Quote of the Day, Submitted Without Comment edition.

We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, the Enemy permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. – C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

Tweet of the Day, TIME TRAVELERS MUST READ THIS edition.

You want to calibrate exactly when you go to eavesdrop on this drunken conversation between Arthur C Clarke, CS Lewis, and JRR Tolkien. You don’t want to get there too early. Two drinks is too soon; five drinks is too many. You want to arrive somewhere between three and four ales apiece: that’s probably the peak point for Awesome Drunken Conversations.

…What? Recording awesome stuff on the sly is the only really ethical use of time travel that I can think of. I mean, you don’t want to actually change anything, right? …RIGHT?

Jobs ‘saved’ by ‘stimulus’ reduced to 2.5 million.

This week.

Contra Wizbang and Roger Kimball, this is actually the latest estimate of Mark Zandi, not the Obama administration itself. What the Obama administration is merely doing is trying to lower the expectations of their debt bill:

WASHINGTON (Reuters)- President Barack Obama’s aides warned Americans on Sunday not to expect instant miracles from the $787 billion economic stimulus bill he will sign this week, but said it would help eventually.

[I’m snipping the nonsense about how this was Obama’s first major legislative victory. The sentence should more properly read: “It was the legislature’s first major victory over his young presidency.” – ML]

“There will be signs of activity very quickly,” David Axelrod, the White House senior adviser, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But it’s going to take time for that to show up in the statistics. The president has said it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”

Continue reading Jobs ‘saved’ by ‘stimulus’ reduced to 2.5 million.