Today's Poem

is the first one I've recommended in a while. Not even Yeats from Sunday. Hunh.

Packet
by Jamie Ross
A green light that comes when you never saw it coming, never heard it, felt it, but you knew it like the woman in the sandlot behind Abram's Grill who's just lost her lenses, on her hands and knees, her hair cut short but seems as if it's flowing, and the rush on her throat like a rise from birth, the music in the car as the engine goes silent while you fold down a seat for the stashed beam lantern with it's yellow plastic grip, six Ray-O-Vacs, the movement in the trees beyond Lake Michigan. It's a wave like that when the wind gets lost and the mail-boat from Racine, three hours late, cracks into a tanker, where the crew, like you, has waited on the decks, in the hold for two months out, to send a message home—or to get a certain scent, for just one instant, of weeds, in the dirt, the both of you groping.

Nobel Winner Explains My Entire Life

But I was too incompetent to know it.

Dunning and Kruger argued in their paper, “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.  Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.”

I Love The Intertubes

I couldn't be there, except in spirit. But I felt like I was there. New York City, a story on every block, a drama on every corner. Human family.

Bhangra in the East Village from Derek Beres on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch

There's this thing called fusion. I dunno either, but people who do seem to think we MIGHT BE SAVED!

Successful early test shots suggest that the NIF will achieve the first ignition within the next few months, and that shot will be heard round the world.

The American Health Care System

Sometimes it helps to have a little perspective. Andrew Sullivan found this:

The truth is that the volume and complexity of the knowledge that we need to master has grown exponentially beyond our capacity as individuals. Worse, the fear is that the knowledge has grown beyond our capacity as a society. When we talk about the uncontrollable explosion in the costs of health care in America, for instance—about the reality that we in medicine are gradually bankrupting the country—we’re not talking about a problem rooted in economics. We’re talking about a problem rooted in scientific complexity.

Half a century ago, medicine was neither costly nor effective. Since then, however, science has combatted our ignorance. It has enumerated and identified, according to the international disease-classification system, more than 13,600 diagnoses—13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we’ve discovered beneficial remedies—remedies that can reduce suffering, extend lives, and sometimes stop a disease altogether. But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures. Our job in medicine is to make sure that all of this capability is deployed, town by town, in the right way at the right time, without harm or waste of resources, for every person alive. And we’re struggling. There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver.

Would I be alive today without Spireva and Advair? Possibly not. Certainly not walking or breathing without assistance. They cost a lot.

Clean ALL The Things

Adult is hard.

Project Runway: Eleanor Of Aquitane Edition

Queen of France divorces King of France (how was that possible) to marry King of England, bear him eight children, create the culture of love. Oh, yeah, she fought in a Crusade, too.
Here's what we would have her wear.
Do you think she got dumpy in her old age? Wiki thinks not.

Why I Love The Intertubes

and the people who contribute to Metafilter. Because how would I ever know about this without them?
Delight for delight's sake. What is life for besides that?

'There Is No Resupply Vehicle'

Taplin has this ongoing project on what he calls the Interregnum, which is explained here.
But the last sentence is what got me.

...we are all passengers on spaceship earth, flying through the cosmos. Everything we have for the journey is already on board the ship (except sunlight for life generation). There is no resupply vehicle.

Laugh Out Loud

Obama gets BP to withhold dividends and put $20 billion — $20 BILLION — toward and independently administered damage fund, and the GOP calls it "Chicago-style shakedown."
That's it. That's all they can think of to say. Hallelujah! The GOP just fucked itself sooo big time.

Headline O' Teh Day

Scientists Study Ozzy Osourne's Blood To Find Out Why He's Still Alive

My Goodness, Indeed

The crazier woman who beat the crazy woman for the GOP Senate nomination in Nevada has inadvertently revealed the new crazyspeak for guns.

If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.

Is that crazy enough for ya?

Can They Do That?

Yes, they can.

Denmark and the Netherlands played to a scoreless tie in the first half of their World Cup matchup Monday, but a costly Danish error gave the Dutch the lead just after the second half began. Less than one minute into the new half and with the Netherlands threatening, left back Simon Poulsen attempted to clear the ball with a header, but instead he deflected it into teammate Daniel Agger's back, where it bounced into the Danish goal, giving a score to the Dutch team. The goal was credited to Simon Poulsen. Scroll down for video.

