At the Faux Archaeology Café...

... you can display what you've unearthed lately. Me, I excavated the grave of a sticks and stones man who was, it seems, buried in a landslide that preserved the horror of death on his face for all time.

(Enlarge: 1, 2.)

I'd vote for Donovan and Laura Nyro.

The new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.

"Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Suicide, announced on Facebook, after live-streamed internet exposure via secret webcam.

"Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my Web cam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."

Let's take a closer look at that wording: "There's nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance you've got right now."

Get it? Ha ha. Nothing in the bill said you had to change what you have, but things in the bill would cause your provider withdraw it, and then, you won't have it. Promise kept!

It's Rouse...

... to rouse us from our malaise lethargy.

"Obama 52%, Clinton 37% for 2012 Democratic Nomination."

Gallup finds — with particular support among women and — in a poll limited to Democrats — "conservatives."

Would you like to see Hillary challenge Obama?
	Yes. I'm against the Democrats and think it will hurt them.
	No. I'm against the Dems and think Obama's a great target and Hillary's a strong candidate.
	Yes. It will test Obama, making him better or replacing him with someone better.
	No. She'll weaken Obama, and the chance that she'll do better isn't worth the risk.
pollcode.com free polls

"If you do not care that Latoya Peterson, the founder of the blog Racialicious stopped reading JackandJillPolitics midway through the campaign..."

"... or if you do not even know who these people are, then Big Girls Don't Cry will seem pretty mystifying in parts."

I tried to read that book (by Rebecca Traister), and this review says a lot of things I couldn't motivate myself to get to the point of being able to write.

Ms. Traister laces her analysis with that of like-minded political bloggers and friends from New York who are similarly outraged... This book is shrewd and smartly written, but if there is a weakness to Ms. Traister's analysis it is that she relies too much on Internet chatter and on the insights of her group of friends. She traces each blog war that arose whenever there was a skirmish on the campaign trail and treats these online battles as if they really mattered, not only to politics but to the world off-screen....

Ms. Traister's effort to recount every flare-up from the 2008 makes this book seem either too early or too late. The due date for campaign books about the last election was about ten months ago. A lot of Big Girls reads like a game of "Do you remember when we cared about" archeological shreds of a dim and distant and mostly insignificant past....

There are so many things that are interesting to talk about in real time, when the election is still in play. That's what blogs do. I don't understand collecting all the detail in a book. Who is the compilation for? People who care about the details absorbed it all through blogs (and other media) at the time. They've moved on to the new details of the day and the current campaigns. People who didn't care at the time... why would they care now? It would have to be that the details seen together reveal a picture that couldn't be seen before. If you don't have that, you don't have a book.

"My experience with that show is like herpes. It never goes away, and it itches and sometimes flares up."

Yeah, you should see what dumbness and the inability to perceive humor does to your herpes.

"Once he imagined he was being pursued by men with black beards on horseback — mujahedeen..."

"he explained to his support team, who encouraged him to ride faster and keep ahead of them."

Jure Robic, the endurance bicyclist, who pushed himself beyond sleep and beyond reason, rode 50 mph down an unpaved twisty hill and who knows what he was hallucinating when he hit that car and entered into the final, endless ride that is eternity.

[H]e once rode 518.7 miles in 24 hours....

One occasional feature of his training regimen, which included daily rides or other workouts stretching between 6 and 10 hours, was a 48-hour period without sleep: a 24-hour ride followed by a 12-hour break followed by a 12-hour workout. ... [He] rode 28,000 miles — more than the circumference of the Earth — every year.

His five victories in the Race Across America, an approximately 3,000-mile transcontinental ride that has been held annually since 1982, are unequaled....

The winner generally sleeps less than two hours out of 24 and finishes in less than nine days....

In 2005, Robic won the race and two weeks later won Le Tour Direct, a 2,500-mile European version with a course derived from Tour de France routes that included 140,000 feet of climbing — almost the equivalent of starting at sea level and ascending Mt. Everest five times. His time was 7 days 19 hours.

As each race went on, Robic’s temper grew shorter and occasionally exploded. He was prone to hallucinations. More than once he leapt off his bicycle to do battle with threatening attackers who turned out to be mailboxes.

Amazing. With races like this, somebody has to be the guy that can go to the greatest extreme. Robic was 45, and it's hard to see how he lasted that long.

