A Final Gulp or Two as the Party Winds Down

Pity the New York Times, which used to be a newspaper but now is a collage of liberal pieties, some feebly muted (those are called news stories) and some screamed at full volume (the editorials and op-eds). But what about the obligation to review automobiles for its wealthy readers, especially those who want something stronger than Starbucks coffee to start the day? Today's paper offers a hilarious example: the Mercedes Benz E63 AMG. The reviewer just loves driving it, but feels he must alternate his praise with disgust at its road-muscling, gas-guzzling ways: the Benz, he says, "feels like a two-ton burrito in habanero sauce: driving it is akin to the last gas-spewing binge before the diet begins." As St. Paul might have said, give me 50 mpg, Lord, but not just yet.... Blue skies! -- Dan Ford