Eight! Count 'em! Eight Pulitzers!

The Seattle Times was firing on all cylinders yesterday, making me once again consider subscribing.

The local pinko rag ran a surprisingly good editorial yesterday, arguing (rightly) that whether Boeing puts a new plant in South Carolina or Washington is none of the federales' business. Unsurprisingly, the federales disagree, and are hauling Boeing before the NLRB to answer for its crime of daring to dispose of its property as it sees fit.

The offense? Boeing came right out and said that it was sick of dealing with the machinists' union, and since Washington is just about the most pro-union state in the country, Boeing bailed. Before bailing, Boeing told the union that if they agreed not to strike for ten years, the plant would be built here. The union balked, and Boeing decided to build in South Carolina, and said why publicly. For this intolerable statement of the obvious truth, Boeing will now be called to account.

Also in the Seattle Times (winner of eight Pulitzer prizes!) yesterday was this syndicated column by Michael Gerson on Ayn Rand. It contains the usual sophmoric attempts at attacking libertarianism, attacks which reveal more about how little Mr. Gerson knows about libertarianism than anything else, but is worth reading for its hilarious slap at Ms. Rand herself. Money quote: " Rand developed this philosophy at the length of Tolstoy, with the intellectual pretensions of Hegel, but it can be summarized on a napkin."

Finally, if you haven't read it already, go read Paul Krugman's column on the perils of 'consumer-based' health care, in which he renounces economics entirely, more or less. Seriously, it reads like a dumbed-down version of the usual commie screeds on the 'commoditization' of whatever they're butthurt about and how this commoditization alienates the whomever from the whatnot.