At the Good Fortune Nightclub...

... you can do what you were born to do.

Shall we watch the Oscars together?

I don't know if I can do my usual live-blogging, but I will try to watch, and I'll put numbered comments up if I think of anything amusing. The main point of this post is to give you a place to comment if you're so inclined.

1. Loved Penelope Cruz's red dress.

2. Have you noticed how many of the men are chewing gum? Morgan Freeman, etc.

3. Sarah Jessica Parker is chewing gum. She's 44 and she looks 60, but she's sweet and enthused about the Chanel column of gold satin. Meanwhile, no one wants to talk to Matthew Broderick, who's gone gray and portly.

4. "I like seeing all my friends cleaned up and looking good" — Meryl Streep on what she likes best about the Oscars.

5. Yikes. This production number is more painful than the crap they make "American Idol" contestants do on elimination night. (Elimination... crap... hmmm....) Men in suits singing, surrounded by scantily clad showgirls waving feather fans... what is this, 1962? So retro. So pre-women's movement. Oh, phew, it's over. Now, the talking. Yeeze. Steve Martin looks like Spencer Tracy in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" ... i.e., just before he died.

6. Christopher Plummer looks way better indoors. Somehow the lighting bestows an artificial tan. Outdoors, he looked diseased.

7. Ah! Penelope Cruz again, in that dress. Lovely! She was last year's Best Supporting Actress, so she's giving the Best Supporting Actor award.  Dialogue chez Meadhouse: "Is that Robert Duvall?" "No, Woody Harrelson."... "Everyone knows Christoph Waltz is going to win." And he does. "Oscar and Penelope. That's an uber-bingo."

8. So the first predictable thing has happened. Will all the other predictable things happen to?

9. Sandra Bullock is "a member of the NRA" and "always packing"... according to the clip show of "The Blind Side."

10. Meadhouse dialogue: "IPad ad. Oh, man! Ohhhhhh!" "Still want one?" "Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh."

8a. "Up" wins animated pic. Predicatably.

8b. "The Hurt Locker" wins screenplay, not "Inglourious Basterds." That's not what was predicted, right? I wanted "A Serious Man." The acceptance speech is anti-Iraq-war, btw.

11. Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick introduce a tribute to John Hughes (who died in the past year). "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." Beautifully done. Genuinely touching. That made the argument that pop culture is, in fact, deep.

8c. "Precious" for adapted screenplay.

8d. Best Supporting Actress, Mo'Nique. Predicted. But she says something interesting and unexpected: "It can be about the performance, and not the politics."

8e. Art Direction, "Avatar."

12. The tribute to horror movies ends with a cut to Quentin Tarantino loving it all. Nice. As for the clip show, I think it was argued that the 2 greatest horror flicks of all time are "Psycho" and "The Shining"... with music from "Psycho."

13. Sound editing... does anyone care? Did I mention costumes earlier? No. Then, mindcrushingly, sound mixing, a separate award. "Hurt Locker" with its amorphous, ponderous music, wins both. [NEXT MORNING CLARIFICATION: I know this award isn't about the music. I'm just complaining about the theme music the band played for this movie.]

8f. "Avatar" wins Visual Effects. Whoever this guy is who accepts the award says the movie is a film about "learning to see the world in new ways" and that sets me off cursing incoherently. 

14. In Memoriam, with James Taylor singing "In My Life." They gave Karl Malden the final spot, and that was not predicted. People thought it would be either Patrick Swayze (who was put first) or Natasha Richardson (who was tucked in the middle). Only one choked me up, Brittany Murphy. She was so young. Malden was 97. Nothing to be sad about. It's not, then, what's saddest. It's a tribute to life. "In My Life," not in my death.

15. I'm recording this with my DVR and pausing, then fast-forwarding. Otherwise it would be intolerable. Right now there's a dance routine (that's supposed to showcase the scores). It's ghastly. I watched a second, sped ahead, watched a second, cursed, paused, and am now waiting for enough time to pass for more fast-forwarding. Why must they waste our time with this musical crap?

16. I love film documentaries, but I don't care about any of these nominees. What the hell happened to this category?

17. "The White Ribbon" doesn't win best foreign film. I was all ready to do an "8g" entry. Wow. Thrilling. Hell. Get me out of here.

18. Wait. A good joke! "I want to thank the Academy for not considering Na'vi a foreign language."

8g. Come on, give Jeff Bridges the Best Actor award and get me out of here. Oh! The blather, praising each of the nominees. There's an insipid reference to "courage." I scream. Ah, finally, Kate Winslet comes out, in a dress made of steel — or fabric that looks like it — and she gives the award, of course, to Jeff Bridges. He whoops. He looks heavenward and addresses his parents. He says "groovy." He's going on too long. I groan. Meade says "He's The Dude."

8h. Another predictable one: Sandra Bullock gets Best Actress. She's wearing bright red lipstick and a pretty dress, beaded and sparkling. She rattles off a prepared speech. She chokes up and cries appropriately when she gets to the part about not thanking her mother.

19. "Oh, no!" "Why? Why?!" — another Meadhouse dialogue... as Barbra Streisand takes the stage. She's giving the Best Director award (for some reason). I guess this one isn't predictable, other than that it's one of 2, James Cameron or Kathryn Bigelow. "Well, the time has come," Barbra says, meaning that for the first time, a woman has won Best Director. It's Kathryn Bigelow.

20. The band plays her off the stage with "I Am Woman." Gag.

21. Tom Hanks does his part to nail the time. With 2 minutes left to go to the top of the hour, he blurts out "The Hurt Locker."

22. For all this honoring of "The Hurt Locker," did anyone say anything valuable and worthy about the war in Iraq? Bigelow praised the troops and wished for their safe return, but that's not what I mean. There's a lot of talk about the bravery of the filmmakers making the film. There was never anything said in support of the fighting in Iraq, but, to be fair, there was never any opposition to it expressed. In fact, I don't think there were any political statements tonight at all, unless you count Mo'nique's anti-political statement: "It can be about the performance, and not the politics." So: modesty. It's film art. Art, not politics.

MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: Wow. I did not enjoy that show at all. Surely, nothing made me want to go see a movie — or even look for it to come up on my cable Video on Demand. The actresses with their hard, frozen faces and their sinewy bodies encased in lavishly ruffled dresses showed that movies are no longer a source of fresh inspiration about beauty, femininity and womanhood. And frankly, I'm not sure what Mo'nique meant by "It can be about the performance, and not the politics." Maybe she just meant that she totally deserved the award on merit, and there were no "political" considerations in the sense of how career and business interests weigh into people's decisions. At the time, I thought that she meant that voters were able to appreciate the artistic value of the movie "Precious" instead of rejecting it because it isn't politically correct to depict black people as lowlifes. That was the only memorable thing that anyone said last night, and it's just a Rorschach test.

"Feeling a bit off?"

I was struck by this inane point-of-purchase ad for a homeopathic remedy:



"A bit off"... what the hell kind of a medical problem is that? Perhaps one that goes perfectly with the non-remedy that is homeopathy. It made me think of this ad from 1930 for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound:

"I was very nervous and weak and never had a good appetite. Almost every day I would have to lie down. My aunt used Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound and so did other women. I often wondered if it would help me but I hesitated to try it. After the firs bottle I felt better, so I kept on. I have already taken five bottles and feel as strong as can be."

