"I feel your pain. And have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz?"

"It’s about this sweet little nobody who gets to pay a brief visit to the glittering Emerald City before being swept back to the reassuring familiarity of the poor thing’s broken-down windswept economically devastated monochrome dustbowl. You’ll love it!"

I hate hate hate hate hate what they've done to Blogrolling.

I don't even want to talk about it. Just try using my blogroll now if you want to know what is pissing me off.

UPDATE: I've taken Blogrolling out of my template. I'll make a list of links by hand, and I apologize to all the bloggers who've temporarily lost their links.

I've seen that road before.

A day in the life of the greatest crossing-the-street photo-op on the face of the earth:



Via 10,000 Monkeys & a Camera.

Reference photograph.

"While pouring syrup on your Eggo waffles, you note that you missed a few voxels."

Jokes for brain scanners.

"[T]he Obama administration may be attempting to appease its antiwar base ... or trying to look good for the chattering classes."

John Yoo defends his memos:

Imposing Fourth Amendment standards on military action would have made the Civil War unwinnable -- combat occurred wholly on U.S. territory and enemy soldiers were American citizens. The military does not have the time to obtain warrants before soldiers fire upon enemy targets and personnel; the battlefield does not provide the luxury to collect evidence needed to meet probable cause standards in civilian courts. Even if the Fourth Amendment applied, we believed that courts would judge military action under a standard of "reasonableness" -- as they might review a police officer who fires in self-defense -- rather than demand a warrant to use military force to stop a terror attack....

But if the administration chooses to seriously pursue those officials who were charged with preparing for the unthinkable, today's intelligence and military officials will no doubt hesitate to fully prepare for those contingencies in the future. President Obama has said he wants to "look forward" rather than "backwards." If so, he should not restore risk aversion as the guiding principle of our counterterrorism strategy.

"I already paid the tax. Why do I have to pay it again just 'cause I died?"

Lots more Whoopi-and-taxes links and discussion here.

Ötzi, the Iceman, is ready for his closeup.

Tattoos and all.

(Via Metafilter.)

"President Obama told the Interior Secretary, a comical desert elf in a bolo tie, to review the Bush administration’s removal of the gray wolf..."

"... from the federal endangered species list for certain areas of the US. The Interior Secretary Salazar reviewed and decided to uphold the decision. So basically, the answer is that Barack Obama hates gray wolves because they do not stimulate the economy."

"First, I wanted people to see that the Supreme Court isn't all male."

"I also wanted them to see I was alive and well, contrary to that senator who said I'd be dead within nine months."

Senator Bunning won't be contradicted until November, but good luck.

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to stabilize the nation’s banking industry..."

"... implement a housing rescue plan and prop up a plunging stock market – all with about 18 vacant senior positions, virtually the entire upper echelon of his department. The staff is so faceless that lobbyists have begun trading jokes about a 'ghost' bureaucracy, given the many empty picture frames hanging on the department’s walls."

Just give him a big plastic button labeled "fix everything."

So Hillary Clinton gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a large plastic button with the word "overcharge" on it.

Oops.

Got to give her credit though. She was drastically ill served by her people. What? Did they Google for a translation (of "reset")? Yet she handled the screwup gracefully:



I'd love to see her behind the scenes afterwards with whoever came up with that stupid button.

And then there are those screwups she can't blame on anyone else. "High Reprensentative Solano" and so forth....



AND: Don't touch it! It's the history eraser button!



IN THE COMMENTS: Peter V. Bella said:

Hillary's people screwed up? She gives the guy a stupid button like some college kid would do? She screwed up and big time.It is her fault. She is way out of her league. This is more serious than serving tea, being Bill's doormat, and being a junior Senator.

This is some administration. The Prime Minister of England gets some cheap DVS and the Russians get a stupid toy button. I wonder what Oprah got from her visit?

You're right. The button is incredibly stupid. I wrote this post in the middle of the night, between sleeps, and I was impressed that she weathered the incident at all. But in the cold light of morning the stupidity of it all is glaring.

AND: They should have asked Volokh:

Unless I'm unfamiliar with some alternative meaning — and one that the Russian foreign minister was unfamiliar with, too — "peregruzka" doesn't remotely mean "reset." "Gruz" means "load," and "pere-" means "over-"; "peregruzka" means "overload." (I take it that "overcharge" is used in the story to mean an excess of an electric charge, which is to say an electrical overload, not "overcharge" in the more common English sense of charging too much money.) Doesn't the State Department have fluent translators to do such things?

