Midday open thread

• Jacob Weisberg asks: Who's really pulling the plug on Grandma?

  It's not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make a timely exit. After all, that's been Republican policy for years.

  It was Sen. Grassley himself who rammed the GOP's most astonishing pro-death policy through the Senate in 2001. The estate-tax revision he championed reduces the estate tax to zero next year. But when the law expires at year's end, the tax will jump back up to its previous level of 55 percent. Grassley's exploding offer has an entirely foreseen if unintended consequence: It's going to encourage those whose parents and grandparents are worth anything more than a million bucks to get them dead by midnight on Dec. 31, 2010. This would be a great plot for a P.D. James novel if it weren't an actual piece of legislation.

• Looks like Sen. David Vitter may draw a challenger in the Republican primary: General Russell Honore, dubbed "the hero of Hurricane recovery." Local outlets report him signaling that he is "more than 50% sure that he will run."
• Could TARP turn a profit after all?
• Mark Athitakis of the terrific book blog, American Fiction Notes, ruminates about why there are so few novels being written about working class life.
• Oh, irony of ironies: Chevron's using solar power ... to drill for oil.
• Self-styled digital strategist Jordan Julien tried an interesting experiment--he went two weeks without traditional news sources and relied only on his online social networks to keep informed. Result?

  This was different than the type of news I was used to. It was very raw, unedited, uncensored, and uncategorized. But it was amazing. I didn't just get the news, I got to see how everyday people reacted to news; how people interpreted stories; what went on in peoples heads; how rumors can start; and how unclear data can cause major problems.

• From Indexed, a little slice of reality called All else being equal.

  

• In the past couple of years, I've become a sucker for online slideshows/essays. One of the most interesting I've run across lately is from Slate, which looks at Forest Hills Gardens, "A walkable, transit-oriented, architecturally rich planned community, built 100 years ago."