As strong as can be, eh? 5 bottles? Is it 5 bottles of placebo or is it booze?

But these ailments! They are relics of one historical era or another. Who would complain about not having a good appetite today? Today, you'd get rich if you could bottle a remedy that caused not having a good appetite. And today, feeling a bit off is something you'd shell out money to cure.

***

Miscellaneous things:

1. I love the assurances on that package: "No Side Effects, No Drug Interactions, Non-Drowsy." Well, duh. It's a homeopathic remedy.

2. Can you believe people pay $9.99 for a product labeled "Gas"?



3. Why did I run across that ad for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound? We were fooling around with the Google News Archive and did a search for "iPod." We were intrigued at a hit from 1930. Upon inspection, we saw that the word "good" — in "never had a good appetite" — was printed with the "g" and the "o" corrupted enough to make it look like an "i" and a "p." I love odd mistakes like that.

"I need eight hours to get maybe 20 minutes of work done."

The life of a writer — in this case, David Eggers — is not easy:

... I used to write in the middle of the night. I suppose I was surprised by the sedentary nature of writing: like, wow, most of this is sitting down and typing! So I used to add a bit of adventure by starting at midnight and working until five. That was excitement! But now I have two kids... So it's bankers hours for me.

... Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year....

Eggers denies himself internet access. That's what I would do if I really wanted to write a book. Which I guess I don't. I mean, I'm at the level where I (mostly) cut myself off from Twitter because I want to have a blog. What if I cut myself off from the internet for — let's say — the 4 months of summer break? The deep-sea dive. It would probably take me all 4 months just to get into into it.

Oddly, Eggers is motivated by his sense of how short life is. All that time getting going and thinking about how short life is? Oh, the pain. Blogging, by contrast, is the continual relief from that pain.

"It's always one man and one woman walking here."

We overheard the young girl, balking at the entrance to the garden, where her mother had brought her yesterday.

Death in Switzerland.

Whenever you want:

Assisted suicide is also legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, as well as in the American states of Oregon, Washington, and Montana. But in all those places, the practice is restricted to people with incurable diseases, involves extensive medical testing and consultation with physicians, and requires that applicants be permanent residents. By contrast, Switzerland’s penal code was designed such that, without fear of prosecution, you can hand someone a loaded pistol and watch as he blows his brains out in your living room. And there is no residency requirement. There are only two conditions: that you have no self-interest in the victim’s death, and that he be of sound mind when he pulls the trigger.

Can we believe the polls that say a big majority of Americans oppose the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United?

No, because the people surveyed mostly only knew about the case from the description given by the pollster. Here's the way ABC/Washington Post tried to get its unprepared respondents up to speed:

Changing topics, do you support or oppose the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that says corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

What percentage of those surveyed do you think understood "spend" to exclude contributing money to the candidate?  20%? I'm saying 20% to be snarky, because that's the proportion of respondents who approved of the decision. My real point is, the survey is utter trash. Worse than utter trash, because it propagated misinformation.

Search the 137-year Popular Science archive.

But you have to go in by keyword. So what do you search... and what does that say about you?

I searched "bomb shelter" and read an article from January 1962 and scrolled through the rest of the magazine to see what was going on from the PopSci viewpoint when I was 11 and wondering why my parents weren't building us a bomb shelter. The article, "Plain Facts About Fallout Shelters" is written as Frequently Asked Questions, and the first question is exactly the one my parents would have asked — "What's the point of all this effort? Wouldn't an H-bomb attack kill everybody anyway, shelters or no shelters?" — if they were the sort of people who put their thoughts on the subject in question form. They were not.

Painted and photographed.

Wow!

ADDED: For those who object to going to Andrew Sullivan's blog, go here to get directly to the photographer's page. And it is a photograph, not a painting. That's why I said "wow."

"If a federal budget that is 25% of GDP is too low, what is about right?"

A big "if."

"[T]he key to understanding David Brooks is that he hates the culture war."

"But when he says the 'similarities are more striking than the differences,'" Jonah Goldberg thinks "he gets it backwards. The differences are more striking than the similarities."

The Tea Partiers, fundamentally, love America. The hardcore New Lefters, simply, did not.

Towards the end, Brooks offers  this rhetorical flourish:

...both the New Left and the Tea Party movement are radically anticonservative. Conservatism is built on the idea of original sin — on the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty. To remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings.

Some Tea Partiers may get all sorts of things wrong. No doubt conspiracy theories find fertile soil at Tea Party rallies. But unlike the New Left, they do not believe in starting over with a plan hatched from a new cultural avant-garde. They believe in getting back to basics. They take the founding, the Declaration and the Constitution seriously....

For years — decades — I've found insight into the way other people think with the simplification that there are 2 kinds of human minds: Those that focus on difference and those that focus on similarity. I think most people, like Jonah, figure things out by observing and heightening the ways in which things are different. We're taught to pursue that tendency from an early age. Think of the kindergarten/"Sesame Street" quizzes asking which of these things is not like the other. But the skill of likening things to others is also useful. Perhaps it should be encouraged by repurposing those old quizzes and asking kids: If you had to explain why all these things are alike, what would you tell me? And then you could grow up to be David Brooks.

"This moment. Is so much bigger. Than me."

Are you hoping for a big moment tonight? Or have you had it with Oscar grandiosity — especially in a year when nothing seemed very grand at all... except in that horrible in-your-face grand way that you have to put on special glasses for?

"I have called ALL the highs and lows of the market giving EXACT DATES for rises and crashes over the last 14 years."

Did Sean David Morton think there was some "prophet" exception to securities regulation? Or maybe he — or you — think some things are so stupid that the people who believe them don't deserve any protection from the government.

Cyclamen.

(2 more pictures from the Spring Flower Show at Olbrich Gardens — which continues through March 21.)

Tulips.

At the Blue Sky Café...

... you can be as true or fake as you want.

"Pretty cranky this morning, it seems."

Says commenter Richard Dolan, noting some things I've said today:

"Please don't stumble embarrassingly over yourself ...." She knows you can't help yourself, and wants to enjoy the spectacle.

"pissily political but you might want to read it" -- if you're a jerk, that is.

"nitwits" in twitterville, following/followed by Rover and thinking that's cool.

WSJ is just playing "teaser" behind the wall, and teasers are lowlifes who get a thrill out of proving that you can't get and don't deserve no satisfaction.

The lady's face is "80 years out of date." Gross lookism in/about the face, from a supposed feminist.

"bitch about the accuracy of the journalism of the NYT" -- bitch, bitch, bitch. It's today's theme.

But I'm not in a bad mood in real life. It's a beautiful, sunny morning in pre-Spring Madison, Wisconsin. I guess it's time to shut the laptop and open the front door.

$9.8 trillion.

$9.8 trillion. I'm sorry. I have nothing to say. The number is utterly incomprehensible. If you think it is not, I'm going to assume it is because your brain has less, not more, capacity than mine. Please don't stumble embarrassingly over yourself trying to prove otherwise.

