When you appear regularly on television and give these lectures and are asked to express opinions, you lose the essential thing you need to be a good journalist, which is being a good listener...

What Is World Reading Today
Josh Marshall has a excellent, far-reaching post up about the frustration of trying to engage in debate with people who have no desire to engage in any sort of serious discussion. (I was accused of something similar in my comments section recently, by the way, and I sort of pleaded guilty. But in the end, I responded.)
Take somebody like Mark Steyn, who wrote a polemic in The Daily Telegraph a few days ago that sounded nothing short of hysterical.
· How the West will win and continue to deny it? [ via Scottymac]

Millions of words have been written as to the motivations of voters. But the speculation misses the mark by far....
· S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.
· Ogle Google]

Well, it looks like when I'm ready to retire I will be poor. Great.
Here's a little sticker shock for you: By 2030, by which time most Boomers will be retired and those of us in Generation X will complain that today's whippersnappers have never even heard classic rock bands like Kajagoogoo and Men Without Hats, everything will be about 2.5 times more expensive than it is today , or more, thanks to the miracle of compound inflation.
· Five o' clock shadow? You're a marked man! Poor Us [ via Instinctive Scrooges are all around us. ]
· Poor Workers

Like Flies to Bulldust, hard work and creativity pounced on them
Adam Green: The key to making things happen is to take your client, who may not even deserve to be in the papers, see what he has to work with, and, even if it's not much, rub a few ideas together till something hopefully catches on fire.
· Determined Writer [blatantly pinched from Boy, Girl, Boy Study says NYTBR favors books, reviews written by men]