 Am I watching the WC? No.
The opening episode of True Blood was awesome. As the LA Times put it, you want werewolves? We got werewolves!

The Internet Is My Only News Source These Days

So stop me if you've heard this:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

Or this:

Apparently, according to historian, Douglas Brinkley there is a huge federal gulf recovery act being planned by the Obama administration and by Congress that would be on the scale of Tennessee Valley Authority.

Dean's Blue Hole

Full screen advised.

Question O' Teh Day

Q: How long does it take a determined corgi dog to remove the duct tape used to repair the inevitable tear in her "indestructable" Zogoflex Frisbee?
A. About ten seconds.

Still, it lasted about six months, six times as long as other Frisbees. Add to annual budget, Frisbee: $14.50 X 2.

The Lusty Lady

A Seattle landmark no more.
I went into the lobby once to use their cash machine. Everyone was very friendly.

Bill died because he hired a hooker who was giving him a blowjob while he drove through downtown Seattle and he had a heart attack. The car crashed, the hooker fled the scene, and Bill was dead. That's when everything went to shit."

They Read It

so you don't have to then tell you what's worth your time.

Ooh, Soccer!

Ronaldo, is that you?

Why Bother With Journalists

when there's The Daily Show? I dunno. Why?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2010 - Primary Victory for Women
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

The Birds

Andrew Sullivan's readers have uncomfortably noted that wind turbines, one feel-good alternative to oil drilling in the Gulf, kill a lot of birds, about 300,000 a year.
But not nearly as many as building windows.
No one mentions cats. Hundreds of millions, according to the American Bird Conservancy. Of course, they're not killing brown pelicans.

Absurdity O' Teh Day

There are always so many that I usually fail to notice. But this is just too much.
It seems GM does not want anyone to say Chevy ever again. When I read that, I thought maybe they were retiring the Chevrolet brand.
But nooo, they've hired a new ad agency that has this thing about politically correct branding. Wonder if they considered the fallout from being the laughingstock of late night for the next week. Beats lame primary jokes, eh David? (I don't speak directly to Jay.)
I love America.

Cheap Shot Dept.

I always loved Leno's Jaywalking even though it seemed like a set-up.
But here we have the Advanced Placement, otherwise known as the APs, to confirm our worst suspicions. American children are not getting educamated.
My fav:

Most importantly, men now know how to make their own sandwiches.

Mmm, sandwiches.

Sarah's Girls

The part of the FOX News report I liked best is "Palin is not commenting."
Sarah not commenting when she's offered air time by her favorite? How can that be?
Remember, I read it so you don't have to.
Ta-ta!

Don't Say I Didn't Warn You

Should I Go

on a mind fast?

I Didn't Know That

Obama donned a bow tie, presumably in honor of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens'  sartorial trademark, when he gave a message about Stevens' retirement. I think it's cute, but also spookily reminiscent of the black Muslim Brother Mouzone featured as a hired hit man in The Wire.

Torture, Ch. XXX, Etc., Ad Infinitum, Blah-blah

There's a new report.

OK, but so what? Every member of the Cheney-Bush torture regime still roams free, having not even been given a wrist-slap for ordering, condoning, participating in or writing twisted legal rationalizations for these violations. Why would the revelations in PHR's new report matter except as confirmation for what we already have long suspected? Because there is a possibility, PHR argues, that unlike the justifications written for enhanced interrogation techniques, the Office of Legal Counsel may not have approved the experiments as being legal. That might make administration officials liable for new charges that might be prosecutable.

Chad Liked This

Chad is what I call my inner 14-year-old boy. My inner Bob thought it was a bit much. I don't know how to explain Bob, but he's sort of old-fashioned about some things. Also, he's missed the last 27 years of entertainment and everything else.

Pure from Jacob Bricca on Vimeo.

I Don't Recall

Gonzo may really have meant it when he said he couldn't remember. The rest of us just go along believing the fantasies.

...every time we remember anything, the neuronal structure of the memory is delicately transformed, or reconsolidated. And that is why it's so easy to convince naive subjects that they met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland.

