The Cuomo connection.

Why Scozzafava endorsed Owens.

46% of people in the 18 to 49 age group do not skip the commercials when they watch network TV using a DVR.

Why?!

It's believed that people are just passive. Or they just forget. That makes me sad and happy. Sad, because I don't want people to be dumb. Happy, because the commercials support the shows that I like to watch too, and I'm skipping the commercials. If everyone did that, what would happen?

(Actually, I will occasionally stop and watch a commercial that — in the speed-by — looks very interesting graphically like that current commercial for whatever-the-hell that has floating jellyfish balloons and the like.)

Rush Limbaugh says Obama is a "man-child" and Sarah Palin is ready to be President.

Video and transcript here. I'll just do 2 excerpts for you:

WALLACE: You have now taken to calling Mr. Obama "the man-child president."

RUSH: Right.

WALLACE: What does that mean?

RUSH: Just -- he's (inaudible) he's a child. I think he's -- he's got a -- a five-minute career. He was in the Senate for 150 days. He was a community organizer in Chicago for however number of years. He really has no experience running anything. He's very young. I think he's got an out-of-this-world ego. He's very narcissistic. And he's able to focus all attention on him all the time. That -- that description is simply a way to cut through the noise and say he's immature, inexperienced, in over his head.

***

WALLACE: Sarah Palin -- you say that you admire her backbone. Do you really think she's ready to be president?

RUSH: Well, yes, I do. See, I am a -- one thing I do not do is follow conventional wisdom, and the conventional wisdom of Sarah Palin is she's not smart enough, she needs to bone up on the issues, she's a little unsophisticated, she -- Alaska, where's that? -- doesn't have the pedigree. I've seen -- she's the only thing that provided any kind of a spark for the Republican Party. This is not an endorsement, but I do have profound respect for Sarah Palin. There are not very many politicians who have been through what she's through -- been put through and still able to smile and be ebullient and upbeat. I mean, this woman, I think, is pretty tough.

Any contradiction detected?

"When the judge gave him standing to sue for custody, I thought, 'What's happening?'"

"'She voided the marriage, she knows he is a woman.' It's ludicrous."

Players in pajamas.

I hadn't watched baseball in quite a few years, but I got married a few months ago and one of the many consequences is that I've been watching a bit of the World Series. I realize a sports game is not a fashion show, but I'm appalled at what these men are wearing. I remember when baseball players wore skin-tight knickers. (I remember that time the Chicago White Sox wore shorts.) And now, I'm seeing men that look like children in their jammies. Yes, I realize that they are probably 6 feet tall or so, but they don't look much like athletes — not like those players of old in their skin-tight knickers. Some combination of tubby body and oversized shirts and slouchy pants changes the proportions and scales the guys down into children. And yes, I can see that many — many! — of these boy-men are wearing — "sporting" — beards. It's all too "My Very First Beard - from Kenner!" It's not helping. I'm sorry! Baseball is just not sexy enough. This was better. And I hate men in shorts. Not fond of the mustache either. Come on, baseball men, raise your game. I know you're still allowed to wear the knickers-and-socks. I root for the players that still wear the knickers. Look like an athlete, could you please? Women might like to watch.

At the Drained Lily Pond Tavern...

... it doesn't matter if we see that your beautiful ideas were always potted and propped up on cinderblocks. It's beautiful that way too.

A month ago:

November flowers.

Crocus.

Virgins in the United States.

13.9% of men and 8.9% of women between the ages of 25 to 45 have never had sex.

Via Metafilter, where there are some comments like this....

I watch the people around me find relationships so easily (I know it's *never* easy - but believe me, however difficult it is for you, it's all but insurmountable for me) and I wonder, night after night, month after month, year after year, what I'm doing wrong. it's hard not to wonder whether there's something fundamentally, immutably wrong with *me*. it's hard not to wonder whether sex and romantic love are simply things which aren't *for* me - things which the universe has seen fit to make available to others, but not to me. I know that doesn't make sense, but that's often how it feels.

it's hard not to feel resentful watching others take it all for granted, and to be asked why I don't just [find a girlfriend/get laid/go on some dates], the same way you'd suggest that I make a sandwich if I complain that I'm hungry - like I can just snap my fingers and make those things happen. I don't know *how* to make a sandwich. that may sound ridiculous to you - *everyone* knows how to make a sandwich! but as basic and instinctive as it may seem, there was a specific time, long ago, when someone showed you for the first time *how* to make a sandwich, right? well, I never learned. and now everyone insists that there *isn't* anything to learn; it's just something that people *know* how to do - and so they couldn't teach me even if they wanted to.