"The other interesting thing about her face is that it represents a style of beauty about 80 years out of fashion."

"Certain faces go in and out of style and she has the pursed lips, luminous eyes and heart-shaped face of a silent screen star from the '20s."

"So, it turns out 'plethora' is not the anatomical term for a naughty bit."

"That would explain why my friend Ruben has had no luck at all incorporating it into a pick-up line. Neither, it seems, is 'plectrum', which I now see in hindsight is the reason my doctor looked puzzled when I told him mine was red and swollen. Vocabulary can be a minefield for the unsuspecting. To his credit, though, my doctor looks puzzled and mildly annoyed when I say anything at all. He sees any comment of a symptomatic nature I might make as a willful erection of a roadblock against the swift completion of his Anthem-sanctioned rounds...."

That's the beginning of the text of a Crack Skull Bob post called "A Plethora of Devices" — which has some great drawings — of the completely SFW variety. The remainder of the text is less sexy and more pissily political than what you might want to read, but you might enjoy it. And, again, the drawings are very cool.

I keep wanting to blog editorials in the Wall Street Journal.

But I can't, because they're all just teasers that go behind a subscription wall. My getting a subscription wouldn't make these things bloggable, and if I can't blog it, I go looking for something else to read. I wish they'd reconsider!

"Karl Rove (KarlRove) is now following your tweets on Twitter."

Would that enthuse you? If so, you're a nitwit — a twitwit. "Karl Rove is following 96071 people." 116120 people are following him. Be impressed if you're one of the elite 20049 who follow him without being followed. If you want to be impressed with yourself. It's not recommended. Not in the twitterverse anyway.

"Edith started screaming, 'Stop the car, let me out!' [Jackson Pollock] put his foot all the way to the floor. He was speeding wildly."

The Oldsmobile 88 convertible threw Ruth Kligman clear of the death wreck and back into a long life, in which she was not only able to write that description of how her lover Pollack killed himself and her friend Edith Metzger, but she got to paint her own abstract expressionist paintings and to become — if I am to believe this NYT obituary — a great muse:

Irving Penn and Robert Mapplethorpe made portraits of her; Willem de Kooning, with whom she was romantically involved, titled a 1957 painting “Ruth’s Zowie,” supposedly after she made that exclamation upon seeing it...

"It" being the painting, right? Or are these buried sex jokes? "Ms. Kligman said that de Kooning had called her 'his sponge'" — supposedly because she absorbed so much learning about art from him. I'm thinking a man calling a woman "his sponge" — presumably the quote is "my sponge" — is thinking about spewing something other than information.

Andy Warhol mentions her in his diaries several times, and she wrote that they “had a terrific crush on each other” for many years; she was friendly with Jasper Johns, to whom she once proposed, and with Franz Kline, whose former studio on 14th Street became her home and the studio where she continued to paint almost to the end of her life.

The full text of Andy Warhol's diaries ought to be on line.  That's what the internet is for. But you can go to Amazon and do a "search inside the book" for Kligman. So let's check out the substance of that terrific crush. Page 7:

I read the Ruth Kligman book Love Affair about her "love affair" with Jackson Pollock — and that's in quotes. It's so bad — how could you ever make a movie of it without making it a whole new story? Ruth told me she wants me to produce it and Jack Nicholson to star.

In the book she says something like, "I had to get away from Jackson and I ran as far as possible." So do you know where she went? (laughs) Sag Harbor. He lived in Springs. So that's — what? Six miles? And she was making it like she went to the other side of the world. And then she said, "The phone rang — how oh how did he ever find me?" I'm sure she called hundreds of people to give them the number in case he asked them. 

Ha. Terrific crush. Page 17:

Read the Ruth Kligman book again, she was driving Jackson Pollock crazy in the car and that's when he ran into the pole.

Page 19:

Ruth Kligman had called me that afternoon and I told her I was seeing Jack Nicholson and I would talk to him about starring in the Jackson Pollock movie. She asked me if I would take her to meet Jack and I said no. (laughs) I wouldn't take her anywhere after reading her book. She killed Pollock, she was driving him so nuts.

Terrific crush. Terrific crash.

Page 35:

Ruth Kligman kissed me and I didn't know what she was doing, she started talking all about a love affair she and we had had together, apologizing for breaking it off, kissing me, and it was all a fantasy, so I thought if she could do that with me, then she probably never had a love affair with Pollock. She looked good. She was in a velvet Halston. 

Terrific crush. Can I bitch about the accuracy of the journalism in the New York Times when it's the lady's obituary? She died at — not 88, like the Oldsmobile — 80.

She never got her book made into a movie, but they did eventually make a movie "Pollock" — and Kligman sued the filmmakers for ripping off her memoir. The obit doesn't say if she won, lost, or settled. (And I'm not seeing a reported case.) Jack Nicholson never played the role. It was Ed Harris. Kligman — who looked, it was written,  like one of those "earthy, voluptuous movie stars of the era, such as Elizabeth Taylor or Sophia Loren" — was played by Jennifer Connelly:

Shape up! It's pre-Spring.

"A North Korean factory worker has been executed by firing squad for sneaking news out of the country on his illicit mobile phone..."

"The armaments factory worker was accused of divulging the price of rice and other information on living conditions to a friend who had defected to South Korea years ago.... The man, surnamed Chong, made calls to the defector using an illegal Chinese mobile phone...."

Via Roger Ebert, who tweets it as a joke: "And we complain about our mobile phones." I try to understand the motivation toward comedy. Is it our great distance and alienation from North Korea? Or should I be charitable and say that was never meant to seem amusing?

And a light shall radiate from His left ear...

Oh. Sorry. I was just feeling nostalgic for the old "The One" days. Remember? Maybe whoever does the White House Flickr page is feeling that way too, because that image just went up. Or are we supposed to see the Prez as hard working, sleeves rolled up, serious, studious... ?

Crying at the movies.

I can't vouch for the audio — I'm where I have to keep the sound off — but the video is making me laugh a lot — silently, of course. Later, maybe I will cry like this adorable woman who cries — filmed by her husband — as she's watching movies on TV. Such an intimate relationship — to be able to weep in front of someone like that. And nice to share the sweetness. An excellent use of the YouTube.

At the Blue Path Café...

... we're quite happy and ready to talk all afternoon.

They're bullying the princess!

The granddaughter of the Emperor!

"Men are intimidated by me."

"My friends say, 'You have to find someone more famous and successful than you, or someone who's so happy with their own life they can handle the attention you get.' I want to be worshipped and adored, but then again I also love to be ignored. Hurgh! It’s the same old, same old."

Let me second that: Hurgh!

"If the White House retreats from a civilian trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the others..."

"... not only is it terribly weak optics in the short run, but it cements in the public mind for the long term all the worst fears Republicans have not just been able to sow, but will continue to sow. Think of the worst possible scenario for what would have happened to New York City, no matter how remote, then insert that into a campaign ad. There's no way to disprove what might have been. Human nature will be to focus on the bullet that we supposedly dodged. Whereas if you actually suck it up and proceed with the trial, it takes all the wind of out that sail. People still go to work, buildings don't fall down, the ground doesn't open up and swallow Manhattan. Democrats show they're strong and resolute and the issue goes away."

