It's Obama's fault.

Says Feingold.

"I find it embarrassing. I hear people speaking against the very idea of having rental housing."

"In terms of doing its part to meet the need for affordable housing, the village is so far behind the rest of the county, it's ridiculous."

It's Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, where, in the words of one Village Board member, "People who live here are in for the long haul... This project increases the voting rolls by 20 percent with people who have different values - I'm not saying bad values - but different values from what we have here...."

(Thanks to Irene for the link.)

At the Winter Café...

... you can heat up the conversation.

''2day the world lost a little piece of sunshine.''

''My deepest condolences go out 2 Brittany's family, her husband, & her amazing mother Sharon."

Ashton Kutcher tweets the death of Brittany Murphy, his erstwhile girlfriend. The actress, who was terrific in "Clueless" and "8 Mile," was only 32.

The health care bill as a "starter home."

And that's supposed to be a good thing.

"DC Cop Waves Gun at Snowball Fight!" Sorry. I'm siding with the cop.

"DC Cop Waves Gun at Snowball Fight!"  — that's the Reason Magazine headline on this video:



Additional text at the video page:

Around 2.30PM on Saturday, December 19, during a historic snowstorm, residents at the intersection of 14th and U Streets NW started throwing snowballs at passing Hummers.

There is a difference between a snowball fight and throwing snowballs at moving vehicles. In a snowball fight — like this cool one in Madison a couple weeks ago — you have voluntary participants playing at fighting with each other. Throwing snowballs at cars, on the other had, is surprising people who happen upon the scene and it's distracting them — and doing so at a time when it is particularly difficult to drive. Drivers do not know the extent of the interference when it begins, and they can be frightened or easily stimulated into braking or accelerating — when there is snow and ice and when pedestrians are nearby. Whether the vehicles are Hummers or not makes no difference. Were they protesting gas guzzling? That might seem cute or righteous or harmless, but it might not be. The drivers don't know.

One of the cars pelted was driven by a plainclothes police officer identified only as Det. Baylor. Baylor got out of his car and brandished his gun at the crowd.

"Brandished" is a heavy word and "brandished... at" connotes that he pointed the gun at people, which he did not.

Reason.tv's Dan Hayes was on the scene, capturing the tense confrontation between police and citizens who chanted "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!"

This reminds me of the 1960s era demonstrations where it seemed like a good idea to taunt the police instead of showing them respect. Baylor got out of his car, apparently, to try to deal with disorder that he couldn't have known the precise nature of. Alone, facing a confusing crowd, he got his gun in his hand.

Why couldn't people have spoken with him in a civil way and conveyed the assurance that there was no problem requiring police attention? Did they consider that there might be people elsewhere in the city, during the snow emergency, who actually would have benefited from help from a police officer who got delayed by unruly adults who thought snow suspended the rules and made it okay to throw objects at moving cars?

The quoted chant is "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!" and that sounds funny and fun-loving, but it got me thinking of the encounters with police that we saw in the 1960s when it took next to nothing to provoke shouts of "police brutality" and "pig." And in fact, if you watched the whole video, you heard the shout "Fuck you, pig."

I'm siding with the cop.

IN THE COMMENTS: Chef Mojo says "This was no innocent snowball fight" and links here, to a post at futureMAGINING, written at 1:39, about 40 minutes before Baylor arrived, called "Announcing The DC Snowpocalypse Guerilla Snowball Fight 2009!"

Where? 14th & U st. NW
What? Massive guerilla snowball fight in the middle of the street.

A fun snowball fight would be sited in a park of some kind, not in the middle of the street.

When? Saturday, December 19th, 2009 @ 2 PM.
We will also be tweeting details at twitter.com/futuremagining.

If you try to go to that twitter page now, it says "Sorry, the profile you were trying to view has been suspended due to strange activity."

The only way to play it safe is to bring a posse. This may be complete anarchy.

Remember, if you’re throwing a snowball- you’re game.

Now, that could be a set-up for fun, like the Madison snowball fight, but not in a busy city street.  The first few comments say that the fight belongs in a park, and the "admin" responds: "The reason we’re calling it a 'guerilla snowball fight' is because it’s in the middle of the street." If someone called the police, they were right to respond.