I'm not talking about mechanics; I'm actually relatively comfortable with that. I'm not even talking about the complexities of relationships - once I'm *in* one, I do well enough. I'm just talking about everything between here and there. it may be something *you* can just *do*, like making a sandwich. it's a dense jungle full of vipers and quicksand for me.

ADDED: As the commenters at the first link point out, it was a study restricted to unmarried Americans.

Scozzafava endorses the Democrat!

Well, then!

IN THE COMMENTS: Jason says:

[T]his is just plain dishonorable. All the people who endorsed her look bad, so does her party.

Freeman Hunt say:

And I'm with Jason, it's dishonorable. Lots of GOP establishment people went to bat for her, and now they look extremely foolish for having done so.

At the Autumn Salad Café...

... we're serving a large helping of leaves. But don't leave. Stay. Rustle up some conversation.

"The Washington Post reporter says the president wore a cardigan, and you all just believed it?"

Said Marcia:

Look at the picture. It's a crew neck.

Please remember that the MSM can't be trusted to accurately report anything.

Caught! Liberal bias again!

AND: Combining the Halloween costumes of the First Lady and Prez, I am wearing a leopard-skin-print cardigan:



And, tangentially, on the night after we saw Bob Dylan in Chicago, he opened with "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" — my all time favorite Bob Dylan song (which contains my all time favorite Bob Dylan simile).

The most popular Halloween costume of the past few years was nowhere to be seen last night.

What has become of that erstwhile scary character, The Hippie?

"The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York" — Frank Rich makes it all sound so scary.

Or at least the NYT headline makes it sound as though Frank Rich is about to scare us over the Stalinist invasion. But, reading the text, I see: "The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P." Are they killing the poor citizens of upstate New York or are they killing themselves? Get the image straight, Frank. Are liberals supposed to be aghast that conservatives were able to promote a conservative ahead of the Republican Party's liberal candidate? Or should liberals be delighted that the Republican Party is destroying itself from the inside?

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck... would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity....

Now, Rich himself sounds pretty wacky and paranoid to me. He tells us that it's "better for Democrats if Hoffman wins." He wants Hoffman to win. Really.

Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure....

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes....

Punch-drunk... pathology... hysteria... seething... fear... maniacal... Rich's perception of craziness seems... crazy. Hoffman and others are saying that conservatives should stand for traditional conservative values, and not, like Scozzafava, be more like the liberals. Give the electorate a choice between conservative and liberal and see who wins. That strikes me as quite sane. And I am speaking as someone who voted for Barack Obama in part because John McCain was not a solid, coherent conservative. Faced with the need to trust either a (seemingly) thoughtful, intelligent liberal and a confusing partly liberal candidate, I chose the former. I would do the same thing today. But I would like a real choice. Let the G.O.P. be conservative and defend and develop conservatism and see if people want it. I'm not surprised Rich is trying to portray that strategy as insane: He's a hardcore liberal.

These conservatives’ whiny cries of victimization also parrot a tic they once condemned in liberals....

Oh, I've already said what I had to say. I just threw in one more line because "parrot a tic" amuses me.

Don't tick off a parrot. And as for what to do with a tick... we don't parrot it. We do this.

Now, I'm getting far afield, and I'm manufacturing what could be perceived as evidence that we wingers are crazy. So let me, at long last, bring this post in for a landing. With something positive. Because, you know, we right-wing ideologues are an optimistic bunch. I want to compliment Rich — and the NYT — for studding the column with hyperlinks, many of which send us away from the NYT website. For example, when Rich attributes "whiny cries of victimization" to Rush Limbaugh, there is a link to Limbaugh's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Maybe some NYT readers who would never listen to the radio show will pop over there to see how terrible Rush is and find to their amazement that it's completely cogent and impressive. It might even strike a sympathetic chord for some readers. ("My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race?")

What will happen when the requirement that people buy health insurance is challenged in court?

