Counterscape.

"White House 9/11 evoker resigns."

The headline in Iran.

The asinine photograph:

Out in Ohio.

There's green grass:



Leafy shade:



And a picnic:

My Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T9 died...

... so I bought a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900.

I've always loved my little Sony digital cameras, and I've gotten a lot of use out of them. I passed the first one along to one of my sons because I wanted something skinnier to fit in a handbag. That second one was the T9. It developed a weird error that caused it to vibrate. Searching the web, I saw that this does happen, and there didn't seem to be much to do about it. Tapping on it could sometimes get the vibrating to stop for a while, but that got less and less effective. Another option was the optimist's approach: Look for the good. See? It's a special effect!



That's a dilapidated barn, by the way. Cute, but not versatile. I found myself in a Sony Store yesterday, and I decided to buy what looked to be the best current Sony. Despite the malfunction of the T9, I love Sony cameras. They've served me well. I've taken many 1000s of photos with that T9 and banged it around in my handbag for years. And I'm ready to see what the new one can do. (HD video for one thing.) So I went with the Sony again.

Are you still thinking about why you voted the way you did last November?

Last night, I'd done another one of my Obama-is-like-Bush posts — re global warming and polar bears — and Zachary Paul Sire commented:

It's just as bad now that Obama is doing it. Worse, even.

Palladian taunted:

But you'll still love to tongue his armpits, won't you Zachy baby?!

Yanking me onto his side, Zachary came back:

You always hysterically try to paint people who voted for Obama as some kind of mob of horny, brainwashed maniacs, so is that what you make of Althouse, who voted for Obama?

And what about you, darling Palladian? Are we to assume that you voted for John McCain, or did you not vote at all? Just because there is no magic candidate that reflects all of your wildest hopes and dreams doesn't mean you have to take it out on everyone else.

Sometimes, people have the fucking balls to go with a candidate and hope for the best. Sorry you couldn't man up.

Palladian says he mainly thinks of Zachary as a horny, brainwashed maniac, and as for Althouse, he sees why I voted the way I did, though he disagrees. As for himself, he says:

I voted for McCain/Palin, but it was a meaningless vote considering my state and district. I voted out of contempt for the other candidates and as a protest against the incredibly distressing mob mentality exhibited by the citizens of my city. I was actually not going to vote for anyone on the Presidential/Vice-Presidential ticket but when I was in line at my polling place, someone laughingly said "we're racking up the votes for our man Barack!" and a few people cheered which irked me enough to pull the lever for the opposition ticket.

"Just because there is no magic candidate that reflects all of your wildest hopes and dreams doesn't mean you have to take it out on everyone else."

Huh? See, this is the difference between lovers of liberty and freedom and people like you. We don't want or need a candidate who reflects all of our "wildest hopes and dreams". We want a candidate who will leave us alone. Neither party generally delivers such candidates. It is liberals (and often also conservatives) who need to be "led", who look for a politician to be their "savior", who vest their "hopes and dreams" in the person of a politician. This is a mistake, a pathetic vestige of our dark days when we dropped on bended knee and surrendered ourselves to worldly kings and potentates.

It was your candidate who based his entire campaign upon the ambiguous and ultimately meaningless word "hope", it was you who looked to him to reflect your wildest hopes and dreams of further enslavement to the State and further erosion of our national character. And, as it always happens, it is you who ended up with the political equivalent of vaporware inhabiting the Oval Office.

"Sometimes, people have the fucking balls to go with a candidate and hope for the best. Sorry you couldn't man up."

It's funny to hear liberals constantly, un-ironically, deploy the rhetoric of masculine power (balls, fucking, "man up") in defense of the weakest of feminine traits. There's nothing manly about "hope". Men don't hope for things, they make them happen. You sold your birthright for a mess of pottage. There's nothing manly in that.

Reap the whirlwind, dear Zachary. It's wonderful to watch you twist in the wind.

Zachary? Zachary? Where are you? Evaporated?

The beautiful, horrible press conference.

Jose Canseco has something to say about Manny Ramirez.

(Via The Sporting Blog.)

"Often the only way victims can prove that they are being stalked... is through new technologies like GPS."

From a NYT article about the use of GPS technology to monitor individuals who are accused of stalking:

The scope of stalking was revealed in a study released by the Justice Department in January, which found that 3.4 million people had been subjected to stalking over a one-year period....

"Subjected to stalking"? Does that mean they believed they are being stalked or that it has been proved? Note how the quote in the title suggests that GPS should be used to substantiate allegations — but you're not supposed to notice the threat to individual privacy, because these allegations aren't called allegations. These are statements by "victims" who have the problem of needing to "prove that they are being stalked." But if it's the "only way" to prove there is stalking, then how do we know whether the accused deserves to be monitored?

What's the difference between "monitoring" and "stalking"? Monitoring is what the government does.

I'm not trying to say that GPS monitoring is never warranted. Go read the article to see some good examples of persons who deserve monitoring. What bothers me about this article is that there's nothing about excessive government surveillance.

(And when it comes time to write a NYT article about the surveillance of suspected terrorists, I have the feeling that the threat of government abuse will not be forgotten.)

I'm out here on the front porch.

Were you wondering where I was?