You Don't Know Shit

But that's okay. You're human.

...63 percent of Americans consider themselves more intelligent than the average American, a statistical impossibility. In a different survey, 70 percent of Canadians said they considered themselves smarter than the average Canadian.)

Kids And Books

 This really got to me. Tears welled up. Really.

As much as we love libraries, there is something in possessing a book that's significantly different from borrowing it, especially for a child. You can write your name in it and keep it always. It transforms you into the kind of person who owns books, a member of the club, as well as part of a family that has them around the house. You're no longer just a visitor to the realm of the written word: You've got a passport.

More on the study here.http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/06/02/summer_book_giveaway/index.html

Geoduck!

What would Julia say? Well, whatever she would say, at least I could understand it. I am glad the French know how to have fun, but I would like to know what he does next.

Comment O' Teh Day

On Huffpo's story about the Arizona elementary school principal who ordered that mural artists lighten the "controversial" faces of black and Hispanic students in response to racist taunting.

If we'd have known that electing a "different" looking President with a "funny" name was all it took to be able to easily identify the racists among us, we'd have done it earlier!

Nickel And Dimed

Never read Barbara Erenreich's book, so don't know if it touched on this:

In his research, [Edward Gresser, senior fellow and director of trade policy at the Progressive Policy Institute] found that the tariff rate on a cashmere sweater is 4 percent; the rate for one made of much cheaper acrylic is 32 percent. A silk brassiere has a tariff rate of less than 3 percent, but the rate on a polyester one is slightly less than 17 percent. The tariff rate on a snakeskin handbag is just over 5 percent but climbs to 16 percent for one made of canvas. Similar variations occur when it comes to household goods. Drinking glasses that cost more than $5 each have a tariff of 3 percent, while those that cost less than 30 cents each have a rate of 28.5 percent. A silk pillowcase has a rate of 4.5 percent; this goes up to nearly 15 percent for one made of polyester.
Overall, clothes and shoes contributed nearly $10 billion in tariff revenue in 2009, while higher-cost items including audiovisual equipment, computers and even cars added less than $2 billion. Gresser contends that the $10 billion is disproportionately borne by people who can’t afford to buy luxury goods. What’s more, when customers pay sales tax on these products, that amount is also higher than it would otherwise be thanks to the tariff that drives up the retail price.

Speaking Of Iceland

The voters of Reyjavik have just elected the nation's top comic to be their mayor, over four other candidates.
Taplin thinks it's significant.
I think South Carolina is significant.
Which of us is right?

Friviality Friday

The hound dog and the orangutan.

Even Dave Barry Couldn't Make Up South Carolina

It just is.

Who'da Thunk It?

In the hot Washington afternoon, in one of those endlessly bustling government offices, there sits a man named Michael J. Astrue, the fifty-four-year-old head of the Social Security Administration. Competent, organized, bald, and busy, he is not a politician, exactly, but one of those people who has to live in a highly political world, trying to make what the politicians come up with actually work...

...Across the city, in the only slightly less hot Washington evening, in an apartment overlooking Georgetown, sits Astrue’s opposite, a man named A.M. Juster: formalist poet, comic versifier, and classical translator. Eight years ago, Juster won the Richard Wilbur Award for his collection The Secret Language of Women (2002), besides publishing book-length translations of Petrarch (the 2002 Longing for Laura) and Horace (the 2008 Satires). 

Full story at First Things, a bit of a wonderment itself, being "published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society."
Scary, huh?
I'm so glad I ran across Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God" on TV today. Recommended for hilarity alone. "Depok Chapra is full of shit." Reminds me of me.

'Attention Seeking Whores'

is another term for survival impulse.
Here's a charming little video from 80ish Peter Oakley about his YouTube experience.
Would it be quite so charming without the British accent? Probably not, but I don't find Tony Hayward the least bit charming.


This all comes from Sullivan this morning, who includes a number of thought provoking links entitled "How Have You Deployed Your Cognitive Surplus?"
Indeed.

Israeli History

It was Britain's turning away of a ship full of Holocaust survivors trying to reach Israel and the worldwide sympathy that followed which many view as a turning point in the push for a Jewish state.
The Israeli attack on the activist flotilla may similarly be seen some day as a turning point for the Palestinian cause.