That's David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo, whose agitation is manifested in metaphor. Don't retreat from the optics. Don't cement the fears. Don't let them write a bad scenario and say we dodged a bullet. Take the wind out of their sails. Suck it up. Open up and swallow!

But enough about metaphors. Look at what David "The Horror" Kurtz is really saying: Obama should not do what he thinks is right but what will be most effective at avoiding damaging criticism. Ah, but what about people like me, DTHK, who will criticize him for doing things mainly to dodge criticism? Then maybe Obama can get back to just doing what he thinks is right — not because it's right, mind you, but because it's the best way to dodge criticism. That would be cool or ridiculous or something.

Now, open up and swallow.

The reason this isn't what it looks like it is is that if it really were what it looks like, he wouldn't do it.

Come on! It would be so blatant, he wouldn't do it, if he were doing it. Therefore he can't be doing it.

That's how I hear this Think Progress argument:

Today on Fox News, Neil Cavuto irresponsibly pushed the baseless rumor that President Obama bought Rep. Jim Matheson’s (D-UT) vote on health care reform by offering his brother a federal judgeship. First, Cavuto invited the originator of the conspiracy theory, Weekly Standard’s John McCormack. For his part, McCormack undermined his own argument. “Was there an explicit quid pro quo? Probably not,” he said. Next, Cavuto invited Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who reiterated her call for an investigation into the matter. But Bachmann, too, acknowledged the lack of any basis for the claim. “We don’t know — that’s the question,” she said. 

It's not a "conspiracy theory": It's the observation of facts that create an appearance of impropriety. TP is saying we should forget about it because Obama didn't openly state that he was making the nomination in exchange for the vote. Of course, there's no explicit quid pro quo! How do you think successful corrupt individuals perform corrupt acts? If it were a quid pro quo, there'd be no explicit quid pro quo — certainly not one that we'd hear.  Lack of any basis? The basis is the nomination of the brother of a man whose vote is needed. Think Progress conveniently pretends that "any basis" is the same thing as "conclusive proof." You know damned well that if Bush were still President, needed a vote from a congressman, and nominated that congressman's brother, Think Progress and its ilk would be screaming for an investigation.

Steven Benen of Political Animal calls it the "Manufactured Controversy of the Day." And I call that the Manufactured Desperate Spin of the Day.

"Republicans gleefully circulated a Weekly Standard piece yesterday that asked if Obama was trying to buy Matheson's vote by nominating his brother, Scott, to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Both the White House and Matheson's office swiftly answered the question with a resounding 'no.' "

They didn't confess to an explicit quid pro quo? Well, then, move along! Please tell us, Mr. Benen, what you would have said if George Bush had done exactly this much.

Rep. Matheson's spokesperson called the question "patently ridiculous." A White House official called the question "absurd."

And what would they have said if there was something more to the nomination than just the brother's outstanding credentials? The same thing.

Is there any evidence — anything at all — to suggest the Matheson nomination is related in any way to getting his brother's vote on health care? No. There's literally nothing.

Of course, there is evidence. The evidence is the need to persuade the congressman and the timing of the the nomination of the brother. It's not conclusive proof, but it is evidence. We need more evidence to answer our questions, but there is surely a basis of our questions.

But it's nevertheless the talk of the conservative world today....

And you know damned well it would be the talk of the liberal world if Bush were still President and... man, that point is tedious. But it's so apt! Politicos are so boring. Blech.

"Pelosi annoyed on abortion."

Headlines Politico. 

"I will not have it turned into a debate on (abortion)... Let me say it clearly: we all agree on the three following things. … One is there is no federal funding for abortion. That is the law of the land. It is not changed in this bill. There is no change in the access to abortion. No more or no less: It is abortion neutral in terms of access or diminution of access. And, third, we want to pass a health care bill."

You can tell how annoyed she is by the way she says there are "three... things," then lists them as: "one," a somehow implicit two, and — switching to the ordinal — "third."

I wonder if her expressive annoyance pushes her antagonists more in line or if it fires them up. I know when I read "Pelosi annoyed on abortion," my first reflex was something along the lines of: and millions of fetuses really pissed off. And I support access to abortion.

AND: Here's another example of headline deafness. Over at TIME, Amy Sullivan writes "Is This An Abortion Whip Count?" and one of the first comments is: "Thanks for your post, Amy, but what does an abortion whip look like? (please don't say a coat hangar [sic]…)."


Sullivan — who may not have written her own headline (do MSM bloggers write their headings?) —has some good substance:

... Pelosi has got to do a better job of hiding her exasperation with her pro-life colleagues. When asked about Stupak's concerns, she has on three separate occasions in the past week flatly dismissed them as unfounded. "There is no federal funding of abortion," says Pelosi. By that she means two things: 1) the Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds, with some exceptions, to pay for abortions; and 2) she does not interpret the Senate's version of health reform as allowing federal funding of abortion.

As it happens, a lot of people — including a number of pro-life politicians and religious leaders — share Pelosi's interpretation. But some don't, and it's not as if they're suddenly going to smack themselves in the forehead and say, "By golly, she's right! I hadn't looked closely enough at the bill, but now that the Speaker points that out, I see that it doesn't fund abortions at all!" It wouldn't kill her--and it just might help negotiations with some wavering Democrats — if Pelosi would try saying something more like: "I understand that's how some of my colleagues interpret the language of the Senate bill. I see it differently, but I do respect their concerns."

How do you look closely enough at something that's over 2,000 pages long? I think if you genuinely want to exclude abortion, you have to have an express provision that takes precedence over anything else that might be in the bill. You can't rely on some earlier statute (the Hyde Amendment) along with the whole text of the new statute (and what's not in it). There's no reason why people who really care about abortion should accept Pelosi's assurances. I take it that she's mainly saying, put aside your pet issue and help us finish this big project.

"We all bring our kids to work. That just happens to be his profession."

Trying to wring sympathy out of kid-loving readers for that air traffic controller who let his kids take over.

If you had as much money as Rush Limbaugh, how would you decorate your 4,600 square foot apartment on 5th Avenue in NYC?

Here's how Rush had it done:





As that second picture suggests, he didn't really like NYC, but it was, apparently, the millionaire's tax that drove him out.

Once again, 1 man attacks a U.S. government building.

A few weeks ago Joseph Stack crashed a plane into an IRS building in Austin. Yesterday, John Patrick Bedell started shooting people at the Pentagon. What sort of person attacks a government building by himself? And let's distinguish Stack and Bedell from Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a government building years ago. Not only did McVeigh act in a different era — pre-9/11 — but McVeigh used a method that was designed to cause vast damage and to allow him to watch from a distance, unscathed. Stack and Bedell undertook ineffectual attacks that led — predictably — to their deaths.

So, should we make this easy and just consign Stack and Bedell to the dead psycho dustbin? But they attacked government buildings, so it was political. Yes, but a lot of crazy people rave incoherently about the government. That in itself doesn't make them part of a movement. Do they belong to the left or to the right? Is that a question that interests you? If it does, do you lean in the direction other than the one you feel like saying they lean? No one answers "no" to that last question, do they? And therefore... what?

At the Snow Tree Hotel...

