Closing the door on "schlong."

I'll just quote Jeff Greenfield's series of tweets (Greenfield is a long-term establishment journalist, not someone you'd expect to help Trump):

On further review, Trump is right on this. "I got schlonged" is a commonplace NY way of saying: "I lost big time," w/out genital reference.

I've heard it for year, -after tennis games, poker games, bad stock bets.I obviously have a classy group of friends.

[Retweeting] Moynihan said it all the time. Rockefeller too. "You know, Happy, they really schlonged me on this one." Really.

[Retweeting] In 2011, NPR’s @nealconan said the Mondale/Ferraro "ticket went on to get schlonged at the polls.”

So for those of you who assert you've never heard THAT word used the way I did … [Links to "The 'Schlong' Revisionist Analysis We've Been Waiting For?" (a Talking Point Memo piece quoting someone who, like Trump, grew up on Long Island and said "shlonged" was "a pretty commonplace" way to say "thoroughly defeated.")]

The flood of vile, obscene Tweets I've received--after offering note about Yiddish slang--is a depressing sign of the times.

Is anyone praising Obama's Oval Office speech?

I'm hearing a lot of negative spin — Obama squandered the opportunity, etc. So I went looking to see if places that would be expected to support him are saying nice things.

I tried Talking Points Memo and the front page is cluttered with all sorts of things but the only Obama-speech-related items are: "Fox Guest On Obama: 'Such A Total Pussy, It's Stunning'" (top left) and (lower down) "Fox News Host: Obama ‘Could Give A Shit’ About The Threat Of Terrorism." That's nothing complimentary about Obama, just the direction to look elsewhere, at how nasty his critics are. 

The Daily Beast front page has that "pussy" guy...



There's also a column by Michael Tomasky, "President Obama’s Challenge to Muslim Americans":

This is the first time Obama has issued this challenge to Muslim Americans.... [I]f other Americans had some sense that Muslim Americans as a group were really working to ferret out the radicalism, then this stalemate might be broken. If anything Obama should have been more emphatic about this. He should now go around to Muslim communities in Detroit and Chicago and the Bay Area and upstate New York and give a speech that tells them: If you want to be treated with less suspicion, then you have to make that happen. That would be real leadership, and a real service....

Sounds like there's a big, daring, additional step Obama would need to take to earn Tomasky's praise.

Vox tried to keep it neutral: "Obama's rare Oval Office address to the nation: what he said and what he meant."

The NYT did put up "President Obama’s Tough, Calming Talk on Terrorism," as I noted last night.

Salon has: "Obama calls for reason: The president’s nuanced take on terror post-San Bernardino." The classic liberal buzzword. I've said it before:

Ted Cruz would really like your attention.

He's making bacon with a machine gun...



Via Talking Points Memo, which is duly disgusted.

The relationship between football players and fans at Ohio State.

Screen-grabbed by TPM, which seems to be celebrating Cardale Jones (the potential starting QB):

"Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003.... This story about the former Treasury Secretary’s brother does not rise to the level that our flagship site should be publishing."

"The point of this story was not in my view sufficient to offset the embarrassment to the subject and his family. Accordingly, I have had the post taken down. It is the first time we have removed a significant news story for any reason other than factual error or legal settlement.... But this decision will establish a clear standard for future stories. It is not enough for them simply to be true. They have to reveal something meaningful. They have to be true and interesting. These texts were interesting, but not enough, in my view. In light of Gawker’s past rhetoric about our fearlessness and independence, this can be seen as a capitulation. And perhaps, to some extent, it is...."

Writes Nick Denton, reacting to intense criticisms. 

ADDED: TPM says:

[T]here was apparently a clear difference of opinion about removing the post between Gawker's parent company, Gawker Media, and the website's editorial brass. Gawker staff writer J.K. Trotter wrote that Gawker Media's managing partnership, which includes its legal counsel, actually had voted 5-1 to take the much-maligned article down over the protests of "every other member of Gawker Media’s editorial leadership."...

The website's editor-in-chief, Max Read, had defended the article's publication by arguing that the executive was fair game by virtue of his position with Condé Nast and the fact that he solicited a male escort while being married to a woman....