Headline O' Teh Day

OMFG!

Quote O' Teh Day

I don't have huge faith in the possibility of psychotherapy to change people as I used to. In fact, I now think poetry has more capacity to change people than psychotherapy. If you read a poem and it gets to you, it can shift your perspective in quite a big way, and writing a poem, even more so.

Sean Haldane, poet and psychotherapist

This Gives Me Hope

University of Oregon a' capella group On The Rocks.

Death In The Gulf, Day Forty-Something

Josh Marshall's reader, MM, a former investigative journalist, asks a few pertinent questions. Will there be ansers?

Sex And The City2

is not a crappy movie after all. It is a science fiction movie. A.O. Scott of the New York Times — and moi — got it wrong. But Mannequin was better.

This review was kinda fun.
Outtake:

essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls.

Oh, Okay

here's Dennis Hopper.

Lefties Can Be Big Jerks, Too

I first heard about Mikey Weinstein, I think, in a piece 60 Minutes did. But his work to prevent the Christianization of the military is well-known among liberal bloggers and I've read various pieces on it at Daily Kos.
So this little bit of good-meet-perfecthood just about nails the absurdity of ideological purity.

ZZZzzz And The City

Don't pay money, don't spend time to see this movie. I loved the show, hated the first movie and the second is, reportedly, even worse. SJP, you have sold us out for a heap of potash. Or something.

The first “Sex and The City” movie, which came out two years ago, qualifies as a comedy both because it is somewhat funny and because, according to a more classical definition, it ends, after some reversals and delays, with a wedding. The sequel — which should have borrowed a subtitle from another picture opening this week and called itself “Sex and the City: The Sands of Time” — begins with a wedding and never seems to end. Your watch will tell you that a shade less than two and a half hours have elapsed, but you may be shocked at just how much older you feel when the whole thing is over.

Friviality Friday

Pinky the cat has been around a year, but this was the first time I'd heard of it.

Pop Quiz O' Teh Day

Disclosure: I got nine out of 12 questions correct, but that's because I somehow didn't see and didn't answer the second question, which I would not have gotten wrong.
Test yourself.

Women And Movies

Give your favorite films the Bechdel test:
1. Are there two or more women in it?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

I liked the relationship between the Red Queen and Um, although it was a relationship predicated on a fabrication. But I think it passed the test. I haven't been watching many movies lately, so I'll keep my antenna up in the future.

America And Morals

Doctor assisted suicide: tie
Gay or lesbian relations: close for teh gay
Out-of-wedlock babies: um, okay sort of
Abortion: nah

Government torture, government spying on citizens, financial industry control of government, oil industry control of government:Priceless

Gallup report here.

At Last

Someone who knows something writes in to TPM about the oil spill.

On having Obama "do more," WTF is he supposed to do? Everybody seems to be calling for more fire in his belly and scary, threatening speeches. What does that accomplish? It's like people want him to do a dramatic speech like post-9/11 about bringing the criminals to justice. It does nothing to actually plug the damn well. The
government does not have the expertise to do more to stop this gusher. It's in BPs interest to stop the gusher. All the conspiracy theories about wanting to preserve the well for future production are technically wrong and ignore that NOBODY in the industry benefits from this gusher continuing. BP wants what everybody else wants, though
I'll concede that I suspect dispersants are about killing life where it's less easily photographed. Dispersants aside, the only conflict of interest is regarding the causes of the blowout, not the capping of the well. Fed investigations are already taking care of that part.

Eat The Rich

Want to know why Larry Summers is out there floating another stimulus? Because it's scary out there, that's why.
The experts I most often turn to (Paul Krugman and, um, Paul Krugman and whoever confirms Paul Krugman) said the stimulus was too small, but acknowledged it may have been politically impossible to do otherwise.
I think it's significant that Summers is talking another one.
Here's a somewhat lengthy analysis. Key quote:

“We’re about to see a big national experiment on stress.”

