Quick Roundup 500

Win-Win

Torn between a favorite team and a favorite player, that's how I decided to look at yesterday's NFC Championship game going in. Either the Saints would finally appear in the Super Bowl or Brett Favre, my favorite quarterback, would be there again. Favre even made the downside of the eventual outcome easy for me: He threw one of his occasional ill-conceived passes for an interception near the end of regulation. He's just one year apart from me and I was sad to see him lose the game. But ... the wily veteran should have known better. That decision arguably cost the Vikings the game.

I recall one of the commentators speak of Favre's wife getting calls from friends and relatives also torn about the game. Favre, a fellow Mississippian, hails from a small town fairly close to New Orleans. Having watched Favre since college* and grown up listening to Yat-accented prophecies of Super Bowl glory, I knew exactly what they were talking about.

And now, for the Super Bowl: Archie Manning's old team against his son, Peyton's, team!

* I like Favre all the more now because I like seeing someone my age doing so well as a pro. Or, as my wife likes to joke: "Brett Favre makes you feel useful!"

Related: The accuracy of Drew Brees and a little Dr. John.

Venezuela's "Fat Cats"

A popular leftist conceit is that the bulk of the political opposition to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela consists of wealthy "fat cats." Not only is this notion wrong on the count that mere possession of money on someone's part does not ipso facto strip him of the right to moral consideration, but most of these individuals are, to the contrary, struggling to make ends meet.

As you'll have guessed by now, Carola and Andrea are the same person. She's just one of many of my friends who occupy a strangely contradictory social space I like to think of as the Hard-Up Elite: high-status professionals living off their salaries who are vastly better off than the average Venezuelan but struggle hard to afford the kind of lifestyle a truck driver in Madrid or a school lunch lady in Columbus, Ohio take for granted.

Read the whole thing. (HT: Dismuke)

BK to Open Biergartens?

I was intrigued to see that Burger King, whose hamburgers are tastier than McDonald's, but whose cooking methods are less well-suited to the lunch-hour rush, will open a restaurant in Miami featuring beer on the menu:

Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy says adding beer at selected locations around the world is part of Miami-based Burger King's effort to reinvent itself as a fast-food restaurant with a sit-down feel.

This strikes me as an excellent move on Burger King's part, although the beer selection sounds disappointing to me. Still, perhaps if this move meets with enough success, something more interesting than "macro-brew" will eventually make its way to the beer list. It just about has to since this segment of the market is already served by Beck's Prime.

As for Africa, so with Haiti

As I head out the door, I see that someone is arguing that foreign aid has actually been harming Haiti. I have noted similar arguments being made regarding foreign aid to Africa during the past few years.

-- CAV