... come in and get warm. We'll be here all night, so let's talk.

"Obama Begins Drive for a Health Care Bill."

Obama Begins Drive for a Health Care Bill. That's the headline in the NYT.

And that's my post.

I hope you are amused.

I'm laughing. Are you?

Aaaaaah!

It's Grickle in "Channels," by Graham Annable (via Drawn!).

Children playing with toy trains and play money...

... or no... real money. Our money.



And don't get me started about the Madison kids.

Real love... hyperreal...



Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

"Nuit Blanche," by Arev Manoukian.

Chills.

Rumor no sooner heard than shot down.

So did you hear the one about John Roberts resigning from the Supreme Court?

(That link does not go to the sites that boosted their traffic by reporting this rumor. It goes to my Google search for the rumor.)

ADDED: David Lat traces the rumor to a lawprof.

"What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate...?"

"Save the country from trending toward Socialism!"

The [PowerPoint] presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said...

One page, headed “The Evil Empire,” pictures Obama as the Joker from Batman, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively.

Okay, now, that's just terrible. Everyone knows that Republicans can't do humor. But. And this is a big but. How do you depict Harry Reid as Scooby Doo? I did a Google image search and got nothing. Pelosi as Cruella and Obama as the Joker I've seen. But what's the Harry Reid Scooby Doo? Is it an audio joke connected to the last 2 syllables of his name?

The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”

Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.” Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.”

Rut roh.

But wait. Top donors were there for presentation. Driven by ego and benefiting from access, apparently. And — gasp! — able to laugh at themselves. Nooooooo. Not possible! They are Republicans!

A grand jury is about to indict John Edwards?

That's what the National Enquirer says, and we should've listened to them last time.

"A 45-year-old woman, charged with ending a domestic dispute by killing her 26-year-old husband of five days, is a registered lobbyist for a group fighting domestic violence."

That story makes me instantly anticipate domestic violence foes scrambling to defend the woman. They'll go for the conventional, reflexive assumption is that she was a longtime victim of domestic violence herself who after much abuse and fear finally resorted to killing. But... the template doesn't fit. The couple were married for only 5 days. And she was 45, and he was 26.

Did they really pull Sacha Baron Cohen skit from the Oscars just because it might irk James Cameron?

"... Baron Cohen planned to appear onstage as a blue-skinned, female Na’vi, with [Ben] Stiller translating 'her' interplanetary speech. As the skit went on, though, it would become clear that Stiller wasn’t translating properly, because Cohen would grow ever more upset. At its climax, an infuriated Baron Cohen would pull open 'her' evening gown to reveal that s/he was pregnant, knocked up with Cameron’s love child, and would go on to confront her baby daddy as if s/he were on Jerry Springer."

Maybe the problem was just that it's bad — or not good enough to justify lowering the taste level. We (might) laugh at the Jerry Springer show, but the Oscars are immensely glamorous, and crudeness is out of place. Out of place can generate humor, but who should be permitted to appropriate the glamour for comic effect and what are the costs? Isn't it mostly women who enjoy the Oscars? Quite aside from how James Cameron will feel, how will the show's natural audience feel?

But let me go one step further. Here's my theory: The Hollywood elite want the Democrats health care bill to make it through, and one stumbling block is abortion. The producers have therefore deemed this not to be a good time to highlight and laugh about undesired pregnancy. The unwanted unborn child is an overwhelmingly serious matter for people who care about the right to life. Don't antagonize them with edgy, blatant material. Not now.

Federal judgeships as favors for voting the right way on health care?

"Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit."

How's that for changing the way Washington works?

Remember this:

This past Election Day, the American people sent a clear message to Washington: Clean up your act....

[I]t's not enough to just change the players. We have to change the game.

Americans put their faith in Democrats because they want us to restore their faith in government....

The truth is, we cannot change the way Washington works unless we first change the way Congress works. On Nov. 7, voters gave Democrats the chance to do this. But if we miss this opportunity to clean up our act and restore this country's faith in government, the American people might not give us another one.

Restore this country's faith in government? You are driving cynicism to new heights.

***

I am assuming that Scott Matheson has the credentials to serve on the federal court. So do many others. (Not me. I lack judicial temperament.) But the President chooses from a large pool of individuals with good enough credentials. What are the good enough reasons to pick a person out of the pool? To buy the vote of his brother the Congressmen? Obviously not.

And even if you want to argue that it's a good enough reason, Barack Obama won the presidency by holding himself out as powerfully virtuous, as the man who would change the way Washington works. When I voted for Obama, I didn't think that was going to be the set-up for sarcastic, world-weary jokes.

UPDATE: I respond to Obama supporters who say move along, there's nothing to see.

At the Winter Tree Hotel...

... come in and talk all night.

"My understanding of the Senate is is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen..."

"... which means that Democrats and have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward, not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?"

That's Barack Obama in 2004. And, here he is in 2006:

Those big-ticket items, fixing our health care system. You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with, uhh, my fellow progressives and -- and some of these have -- have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion -- is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we -- we identify our core base, we throw 'em red meat, we get a 50-plus-one, uhhh, victory. See, Karl Rove doesn't need a broad consensus because he doesn't believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a -- a sizeable majority.

And 2007:

[Health care reform] is an area where we're going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We're going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk that is not just a 50-plus-one majority....

You gotta break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory with 50-plus-one but you can't govern. You know, you get Air Force One and a lot of nice perks as president but you can't -- you can't deliver on health -- we're not going to pass universal health care with a -- with a 50-plus-one strategy.

We're not? Or were you lying?

AND: In 2005:

Under the rules, the reconciliation process does not permit that debate. Reconciliation is therefore the wrong place for policy changes. In short, the reconciliation process appears to have lost its proper meaning: A vehicle designed for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility has been hijacked.

Yes, it has.

"Don't males make a disproportionate number of the sarcastic, douchey comments in the world?"

Oh, I don't know, but I'm doing what I can to balance the proportion.

The death of Jon Swift — a formidable blogger.

I'm very sorry to read about the death of Jon Swift — whose real name was Al Weisel. He died after 2 aortic aneurysms, which happened as he was on his way to his father's funeral, according to a comment on his blog — which hadn't been updated in about a year. The comment is (apparently) from his grieving mother.