But Denton seemed to side with those journalists who had complained on Twitter that outing the executive wasn't truly in the public interest.

2 sides of what I say is the same post-election meme.

1. "Meet The Real Next Senate Majority Leader: Ted Cruz." Talking Post Memo.

2. "Republicans’ First Step Was to Handle Extremists in Party." New York Times.

"Justice Anthony Kennedy issued an order to halt same-sex marriage in Idaho — and apparently also Nevada — on Wednesday..."

"... after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the states' bans one day earlier."

Interesting, but I don't think it suggests the Court will take the case. There's still no split in the circuits, and there probably never will be, and I'm holding to my theory that the Court has decided to decide by not deciding. Within that theory, Justice Kennedy is only slowing things down a little and keeping a feeling of procedural regularity while the government petitions for certiorari and the Court denies it.

UPDATE: Stay lifted for Nevada.

Justice Kennedy, the member of the court responsible for hearing emergency applications from the Ninth Circuit, entered a temporary stay on Wednesday morning on very short notice after a last-minute request from officials in Idaho. He acted so quickly that he included Nevada in his order.

A few hours later, Justice Kennedy issued a revised order, limiting the stay to Idaho.

Is the Supreme Court going to "deal a fatal blow" to unions tomorrow?

That's how TPM presents Harris v. Quinn:

If agency fees for non-members are ruled to be a violation of free speech, unions fear they would lose funding, become less effective at bargaining for benefits and, in turn, lose members.

A death spiral.

Doesn't this only have to do with public employee unions?

One labor official said such a result would bring about "the possible final destruction of the American labor movement." The official added, "It would cause the death not only of public sector unions and what's left of private sector unions, but also the Democratic Party," suggesting that the demise of unions would make Democrats more reliant on Wall Street money.

Why? What's the causal chain here? This TPM article is written by Sahil Kapur, whose law analysis I've found wanting before. He switches over to discussing only public employee unions. I wonder if it's just that Kapur doesn't care about the details or if he understood the unnamed labor official's reasoning and it's too shameful to spell out, some cycle of spending and favoritism that makes the Democratic Party look bad.

"George Will's Rape Column Was Edited By A Bunch Of Men."

Headline at Talking Points Memo for an article that is written by a man. I don't know who edited it, but this man, is named Dylan Scott. I know... "Dylan" could be a woman's name, but here's his picture...



I don't want to be too gender-normative, but — and I stress that I am speaking as a woman with long experience, 60+ years, as a female in the highly gendered social stratifications of America — I say he's a man. And who are the editors at TPM? It's not easy to get to a page of faces of TPM editors, maybe because it would be a bunch of men.

But Scott is only linking to a piece in The Washington Post itself: "George Will sexual-assault column: Editors were all male," written (ironically) by another man — jeez, these guys are everywhere — Erik Wemple.



But, anyway, that terrible George Will...



... whose picture, uploaded here, displayed super-large in compose mode and, in html, had the word "bigwill" in the code — can I get a trigger warning? — that terrible George "Bigwill" Will, according to Erik "Bigchin" Wemple, apparently, "knew what he wanted to say," which I translate to mean: It's not that the editors were all male; nobody can stop Bigwill.

Bigwill wanted to speak up for due process:

Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process. Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female “survivors” — note the language of prejudgment. Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape. Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies.

Due process was the fixation of that bunch of men who adopted the Bill of Rights. Who was speaking for the women?



Out with that phallocratic due process bullshit! "Sentence first — verdict afterwards"!



And if our commitment to the vindication of rape victims inflames us and the niceties of procedure get less than their due, and if young male lives are crushed for years...



... what's that supposed to be a picture of? Looks like a bunch of men. Let's not dwell on that. $40 million dollars will be paid. Justice now... settlement afterwards. These are the ways of the bunch of men that have been running this country all too long.

Solution: Female Power. Hillary Clinton stands ready to restructure the old stratifications. This woman has amazing experience, including that time she sent a rape victim "through hell."

"NRA Thinks #BringBackOurGirls Hashtag Isn't 2nd Amendment-y Enough."

