The story starts on the highway.

A June day so humid it feels like you’ve been swimming in the outdoors and you haven’t been clear of a coat of foul sweat in weeks. Driving fast without thinking, the surrounding cars falling away in magic obediance as you aim at the destination like a Zen archer. Everything is effortless and it feels like the car is driving you, making minute course corrections to avoid the flotsam and jetsam of the other motorists.

Yesterdaywas another day, indeed. What seemed interminable in the light of day seems all too short once energy is mustered and inertia overcome to depart for the bar, where the air is as still in as it is out and the barmaid remains motionless, unwilling to move, lest the exertion bring more accursed sweat.

But the beers are cold and the glasses sweat perfect circles of water on the scarred plank of the bar beneath them.

The first was that Air America was not properly funded from the beginning. Even before its launch, it was taken over by a con artist who was later convicted on un-related charges of business fraud. Managers spent money lavishly on talent and studios, while generating little advertising income. At one point, staff went without pay checks while Al Franken hustled money from new investors. New owners took over, but the operation continued to bleed cash until the latest owner finally said: Enough!

I went to school (and even briefly had as a supervisor) said con artist. If you went to school with me, YOU know.

Sorry to see Air America go, but hopefully they’ve made some things in this country get better.

“With all those guys in tow, it is unclear what Limbaugh needed with those 29 100mg Viagra pills”

(The Smoking Gun)

Haiti didn’t have that kind of tourism, I guess. Must have been that pact with the devil.

– Conor Friedersdorf

I understand Rush has been hospitalized with chest pains.

The person who has been introducing Palin into the more exalted social and political circles of the capital, and who has already arranged her appearance at the Alfalfa Club, is Fred Malek. Two things about Malek are worth bearing in mind.

The first is that he was an important member of the Nixon administration, a senior figure on the Republican National Committee, and the campaign manager for the re-election of George H.W. Bush in 1992. With his Carlyle Group and other corporate connections and his mansion in suburban McLean, Va.,* Malek is almost the prototypical “establishment” Washington insider and consiglieri Republican, against whom Palin’s adoring book-tour crowds, in their pathetic dreams, imagine her to be a crusader. But her preposterous book Going Rogue is larded with praise for the wise support and advice of this leathery old Beltway bandit. Populism? Hah! Unless, that is, you count Jew-baiting as a form of populism, which I suppose in a way it is. (Bryan, that other foe of Darwin, was also a fan of the Klan.)

Some good advice here, including:

How soon into the relationship should a player bring a twelve-sided die into the sack?
I am going to interpret your question literally and assume you are planning to fashion a string of anal beads out of the dice. A word of warning: they have slightly pointed edges that can cause discomfort. I would recommend starting with a d4 and working your way up. Usually, the third date is a good time to introduce this.