What is the sound of 250,000 signs yelling?

New York City must change every single street sign because the federal the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices adopted a rule against all caps. 250,000 signs X $110 per replacement.

Now, now. It's a lot of money. But you know all caps is the same as yelling.

Tony Curtis, RIP.

He was 85.

As a performer, Mr. Curtis drew first and foremost on his startlingly good looks. With his dark, curly hair, worn in a sculptural style later imitated by Elvis Presley, and plucked eyebrows framing pale blue eyes and wide, full lips, Mr. Curtis embodied a new kind of feminized male beauty that came into vogue in the early 1950s. A vigorous heterosexual in his widely publicized (not least by himself) private life, he was often cast in roles that drew on a perceived ambiguity: his full-drag impersonation of a female jazz musician in “Some Like It Hot,” a slave who attracts the interest of a Roman senator (Laurence Olivier) in Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” (1960), a man attracted to a mysterious blond (Debbie Reynolds) who turns out to be the reincarnation of his male best friend in Vincente Minnelli’s “Goodbye Charlie” (1964).

Tony Curtis was great. I recently watched the second-rate movie "Sex and the Single Girl" and noticed how funny Curtis made lines that were really not very good. But "Some Like It Hot" is as good as a movie can be and Tony Curtis is part of what makes it fabulous. Here's one of my favorites scenes, where Tony sets up an encounter with Marilyn in which he's not dressed in women's clothes, he's pretending to be a millionaire:

"How am I going to celebrate? I’m going to spank some ass."

How would you celebrate a court decision finding a right to practice prostitution?

At the Litter & Poo Café...

... did you Obamadisonians clean up after yourself as well as the Tea Partiers do?

Where are all the news media photographs of the big Madison crowd that Obama harangued last night?

I thought the University of Wisconsin was a major photo-op. Where are the photos — vistas of hopeful, youthful faces? There's a tiny thumbnail here in the NYT. Help me find some pictures or I'm going with the theory — offered by those who looked at my pictures — that the crowd was — as all those news media people loved to say about the Tea Party rallies — overwhelmingly white.

My pictures were taken on Bascom Hill and the Memorial Union Terrace — overflow areas with piped in sound/video. I did not go through security and into the Library Mall area where the President could be seen in person, and I thought we were going to get some grand wide-angle shots of the President and his enthusiasts.

ADDED: Here's the vista in the Cap Times. "Overwhelmingly" is not the right adverb. It's too much of an understatement. (Thanks to former law student, in the comments, for pointing me there.)

I got my Bob Dylan tickets.

Previously on this blog: Despair. Now: A second show at the Overture, starting at 10. Are Meade and I too old to go to a 10 p.m. concert? We're younger than Bob!

(Pre-order info here.)

The University of Wisconsin had "to weigh the many benefits of a visit by a sitting president against the naked political purpose of that visit."

Analysis by Dan Barry of the NYT.

But first, the necessary quotation from Bob Dylan: "But even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked." In context:

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits

Yes, wait while we blast political polemic that drowns out the classrooms....

Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates

Hope you made it through security...

But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

And you know that Bob Dylan wouldn't be "all cheesin' and grinnin'" with the President.

Now, back to the Dan Barry analysis:

[T]he event would be a kickoff rally for Democrats as they approach the midterm elections, and Barack Obama would be appearing as a party leader more than as a president....

[H]is visit wasn’t an easy call. Before the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and the Democratic National Committee signed a contract last week, in which the committee agreed to pay $10,500 to cover expenses, [UW Chancellor Biddy] Martin had to satisfy herself that it was the right thing to do.

$10,500! Where did they pull that number from?

“There was never a question whether we wanted President Obama to come to our campus,” Ms. Martin said. “That was clear. But the question was how to do this in a way that was fair to everyone in the community.”...

Ms. Martin, who has been chancellor since September 2008, was thrilled by the chance. You couldn’t buy this kind of educational experience, or, quite frankly, this kind of publicity; it’s an honor. 

Ah, yes! The publicity. That's what seals it, don't you think?

But she worried about the fairness of having campus life disrupted by a political event. A day or so of fretting followed.