We see this one mistranslation. How many unseen mistranslations are there? Is it the same as the ratio for vermin sighting to vermin population? Or is it much, much worse? And also, why hasn't nuclear war killed us all yet?

"A woman in an airport bathroom who, I felt, had addressed my daughter Julia with an unforgivable tone of officiousness and disdain..."

Oh, the things that have become unforgivable.

Gratuitous bathtub scenes.

Back on December 15th, I wrote:

I'm slightly obsessed with the prominence of bathtubs in the movies. You'd think the most interesting thing in the world was a woman in a damned bath. "Australia" has the conventional lead actress taking a bath for no good reason. Hmm... 2 characters have to have a conversation. Let's put the woman in the bathtub. Depending on what rating you want, it will either be a bubble bath or it won't. It's embarrassing.

Ever since then, Trooper York has had a daily gratuitous bathtub scene. And, really, I'm flattered. But how does he get all those hilarious photographs? I tried a Google image search for "bathtub," and got a lot of empty bathtubs. So I tried a search for "bathtub woman" — yes, I know, not very creative — and this came up first. I mean, come on!

What's the trick? "Bathtub movies"???

Professor John McGinnis on originalism.

Here's the audio from yesterday's event at the UW Law School, which was sponsored by The Federalist Society. McGinnis speaks for about 20 minutes, then I do a 10 minute commentary, and the rest is questions and answers. McGinnis contends that judges should interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning because this kind of interpretation will produce better consequences than other approaches to interpretation. He depends heavily on a belief in the superiority of a text produced by a supermajority — i.e., the Constitution — as understood by that supermajority. He chooses an interpretive methodology based on what is most likely to work out for the best even as he would exclude judges from thinking in normative or pragmatic terms as they decide particular cases.

"Courage is not solely for men, but it is mainly for men."

"The Greek word for courage is andreia, which comes from he-man and also means manliness. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was, however, critical of the implication in his language that courage was for men only. He said something not so definite: men find it easier to be courageous than women, and women find it easier to be moderate than men.... Giving women equal opportunity for displaying courage does no obvious harm if the need for courage remains clear. It would not be good to measure the amount of courage we need from the willingness of women to produce half of it. Less obvious harm might result from the loss of tenderness, and the loss of esteem for tenderness, in women. Do we really want two tough, aggressive sexes instead of one tough, the other tender? And do we want to dispense with gallantry in men, which is related to protectiveness in husbands?"

Harvey Mansfield is at it again.

(Via A&L Daily.)

"These memos I wrote were not for public consumption. They lack a certain polish." Said John Yoo.

Polish?

"I think [it] would have been better to explain government policy rather than try to give unvarnished, straight-talk legal advice. I certainly would have done that differently, but I don't think I would have made the basic decisions differently."...

"One thing I sometimes worry about is that lawyers in the future in the government are going to start worrying about, ‘What are people going to think of me?’ ... Your client the president, or your client the justice on the Supreme Court, or your client this senator, needs to know what's legal and not legal. And sometimes, what's legal and not legal is not the same thing as what you can do or what you should do."

Any sympathy for the lawyer? For lawyer-client confidentiality? The need for harsh, straight-talk without the verbal lubrication of public speaking.

UPDATE: More here.

Mickey Rourke, fashion icon.

I love it.

""My wife’s dead' 'Oh yeah well my eyeballs are dead.'"

The "American Idol" "tragedy off"... and other things.

I can barely force myself to watch AI anymore, but reading descriptions of the show is great fun. Yes, I know, maybe you had fun reading my descriptions of the show in year's past, but the problem there is that I have to watch it, and my current watching involves the kind of fast-forwarding that compresses a 2-hour show — why the hell is the show 2 hours?! — into about 15 minutes. I'll hear 2 seconds of a singer and know it's too horrible to watch. Even the good ones are annoying me now.