Talking Points Memo doubles down on cutesiness. Those who object to the hashtag think it's a conspicuously lame and unserious response to something that deserves strength and seriousness. The response to the objection is to taunt with goofball silliness. Because here in America, we have this long-running standoff about guns, all readers know which side they are on, and it's a relief to retreat to the comfort of the usual political blather.

You won't believe the tameness of the joke behind the TPM headline "Here's George W. Bush Telling A Very Dirty Joke At A Civil Rights Summit."

My post title is intended as a deliberately parody of headlines (like the one I'm quoting) that shamelessly beg for traffic, so let me help you resist clicking on this link by revealing Bush's joke.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act at the LBJ Library, Bush said: "Former presidents compare their libraries the way other men may compare their, well..." Pause for effect. Crowd laughs.

Does the word "very" mean nothing anymore? Even "dirty" without the "very" seems like a dumb exaggeration. Just call it off color... and insist that one must never indulge in any off-color humor anywhere in the region of civil rights. Not even to gently rib LBJ. LBJ!

Johnson was a sexual beast, and also fond of (literally) waving his dick around.... As for waving around his cock (a little extension of him that he had affectionately nicknamed "Jumbo"), he was said to piss in public whenever he felt like it, and if anyone dared confront him, he would whip his dick around and challenge the poor sap with, "Have you seen anything bigger than this?"

"Obama Trolls Tea Party With Bumper Sticker"/"Scalia's Past Haunts Him On Birth Control."

2 teasers from the top of the front page at Talking Points Memo:



Both go to articles written by Sahil Kapur, whose name I first noticed in connection with the Scalia piece yesterday. I didn't blog about that because the legal stupidity of it annoyed me but also bored me too much to explain. I happened to see Kapur's name again this morning as I clicked on a link at Drudge that read "LIMBAUGH RIPS MEDIA": 'PIG IGNORANT'..." Limbaugh excoriates the media for not understanding that self-employed persons — such as Matt Drudge — have to pay quarterly installments on their taxes, so Drudge was not lying when he said he was already paying the penalty for declining to buy health insurance.

The individual mandate went into effect Jan. 1 of this year, and most people paying their taxes right now are paying taxes for 2013. 'Dude, there's no penalty until next yr,' Sahil Kapur of the left-wing Talking Points Memo tweeted.  Kapur's colleague at TPM Dylan Scott wrote a full story with a headline alleging Drudge was 'probably lying.' 'Americans don't pay a penalty for not having health insurance until they file their 2014 taxes -- in 2015,' Scott wrote.

Now I see Kapur's name on that piece about the bumper sticker, which, at the inside page, is headlined "Obama Co-Opts Tea Party Slogan For Obamacare Bumper Sticker." We talked about that bumper sticker last night. My favorite comment on my post is from Carl Pham, who says:

Love it. An effeminate l'il toothless snake, slim 'n' trim from his regular yoga class, sipping chai latte and curling up with his iPad to do a little Facebooking on the back of a lime-green Prius. I'm guessing the same design team that came up with Pajama Boy?

I also like Dr. Weevil:

Unlike the Gadsden flag snake, this one doesn't seem to be a rattlesnake. The point of the original flag is that the snake-warrior doesn't strike first, doesn't go in search of people to bite, but if you step on him, he will bite back and hurt you worse than you hurt him. The Obamacare snake just bites people.

Yeah, and also, if you tread on a stethoscope, it doesn't attack you. You can quite successfully survive stomping all over a stethoscope. And why would they want to portray that stethoscope as being like a rattlesnake? The message seems to be that Obamacare is threatening you and can kill you.

Anyway, I have no problem with TPM noting that Obama has appropriated the old Gadsden flag, which has of late been strongly associated with the Tea Party. And it's not Kapur who called Obama a troll. I just found all that interesting and was surprised to see Kapur's name again.

It's that Scalia piece that is so irritating. Kapur is not responsible for the photo of Scalia coming out of the darkness with his hands in the "Boo!" position under the word "Haunts." But he is responsible for writing such a nitwit explanation of a legal problem. Scalia wrote the majority opinion in the case that most clearly explains what the Free Exercise Clause means — which is that there's no constitutional right to exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws. The case that's currently before the Supreme Court (Hobby Lobby) is based on the statute — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — that Congress passed after the Court decided that Free Exercise case, so now there is a statutory right to exemptions. There's nothing haunting about this. There's the Constitution, which needed interpretation, and there are statutes, which can extend more rights than the Constitution provides. These are different texts and they require independent interpretation.