There's no chance that it won't be challenged, is there? David Savage digs up a quote from the Clinton era: Requiring people to buy health insurance "would be an unprecedented form of federal action. . . . The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."

Savage tries to assure us:

Many constitutional-law experts ... predict that even a conservative Supreme Court would uphold a federal requirement that individuals buy health insurance. The justices have said that Congress has wide latitude to regulate economic activity, and health insurance qualifies as that.

Although the mandate to buy insurance may well face a constitutional challenge, "I don't think this is a close call," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine law school. He said that individuals' refusal to buy insurance could have an effect on the market, and the Supreme Court has said that Congress may regulate actions that affect a market.

That, for you nonlawyers, is a discussion of whether Congress has an enumerated power to support the requirement. The power referred to is given by the Commerce Clause. That says absolutely nothing about whether it might violate the constitutional rights of the individual.

As an example, [Chemerinsky] cited the court's decision four years ago that upheld federal restrictions on home-grown marijuana in California even though two women who used medical marijuana at home argued that they did not intend to buy or sell it.

A 6-3 majority said Congress may "regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce," and at least in theory, the home-grown marijuana could have been sold in the illegal drug market.

Yes, and the Supreme Court, after resolving the Commerce Clause question, remanded the case to consider whether there was a substantive due process right to use marijuana when it is medically necessary. That claim of right ultimately failed, but the point is that it's not enough for Congress to have an enumerated power to pass a law. It must also avoid violating individual rights. Savage's quoting of Chemerinsky about the commerce power makes it hard for the average reader to see what is an elementary legal matter — one that liberals ordinarily like to spotlight.

Moreover, the Commerce Clause question is quite a bit more complicated than Dean Chemerinsky makes it sound. The marijuana growers were engaging in an activity — making a product for which there is a big, regulated market. In this new case, we'd have Congress regulating people for their inaction. What other case is like that? Congress can "regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce"? Where's the activity? It's inactivity! And Supreme Court cases have limited Congress's power where the activity in question is noncommercial. Isn't the failure to buy insurance noncommercial?

A legal challenge to the healthcare mandate may be several years away. To challenge this requirement in court, a taxpayer would have to face a penalty, and the pending legislation does not phase in the penalties until after 2013.

Now, wait. The economics of the entire restructuring of health care is balanced on this individual mandate. I don't know how well-balanced it is, but the economics are shot to hell without the individual mandate, right? What happens if it turns out that the individual mandate is unconstitutional? Does the whole system go down?

Under Section 255 of the bill ("Severability"):

If any provision of this Act, or any application of such provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the provisions of this Act and the application of the provision to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected.

In other words, by its own express terms, if part of the Act is struck down, everything else survives. So if we find out, some day, that the individual mandate to buy insurance is unconstitutional, we're still stuck with all the other parts of the plan. Then what happens?

Has anyone promoting this bill even attempted to calculate the economics with the individual mandate excised? Are we going to have the whole lumbering system cranking into operation for years before we find out whether the the individual mandate is unconstitutional? Or is that the scheme? The individual mandate is too big to fail, and the courts will cave.

Open marijuana farming in northern California has "just torn the fabric of our society. It's pitted people against one another."

"Kids stroll much of the year past pungent plants flourishing in gardens and alleys. The red-and-black clad Timberjacks football team moved its halftime huddle on a recent Friday night to avoid the odor of marijuana smoke wafting over the gridiron from nearby houses. Some students talk openly of farming pot after graduation, about the only opportunity in this depressed timber town.... Fall harvest season brings strangers with dreadlocks and cash boxes. Some farmers guard their crops with electric fences, razor wire and snarling dogs. Hikers have been threatened at gunpoint for wandering too close to where they aren't wanted."

Halloween yard display understood the next morning.

Oh, now I get it. It was like this. The dummy in a Favre Vikings jersey was the equivalent of a Frankenstein or mummy.

This is the day that this town, this state, the whole Packers fan base has been either waiting for or dreading, and the mere anticipation of it in Green Bay has spawned celebrations and angst, contests and consternation.

"We've gotten more than 1,700 suggestions about what the city should do" to mark the occasion, Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt said. "We asked people for tasteful suggestions, so about 500 of them were eliminated right away."