The link above goes to Trooper York. I also like Jacob at Television Without Pity. When I was trying to actually watch the show, I thought Jacob's recaps were ridiculously long and meandering. Well, the solution to that is not for Jacob to rein in his effusions and digressions. It's quite simply for me to stop watching the show and read Jacob (who absurdly gives every episode an A+):

First up we're going to group sing -- mostly seated, because of the Scott [blind guy] factor -- a Katy Perry song, "Hot & Cold," which is the third Katy Perry single that has to do with boys and girls and boys who like girls who do boys like they're girls and reinforcing gender stereotypes while congratulating itself on not doing that. Let's talk about Katy Perry for a second. I actually heard this cover of "Electric Feel" that she did, and it was totally lovely. She has a wonderful voice under all that bullshit, which makes me hate her more and not less. It's not even the horrific Diablo Cody/Betty Page cute/burlesque crap, although they do contribute to the overall '90s-ness of her, which is admittedly yucky.

The problem is that, just like this show is not so much about selling your soul as speculating against the real estate market of the place your soul would normally be located, Katy Perry took a pretty face and a fantastic voice and leveraged them against this stupid-ass dead-end offensive gender stuff: "You change your mind like a girl changes clothes" tells you everything you need to know about Katyworld, where men have minds and girls have clothes, and girls only kiss girls to impress guys because they are drunk. It's not even a one-trick pony, it's just a trick, and a cautionary tale for these kids, who have not even begun to sell out yet. Katy Perry is to sexuality what Gwen Stefani is to racial equality.

Twitter, explained. By Evan Williams.

"He was in pain all the time. He cried."

"I bought him a toy piano."

What happened with Sanjay Gupta?

"Gupta, who was once named one of the 'sexiest men alive' by People Magazine, was never officially named to the post and continued to report on CNN. He did not issue a statement or explain his decision Thursday. Sources said the medical journalist told CNN executives that he wanted to devote more time to his medical practice and to his duties at the network. But one source close to him said he was very disheartened by Daschle's fate and fearful he was not going to get a prominent role in the health reform process."

Okay. I understand. Thanks for the explanation, WaPo. He's rich and prominently sexy. He can't go into government without major flash and admiration. And some people were even going to pick at his credentials, maybe beat him up the way they did to poor little Tom. That won't do.

"Never waste a good crisis..."

Says Hillary Clinton.

What if George Bush or Dick Cheney had said something like that openly? It's the kind of line that people used to imagine Bush people saying in secret.

IN THE COMMENTS: jayne cobb says:

Didn't Rahm Emanuel say the exact same thing?

Yes:



It's the mantra of the Obama administration.

Aw, look, it's Jeremy Neren of Madtown Munchies, who challenged himself with "28 Days on Munchies" and lost 10 pounds.

He seems to be the anti-Spurlock.

(Madtown Munchies.)

"'I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is,' observed one of the justices, a sly reference to Starr’s previous job."

"Starr did not take the bait. He merely smirked and carried on with his argument."

The justices were particularly interested in whether Prop 8 invalidates some 18,000 nuptials performed between the court’s initial ruling and the passage of the initiative. And they zeroed in on the precise wording of the proposition, which read: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

The economic downturn has been much harder on men. Is that some kind of boon for feminism?

Doodling is quite appropriate.

A study shows.

Accordingly, at today's presentation, I doodled:

Now, worldly things call me.

I have an intimidating amount of work this morning.



The Federalist Society is hosting a talk on originalism by Northwestern lawprof John McGinnis, and I'll be offering a bit of commentary. The stated time of the end of of this event is actually 10 minutes after my 80-minute Constitutional Law class begins, and, of course, I must begin on the dot. I will not resort to prayer. I'm going entirely on preparation, nerve, and slipping out 11 minutes before the stated end time.

I have a religious experience.

On Library Mall:



A photograph is consented to, and I am given a prayer card. It says, among other things, that I ought to recite this 3 times:

Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

I haven't recited it 3 times, but I have blogged it once, and you can reread it as many times as you want.

"Why couldn't President Obama have put on more of a show for his British guests?"

"He looked like he simply couldn't be bothered."

ADDED: Telegraph blogger James Delingpole writes:

My favourite theory so far ... was that it was a move calculated to please his Lady Macbeth. At the moment in Britain, we're still in the "Doesn't she look fabulous in a designer frock" stage of understanding of Michelle Obama. Gradually, though, we'll begin to realise that she is every bit the terrifying executive's wife that Hillary Clinton was. Or, shudder, Cherie Blair.