It's dumb (or disingenuous) to portray Scalia as somehow troubled by needing to apply a statute that requires courts to protect religion more than the Constitution requires. In fact, if anything, I could see him being especially deferential to Congress's choice to trump a judicial opinion with a clearly stated statutory entitlement. The problem to be argued before the Court today is about 2 statutes and the way they interact. It's Congress, not Scalia, that is "haunted" by the past. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a clear text, and it had the power to put text in the Affordable Care Act that would exclude the application of the RFRA. It didn't!

I've explained this before, by the way, back in November when the Supreme Court granted cert. in the Hobby Lobby case:

This is about statutes and the politicos who produce them, not the judges who stand back and let them trip all over themselves pandering to everyone. If the Congress that passed the Affordable Care Act had wanted to exempt it from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it could have done so explicitly. It did not. Why should the Court cut back Congress's absurdly broad RFRA to help it out with what it failed to bother to do with the ACA?

"The wife is to voluntarily submit, just as the husband is to lovingly lead and sacrifice."

"The husband's part is to show up during the times of deep stress, take the leadership role and be accountable for the outcome, blaming no one else."

IN THE COMMENTS: Dr Weevil said (and Instapundit quoted this):

This couple could very easily get all the lefties to stop criticizing and even to admire them. All they have to do is keep the Biblical quotations to themselves and just tell people they're really into BDSM, she's the M and he's the S, she really likes to be disciplined, he really enjoys disciplining her, and who are you to judge? They can be totally traditional in the privacy of their own home and totally transgressive in public. Win-win!

Now, that's funny — and Instapundit twists the humor by saying if the public display of religion were Muslim (rather than Christian), the lefties would refrain from criticizing. I see the humor, but I'm going to take the underlying concepts seriously.

1. Are the lefties criticizing? The linked article is the lefty (politely lefty) website Talking Points Memo (which links to a WaPo article). I see "This post has been updated," so maybe it was nastier before, but I see a pretty neutral account of the beliefs of Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), with verbatim quotes from his memoir and from his spokesman who says that The Washington Post misread the book, which in fact shows that "Pearce believes the phrase 'submission' is widely misunderstood in society and criticizes those who distort the bible to justify male dominance." TPM quotes a passage of the book that the spokesperson said shows what Pearce really thinks:

"I reasoned that surely Jesus did not in any way teach the idea of a chauvinistic male-centered marriage.... We are all created in God’s image, I reasoned, so it could not be that the man is in some way superior or the wife inferior."

That's TPM, and that post was updated, so maybe there are lefties somewhere criticizing, but if that's the way you think, aren't you displaying the very close-mindedness of which you'd like to accuse those terrible lefties?

Here's the underlying WaPo piece, which has an update appended to the text of its original article. WaPo quotes the Bible passage ("the book of Ephesians says wives should 'submit to their husbands in everything'"), recounts the Pearce's struggle to make sense of it, rather than to ignore it as "[m]any of their friends" did, and quotes Pearce's opinion that it is not a basis for husbands to "bully their wives and families" or to claim "authoritarian control."

WaPo notes that "Democrats in recent years have repeatedly attacked Republicans for their views on and comments about women's issues," and that "Since that election, GOP leaders have sought to coach their members on how to be more sensitive when talking about women's issues." That is, WaPo refers to the potential for Pearce's words to be used against him, the propensity of Democrats to do exactly that, and the way GOP leaders worry about candidates that give Democrats any raw material. That's pretty damned balanced. I guess you can say that WaPo made the Democrats look like lefties who pounce on anything to push the old war-on-women theme, but let some Democrats step forward then and trash Pearce for reading the Bible and trying to understand it in the context of a loving, equality-minded couple. What Pearce is saying is the typical stuff of modern American church sermons, and liberals have heard and absorbed these sermons too.

