10 Books

All the best bloggers are doing it but I didn't think much about it because my books wouldn't be life-changing, mind-changing intellectual challenges like Sophocles or whatever. In fact, while my books changed me and the way I viewed the world, I really can't remember specifically why or how in any detail. Just that they impressed me at a time and it made a difference and I've never forgotten.

1. Gone With The Wind — Scarlett became my female role model, replacing Nancy Drew.
2. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. First, big, serious book I read independently, loaned to me in high school by a college boyfriend. I ate it up.
3. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
4. Shirley Jackson horror stories.
5. Catch-22.
6. The Alexandria Quartet.
7. A series of famous people bios for children that had orange covers. Babe Ruth taught me how to hit a baseball, important at the time, and the Zen of it has applied to most of my life. Keep your eye on the ball. Always.
8. All the Black Stallion books. And the Lad, A Dog books.
9. Little Women, Little Men, whatever else she wrote.
10. Richard Hofstader, probably The Age of Reform, but I'm not sure.
11. Confessions of An Ex Prom Queen, Fear of Flying.

Okay, that's 11. Take off the Quartet then.

How Health Care Reform Is Financed

For more, go here.

Pope: Day Two

Apparently the BBC has a documentary going on tonight with even more damning evidence of Benedict's determination to cover it all up.
I honestly don't see how the Catholic Church survives this without a tornado of openness and inquiry and accountability, starting with Pope.

The Real Orange Satan

Grim News Begone

Have a little Gail Collins to cheer you up.
Thanks, I needed that.

Really, there is just so much transformation a person can handle. One day you go to bed worrying about death panels. Next day you wake up and health care reform is so trendy that the coolest spring accessory is a pre-existing condition.

Okay, it's not vintage Collins, especially the old news about Limbaugh, but it's something. I need something.
Isn't tomorrow Friviality Thursday?

JFC!

Can you believe this?

Senate Republicans succeeded early Thursday in forcing a change in a measure altering President Barack Obama's newly enacted health care overhaul, meaning the bill will have to return to the House for final congressional approval.

Where's my medication?

OMFG!

Benedict may as well have died today.
We kinda knew this was coming, right? It was just a matter of time.

As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI and other Vatican officials did not punish or even hold a trial within the Catholic church for a Wisconsin priest who may have molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to The New York Times.

Lawrence O'Donnell: Beltway Hasbeen

I kinda sorta liked him, so much that I allowed him to convince me he actually knew something about reconciliation that I didn't. No more.
Andrew Sullivan was rude enough to remind me of my misplaced trust today.

“Pelosi said that, ‘We don’t have the votes for passing the Senate bill’ and that should have just ended it. Any discussion of another scenario is juvenile. ... We’re absolutely in full fake cheerleading mode. I think Nancy Pelosi has absolutely no moves left. I think she knows that now," Lawrence O'Donnell, the Democratic Senate Finance Committee staff director during the ’93-’94 health care debate, on February 1 this year.

Sister Carol Keehan, This Pen's For You

The president of the Catholic Health Association, which supported the health reform bill, got one of the 20 signing pens handed out today.
Nancy had 435 cats to herd, but Sister Carol had to face down those bishops.

K-K-Karl Rove Was Right

Oh Ye Of Little Faith Dept.

...and my man Weiner, Barney Frank, et al don't know Nancy Pelosi the way they should.

March 21 Declared Official Waterloo Day

by Contrarienne.
And on that note, Sullivan reminds us:

This is what we’ve learned this year: Obama does not mind defeats if they are procedural or about others saving face. He’s happy to admit error; to give his opponents a chance to lunge at his jugular; to let opponents enjoy a day in the sun; to shave off any small stuff as long as the big stuff remains. He seems oddly impervious to personal insult: he doesn’t mind being affronted by the Chinese or humiliated by Netanyahu as long as it’s a matter of symbolism. On substance, he wants what he wants; and, on the big stuff, he has given up on nothing yet.

This is the sort of thing I want to believe, that Obama and the Democrats he influences will prevail in the promise to change things for the better, to offer hope. I've always wanted to believe those things, and until Ronald Reagan, I felt encouraged.

Everything, Repeat, Everything

you need to know about the health care reform bill is linked today by Andrew Sullivan.

C-SPAN Vido Archive

another online resource for your continuing education. And mine.

Charlevoix, Michigan

I have fond memories. The most exquisitely beautiful water I've ever seen, some deep emerald green the cause of which I've never known.
But besides that, Connie Saltonstall's from there, and will challenge Stupak in the Democratic primary. Does she have a chance? It's a conservative district.
I'm thinking of giving her money anyway, just a few bucks I can't afford, but hell...I do my little part.

Republicans Are Fucked, By Themselves

David Frum explains.
Tidbit:

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

Poem For Sunday

Andrew Sullivan posted this today, it was sourced from a nursing Web site.

Please Bring Strange Things

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.

---Ursula K. Leguin

Woke Up This Mornin'

And three RSS feeds are telling me Stupak is a yes vote. Hello day after spring.
Rough guess is the last vote will be about 9 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. here.

Today's The Day

About eight hours from now, the House will pass the health care reform bills. Or not.
But I'm betting it will happen, because all my favorite people want it to happen and my least favorite want it to fail.
What else is there but hope? Oh, yeah, forgiveness. Goes without saying.
Anyway, a friend passed along this short AP piece that purportedly puts it into perspective, and Taplin featured it, too. So I guess it's worth reading. I read it. It's AP, what else can I say?
The language is dramatic, but that's AP style nowadays. It's a little short on perspective for me. I liked the NYT timeline better. How's that prosiness workin' out for ya, AP?

Today's The Day

“You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.”

        Nancy Pelosi, Jan. 28, 2010