We may just LURVE Michelle's fashion sense. But Michelle doesn't reciprocate our affection, one bit. Her broad-brush view of history associates Brits with the wicked white global hegemony responsible for the slave trade....

Now, there's some loose talk. There's no reason to blame Michelle. This is pure racial fantasizing. Quite bizarre. But Obama should be setting off positive fantasies around the world. That's what he said he'd do. That's what those of us who voted for him believed he would do. Come on! Where's the magic?

As long as we're talking about hair, had you noticed our Prez's hair is going gray?

I had, and the NYT has a whole article about this development.

Mr. Obama’s graying is still of the flecked variety, and appears to wax and wane depending on when he gets his hair cut, which he does about every two weeks.

The waxing and the waning of the flecks!

His barber, who goes by only one name, Zariff, takes umbrage with bloggers who alternately claim Mr. Obama, 47, is dyeing his hair gray (to appear more distinguished) or dyeing it black (to appear younger). “I can tell you that his hair is 100 percent natural,” Zariff said. “He wouldn’t get it colored.”

A barber taking umbrage — umbrage with the bloggers. Zariff the barber takes umbrage with the bloggers for writing something I was just about to write. But I will not. I choose not to provoke the umbrage-taking barber they call Zariff.

And for all of his 16 years giving Mr. Obama his “quo vadis” haircut — black parlance from the 1960s for close-cut locks — Zariff said he is not about to start ribbing Mr. Obama. “We do not tease about the gray at all,” he said.

Quo vadis... parlance... Zariff... ribbing... I love the way this article is flecked with amusing words, these words that wax and wane. And I will not tease about the gray. Nor will I tease about the ears or anything else about the head of President.

There is still nothing I see that is not perfection...

Did you get your Adam Lambert haircut?

This is an "American Idol" question, and a cute kid video. Please forgive me. You need know who Adam Lambert is, and you can get up to speed looking at this clip — he's at the end (singing "Satisfaction"). And here's a photo of him.

"Abstinence allowed me to get rid of the garbage internally and externally."

"The love I was looking for was inside me this whole time."

Is that a statement that belongs characteristically to a gay man who worried that God wouldn't love him, or is there something in that for all of us?

The Kindle iPhone app.

New. I'll try it. I'd like to get all the books I bought for the Kindle I don't use onto the iPhone, which I use all the time.

I will let you know how easily this transition goes.

UPDATE: It was easy — as it always is — to find the app in iStore and to "purchase" it. It's free, and it downloaded normally. I opened the app and saw that I needed to enter my email address and Amazon password, and that caused the downloading of "Archived Items," which was a list — with book cover pictures – of the 11 books I'd already bought. When I touched the name of one item — it happened to be "The Best and the Brightest" — a download of the whole text of the book happened in a few seconds. At that point I could display the text on the bright, clear, small iPhone screen and flip the pages easily with my finger. I'm delighted!

[Typo corrected: "finger" not "figure." Yikes. The image!]

I had to do it.

After this.


moar funny pictures

What happened last night at the Ice Hole Tavern.

We were talking at the tavern. And Chip made this:



BONUS:

Do sexually "degrading" song lyrics lure teenagers into bad sex?

I'm trying to read this somewhat abysmal article that Drudge is linking.

In an unusual piece of research, investigators at the University of Pittsburgh graded the sexual aggressiveness of lyrics, using songs by popular artists on the US Billboard chart. The lyrics were graded from the least to the most sexually degrading. They then asked 711 students aged 15 to 16 at three local high schools about their music preferences and their sexual behaviour.

Overall, 31 percent of the teens had had intercourse. But the rate was only 20.6 percent among those who had been least exposed to sexually degrading lyrics but 44.6 percent among those highly exposed to the most degrading lyrics.

The study's lead author, Brian Primack, said music by itself was not the direct spark for sex but helped mould perception and was thus "likely to be a factor" in sexual development. "These lyrics frequently portray aggressive males subduing submissive females, which may lead adolescents to incorporate this 'script' for sexual experience into their world view"...

"Non-degrading" lyrics described sex in a non-specific way and as a mutually consensual act, while "degrading" lyrics described sexual acts as a purely physical, graphic and dominant act.