Now, futureMAGINING has a statement up about the incident, written by Yousef Ali:

The “detective” who started waving his gun around inappropriately without even identifying himself as an officer of the law needs to be reprimanded.  To those who were there with us at the snowball fight, the difference of knowing that the person waving a gun is a hot-headed law enforcement agent who is unlikely to shoot outside of strict protocol versus a random thug with a penchant for violence is HUGE.  When that gun was drawn, many feared for their lives and those of their friends.

Watching the video, I wondered why so many people were laughing and hanging around... and taunting the man. That's not how I'd behave if I thought I might be near a "random thug" with a gun in his hand. I'd say their behavior shows they knew he was a cop attempting to follow whatever the protocol is when one man faces a mob. Unfortunately, the video does not show the entire confrontation.

A debate about Althouse.

In the comments to yesterday's "right-wing reaction was predictable" post, there was a debate about Althouse that I feel like front-paging. After MediaMatters had called me "right wing" and Crack Emcee pronounced that "hilarious,"  Tonejunkie said:

What Althouse’s fans are too naïve to figure out is that her claim she voted for Obama is her shtick. It's what she thinks gives her, as a right-wing blogger, something unique and interesting to talk about. Plus, it gives the impression she has more balanced-observer credibility, that all her criticism of and complaining about him (which, aside from neutral/ambiguous comments, is all there is -- there are no positive comments) carries more weight and bonafides because, after all, “she voted for him.” In their obliviousness, they eat it up and Althouse becomes a favorite because yes, it does feel more truthful and satisfying when someone from a different political camp observes things you knew to be true all along -- when they concede things that your political camp got right. When they go rogue. Problem is, Althouse is not from a different camp, she’s from their own. She’s playing a game. She’s going after blog hits. It’s way past time they grew out of this naivetee, but like children and Santa, maybe they’re better off clinging to the belief.

The Crack Emcee responded:

... Ann might be going for blog hits. Big whoop. That's allowed. But, from where I sit, she also appears to be some kind of observation machine, so it figures she'd alight on an interesting topic, or seven. I don't like all of her choices but, clearly, I like a lot of 'em. Don't hate on her because she's good. We need more good things. I'm all about things getting even better.

I think, like a fellow Leftist reviewing Rush Limbaugh, you miss the point of Ann Althouse's little salon (and, thus, why it's successful and, possibly, even influential) and, especially, how I see it and her. This is a free speech zone. This is what Jazz musicians get to do after all the paying customers go home.... And this is where a unique, and, I think, more workable form of conservatism is residing. Can't find much like it anywhere else.

And that's to Ann's credit, big time. I don't know what she set out to accomplish with this, but the fact she hasn't chased this crowd away is, in my opinion, kinda brave. She's not afraid of us, as you are, and we embrace her for that. When she and Meade say "We love you, Crack!" it means something to me, personally, even if it can ring of paternalistic white guilt or something. I, very much, love them in return.

So, is she conservative? Not on your life - but she's changing, right before our eyes, and that's worthy of applause - not condemnation. You can knock her for dissing the president, but that's just a sign you're brain-dead and she ain't. The guy's a douche. Y'all fucked up, but unlike many, she can finally see it and so we're not gonna completely torture her over it. Conservatism is supposed to be a "big tent", and she's built one herself, so there.

The fact you don't feel comfortable under it says much more about you, than her, by a long shot. We conservatives like this woman, faults and all, just as we do Sarah Palin, and that pro-woman stance, too, goes against the image you carry of we "troglodytes", so it's no surprise, to us, you still can't accept that you're the one with the vision problem.

With her keen eye, good humor, winning smile, a sense of fairness, and very feminine ways, Ann gives herself a very good name - and that name, as we all know, is "Althouse".

Thanks. We do love you, Crack. And, here, have some blog hits.

"Obama... is having a Harriet Miers moment. Or, rather, he's having a George W. Bush moment."