2. Sexual behavior of the domination-and-submission variety has to do with individuals discovering what amuses them on a purely physical level. I don't see anyone of any prominence in America recommending submissive sexuality as a matter of principle or as something to be imposed on women who don't independently and enthusiastically enjoy it. Quite the opposite. I see some men wanting the submissive role. And some women needing encouragement — because it seems politically incorrect — to go ahead and enjoy submission if that's what they find sexually exciting. But I'm not seeing any conspicuous talk of imposing sexual submission on nonvolunteers. That behavior occurs, and when it does, in this country, we call it a crime. When's the last time you heard an American take the position that within a marriage rape is impossible?

3. What's "totally traditional" is to put devotion to religion above one's immediate sexual pleasures. If you go public flaunting your enjoyment of domination and submission, you're conveying a message that is completely the opposite of what is traditional and that has no power to persuade others to do anything because of religion or because of tradition. Your only message is: Whatever turns you on. 

Now, it might turn you on to pretend to believe that God requires you to submit to your sexual partner. And in traditional societies where people believe God requires submission, women may adapt by eroticizing subordination. But what religion gives you extra credit for finding the fulfillment of sexual requirements sexy?

The answer to that question is actually not obvious, and feel free — it's a free country — to explore the nuance. I can imagine some proponents of religion saying that the true believer, doing anything God requires, feels free and joyful. God may seem to be saying what old-school parents say to children: You're going to do it and you're going to like it. As they say in The Book of Common Prayer: "O God... whose service is perfect freedom...."

ADDED: I started a new thread for commenting all the added material.

TPM says "Obama Declares End To Global War On Terror."

That's the headline on the front page, linking to an article with the headline "Obama Defends Drone Strikes But Says No Cure-All."

So what the hell just happened? A big deal or almost nothing? I assume Obama wanted to appease the doves, but are they appeased and, more important, should they be appeased? I feel like TPM doesn't even know what to think. When I heard Obama's articulation of the drone policy, I thought it sounded like he was trying to say something that the left would like, but that in fact he reserved for himself all the power he needed to do anything he wanted to do, that is, that nothing had changed.

Teenager arrested for tweeting rap lyric containing the word "homicide."

"Two teenage girls have been accused of sending threatening tweets about the rape victim, a day after Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond were sent to juvenile detention for raping the West Virginia girl."

Asked if their tweets were about the 16-year-old rape victim, Sheriff Abdalla said “no question.”

“We’re monitoring Twitter 24 hours a day,” he said....

Sheriff Abdalla said the girl’s tweet was: “You ripped my family apart, you made my cousin cry, so when I see you . . . it’s going to be a homicide.”

The lyric in [Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill's] song “Traumatized” is: “You ripped my family apart and made my momma cry. So when I see you . . . it’s gon’ be a homicide."

ADDED: Here's how Talking Points Memo reported the basis for the arrest: "The older girl was charged with aggravated menacing for a tweet that threatened homicide and said 'you ripped my family apart,' according to the attorney general’s office." Pathetic!

Who's missing the point here where Sen. Durbin shouts "you missed that point" at the NRA's Wayne LaPierre?

Here's the video, featured at Talking Points Memo, under the heading, "Durbin Hits Back At NRA’s LaPierre: 'You Missed That Point Completely.'" TPM uses the words "sharply admonished" to characterize the drama in Durbin's voice and notes the "applause from some in the audience."



Full text at the link, but you have to watch the video to understand the incivility of Durbin's tone. Durbin does have a point that LaPierre missed, but why didn't he address LaPierre with respect and invite him to reflect upon the missed point or to refute it he can?

I asked that question out loud, and Meade said, "You're missing the point." 

Of course, Durbin's real point was not that background checks deter criminals from buying guns. The point was to find an opportunity for drama and to seize it. These so-called hearings have little to do with gathering information for the purpose of writing sound legislation. It's political theater to build support for... oh, what difference does it make what they really do as long as they do something?

I ask Meade if I can use his quote in this post, and he says yes, adding that I should let people know that he spoke in a completely civil tone.

Remember the great call for civility that went out — from President Obama and many others — after the Tucson shootings? I've always used the tag "civility bullshit" for that topic, because I never believed that it was intended to apply across the board. Imagine the reaction in the media if LaPierre had used the tone employed by Durbin.