Swift was a terrific writer. He liked to antagonize me, but that means nothing now, other than that I'm honored to have provided some raw material to a fine writer. Here, he pretends to find it fascinating that I stopped by his blog:

Although I am grateful for every one of the new readers who visited this blog in the last week, I am especially surprised and delighted with one new reader in particular who finally decided to drop in. For years she adamantly refused to read my blog or even mention my pseudonym even as she said the most scurrilous things about me. I'm not sure why she resisted coming here for so long unless it was because she was afraid that my writing was so persuasive and reasonable it would shake the very foundations of her carefully constructed world view and set off a dangerous logic loop in her brain that would cause it to short circuit. For many years she remained steadfast in her refusal to let one word of my prose sully the purity of her thoughts. But perhaps the evenings in Madison, Wisconsin, are particularly cold and lonely this time of year and perhaps she had had one too many glasses of wine by 5:30 p.m. on January 8, 2009. And so that evening, as a bitter wind howled outside her window, she checked her Sitemeter to see how many visitors Instapundit had sent her that day and saw yet another link from my site, just sitting there enticingly, beckoning, whispering, "Click me. Click me." Imagine the inner turmoil she experienced as she tried with all her might to resist clicking on the link. Must. Not. Read. Jon. Swift. Then her will power failed her and she could no longer resist, and throwing all caution to the wind, she finally succumbed and clicked that fateful link that whisked her away to my blog. And soon she was reading, feeling that first rush as my prose entered her veins. Who knew it could be so good, she said to herself as one by one the words swept away the cobwebs and the dust in the attic of her cranium, cluttered with crazy theories about breast-bearing feminists, the plots of unfinished books that bored her, deep insights into American Idol episodes and even that dark corner where Bill Clinton waits, crouched lasciviously, ready to betray her all over again. And imagine that moment when her giddy anticipation was finally fulfilled and she came to the first mention of her name, right there, right there in black and light brown, her name in all its glory!: Ann Althouse. So welcome to my modest blog, Ms. Althouse. I wish you had told me you were coming and I would have tidied up the place a bit. I hope you finally found what you were looking for.

He emailed to let me know he'd written that. He said:

Thanks for the visit. I hope you enjoyed it and will be coming back soon. But let me know next time when you're coming over and I'll tidy up a bit first.

I responded:

That post was awfully needy. Not that I read more than the parts right around my name.

He said:

You know, as reflexively mean as you can be sometimes, it's hard not to like you anyway.

I responded:

Okay, I gave you a link, since you bowed down to me.

He said:

Very funny. Thank you.

Jon Swift

Thank you, Jon Swift.

Standing one's ground... after the ground has moved.

"One man swings a thick metal chain. Another grips an ax. An older gentleman favors a wooden pole. And a 20-year-old spoiling for a fight has prepared a garrote — a menacing wire tied between two handles — to confront any intruders."

"I don't know how this plays politically, but I know it's right."

"And so I ask Congress to finish its work, and I look forward to signing this reform into law."

President Obama is about to invite Congress to ram through the health care bill, because it's what the American people would want if we knew what's good for us.

At the Maudite Brasserie...

... "I really think that means 'damned.'"

But we're not drinking Maudite, the Canadian ale with a tap handle that blinks like a damned Christmas decoration. We're sharing a glass of our favorite St. Bernardus Abt 12 — and splitting a cheeseburger.

The finger...

... and the law.

The producer of "The Hurt Locker" is banned from the Oscars for emailing members to disparage "Avatar."

Nicolas Chartier broke the rules. He might win an Oscar — it's the producer of the Best Picture who gets the statuette — but he won't be able to take the stage to proclaim himself the King of the World or whatever the hell he might like to do.

From an article about "the art of list-making."

Finnish architect Eero Saarinen itemizes the attractiveness of his wife:

I. First I recognized that you were very clever

II. That you were very handsome

III. That you were perceptive

IV. That you were enthusiastic

V. That you were generous

VI. That you were beautiful

Handsome and beautiful? I'm picturing the very clever Mrs. Saarinen reading the list and saying, "Not 'very beautiful'?"

Hendrik Hertzberg says he didn't call Rush Limbaugh a racist...

... even as he calls me an "'ax' murderer." In the pages of The New Yorker! No, not the "the great magazine itself, where space is too valuable to expend on close analyses of radiocon conneries." On a virtual page of newyorker.com.  To be fair, I was really mean to him. You can decide for yourself whether he's unwedged the ax from his noggin.

I could have pointed out that there is a meaningful difference between saying something (unintentionally) offensive about Obama in a private conversation in the context of supporting him (Reid) and saying something (unintentionally) offensive about Obama on television in the context of running against him (Biden). I could have explained that there is a much bigger difference between either of those and saying something (intentionally) offensive about Obama in the context of demonizing him as a cynical manipulator of racial division (Limbaugh). I could have noted that Limbaugh’s use of Reid’s private gaffe was more, not less, disingenuous than his use of Biden’s public one. And I could have pointed out that his use of both was a characteristically clever (and disingenuous) way of giving himself cover for his own unsubtle (and habitual) racial ridicule.

What's with that argument in the form of saying what he could have argued? If I were going to respond to that I would (intentionally, unintentionally, habitually, disingenously) say....

IN THE COMMENTS: Balfegor said:

I'm not sure how saying offensive and/or racist things unintentionally is better than saying them intentionally. If you say them intentionally, there's an element of artifice involved, and the possibility of conscious ironic distance. Doesn't unintentionality suggest someone unwittingly offering us a glimpse into his messy inner self?

DADvocate said:

The person making the (unintentional) racially offensive remarks stands as the greater racist because their racist thinking is ingrained in their psyche. Accusing Obama of being a "cynical manipulator of racial division" isn't a racist remark at all whether or not you find it offensive.

mrs whatsit said:

Let me see if I have this straight.

All this fuss is about what Hertzberg said about what Althouse said about what Hertzberg said about what Limbaugh said about what Reid said about Obama.

Oh, and also what Hertzberg said about what Althouse said about what Hertzberg said about what Biden said about Obama.

Oh cripes, and also about what Liberman said about what Althouse said about what Hertzberg said about what Limbaugh said about what Reid said about Obama, and about what Hertzberg said about what Althouse said about what Hertzberg said about what Biden said about Obama.

It's a vortex!!!

"Small men feel... that the world belongs to big men. Seeing men you know to be small playing big on the silver screen is comforting...."

So says the small Fish — small fry — Stanley, who loves the short — under 5'9" — actors who play tough guys in the movies:

The pattern was set in the 1930s and ’40s by Edward G. Robinson (“Little Caesar”), James Cagney, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart and Paul Muni — all small men who usually played tough and cruel. Sometimes camera angles obscured the physical facts — Robinson looked absolutely huge as Wolf Larsen in “The Sea Wolf” in what can be called, without irony, a towering performance — and sometimes the camera just didn’t care as when, for example, Cagney regularly beat up men obviously twice his size.

Slightly later came John Garfield, and the smallest of them all, Alan Ladd who played big in “The Blue Dahlia,” “The Glass Key,” “The Badlanders” and who more than holds his own against Ben Johnson and a tree-like Van Heflin in “Shane.”...

Famously slight Paul Newman displayed his chest and pugilistic abilities in movies like “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” “Hud,” “The Long, Hot Summer” and “Cool Hand Luke.” James Dean would have made the list had he lived longer. Now aging tough guy-short guys (by short I mean under 5-foot-9) include Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Al Pacino, Mel Gibson, Jean Claude Van Damme and Sylvester Stallone, who created not one but two iconic American males, Rocky and Rambo.

And these days we have a bumper crop of undersized super heroes — Tom Cruise, Tobey Maguire, Mark Wahlberg and Robert Downey Jr., along with the occasionally macho Johnny Depp and Sean Penn.

Is there something comparable for women? Maybe we could make a list of women who have fairly average looks who play beautiful women on screen. My favorite example of this is Bette Davis in "Mr. Skeffington," where the raving over Bette's beauty occasionally crosses the line into the laughable. No man could resist her:



Ah, yes! I remember laughing out loud in the theater when she comes down the stairs and a man exclaims "Fanny! You look beautiful!" And check out that death-bed dialogue: "A woman is beautiful only when she is loved." That's what the plain women in the audience — next to the hubbies they dragged to the chick flick — long to believe.

