- Hell is hot but entertaining. Rich people dress like bums, top executives have no title on their cards, beautiful women dress down: it’s called “counter signaling.” More examples over at Marginal Revolution.
- Hell has a mild day. Local ultracon Tom Roeser endorses and seeks to expand the century-old progressive reform of primary elections, calling for a state law requiring that the runner-up in any primary election should automatically succeed to the candidacy if the winner cannot continue. Thus Jim Oberweis would have run against Barack Obama for Senate in 2004, and Forrest Claypool would now be running for Cook County Board chair against Tony Peraica. Conservatives are just liberals who take longer to get it.
- Hell is air-conditioned. Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post, “The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now.” (Hat tip to Cliopatria.)
- Hailstorms in hell. The New Standard (“Independent. Commercial-free. Nonprofit. Uncompromised.”) reports that Illinois will offer extra subsidies to companies locating “near affordable housing units or public-transportation routes,” a move that has sucked some subsidy foes into speaking kindly of this form of boodle.
- Hell just froze over. Environmental Defense is hiring a “project manager” to work with Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Arkansas, “to create substantive, measurable and lasting environmental progress.” (Hat tip to worldchanging.)