The Pappy Van Winkle Heist That Wasn’t
This story was originally written for Bloomberg BusinessWeek over the summer. Instead of running it they turned it into a highly-truncated cartoon thing that, being honest, was pretty darn clever and probably more appropriate for the subject matter than a 3,000-word story.Still, I’d like to have the words I wrote for it all preserved someplace, […]
Read moreDrug exec: “is is a moral requirement to make money when you can”
A drug company CEO raised the price of an antibiotic 400%. He justified it by saying the following: I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can . . . to sell the product for the highest price . . . I agree with Martin Shkreli that when he raised the […]
Read moreHunter S. Thompson nailed this one
Hunter S. Thompson had long since lost his fastball by 9/11. Within three and a half years he’d be dead. But what he wrote on 9/12/01 — like so much of what he wrote when the stakes were truly high — was dead on the fucking money. The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, […]
Read moreThe New York Times Op-Ed writer is no hero of the resistance
When Donald Trump became a credible political figure in the run-up to the 2016 election a lot of Republicans tried to distance themselves from him. For months the line was that he wasn’t really a Republican. He didn’t believe in Republican principles and policies, so he couldn’t be. Some Republicans I know even claimed he was actually […]
Read moreArguments from Authority
My daughter texted me from school today. She was in her freshman humanities class which is basically an English/social studies mashup. Anna texts me from school a lot. When she does so it’s usually the best part of my day. Today, like most days, it was because she wanted to share something funny with me. […]
Read moreThere are no accidents
Gen-Z at the Old Ballgame
I took my kids to Cleveland for the Orioles-Indians game on Friday night. They’re not really big baseball fans, but they like going to games. Partially because it’s fun and there’s junk food, but mostly because it provides them a new venue for the sort of savage and absurdist commentary for which Gen-Z kids are […]
Read moreOH-12: a bad outcome, but a good result
Last year I spent a lot of time talking about Ohio’s 12th district. I wrote about how I thought it was possible for a Democrat to win it and I proceeded to lay out a multipart road map of how, in my view, it could be done. This despite the fact that the district is sharply gerrymandered to favor […]
Read moreWill OH-12 flip to the Democrats next week?
Last year I wrote a multi-part series about how, in my view, it was very, very possible for a Democrat to win my district, the Ohio 12th Congressional district. This despite the fact that the district is sharply gerrymandered to favor Republicans. This despite the fact that the Republican routinely carried two-thirds of the vote. […]
Read moreDon’t forget how vile Donald Trump is. Don’t forget who put him in power.
Donald Trump is in the United Kingdom today and The Scotsman, Scotland’s national newspaper, published an editorial about him. There is not a single new piece of information in it, but it’s nonetheless a must-read. Primarily because there is not a single new piece of information in it: None of this is news to anyone, […]
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