You've probably already heard all about most of the social and economic fallout among various sectors of our population. I read all four pages of this thing and there wasn't a single fact that was new to me.
So let's just jump to the end:

Concerns over deficits are understandable, but in these times, our bias should be toward doing too much rather than doing too little. That implies some small risk to the government’s ability to continue borrowing in the future; and it implies somewhat higher taxes in the future too. But that seems a trade worth making. We are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe, one that could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come. We have a civic—and indeed a moral—responsibility to do everything in our power to stop it now, before it gets even worse.

Let Us Be Happy

the glass, the songs, and the laughter make the night more beautiful.



The Brindisi, Act 1 La Traviata

Stop

Traffic

Streetcars, pedestrians, horse-drawn carts, horses and riders, cars.
San Francisco, 1905. The randomness of it all shocked me.


Correction: 1906 just days before the earthquake. And not as random as originally thought, at least not the car part.

AKC Includes Mutts In Competition

And MetaFilter commenter sets the proper tone with "Another example of our failing standards under Obama."

Too bad Gus is too old, I think he'd be great. Shorty could probably do it.

Browsing

on the Web is all very fine and good, but I don't have time.
So I subscribe to Mark and Angel, who send me stuff like this and then I can go out and garden after passing it along to you.

Comment O' Teh Day

If the GOP has to choose between dumb and insane for their candidates, which is preferred?

Commenter Chimpale after reading TPM's report of the ineffable Vaughn Ward of — you guessed it — Idaho!

ineffable — n., adj., cannot be more effed if he tried.

Just Like Bush

I'm so tired of the handwringing super pures out there that I blew up at a friend this week and  called yet another missive she forwarded to me "crap." But I stand by it anyway, because it is.
Here's why:

So if things go the way I think they'll go, by later this year Obama, Pelosi, and Reid will have passed a historic stimulus bill, the Lily Ledbetter Act, healthcare reform, college loan reform, financial reform, repeal of DADT, and Obama will have withdrawn from Iraq.¹ Not bad for 18 months of work. And who knows? There's even a chance that Obama's Afghanistan escalation will work. If it does, what president since LBJ will have accomplished more in his first term?
¹Except for the pesky "residual force," of course. Still, once the combat forces are gone, it's hard to see a scenario in which they're ever sent back in.

Oh, wait. They're not perfect. They could have, should have, would have (if Nader, Feingold, FDR were in charge) because, dammit, we say so.
I'm not against criticising Obama. There's plenty there. But to then turn the criticism into a conclusion that he's "just like Bush" is our own version of teabagging.

Most Reporters Would Kill

for a lede like this:

"The Brevard County doctor who was arrested for groping a woman while dressed
as Captain America with a burrito in his pants will not go to jail."

 

BP World

Andrew may not have figured out how to deal with it, but Mac McLelland is there. I go with her.

Soccer Players

have great butts. I think it's time I became a fan. Ronaldo, is that you, honey?

Right Back Atcha

So the Boomers are retiring and the political prospects for cutting the two biggest entitlements, the ones that threaten to bankrupt us, Medicare and Social Security, dwindle in proportion.
In the end, says one of the only sane conservatives left, the only way to handle it will be cuts to defense spending and increased taxes (on the wealthy, I presume).
Weren't these two measures sort of the fiscal underpinning of the great Sixties unrest? I think they were. What goes around, comes around, eh? Unintended consequences indeed.

Question O' Teh Century

If we cannot stop this, what else can we not stop?

        Andrew Sullivan, who admits he's had trouble deciding how to blog about Death in the Gulf.

Headline O' Teh Day

Chicken Costumes Banned At Nevada Polling Places

Um, what about free speech? Just sayin'. Could be a fun lawsuit, kinda keep the issue in the front of voters' minds.

Quote O' Teh Day

"I went to Princeton with Paleolibertarian John Stossel. He was an asshole in 1968 and I've seen nothing since then to change my mind."

        Jon Taplin

Since You Asked

Josh Marshall's brief refresher course on civil rights.
Lesson:Don't trust anyone who says he's a libertarian.

Today's Poem

Is terrific. If you like it, you'll probably like her friends, too.

