Read Stuff, You Should

Lots of things today, including two to skip. The first is current: you really don't want to bother with today's Maureen Dowd. I'm a fan...but today's misfire tries to fit Mad Men, Letterman, and a bunch of other things all linked by men having affairs and not much else. You also can safely skip last week's Politico piece by Alex Isenstadt about John McCain, fashioner of the New GOP. He claims that McCain is trying to remake the GOP in his image, but the evidence he presents is only that McCain is paying back favors from the campaign. As Steve Benen says, "[I]t's not at all clear how, exactly, McCain would change his party...But what does he want to "reshape" it into? I have no idea, and my hunch is, McCain doesn't either."

On to what is worth spending your time on:

1. Fred Kaplan explains what you need to know about the McChrystal/Shinseki question.

2. As a Cal alum, I enjoyed (if that's the right wold) Michael O'Hare's recent posts on various pieces of bad news about UC Berkeley, including this one about football.

3. Seth Masket says smart things about individual malfeasance and systemic failure.

4. This Joe Mathews article is a fair-minded and honest takedown of once and future buffoon governor Jerry Brown. It's better than Brown deserves, but perhaps it'll convince a few liberals that they still shouldn't trust Moonbeam. Has any state had a worse run of governors than California?

5. I thought Richard Posner's thoughts on Keynes were well worth the extended length (particularly recommended for those who don't know why a stimulus is supposed to stimulate).

6. TNC's latest must-read (but then again, anything he says about politics, broadly defined, is must-read. Oh, and insert Giants/Cowboys woof here...a couple of weeks old, but still sweet).

7. Comic relief: you'll want to read both Rod Dreher's comments and the original document. They totally have to get Sarah P. to do the audiobook version.