First, there is something strange about using the term "degrading" instead of the usual "graphic." I should think that people who listen to graphic lyrics are already interested in having sex and are not merely learning that sex is somehow mandatory and perfunctory. If you are inclined toward sex, graphic lyrics aren't degrading. And it's not right to classify any dominant sexual male as degrading the woman. That says more about the classifier than the lyricist!

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, lyrics by Prince on his album "Purple Rain" prompted wives of senior politicians in Washington, led by Tipper Gore, to set up the Parents Music Resource Center.

Oh, for the love of God, leave Prince alone. Now, of course, his lyrics were very sexy, and he did influence many of us women to want — and even have — more sex. But the song that upset Tipper so much was "Darling Nikki." Read the lyrics. Nikki was not an innocent, subordinate female degraded by a dominating Prince. Nikki was the dominant one, and if anybody was overcome or degraded, it was Prince. It was the dominant female that freaked out Tipper.

Anyway, if you have young kids, protect them from graphic song lyrics. That is your job. But don't lose your mind and start calling things degrading unless they really are. All sorts of song lyrics, including some of the most beautiful old standards, depict a relationship in which one person — usually the singer — is overwhelmed by and enslaved to his or her lover. It's ridiculous to get bent out of shape over that.

"It's just unbelievably fascinating that he could write a novel about the most boring and unpleasant parts of life..."

"... and make it interesting and exciting and worth writing about.... This is the stuff that our life is really made of, and the challenge is to find a way to be happy."

And David Foster Wallace committed suicide in the middle of writing this book, "The Pale King." The "most boring and unpleasant" thing he was writing about was the IRS.

Today, the pages of "The Pale King" sit in bins and boxes around [editor Michael] Pietsch's desk at home, but he bristles at the suggestion that he won't get through them in time to publish the novel, as he has promised -- and as Little, Brown has announced -- in the spring of 2010.

It doesn't seem to faze him that among the various drafts are sometimes "10 different versions of one chapter or one scene."...

"You do not change a word if someone's not there to argue with you or discuss it with you," he says.

What this means is that he has his work cut out for him. "It's not clear what the intended structure was," Pietsch admits, although Wallace left copious outlines and notes about "The Pale King" that he will use as guides. The published book "will just stop where it stops," and may include some of Wallace's notes and journals.

Good God. May I suggest not making a book at all, but a website? Put everything up, connected with links, and just let us try to find our own way through it ... or give up, as Wallace did.

"Whatever happened to cinephilia?"

Asks Scott McLemee.

Another way to ask the question is: Why did we ever have cinephilia in the first place? Have we simply overcome a delusion — aided, perhaps, by the immediate availability of everything — or was there some beautiful devotion to film art that we should long to recover?

The Democrats and Rush Limbaugh: An intriguing symbiosis.

Jonathan Martin describes the dynamic:

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned [that he had an 11% approval rating with voters under 40]. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

Rush's "I hope he fails" line was big.

... Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

Limbaugh is embracing the line of attack, suggesting a certain symbiosis between him and his political adversaries.

"The Administration is enabling me,” he wrote in an email to POLITICO. “They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama's policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.”

The bigger, the better, agreed Carville. “It’s great for us, great for him, great for the press,” he said of Limbaugh. “The only people he’s not good for are the actual Republicans in Congress.”

Now, of course, Carville, as usual, is crowing about the fabulous Democrats and mocking those dismal losers on the other side. But he must also secretly be scared of the Democrats' powerful, fearless, articulate critic. Those Republicans in Congress were conveniently cowed, and the last thing that needed to be done was to ruin Rush. But Rush gets energy from the attention. If only those under 40 folks would actually listen to his radio show and find out what he's really saying. It's easy to hate him from afar, to regard him as poison, not to be touched at all. I felt that way myself. But if they were to overcome that barrier and actually listen — as I did — they might get hooked in — as I did.

By February, Carville and Begala were pounding on Limbaugh frequently in their appearances on CNN.

Neither Democrat would say so, but a third source said the two also began pushing the idea of targeting Limbaugh in their daily phone conversations with Emanuel.

Conversations and email exchanges began taking place in and out of the White House not only between the old pals from the Clinton era but also including White House senior adviser David Axelrod, Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Woodhouse.

The White House needed no more convincing after Limbaugh’s hour-plus performance Saturday, celebrated on the right and mocked on the left, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he re-stated his hope Obama fails....