Hey You by Adrian Blevins Back when my head like an egg in a nest was vowel-keen and dawdling, I shed my slick beautiful and put it in a basket and laid it barefaced at the river among the taxing rocks. My beautiful was all hush and glitter. It was too moist to grasp. My beautiful had no tongue with which to lick—no discernable wallowing gnaw. It was really a breed of destruction like a nick in a knife. It was a notch in the works or a wound like a bell in a fat iron mess. My beautiful was a drink too sopping to haul up and swig! Therefore with the trees watching and the beavers abiding I tossed my beautiful down at the waterway against the screwball rocks. Even then there was no hum. My beautiful was never ill-bred enough, no matter what you say. If you want my blue yes everlasting, try my she, instead. Try the why not of my low down, Sugar, my windswept and wrecked.

© 2010, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved.

Headline O' Teh Day

Prices Jump After Germany Bans Naked Shorts

What can I say? It's a slo-o-ow news day unless you care that Arlen Specter may lose the Penn. primary and some guy in Connecticutt got outed by the New York Times for falsely claiming — once — that he fought in Vietnam.
Tha-a-at's all, folks.

Baby Sloths

Seem to be the internet video drug of choice this week.

Meet the sloths from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

Another Good Poem

from the folks who will send you one a day so they're not filtered by Contrarienne. But maybe you like that.

Anybody Can Write a Poem by Bradley Paul I am arguing with an idiot online. He says anybody can write a poem. I say some people are afraid to speak. I say some people are ashamed to speak. If they said the pronoun "I" they would find themselves floating in the black Atlantic and a woman would swim by, completely dry, in a rose chiffon shirt, until the ashamed person says her name and the woman becomes wet and drowns and her face turns to flayed ragged pulp, white in the black water. He says that he'd still write even if someone cut off both his hands. As if it were the hands that make a poem, I say. I say what if someone cut out whatever brain or gut or loin or heart that lets you say hey, over here, listen, I have something to tell you all, I'm different. As an example I mention my mother who loved that I write poems and am such a wonderful genius. And then I delete the comment because my mother wanted no part of this or any argument, because "Who am I to say whatever?" Once on a grade school form I entered her job as hairwasher. She saw the form and was embarrassed and mad. "You should have put receptionist." But she didn't change it. The last word she ever said was No. And now here she is in my poem, so proud of her idiot son, who presumes to speak for a woman who wants to tell him to shut up, but can't.

© 2010, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved.

Link O' Teh Week

Dickipedia does not play favorites.
From the Billy Crystal entry:

Though Crystal has appeared in several successful movies – When Harry Met Sally … (directed by his friend dick Rob Reiner), City Slickers, City Slickers II, Analyze This, Analyze That, and the (probably) forthcoming Analyze The Other Thing – he is most closely linked to his directorial debut Mr. Saturday Night, a wildly self-indulgent fiasco that looked back at the life of a now-old Borscht Belt comic, providing Crystal with just the excuse he needed to appear on screen in some of the worst makeup in cinema history.

[edit]

The Vatican Can Be Cool

 Metafilter people warns this is flash. My Mac laptop seems okay with it.

Joke O' Teh Day

Did you know that one of Pat Buchanan's relatives was killed in the Holocaust? He fell out of a guard tower.

 TPM commenter in response to:
Buchanan, who is Catholic and a raging bigot/anti-Semite to boot, apparently has complained in a column that there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court.
It should be noted that there are six Catholics on the Court, two Jews with the retiring Stevens the only Protestant.

Big Think

is the web site o' teh day.
Sorry, as happens so often, I have found no frivolity yet, but Big Think probably has some. If you find any, send me a link.

Poem O' Teh Day

Another good one. Looks like they've got enough money to send one a day forever.

Across a Great Wilderness without You by Keetje Kuipers The deer come out in the evening. God bless them for not judging me, I'm drunk. I stand on the porch in my bathrobe and make strange noises at them—                                                   language, if language can be a kind of crying. The tin cans scattered in the meadow glow, each bullet hole suffused with moon, like the platinum thread beyond them where the river runs the length of the valley. That's where the fish are.                                    Tomorrow I'll scoop them from the pockets of graveled stone beneath the bank, their bodies desperately alive when I hold them in my hands, the way prayers become more hopeless when uttered aloud.                             The phone's disconnected. Just as well, I've got nothing to tell you: I won't go inside where the bats dip and swarm over my bed. It's the sound of them shouldering against each other that terrifies me, as if it might hurt to brush across another being's living flesh.                 But I carry a gun now. I've cut down a tree. You wouldn't recognize me in town— my hands lost in my pockets, two disabused tools I've retired from their life of touching you.