Yeah, I'll do some blogging. Just hang on a sec.

At the Dog in Clover Café...

... maybe you'll get lucky.

"Why Does President Obama Hate The Polar Bears?"

Just one of those things that were terrible when Bush did them.

"The hair is gone. Her famous hair. I have it at home. She didn't care. I rub her head."

"It's kind of fun, actually, this great, tiny little head. How she carried all that hair I'll never know. She doesn't have a vanity about it."

Jeffrey Rosen defends his attack on Sonia Sotomayor.

As you may recall, on Monday, Rosen quoted unnamed former clerks to make what the headline called "The Case Against Sotomayor." The "case" seemed to be mainly that she wasn't smart enough. Rosen got slammed. Finally, today, he responds:

I've just returned from London to find that my piece on Sonia Sotomayor has provoked an energetic response in the blogosphere.

Everyone knows there's no way you can check the internet in London, and anyway, why would you even think to look when, after all, you only just threw a huge stinkbomb?

Many people have mischaracterized my argument, and I can understand why. The headline--"The Case Against Sotomayor"--promised something much stronger than I intended to deliver...

Blame the headline writers. Yes, they do have a tendency to state bluntly the things you swathed in verbiage.

Readers have asked for more information about my sources....

Rosen assures us his sources are trustworthy and must remain anonymous.

I was satisfied that my sources's concerns were widely shared when I read Sotomayor's entry in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, which includes the rating of judges based on the collective opinions of the lawyers who work with them....

Yeah, the evaluations are bad — not on the point that she's not smart enough, but that she lacks "judicial temperament."

Some readers have also questioned my confession at the end of the piece that I hadn't read enough of her opinions to make a fully confident judgment.

Now, he's read some more opinions. He stands by his original opinion, which, he notes, accords with that Almanac of the Federal Judiciary.

Rosen concludes:

[I wanted] to encourage the White House to weigh considerations of temperament against the many other factors they'll be considering.

Ah, he's shifted to the temperament argument. He really didn't defend the "not smart enough" position.

For the next Supreme Court seat, the president needs to be sure that the nominee's temperament and abilities are not merely impressive but absolutely stellar. She--and the next justice should indeed be a she--must be ready to challenge the conservatives and persuade her fellow liberals from the very beginning.

Must be a woman. (I agree.) Must be a woman who can interact well with the Justices already on the Court. Fine... boilerplate. But read as a whole, this new Rosen piece — put bluntly, in the manner of a headline writer — is saying that Sonia Sotomayor would be a terrible choice for the Supreme Court.

"If people here are like me — I call myself a 120-percenter. If I'm not doing any job at 120 percent, I think I'm failing."

Well, you're failing math.

"Obama Pressed to Engage..." on all things gay.

Should he?

Does he gain or lose politically? (That's really the question.)

How can he rake in votes just by seeming to care about the rights and interests of gay people? Not even seeming all that much — he's against same-sex marriage! — but just by stirring hopeful feelings and looking like somebody who cares. Well, he's already done it once. Why shouldn't he believe that what worked once will work again?

Is Letterman mocking Sonia Sotomayor or mocking the mocking of Sotomayor?

If he's not mocking the mocking, he looks anti-Hispanic, and I'm pretty sure his show is careful about avoiding the appearance of bigotry.

Brian Beutler opines:

The campaign against Second-Circuit Court of Appeals Judge (and potential SCOTUS nominee) Sonia Sotomayor began in earnest when nameless former clerks on that court told The New Republic's legal correspondent Jeffrey Rosen that the Hispanic judge (and one-time George H.W Bush appointee) is too temperamental--and not intelligent enough--to serve on the Court....

The charges have been challenged loudly--almost immediately after the article came out, other people familiar with her work came forward to call the piece baseless. But once the cat was out of the bag, there was no stuffing it back in....

[T]he coup de grâce may have come last night when Sotomayor bashing traveled outside the beltway, and on to the Late Show...

Beutler notes the speculation that Rosen was trying to help his brother-in-law — go to the link for the details — and procures a denial from Rosen.

Here I am on May 4th wondering whether Rosen had ulterior motives:



I anticipate a careful response from Rosen (whose reputation is now on the line).

Meantime, while it counts, Sotomayor's been wounded. Her stock on Intrade has spiked and plunged.

"Finally feeling better! Coffee! My next big worry - tomorrow is Danny Gokey Day in Milwaukee area and I don't know how to celebrate."

Michael_Haz tweets....

For Gokey Day - Put up a tree? Wreath on the front door? Carve a large vegetable? Personal Day off? What? Maybe buy a new shirt?...

What's a proper dinner for Danny Gokey Day? The other holidays have all the major meat groups covered, so maybe...ice cream? Help!...

Wisconsin has our own one of the "American Idol" final 3 guys. (They are all guys now. Sorry, Allison.) Danny is not my favorite. Not at all. (I've been all for Adam Lambert since his first audition.) But he's Wisconsin, and that means something.

So let's all go to Milwaukee and do some Gokey events: Miller Park — with first pitch and national anthem, sung, presumably, without screaming — the Harley-Davidson Museum, the Harley-Davidson Roadhouse, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the bronze Fonz....