Then, amid the many documents and manuals that provide guidance in the administration of a campus of 42,000 students and 21,000 faculty and staff members, someone uncovered a written policy called “The Use of University Facilities for Political Purposes.” Among other things, it said that each major political party can hold one event on campus during an election period.

If there's one thing I love it's a written policy. Good thing "someone uncovered" it!

And don’t forget: Library Mall, where the Democrats wanted to hold their rally, is a vibrant nerve center for the university and the city, with a rich tradition of political events and free speech.

And the great thing about a vibrant free speech forum is the way a political party can block every entrance but one and then require you to go through a "security" process that includes taking away any signs you might have.

Ms. Martin and the Board of Regents signed on, then received validation of that decision in the plans of students and faculty members to gather after the political rally to debate everything from the economy and the wars to the political process itself. 

That explains this sign we saw:

"Eddie Long ... should openly admit what he did, disavow his antigay positions..."

"... and serve as a beacon to a black community that needs to get beyond an unthinking prejudice especially unseemly in a group positioning itself as a standard-bearer of America’s moral advancement."

Says John McWhorter, who thinks Long "would do himself and his own race a massive favor if he, shall we say, had a conversion here."

“Got the call,” to put it in language familiar in his realm.

I'm for overcoming homophobia too, but I'm squeamish about the suggestion that a religious leader should present a moral argument as if he'd heard it from God... unless he sincerely believes he heard it from God.

Impactfully yours, Thomas Friedman.

He's here to tell you that the Tea Party movement you see out there is actually the Tea Kettle movement "because all it’s doing is letting off steam" — and the real Tea Party movement is... well, guys like him:

The important Tea Party movement, which stretches from centrist Republicans to independents right through to centrist Democrats, understands this at a gut level...

This = "our politics has become just another form of sports entertainment, our Congress a forum for legalized bribery and our main lawmaking institutions divided by toxic partisanship to the point of paralysis."

... and is looking for a leader with three characteristics. First, a patriot...

A patriot isn't a characteristic. It's a type of person.

Second, a leader who persuades Americans that he or she actually has a plan not just to cut taxes or pump stimulus, but to do something much larger — to make America successful, thriving and respected again.

A leader isn't a characteristic.

And third, someone with the ability to lead in the face of uncertainty and not simply whine about how tough things are — a leader who believes his job is not to read the polls but to change the polls.

Someone isn't a characteristic.

Convert those 3 items to characteristics: patriotism, leadership, and... uh... leadership. That's what the real tea partiers know and the kettlefolk can't get through their steam-puffed noggins.

Democratic Pollster Stan Greenberg told me that when he does focus groups today this is what he hears: “People think the country is in trouble and that countries like China have a strategy for success and we don’t....”

Here it comes. The part of the Friedman column where we find out that China does it better. This time, a pollster is rolled out to mouth what I presume is the thesis of Friedman's new best seller.

And supposedly, Friedman has told us what the "real Tea Party" is. As for the Tea Party movement that he says is fake and would like to disparage as "Tea Kettle":

That is not to say that the energy behind it is not authentic (it clearly is) or that it won’t be electorally impactful (it clearly might be)....

Impactfully yours, Thomas Friedman.

"Florence Henderson and Corky Ballas find out they're safe and hug after Florence says something weird about locking hips with some guy. It sounds lude."

The Daily News reports on "Dancing With the Star" and sounds stoopid. Got some ludes?

Bill Clinton's in trouble for saying "I've dreamed of getting a lesson from Annika Sorenstam."

Now, is that fair?

"Who knows? This may be the only time Ann Althouse and Barack Obama have ever appeared in the same picture."

Ha.

"Boy, that's an overwhelmingly white crowd."

Says Instapundit, looking at my pictures from the Obama rally.

That's also a popular observation in the comments. Seven Machos started it:

I see white people...

Palladian said:

Do you think they'll photoshop a little diversity in that crowd, the way they used to at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?

Revenant said:

Heh! Yeah, it IS whiter than a typical tea party rally, isn't it?

Yes, that's the thing. If these were pictures of a tea party rally...

Obama tries to warm up the crowd at the University of Wisconsin with sports talk and hints of partying.

I took the video from my vantage point on the Union Terrace. The President is seen on TV. Listen for the booing when he mentions Chicago...



There's confusion when he mentions Sunday. Everyone in the crowd knows the Packers lost to the Chicago Bears on Monday.