By Sunday morning, Emanuel elevated the strategy by bringing up the conservative talker, unprompted, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and calling him the “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”

Even Republican National Chairman Michael Steele joined in with a surprising critique of Limbaugh as a mere “entertainer,” who is “ugly” and “incendiary.”

“He took a little match we had tossed on the leaves and poured gasoline on it,” said one Democrat of Steele.

Steele was forced into calling Limbaugh to apologize Monday, an embarrassing climb-down following the RNC chairman’s criticism of the conservative talk-show host.

But Democrats kept at it in rapid-fire succession, thrilled that Steele had validated their claim that Republicans were scared to cross Limbaugh...

“I want to send Rush a bottle of vitamins,” said Begala. “We need him to stay healthy and loud and proud.”

Oh, really?

It’s something of a back to the future tactic for Democrats: painting the GOP as the party of the angry white male. But unlike Newt Gingrich or other prominent Republicans, Limbaugh doesn’t have to mind his tongue.

So let's have a free-wheeling outsider voice reviving conservatism. In fact, with all this newfound power, Rush is likely to concentrate on explaining conservatism. He's not out of control, and it would be naive to think he's going to say outrageous things that can be used to hurt Republicans. He's more likely to throw stink bombs when he's not getting enough attention. What he will do now, I think, is highlight things Democrats say and show you why those things are outrageous — and he is at his best and most entertaining when he does exactly that.

“The television cameras just can’t stay away from him,” Carville said Tuesday.... “Our strategy depends on him keeping talking, and I think we’re going to succeed.”

It's a risky game, and Limbaugh can't lose it. We'll see what happens to the Republicans he means to help.

Barack Obama, more popular than ever.

Deal with it.

At the Ice Hole Tavern.

Tell me why you do it? I'd really like to know. Do you think it makes sense to be out there on the ice, fishing through a hole? Please don't hesitate to take these questions metaphorically... or homophonically.... or any way you like.

What was Althouse drinking?

Here.

What was Althouse drinking?
	Vodka
	Water
	Vodka and water
pollcode.com free polls

IN THE COMMENTS: Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said:

She was drinking a 'Sullenberger.'

Several shots of Grey Goose,
Shake hard, then
Set down gently ... with a splash.

Trooper York (who has met me in person) said:

Despite all the crap she takes from the liberal loons, Althouse is not much of a drinker. She is actually tiny and more than one or two drinks would be very noticeable. So this is all bullshit and make believe fun.

But hey, apple juice in the rocks glasses worked as a gimmick for Dean Martin, so go for it.

Chickenlittle said:

I think she should cultivate an image of a hard drinker, even though she isn't. It's a good foil to fool the left and drive them even crazier.

Meade (who has met me in person) said:

Wait. Chickenlittle, are you saying she's faking it? That she's not really a hard drinker?

But that would change everything. And how would you explain her expensive tastes in vodka and whatnot?

Chickenlittle:

I really thought she was, but she seems to be denying it here. How can I argue? Why would Althouse be messing with our minds?

Meade said:

Wow. If it was just water, I'm afraid I owe her a big apology.

Wow.

Ricpic said:

Blame It On Moskva

Tiny Annie took a sip
And tiny Eve turned red,
Mortified but hic to hip
Both tumbled into bed.

Meade said:

Then Eve said something seemly
And Ann said oh pshaw
You seem to some so dreamy
Your bash of Rush withdraw!

Your bash of Rush withdraw, Eve
Unfounded lies cause schism
Apologize for he's my guy
And learn apologism

Palladian (who has met me in person) said:

Althouse and I once got drunk by clandestinely drinking eau de cologne off the cosmetics bar at Bergdorf-Goodman.

Today's object in rebellion: My car.

Over the weekend, my furnace died. I have a boiler and a furnace, so it's not a huge problem if one or the other goes out. Still, some rooms were quite nippy. But my heating people quickly responded on Monday, and everything is fine.

Today, my car died. Some switch went bad, causing the brake lights to stay on, which destroyed the battery. I was stranded in a parking lot, but not in the middle of nowhere, and a competent technician came by to jump start the car, which I drove to the Audi dealer, where they fixed everything, while I waited with WiFi.



When little, fixable things like this go wrong, I take it as a reminder that there are so very few problems. What great good luck I have!

Althouse in the NYT.

Playing the race card.