Rangel steps aside...

... temporarily.

Sarah Palin on the new/old (Jay Leno) "Tonight Show."

(Via theblogprof via Instapundit.)

Mourning the loss of Desiree Rogers as White House social secretary.

It's Robin Givhan, crying for fashion:

When the Obamas announced that the New Orleans native with the platinum résumé and the knack for glamorous style would be the White House's first African American social secretary, the fashion industry practically swooned. The nation's capital, dominated for 20 years by administrations that, at best, endured fashion, now had a first lady who chose her designer wardrobe like a savvy insider. She and her husband hired a host of attractive young staffers who didn't mind posing for the occasional fashion spread -- Birkin bag in hand, feet shod in trendy platform heels -- and a social secretary who knew the difference between Nina Ricci and Lanvin and regularly wore both. The industry could not believe its good fortune! At long last, it had a diverse array of intelligent and respected women in federal Washington who, by their appearance alone, served as powerful advocates for an often-maligned business.

Hired a host of attractive young staffers... You mean they practiced lookism?

Was Rogers engaging in what one magazine editor described as "an arrogance of style" -- using her clothes for competitive one-upmanship rather than to exude personal creativity, self-confidence or self-respect?
Or could a city of wonks and political animals simply not grasp what Rogers was saying?

In federal Washington, after all, a modest Armani suit still can get one a best-dressed award. For that crowd, taking the measure of Rogers, a special assistant to the president, dressed in Prada and Jil Sander, would have been a bit like someone trying to make sense of an NFL team's strategy diagram based on their knowledge of Foosball.

I certainly can't understand what Givhan is saying about why Rogers lost her job. It was too hard to understand the high level of sophistication of her fashion?  I'm trying to read between the lines as Givhan obviously means to lavishly promote Rogers. Was the problem that Rogers created the wrong image for the Obamas and made them look profligate and frivolous?

After the jump, I read some more sources and summarize a few theories. 

At the Strange Place Hotel...

... you may be uneasy. But is that really necessary?

"Sex should be fun, beautiful and colorful, but women get the short end of the stick."

Says Lady Gaga, who maintains celibacy.

"Why are you asking us to overrule 140 years of prior law….unless you are bucking for a place on some law school faculty?"

Justice Scalia amusingly squelches in the oral argument that the Supreme Court ought to use the Privileges and Immunities Clause — instead of the usual Due Process Clause to find the 2d Amendment applicable to state and local government. The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago, and SCOTUSblog describes the argument and explains why it's quite likely the Court will find the right to bear arms to extend to state and local government.

The Justice said the “privileges or immunities” argument was “the darling of the professorate” but wondered why [Alan Gura, the lawyer for gun rights advocates,] would “undertake that burden.”  And Scalia noted that the “due process” clause — an open-ended provision that he has strongly attacked on other occasions–  was available as the vehicle for incorporation, and added: “Even I have acquisced in that.”   Gura somewhat meekly said “we would be extremely happy” if the Court used the “due process” clause to extend the Second Amendment’s reach.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the dissenters in Heller, then moved in to press Gura on just what “unenumerated rights” would be protected if the Court were to revive the “privileges or immunities” clause. It was a theme that would recur often thereafter, solidifying the appearance that the argument had virtually no chance of succeeding.  (In fact, when Gura near the end of the argument returned to the podium for his rebuttal, his time was used up by Justices Ginsburg and Anthony M. Kennedy exploring what other rights might come into being if the Court gave new life to the “privileges or immunities” clause.  He responded that he could not provide a full list, to which Justice Scalia retorted: “Doesn’t that trouble you?”  It was obvious that it troubled the Court.)

"Mr. Sacks, a third-year law student at Georgetown, had set himself a goal, now shattered..."

"... he wanted to be the first person in line for every major argument this term. He brought three advantages to the task. He has no morning classes this semester, he lives pretty close to the court, and he has an unhealthy obsession with it. The name of his blog is a play on his habit of showing up early at the court’s street address."

The blog is First One @ One First, and the student, Mike Sacks, now has it linked in The New York Times. Congrats!

The big case today where he got beaten by "Robert Cumberland and Larken Euliss, two chemists from California," deals with whether the Second Amendment is applicable to the states via the 14th Amendment.

Point for Ryan? Point for Ryan?! You mean outrageous blatant lie for the Democrats!

Ezra Klein has us crying out with derision this morning:

After the Blair House Summit... Rep. Paul Ryan... says that "the true 10-year cost of this bill in 10 years" is $2.3 trillion. On this, Ryan is right, but misleading. In Ryan's favor, Democrats have artificially lowered the cost of the bill by pushing its start date back to 2014, even as its 10-year budget window begins in 2010. The 10-year cost of the bill is really only counting six years of operation. This was a deceptive effort to keep the bill's price tag under $1 trillion, even as the bill's price tag was really quite a bit more. Point for Ryan.

Point for Ryan???!!!!!

"So everyone has pretty much agreed that I was right yesterday when I said the 'moderation' language about Obama’s alcohol consumption was just boilerplate."

Says Glenn Reynolds:

Still, to show my support for our President, I went out to the Downtown Grill & Brewery last night and hoisted a couple — moderately, of course — in his honor. Kinda like when some Obama fans changed their middle names to Hussein to show support, only more delicious . . . .

Ha ha. So, then, this is me, the other day at Brasserie V:



Ah, but look at the prudes — the killjoys — who freak out about drinking, who think that lifting one glass depicts degeneracy. These people call themselves "liberals," but they are not liberal at all. They despise your pleasure and revelry and want only to clamp down on any fun. Don't trust them with power, my friend!

The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy...

IN THE COMMENTS: Jim Treacher said:

Is there enough booze in the world to get those guys laid?

Sadly, no.

The notion that Rahm Emanuel has been the voice of reason — and Obama should have listened to him.

Jason Horowitz writes in WaPo:

Emanuel ... could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts.

... [Emanuel] was not aggressive enough in trying to persuade a singularly self-assured president and a coterie of true-believer advisers that "change you can believe in" is best pursued through accomplishments you can pass.

By all accounts, Obama selected Emanuel for his experience in the Clinton White House, his long relationships with the media and Democratic donors, and his well-established -- and well-earned -- reputation as a political enforcer, all of which neatly counterbalanced Obama's detached, professorial manner....

... Obama went for the historically far-reaching, but more legislatively difficult, achievements that he and his campaign-forged inner circle believe they were sent to Washington to deliver.

Read the whole thing. There's some great detail about closing Guantanamo and trying KSM. I don't know who the sources are for Horowitz's article. It reads like PR for Emanuel. Eric Holder is portrayed as stuck on abstract principle, while David Axelrod is blinded by his "strong view" of Obama as a big "historic character."

[A]n early Obama supporter who is close to the president and spoke on the condition of anonymity... blamed Obama's charmed political life for creating a self-confidence and trust in principle that led to an "indifference to doing the small, marginal things a White House could do to mitigate the problems on the Hill. Rahm knows the geography better."