ADDED: Do you believe that Obama, when he lived in Chicago, would come up to Madison to have fun? The students love that line, but I don't believe it.

"After a couple of blah songs by The National, then a long energy-sapping break for canned music (pace, people, pace), singer-guitarist Ben Harper plays a mostly pensive solo set."

"It’s the exact opposite of rousing," writes Dean Robbins about tonight's Obama rally:

But just when you think the rally (and maybe even the Democrats) are doomed, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold bursts onto the podium.

The media had predicted Feingold wouldn’t show up at the event, suggesting he didn’t want to be tied to the increasingly unpopular Obama. You wouldn’t know it from his passionate speech. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. President,” he booms, “you are my friend!”

I wondered if maybe the pace was all off because Feingold decided to come at that last minute. I wasn't buying it when he criticized right-wingers for saying he wouldn't come. Why didn't he announce earlier that he would? Why was Tim Kaine talking about  how it was perfectly normal for Feingold not to come?

... And here [Obama] comes... He’s more handsome in person than on TV, with a thousand-watt smile and more charisma than any one person should be allowed to have. He gets the crowd in the palm of his hand from his opening story of driving to Madison to visit student friends when he lived in Chicago. 

Robbins doesn't mention that the crowd booed Chicago. (The pain of last night's Packers-Bears game was quite fresh and raw.)

“I had some fun times up here in Madison,” he says. Perfectly timed pause, followed by the punchline: “I can’t give you the details....”

Isn't it amazing that we let him play coy about such matters? Why was that ever charming?

Pictures from the periphery of the Obama rally.

Arriving as we did around 5, we couldn't get into the restricted area that people had lined up all day to get into. First, we went to Bascom Hill, which was well wired for sound, and there were hundreds of people sitting or standing on the grass:



This photo shows the attitude of the crowd before the speech:



It was nice to see some students studying:



We made our way over to the Union Terrace, about a block away from the live event, to hang in a mellower crowd by the lake. There was good audio and video over here, and some folks had their beer, while others, like me, had Babcock Hall ice cream cones.



These people were relaxed and listening. It was hard to tell what they were thinking. But they didn't chant along with "Yes we can." There were a couple clowns protesting, like this:



"9-11 Frame Up/Inside Job"... idiots.

We got cold and headed home before the speech ended and before the sun set.

ADDED: Some video.

We're back from Obamastock. Immense, overflowing crowds. And Feingold too.

Photos and video soon.

Huge crowds of students lining up to get into the Obama rally here in Madison.

I took this little video of the line at 2:25 CT. The security checkpoint wasn't set to open until 3:30, and the event won't start until 4:45.



It looks like President Obama will have the fabulous crowd he's hoping for.

Here's the email sent just now from the UW Police:

President Obama’s Library Mall rally is expected to draw a capacity crowd this afternoon. For safety and security reasons, Bascom Hill will be opened as a site for overflow spectators who can not fit into the event area.

To accommodate spectators, there will be amplification of the event and music up Bascom Hill, beginning at 4:30 p.m. As a result of the noise, there could be potential impacts on classroom meetings, academic activities or other events scheduled after this time.

So if you're one of those who think "Right now Nietzsche is a little more important" and things like that, you will be overwhelmed by sheer power and volume. I'm not enough of a Nietzschean to say what Nietzsche would have thought about that.

"I'm not a big opera buff in terms of going to opera, but there are days where Maria Callas is exactly what I need," says Barack Obama.

He was answering Jann Wenner's question: "What music have you been listening to lately? What have you discovered, what speaks to you these days?" I wonder what Callas arias are fulfilling his needs these days. He also says his iPod is "heavily weighted toward the music of [his] childhood: "a lot of Stevie Wonder, a lot of Bob Dylan, a lot of Rolling Stones, a lot of R&B, a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane." And a "lot of classical music." He makes a bow to rap music — his personal aid Reggie Love has helped him with that. And "Malia and Sasha are now getting old enough to where they start hipping me to things."

Wenner pushes him about Dylan, who recently performed at the White House. He says:

Here's what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you'd expect he would be. He wouldn't come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn't want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn't show up to that. He came in and played "The Times They Are A-Changin'." A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I'm sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don't want him to be all cheesin' and grinnin' with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.

