jezebel, where it ran over the weekend under the title “Fly Away Home, Gentle Underpants”

That wall between Fox opinion and Fox News that Howie Kurtz and the Snooze Hour stooges are always babbling about? Not so much.

I have a weird urge to buy one of those cardboard clocks that you see on retail desks when the clerk is at lunch. It will say ‘Gone Galt. Back in…’

In other news, a couple of photos from a walk around town yesterday.

I don’t know enough about climate science to critique much of what Levitt/Dubbner write, but there’s something that gets me because it’s so typical:

“The problem with solar cells is that they’re black.” Try googling “solar cells” — [Nathan, you can Bing “solar cells”] — and most of the panels you’ll see are in fact blue. I’ll call this half a howler. Lots of the cells are black. As we’ll see, however, it is NOT a problem. This is a bogus issue.

Now, I’m sure Levitt/Dubner would say this is a small thing, call off the pedant police, blah blah blah and so on. But the trouble is anecdotes (that’s sort of what this is, though it’s a bit worse) define a lot of our discourse. Al Gore said he invented the internet! The Clinton people took the “W” keys off the type writer! And this isn’t the first time Levitt/Dubner have gone in for an anecdotal whopper—Felix Salmon busted them peddling the “Shithead” urban legend in their last book.

The great thing about anecdotes is when you get busted on them, you can just say “who cares?” even if your entire methodology is built on anecdotes. I’m not saying that Freakonomics’ entire methodology is built on anecdotes, but David Brooks’ work (for example) is and his snotty, arrogant reply to Sasha Issenberg’s fact check of a Brooks Atlantic piece illustrates this perfectly:

I called Brooks to see if I was misreading his work. I told him about my trip to Franklin County, and the ease with which I was able to spend $20 on a meal. He laughed. “I didn’t see it when I was there, but it’s true, you can get a nice meal at the Mercersburg Inn,” he said. I said it was just as easy at Red Lobster. “That was partially to make a point that if Red Lobster is your upper end … ” he replied, his voice trailing away. “That was partially tongue-in-cheek, but Id id have several mini-dinners there, and I never topped $20.”

[.....]

“What I try to do is describe the character of places, and hopefully things will ring true to people,” Brooks explained. “In most cases, I think the way I describe it does ring true, and in some places it doesn’t ring true. If you were describing a person, you would try to grasp the essential character and in some way capture them in a few words. And if you do it as a joke, there’s a pang of recognition.”

The dishonesty of all this is amazing. Brooks eats at a few chain restaurants in lieu of doing actual research; and then when he can’t milk enough meaning out of the baby-back ribs and Jack Daniels chicken, he just starts making things up. What Levitt/Dubner do, I’m afraid, isn’t so different. Levitt admits he does “economics of pimping” type stuff because it’s so difficult to get ahead going traditional research. And then, not content with that, he has to lie in order to sex up his already lightweight, sexed up book.

It’s pathetic.