"When Bush nominated the in-over-her-head Miers to the Supreme Court, his fan base turned on him. As one ardent Bush supporter told me at the time: 'It was in that moment that I realized he really might not know what he's doing.' And so things seem to have turned for Obama. Left-leaning Democrats suddenly are wondering: Who is this guy? What happened to the liberal dream-maker... ?"

The tragic narrative arc of Barack Obama: The world built him up, and the world is tearing him back down.

"Love is in; angst is out."

One of 9 musical trends of the 00s.

"Tiger Woods Plays Sad Golf at Night."

I thought this was going to be some sex metaphor — with lame wisecracks about holes and so forth — but it's literally true: Tiger Woods Plays Sad Golf at Night.

In Madison, we are now required to recycle plastic bags... assuming they are clean... and there's no plan to, you know, actually enforce the requirement.

City recycling coordinator George Dreckmann "stressed that the city had no intention of enforcing the law, saying the city would focus instead on encouraging residents to comply."

"I think the idea behind making it a mandate was to raise the awareness and to get people to do it," Dreckmann said. He pointed to the city law mandating residents put recyclables in green curbside containers -- for which the city has never issued a ticket -- as a model for how the department will carry out the new program.

So if you were thinking of keeping a little jar of mud on the counter to pre-dirty your plastic bags so you're still allowed to toss them in the trash, it's quite unnecessary. Here in Madison, power is wielded not with fines, though fines are threatened. It is applied directly to you subservient conscience. You could smudge your bags and throw them away, but the law can smudge your brain with a guilt that never ends. If you've got that kind of brain, and you know you do, you Madisonians.

(And, by the way, isn't Dreckmann a great name for a trash guy?)

Brandon Scholz, president and chief executive of the Wisconsin Grocers Association and an early critic of the program, said Thursday the program was an ineffective use of city resources because many private companies in the city already offer the same service. He also predicted the city's outdoor bins would be hard to keep clean and difficult to monitor for misuse.

"I think when you have these bins out in parking lots or who knows where ... they're going to become trash bins," he said. "It's a feel-good (program), that's what it is."

Ah, the tawdry little things we do to make ourselves feel good up here in Wisconsin.

Ald. Judy Compton, 16th District, who co-authored the law, called the program "a good step in the right direction" but said it still needs to "evolve." She said the city's goal should be to see 90 percent of residents recycling their bags. Current estimates put the level of participation in existing programs below 10 percent, she said....

Compton also questioned the effectiveness of store bag-recycling programs, questioning whether all the bags get recycled. She did not discourage residents from recycling their bags at stores but said with the city's program people would know where their bags were going.

Private recycling programs weren't good enough because the city wants to monitor our compliance. If there are all sorts of different recycling bins, placed where shopkeepers want them, how will the people — AKA the government — know if the mandate is boosting our bag-related virtue over the 10% level? The unenforced mandate, mind you. Now, not only will the people know how many bags are recycled, the people will know how much the mere idea of being supposed to do something produces the intended result. Think there will be a decline from the current 10%? You don't know Madison.

"Anthony Galluccio laps up wrist slap."

Oh? And does he wrist up a lap slap?

Senator Ben Nelson, bought off.

"I know this is hard for some of my colleagues to accept and I appreciate their right to disagree. But I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions."

Who stole the "Arbeit macht frei" sign?

Neo-Nazis/Holocaust deniers hoping to prove the sign is fake?

ADDED: Jules Crittenden has some doubt that it was Holocaust deniers:

[I]t could be neo-nazi enthusiasts who want it for their clubhouse. Could be someone who wants to sell it to a World War II memorabilia collector. Or, it could be scrap metal mongers. Turns out the thing is made of bronze. In the past couple of weeks, someone pried off a 100-year-old commemorative plaque at Lexington’s Battle Green, as well as a couple of plaques with the names of World War II and Vietnam war dead in Attleboro, Mass. Scrap metal thieves suspected. If it can be melted down, they don’t really care what it is.

NPR decides who told the Lie of the Year.

Guess who told it?! Sarah Palin!!11!!!1111

ADDED: They forgot to consider "Yes We Can."

"Talk about lucky. I was one of the luckiest guys in the world to survive that day."

"And now this."