© 2010, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved.

Long Way, Baby Dept.

A little summary of the last 50 years.

When Schroeder's class graduated, fewer than 3 percent of women and all law students nationwide were women, three federal judges were women, there were few women teachers of law or law school administrators in the whole country and none at Harvard. In 2009, 47% of the Harvard Law graduating class were women. And soon, a former dean of Harvard Law will probably become the fourth female associate justice to serve on the Supreme Court, its second female graduate of Harvard Law.  

Question O' Teh Day

Q. Why is Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, going to lose the Republican gubernatorial primary in California?
A. Because Meg Whitman looks like Lou Dobbs everyone hates Goldman Sachs.

This is why I love politics.

I Love America

Semi-Literate Former Gold Prospector Given Own Cable News Show

You Know Things Are Tough

when "Paul Allen Puts 10-Bedroom Mega Yacht Up For Sale."

Elena Kagan: Day Two

Josh Marshall Andrew Pincus describes today's politics in fewer than 1,000 very spot-on words. C'mon, people write books about this stuff. But I don't have time to read that much.

The scenes on television and cable yesterday were as civilized, and as choreographed, as the steps in a seventeenth century minuet: the announcement in the East Room...The trench warfare now underway is the laboratory in which lines of attack and defense are tested and refined. The attackers are trying to identify arguments that will "stick"--that are not batted down quickly enough by the nominee's defenders, and therefore begin to migrate into more mainstream media and, ultimately, into the Senate hearing. Think of it as a very specialized form of test marketing...In many ways, Supreme Court confirmations are the ultimate "dog whistle" issue--very important to the base, but virtually ignored by ordinary voters. That is why every Democratic Senator who aspired to be President voted against confirming Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. And it is why every Republican Senator with the same aspirations for 2012, or later, will almost certainly vote against Elena Kagan.

Judge Kagan

Elena Kagan has never worn the judicial robes. As an adult.

NEW YORK — There were a lot of smart girls at Hunter College High School, but only one of them posed for the yearbook in a judge's robes, quoted a Supreme Court justice and is remembered for playing a tough attorney in an eighth-grade trial.

Yes, but is she a lesbian? The world wants to know.

Kagan: Myths And Facts

From Media Matters. A new feature, I guess. I may have to start visiting them more often.

R.I.P. Lena

"I wouldn't trade my life for anything," she said, "because being black made me understand."

Lena Horne

I always loved this.

And The Nomination Goes To...Shorty!

Thurgood Marshall's nickname for her when she was his clerk. I mean, how many times will I get to write that?

'She Will Get The Fifth Vote'

Says Spitzer. Which is the best reason for nominating Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, among a whole long list of excellent reasons.
Andrew has a compendium of back-and-forth for your selection pleasure. I like this from Ed Morrissey:

Obama wants a stealth candidate, someone who can win a relatively quick confirmation battle.  Of the names floated by the White House after Stevens’ retirement, Kagan attracted the least amount of public opposition.

Did I mention that Contrarienne's earlier posts about Kagan were viewed by the White House and ... some other official sources I can't remember? Cool.

The Big One

My old colleague updates the earthquake situation.

A bright-red splotch on a map of earthquake hazards marks the Kitsap Peninsula as one of the hottest danger zones in the United States.

I live 50 miles north.

Quote O' Teh Day

The UK election turned out to be perhaps the only election I can think of where all three parties managed to lose at the same time. Each in a different way.

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
British Election Couverage - Andrew Sullivan
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Contrariennes, Sign Up Your Daughters

for this great new fitness program (only available in SoCal).
You're too old, probably would make your heart fail or something.

White Women's Workout - watch more funny videos

Christian products for women. You ain't saved without a rhinestone tee.

It's Agreed, There Are 954 Colors

and they include poop, poo brown, and shit.
That makes complete sense.
My favorite? Cyan (reaches for dictionary.)
I wish my poop was cyan and smelled like the sea. Or maybe peppermint.

