DEPARTMENT OF COMMENTS FROM MAJOR MEDIA WEBSITES: This little one in the Economist:

This article does no good for the Economist's credibility. I'm asking myself: "If articles about a country which I know well (I'm French) are so misguided and misinformed, how can I trust the Economist for news about other parts of the world - which is why I read the Economist in the first place?"

I remember Atrios saying something like this years ago, and I was all, "OH THAT ATRIOS. He's just a meanie. He doesn't even take Instapundit seriously!" Atrios was right about Instapundit, and right about The Economist. Once you see them write about something you know something about, it's invariably at least questionable and then you start thinking--hey, is this page on Ecuadorean politics also suspect? And your interest in The Economist starts to trail off. Plus it's right bloody expensive, as they say over there.

(The comment appears in this article on Francois Holland's probable victory over Nicolas "Jon Corzine in 2009" Sarkozy in the French elections, where a right bloody war has broken out in that comments thread.)

AH, I SWEAR I DON'T PLAN ANY OF THIS: Like writing a post a month. I mean I don't have a reminder set up in my phone or something that tells me, "it's been a month! Update the stupid blog again!" It must be something primitive, in the back of my hindbrain, that gives me the ability to post on a nearly monthly basis. OMG IT'S INNATE! EVOLUTION PROVIDED FOR A BLOGGING GENE!

DEPT. OF PRESSING THE LIKE BUTTON ON COMMENTS MADE ON OTHER PEOPLE'S BLOGS: The entity known as "elm," a member of the LGM commentariat, offers the following on the "Corey Robin on Cory Booker" thing:

Yes, sure, but how do we know he didn’t set the fire to begin with just so he good [sic] save the woman? Answer me that, will you.
(Seriously, even if Booker had funded the fire department up the wazoo, do we think that it would have improved reaction time such that they got there before Booker, who lived next door? Once he saw the fire and knew someone was inside, what was he supposed to do? He did the brave–even heroic–thing, but we’re not supposed to applaud him because he’s not always as progressive as we would want? Really?)

Yeah, the Robin thing...it just struck me as the work of someone so focused on their own set of issues they can't even enjoy a good set of "CORY BOOKER IS CHUCK NORRIS" jokes in the aftermath of an elected American official saving a woman from a fire.