Eric Reasons

The opening incantation of P.J. O'Rourke's new book, Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending : The feminists grabbed our women, The liberals banned our guns, The health cops snuffed our cigarettes, The bailout has our funds, The laws of Breathalyzing Put an end to our roadside bars, Circle the Fords and Chevys, boys, THEY'RE COMING TO TAKE OUR CARS. Now THAT, my friends, is poetry.

I'm going to try and put all this together later, but here's what I'm working with. 1) Fed mistreats bond-holders in Chrysler deal in favor of unions . How likely is it that bond holders will want to offer up any additional capital for companies in bed with the Fed? 2) Stress tests say banks need $75 billion , and their going to have to raise it on the private market. Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary: For those institutions needing more capital, “everyone involved will be looking for banks to raise this through either private means or the selling of some assets that they have or that they control,” Gibbs added. Side note: GMAC is one of the banks that needs money. 3) Treasury Auction of bonds yesterday draws fewer buyers than expected . Yield on bonds jump to move the treasury bonds. This indicates a potential problem for future borrowing by the Fed to finance deficit spending. So, the Obama administration is tipping the scales against capital holders in companies ...

This is too good. A 22-year old student placed a false quote on Wikipedia, and it was reproduced in the obituary in countless "legitimate" newspapers around the world.

Maureen Dowd follows the litany of professional chattering class members thumbing their noses at Twitter . In an oh-so-clever twist, she interviews Biz Stone and Evan Williams, creators of Twitter, in a format that allows for only 140 characters in the questions or answers. (She even used the same title as one of my blog posts on the same subject , which probably means I wasn't being clever enough.) It's one of her more insipid articles, second only in recent memory to the article asking whether Michelle Obama should stop showing off her biceps . Why did you think the answer to e-mail was a new kind of e-mail? Fritinancy gives an excellent sendup of Ms. Dowd's article , rewriting it was if Dowd was interviewing Alexander Graham Bell. Why did you think the answer to telegrams was a noisy new telegram? Read Maureen Dowd, then read Fritinancy. Too good.

I'm about to break the fourth wall, here. Something I specifically avoid most of the time on this blog, but this example is just too good not to document. Forgive me just this once, but I'm going to mention my day job . I get home from work today, and I hit my RSS feeds in Google Reader. Most of these are typical subscriptions, but a few are Google-driven blog searches. The one that searches blog posts for mention of "The Henry Ford" (where I am the network engineer), strikes this post on Re*Move . The first line? Joe and I have decamped this week quite a lot to the cafe in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, because the wifi's so much faster than the Dearborn Inn, where we've been staying. Hehe. You're welcome fellas. They go on to say: Proving the power of Twitter to get people together, we tweeted we were here and yesterday were soon joined by Carrie Nolan, a PR manager from the museum, who came to say hi and tell us how things are going. Chec...

Martin Belam, Information Architect for the Guardian, UK, on the principles guiding the Guardian's online presence: That URLs should be PERMANENT, that all content should be uniquely ADDRESSABLE, that multiple routes to content make everything DISCOVERABLE, and that everything should be as OPEN as possible. Looks like he's promoting Jeff Jarvis' model of searchability, Search Engine Optimization, and making the site as easy to search, link, and share as possible. This philosophy should guide all Internet Development, everywhere. Particularly for information rich sites like news organizations. These principles maximize your chances of landed on the coveted first page of search engine results. Read the whole piece here .

I've been watching must of the post-game analysis on the nationwide Tea Parties this week, and I'm a little embarrassed for the Media. Someone has to be embarrassed for them, because they themselves are pretty shameless. Red Eye had a nice send-up of CNN and MSNBC's adolescent humor: CNN's Susan Roesgen went after protesters with the MoveOn.org talking points memo in hand. I expect this crap from MSNBC, but CNN? On the flipside over at Fox News, the network is quick to jump on the coattails of the movement, and all but take credit for it. Neil Cavuto hit the Sacramento Tea Party, and Sean Hannity decided to take his show to the Tea Party in Atlanta. Newt Gingrich joined him from the one in New York. The Republican party, starved for leadership and a message is trying to glom onto this movement. But RNC Chairman Michael Steele was allegedly rebuffed by the Chicago Tea Party organizers. This attention from conservative media led some of the liberal (nay, mainstream) medi...