Hmm. Does Rahm talk about himself in the third person?  It rings true though! This does sound like what history will record as Obama's tragic flaw: overconfidence and attachment to abstract principles (borne of the great good luck of fitting the template others had so much hope for).

"An image that says power, sex and confidence."

Fashion delusion.

"I write about the TeePees because it's so sad how they've been manipulated to oppose their own best interests."

Says Roger Ebert, who tweets about politics now and does not, on Twitter, eschew the cruder term "teabaggers" for participants in the Tea Party movement.

When Ebert tweeted that he was unaware of the term's pornographic connotation, Big Hollywood countered that he had referred to such a context in past movie reviews.

Ha. It must have been "Pecker." I love that movie. Yeah. Here's Retracto the Correction Alpaca calling gotcha on Ebert — complete with "Pecker"-clip. Frankly, I can see how someone could have reviewed "Pecker" and even talked about the teabagging in "Pecker" — which is pretty silly — and not realize that the word had moved beyond that context into the general parlance and was implied by the term that is now used to mock tea partiers.

That movie also uses the expression "shopping for others." I remember that, but remembering that doesn't tell me that it's become a term for something people are really doing these days. [ADDED: I see that the link within that link now goes to the absence of a YouTube clip from the movie. It was a scene in which Pecker, a budding young photographer, and his friend go into a store and put embarrassing items in other people's shopping carts when they're not looking. Pecker then takes pictures of their reactions at the checkout counter.]

Anyway, I welcome Roger Ebert to the Tweet-o-sphere. It's great when an excellent, interesting writer takes to the 140-character art form. Follow him here. I am.

Harold Ford Jr.: "If I run, the likely result would be a brutal and highly negative Democratic primary..."

"... a primary where the winner emerges weakened and the Republican strengthened. I refuse to do anything that would help Republicans win a Senate seat in New York, and give the Senate majority to the Republicans."

Long snow shadows and, in the distance, a golden glow.

In the garden, there were long shadows on the melting snow...



... the golden pavilion glowed in the setting sun...



... and I got distracted by the birch tree that a beaver had reduced to a stump....

Skiing in golf course semi-slush.

It was too warm today for the skiing to be that good, but we did it anyway...



... in our routine place: Odana Golf Course.

Is Mickey Kaus really running for the Senate against Barbara Boxer?

"Technically I've only taken out the nomination papers, to gather the necessary signatures. I haven't returned them yet."

All right then. Good luck!

"The Democrat has been centrist and even conservative on some of the issues on which Boxer has taken a more left-leaning stand, including immigration: He does not favor amnesty and favors a more restrictive national policy."

Well, it's a good time to shake things up. These are unsettled times, and the Democrats could use a good dose of conservatism.

At the Shrunken Snowman Tavern...

... shun shrinkage. Be as expansive as you like. Swell!

"Dmitry Medvedev called for the resignation of the nation's top Olympic officials..."

... after the country's worst performance in a Winter Olympics in nearly a hundred years."

Worst performance? You mean this?



Yeah, Plushenko's "personality is unbelievable" — don't you think? (I hope you watched the whole thing.)

How many calories in an order of fries?

Think again! (Via BoingBoing.)

The other night we shared an order of fries and counted it as our entire dinner. But even then, we were probably eating too much.

Imagine "Reverse Yoo."

Orin Kerr poses a hypo in which John Yoo is asked to interpret a federal statute that fairly appears to permit enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. The Reverse Yoo believes, personally, that these techniques really are torture and should be forbidden:

[Reverse Yoo] is not going to be like the Nazi lawyers who let the Holocaust occur... So Yoo decides that he must write a memo concluding that these techniques are unlawful.  Granted, he needs to get a bit creative to reach that result.   He needs to stretch a legal term here, bend a legal term there.  But by fudging the analysis when necessary, he manages to write a memo that gets to the result he wants to reach that the CIA is not permitted by law to engage in these interrogation methods.   With OLC’s opinion issued, the CIA never uses these techniques and no one is ever waterboarded.

Now, did the real John Yoo do basically the same thing as the Reverse Yoo? Or is the bending and stretching justified to prevent torture but not to permit it? Does it all depend on whether you think enhanced interrogation techniques are torture?

We love our jobs!

70% of Americans who have jobs say their jobs are ideal.

Even people who make less than $12,000 a year are immensely satisfied: 57% say their jobs are ideal.

At the link, you can also see how perceptions of the job varies by the kind of job it is. The perception is highest among those who own their own business: 87%. But even if you go down to the lowest level, which is "service," you still get 60% of people saying their jobs are ideal.

What's going on?

How many beers a day would Obama need to be drinking before his doctor would recommend "moderation of [in?] alcohol intake"?

Drudge picks out this bit from Obama's health report:

The link goes to this report — which stresses the advice to "continue smoking cessation efforts" (which means he's still smoking, apparently) — and ends:

The doctors also recommended "moderation of alcohol intake."

Considering that there is a great deal of research showing that it is a positive health benefit for a man to drink 1 or 2 beers a day, I would think that a 6 foot 1 1/2 inch man like Obama could easily drink 3 or 4 beers a day without there being an actual negative effect of concern to a doctor.

How much is Obama drinking?

(If you think we shouldn't be talking about the President this way, let's remember how people called Bush a "dry drunk." That is, he was criticized for being a drunk when he didn't drink at all!)

IN THE COMMENTS: madawaskan said...

Who was it that edited it like that? The Guardian?...

The actual wording is (PDF):

Continue smoking cessation efforts, a daily exercise program, healthy diet, moderation in alcohol intake, periodic dental care, and remain up to date with recommended immunizations. 

Why does The Guardian hate our President?!

Recommending "moderation of" is completely different from recommending continuation of "moderation in." Reading the original report, I'd say the doctor told Obama that the amount he was drinking was just fine.

"Wouldn't it be *awesome* if Obama were as radical as the Rights thinks he is?"

Tweets Ana Marie Cox about an article that I didn't click to when I originally read it yesterday. This morning, I happened upon an Andy McCarthy post over at NRO, decided to blog about it, and thought it would go perfectly with what Cox had written. I'd almost blogged Cox's remark, because I thought it was scarily left wing, and I wanted to blog McCarthy because I thought interestingly extreme. I thought it would be clever to put Cox and McCarthy together. Digging out the Cox tweet, I finally clicked her link. It went to the McCarthy post.

Here's what McCarthy said:

Today's Democrats are controlled by the radical Left, and it is more important to them to execute the permanent transformation of American society than it is to win the upcoming election cycles. They have already factored in losing in November — even losing big. For them, winning big now outweighs that. I think they're right.

I hear Republicans getting giddy over the fact that "reconciliation," if it comes to that, is a huge political loser. That's the wrong way to look at it. The Democratic leadership has already internalized the inevitablility [sic] of taking its political lumps. That makes reconciliation truly scary. Since the Dems know they will have to ram this monstrosity through, they figure it might as well be as monstrous as they can get wavering Democrats to go along with.... [I]f the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority....

I hope McCarthy's understanding of what's going on is wrong, and it shapes my view of Cox to know that's what she thinks is "awesome."