IN THE COMMENTS: John Althouse Cohen said:

Professor Althouse ... in the New York Times ... with the race card ... sounds like Clue ...

"Although I thought Ann's Rush apologism was unseemly and unfounded, I have to say I basically agree with Jon Chait..."

Eve Fairbanks reflects on our Bloggingheads encounter and displays the high regard TNR folk have for other TNR folk.

And what exactly is Apologism? (Homophone fans see "Apollo jism.") Wikipedia says:

Apologism is the metaphysical philosophy that argues that it is wrong for humans to attempt to alter the conditions of life in the mortal sphere of influence. It is opposed to the idea that absolute "progress" is a desirable goal for the pursuit of human endeavors...

Apologism stands solidly in opposition to the metaphysics of meliorism, which states that absolute "progress" is the desirable goal of all human endeavors. Apologism is not to be confused with apologetics.

Oh, I'm sure it all makes sense over at TNR as explained by Jonathan Chait or some other genius. Over here, we will quaff the nectar of the gods and allow the unseemliness to rage on.

"He's Quasimodo. Nobody wants to get near him."

Providing legal representation to a monster and misusing a literary reference.

Of course, the latter is much worse.

"The administration is focusing now on rule number 12 of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

"Cut off the support network; isolate the target from sympathy; go after people, not institutions, because people hurt faster than institutions. Well, I don't hurt. I am not hurt by any of this. What this is, though, is cruel. It is cruel because it is a game of manipulation emanating from the Oval Office. It is an attempt to distract Americans from the destruction of their ability to earn a living. It is an attempt to distract you from your plunging economy. It is an attempt to distract you from your ability to save for retirement and to pursue happiness. See, honest face-to-face discussions and debates are fair. I gave a speech at CPAC on Saturday, televised my first national address, address to the nation. In that speech were not just illustrations of what's wrong with this administration and liberalism. There were solutions, solution after solution after solution, because conservatism is a solution. None of the things that I said in that speech are being repeated by the Drive-By Media which I knew would be the case, because face-to-face discussions and debates are not going to happen. Instead, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals number 12 has been employed: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Rush Limbaugh.

Gordon Brown will not have his "standing podium-to-podium with the Messiah image."

Why not? The proffered reason: Obama is a snow pussy. What is he really afraid of?

At the Obstructed View Café...

... you can talk about your dreams and frustrations.

Steele...

... grovels.

Breastfeeding while driving... and talking on the cell phone.

Go ahead. You're entitled. You had a baby. The world should bow to your amazing prowess.

To anyone who thinks I drink a lot of wine.

Now, maybe you're wondering, why is Eve talking about amputees? Well, that's from the final segment of the diavlog about sex and economics. On the subject of amputees — and possibly influenced by what's in that glass — I tell a joke:

To anyone who thinks I'm irascible.

See my reaction to "That's a little bit of bullshit":



(The "he" under discussion is Rush Limbaugh.)

It's the new Bloggingheads — with me and Eve Fairbanks.

They've titled this one "Ann Plays the Race Card."

ADDED: Althouse starts a meme:



Fairbanks is infected:

Like Rehnquist, Chief Justice John Roberts is not a...

... snow pussy.

It's just snow, people!

"Northeast pounded by snowy late-winter storm" — and MyWay was teasing the story with this photo:



Don't let mere snow turn you into an abject sadsack! And, especially, don't infect children with snow-depression. Somebody wrest that child away from that lady and take him sledding. My kids are grown, so I don't get to go sledding anymore. An adult can't just go sledding. If you have a kid and it's snowing, you should realize how lucky you are. The day will come when it will snow and you will wish you had a little kid so you could play outside doing kid things.

Good morning, my dear friends.

I hope you had a lovely weekend.

What? Female narcissism?! It can't be!

XWL encounters a violation of the Althouse rule for gender research. (Note: He's reading an article that we discussed a while back when it appeared in the NYT Magazine.)

Off-blog Althouse.

I stood on Lake Mendota:



Acquired a hat at The Sacred Feather:



Hid under it at Michelangelo's:

"I think I’m closer to Benjamin Franklin than to George Washington..."

"I’m a contributor to my country and to my times. If it turns out that there’s a moment when it makes sense to run, then I’ll run. But if I end up never being able to run, then it won’t devastate me."