Today's shorters

I'd suggest everyone go over to Megan's and pester her about the "lipstick libertarian" blatant, rank, hypocrisy, but she only answers her critics passive aggressively, so we'll just have to wait to find out why it's our fault. Most likely it's cuz we're sexist, unlike the Reason commenters Roy pointed to who paid much more attention to them wimmin's words than appearances and completely ignored the invited lesbian references.
Also, I wanna be whiny for a moment and ask why only wimmin born in the first Nixon Admin or earlier or the second Reagan Admin or later flirt with me n this city. I know it doesn't sound like a bad thing, but I want a relationship, not cheap sex. I blame Sarah Jessica Parker.
Ok, emo moment over, now some shorters.

Good news, the Dow is falling: Here we see Megan attempting to invent the reverse Chicken Little boy who cried wolf. (It occurs to me chicken little was correct. Duh.)

Housing: are more and worse defaults to come?:

Alt-A buyers have more to lose, in terms of their credit rating, and are generally a little more firmly rooted in the American homeownership culture than those borrowing at subprime rates. I'd expect them to fight a lot harder to hold onto their homes, and their ratings, than the subprime borrowers--85% of whom, remember, are still paying their loans on time.

Is there really anyone who reads supposedly high end blogs such as at The Atlantic who is stupid enough to fall for a line like this? She's used it before to try to defend subprime loans, and it was stupid then, too. Does David Bradley have a stake in this issue? What is she trying to accomplish?

Signs of the times: I wish I had taken a screenshot of how crappy this post looked at first. It was like it was formatted by a child still learning word processing. Now it just reads like it was written by a child learning English as a second language.

It feels like these are the things that will be playing on the radio when someone makes an 'aughts nostalgia movie 25 years from now. Of course, the radio will undoubtedly be itself an anachronism that was only introduced in 2010 models.

No, her readers don't know what that means, either.

Why don't Walmart and Louis Vuitton discount?:

So why are sales common in the midmarket, but unheard of at both discounters and many luxury brands? Apple doesn't discount; neither does Bose or Louis Vuitton. At the other end, you don't see a lot of clearance racks at Costco or Wal-Mart. (Though expensive electronics, like cameras, do get marked down, at least at the one Wal-Mart I've been to.)

This passage is a good microcosm of the overall stupid in the post. To begin, Apple does discount, directly and indirectly. Directly through reduced pricing for college and graduate students, and many corporations, indirectly by dropping the price on the backstock of even the most slightly outdated models to third party sellers, who share some of those savings with their customers. But it's not as if Megan has recently done any blogging about Apple or their products that might have caused her to research their actual business practices.
Next, there's the incredible stupidity of asking why Wal*Mart doesn't discount. They do. They're kinda fucking famous for it, but those discounts mostly take the form of rollbacks. Apparently Megan would have to shop at Wal*Mart more often to know more about the business practices of the single most important, for good and mostly ill, retailer and employer in the fucking country. It's not like she writes about economics or anything.
I mean, fuck,

both sets of brands have a very distinct message that discounting wars with. ... In the case of the discounters, it is "You will get the best possible deal every time you shop here."

Discounting conflicts with the brand image of discounters.
What is wrong with this woman?

Just say no to terrorism:

every attack sends the message that animal welfare types are the kind of people who think it is okay to bomb someone's house in order to . . . shut down medical research. The people who could be persuaded to give up fur, or buy humane meat, or eat less meat, or even go vegetarian or vegan, close their ears. Way to win one for the industrial farmers, guys.

In all of Megan's countless posts on her veganism for The Atlantic she has never made the case for why industrial farming is bad. She's vaguely gestured at reasons why industrial meat is bad, maybe, but who is she kidding?
Megan has never, and will never, convince someone to follow her dietary practices, because SHE DOESN'T WANT PEOPLE TO. That would hurt the corporations producing industrial food, and it would make her less of a special, unique, perfect snowflake.

Even now it continually amazes me that Megan McArdle retains her position. There is no longer concern for quality of product at The Atlantic, every last vestige of its original spirit is dead. Congrats, David Bradley, you've successfully cheapened American public discourse.