What Exactly Is Decadence Anyway?

Two summers ago I had a delightful lunch at an Oregon winery. The foie gras on the hamburger was a touch so special I couldn't let it go to waste and removed it, shared and ate it separately.
The dessert was black pepper ice cream with a lavender meringue and raspberry sauce.
Neither the sort of thing I'll ever likely eat again, nor anything like them.
I didn't feel decadent though, just lucky.
But if I had to do that 200 times a year, I think I'd just rather stick to my hummus and naan and the occasional grapefruit, maybe some meatloaf for dinner.

The waiter arrived and placed before Maxime a large white plate. At the center was her foie gras, a short pillar of puréed duck liver on a piece of crisp toast with a lacy web of caramelized sugar on top; the sides were studded with cherries and sprinkled with pistachios, and a transparent sauce, made of white port gelée, surrounded the entire creation like a moat. She considered the dish for a few moments, as if trying to determine the best angle of attack. With the side of her fork, she broke off a piece of the complicated construction, and tasted it. The dish, which I later tried, activated every sense with which humans are equipped: the foie gras was smooth and as rich as butter, its silky texture contrasting with the caramelized sugar, which shattered like a pane of microscopically thin glass against the teeth and tongue, its sweetness offset by the sour cherries, the rounded aromatic flavor of the toasted nuts, and the texture and taste of the port gelée.

Who Pays For Cleanup

TPM has the skinny. Thank you, Talking Points Memo.

Looks Like A Brit

I remember showing a picture of the Frenchman my daughter married to an acquaintance and he said, "He looks French." Sure enough, he did, although I can't say specifically what facial characteristics mean one looks French, and there are plenty of French people who do not look French.
So, too, when I opened up TPM this morning and saw the CEO of BP. Tony Hayward looks like a Brit. He just does. Just like Harry Potter looks like a Brit. I would never mistake him for an American, even if he turned out to be an American. There's a look.
Some commenters say it's the hair, but it's more than that. It's bone structure, it's eyes, it's peaches-and-cream complexion. Or something. Guess I'm a racist in these matters. Nationist?
Oh, and the pinstriped suit. Americans try, but they don't really wear that suit.
See for yourself.
Oh, and it wasn't their fault. Righto, Tone. May you sleep with the sea birds.

Just Nice To Know, Or Have

The solar system as music box.

Is Evil black in every culture?

In Summary: It's Monday

and so far, the news from TPM alone makes me laugh and cry at the same time.
A bit late to the party, blustery here and the electricity just came back about an hour ago.
So far, here's what I know:
1. Pelosi says Bush White House muzzled Treasury and other economic officials, who weren't allowed to tell Congress how bad things were in 2008 until the week of the Lehman emergency. Paulson not commenting, which says a lot, actually. Remember, it was an election season.
Also, nice to be reminded that Republicans blocked TARP until we were about to fall off the cliff.
2. The Idiot wing of the Republican Party, many of whom live in Minnesota, have nominated a gubernatorial candidate who believes states should only obey the federal laws that their own legislures have approved. So much for the Civil War, eh?
3. BP is offering Alabama residents $5,000 to promise never to sue them over that little oil spill thingie.

Poem O' Teh Day

I'm still getting one a day, so they must have got a grant or something.
This one's very good.

A Book Said Dream and I Do

by Barbara Ras

There were feathers and the light that passed through feathers.
There were birds that made the feathers and the sun that made the light.
The feathers of the birds made the air soft, softer
than the quiet in a cocoon waiting for wings,
stiller than the stare of a hooded falcon.
But no falcons in this green made by the passage of parents.
No, not parents, parrots flying through slow sleep
casting green rays to light the long dream.
If skin, dew would have drenched it, but dust
hung in space like the stoppage of
time itself, which, after dancing with parrots,
had said, Thank you. I'll rest now.
It's not too late to say the parrot light was thick
enough to part with a hand, and the feathers softening
the path, fallen after so much touching of cheeks,
were red, hibiscus red split by veins of flight
now at the end of flying.
Despite the halt of time, the feathers trusted red
and believed indolence would fill the long dream,
until the book shut and time began again to hurt.