"Does A Speaker Survive This?"/"Will Boehner’s speakership survive until Plan C?"

Talking Points Memo/Ezra Klein.

Meme watch. Coming in from the left.

ADDED: Here's the presentation of the same material, from the right, at National Review:

The speaker looked defeated, unhappy, and exhausted after hours of wrangling. He didn’t want to fight. There was no name-calling. As a devout Roman Catholic, Boehner wanted to pray. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he told the crowd, according to attendees.

There were audible gasps of surprise, especially from freshman lawmakers who didn’t see the meltdown coming. Boehner’s friends were shocked, and voiced their disappointment so the speaker’s foes could hear. “My buddies and I said the same thing to each other,” a Boehner ally told me later. “We looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and just groaned. This is a disaster.”

"Everything I do turns into a disaster. I guess I really don't know what Christmas is all about."

It's all about... terror!

"Axelrod said all the 'empty binder' talk from the GOP didn’t prompt creation of the new brochure..."

Talking Points Memo gives the glossy pamphlet a glossy presentation. (Though not glossy enough to spell "brochure" correctly every time they used it. I corrected a misspelling in the quote I used for my headline.)

On a conference call with reporters Tuesday, top Obama adviser David Axelrod said the brochure is a version of the plan Obama has been “running on and talking about for months in written form.”

Read the whole document here.

But you can't read the whole document there. You can only flip through the pages and see the pictures and headlines. There's no click-to-enlarge to let you get to the text — minimal as it is — explaining how Obama will do things like "BUILDING THE ECONOMY FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS OUT." There's blurry fine print, but okay, I will stare it into some semblance of focus.

On page 2, "BUILDING THE ECONOMY FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS OUT" is the big headline and there are 7 subheadings, some of which become headlines on their own page of the brochure. The one that caught my eye was "Cutting the deficit by more than $4 trillion." There are 9 more pages to the brochure, but there's no separate page for that one.

Maybe if they'd bother to tell us how they planned to cut the deficit, they would have noticed that when they referred to it on the page-2 bullet-point list, they used the wrong number. The deficit under Obama is only — only! — something like $1.1 trillion. That's bad enough, and Obama had promised, at the beginning of his presidency to cut it in half. Cut it $4 trillion! I know it's just another dimwitted use of "deficit" for "debt," but — good lord — it's a bullet-point in your glossy brochure. Get it right! It looks like you don't care. It looks like you think trillions are absurdities that can be thrown around or cut in half magically.

Paging through the brochure, finding every other bullet point has its own page, I see there is a page, with a different headline that corresponds to "Cutting the deficit by more than $4 trillion." The redone headline is: "A TAX PLAN THAT CUTS THE DEFICIT AND CREATES JOBS."



It's possible to read that text. With effort, I did it. That was very annoying, and I didn't find a plan, so let's talk about that photograph.

First, if you suddenly feel like you need to buy Dockers, please use my Amazon link: here. When you put on your pants, one leg at a time, check the rear view mirror. Is your ass is as appealing to 3 generations of women as Obama's plan for the middle class?

Now, let's look at these women. There's a boy there too, carrying on the family's horizontal stripes theme, but the picture's framed to exclude him, because... well... women.

This election is about women. There's grandma in thick peppermint stripes, clapping her wizened, insufficiently health-cared hands together with delight. There's the little girl in thin peppermint stripes, curling her palms around an invisible ball of light that symbolizes her future, empty but all aglow. There's mom, in her red dress and and squinty, flinty rictus, her right-breast gently clasped for comfort by the one female who is not moved to ecstasy by our President.

Who is this American traitor, this devil child? Whence the expression of dubiety that clouds her young visage? A red flower — inserted in her tawny locks by her hopeful red-clad mother — casts a fateful shadow over the brooding child's brow. Petulant pessimist! How did you find your way into Obama's glossy brochure!

"The Five Stages Of GOP Reaction To Osama Bin Laden’s Death — And What’s Next."

The top post at Talking Points Memo, which I visited after I noticed it on my Blogroll and thought hey, I haven't gone there in a long time and then I wonder why I never go there anymore and then oh, I see.

ADDED: ... and then I'm going to blog about this and then hey, I need 5 stages.