He segues on his own to the subject of Paul McCartney:

Having Paul McCartney here was also incredible. He's just a very gracious guy. When he was up there singing "Michelle" to Michelle, I was thinking to myself, "Imagine when Michelle was growing up, this little girl on the South Side of Chicago, from a working-class family." The notion that someday one of the Beatles would be singing his song to her in the White House — you couldn't imagine something like that.

Wenner asks if he cried, and he starts his response...

Whenever I think about my wife, she can choke me up. My wife and my kids, they'll get to me.

His aides make him stop the interview at that point. No crying in politics! Then he comes back a "moment later" and makes a speech to Wenner — "with intensity and passion, repeatedly stabbing the air with his finger" — about how people need to shake off their malaise lethargy.

"We know that cuts in Medicare are being used to fund national health care reform."

"We became concerned by the long-term viability of Medicare Advantage programs in general... And we also had concerns about our ability to build a network of health care providers that would meet the needs of our seniors."

"Buildings affected by President Obama’s Library Mall event... St. Paul’s Catholic Center: 5 p.m. Mass has been cancelled."

Oh, God.

"'Joey Ramone Place' is perhaps the most stolen of the 250,900 street signs in New York..."

So now, they've installed it higher — 20 feet off the ground. The last surviving Ramone, Marky, thinks it's too hard to see now. It's too high. Maybe they just need "a better way to attach it."

"With Physical Books Obsolete..."

"... The Strand Resorts to Luring Customers With Candy."

"Right now Nietzsche is a little more important."

Said UW student Justin Marita, who said he wasn't going to the President's big get-out-the-vote rally in Madison today.

But there are some students who are asking teachers to cancel class so they can attend. Imagine that! A teacher canceling class for a political rally.

I think Nietzsche is a little more important — important enough to correct the spelling of his name in the quote before putting it in the blog post heading. Madison.com spelled it "Nietschze." How do you misspell Nietzsche in a news story? Isn't it obvious you need to check?

"A special adaptation of Segway Inc.'s dynamic stabilization technology and a wider track maximize stability, while the x2's higher ground clearance ensures that steep hills, uneven trails, and errant rocks won't impede your ride."

And when you get to the point where you want the ride impeded... it will be too late.

Today's Drudgedy... Drudge comedy.

Eyes... bucks... Not sure what Drudge is driving at here. Some strange coded message to Ohio? And why show the front and not the back of the dollar bill?

"Democratic Party Chairman Timothy Kaine says he sees no slight in Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold skipping a campaign rally tonight where President Barack Obama is appearing on his behalf."

I see a slight: To the intelligence of the American people, if Kaine thinks we might believe that.

Obama's big get-out-the-vote-rally in Madison today is "a great experiment."

Says Chris Van Hollen, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee:

The challenge at the moment is how to get out the vote in Wisconsin and other battleground states...

“We know that first-time voters are difficult to bring out in midterm elections, and this will be a test of the White House’s ability to motivate those voters,” he said. “And the message is simple: Even though Barack Obama’s name is not on the ballot, the future success of his agenda and his presidency is at stake.”

And Obama himself says:

"People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up"... The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and "if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."

What if they were serious and they're not happy with what he did with the power they helped him win? The strong progressive opinion is anti-Obama these days. Don't be thinking that Madison is some kind of hardcore Democratic Party stronghold. It's not. This is a town where, in 2000, people resisted that notion that they should voted for Al Gore so Bush wouldn't win. What difference did it make? That was the argument I heard. "Bore and Gush" — remember that? It was important to vote for Ralph Nader. I heard that again and again. The President has taken his lefty fans for granted.

But I assume there will be a big crowd today — if it's not too hard to get through security. I, myself, will attend and put up with getting searched. I don't get jazzed up about seeing anybody in person, not even the President of the United States — not since 1975. But I am very interested in seeing how the crowd looks, getting some pictures, and talking to the people.

Sarah Palin on "Dancing With the Stars" — and allegedly booed.

She looked beautiful, and the crowd is ready to cheer her when the camera is on her, so we can only guess what caused the booing that was heard from backstage. Whoever uploaded this video asserts that the audience booed Sarah. I don't think so. The smarter opinion says it was about the scores the judges gave to Jennifer Grey.

Bristol danced last and, again the song was a "mama" song. Last week, you may remember, she danced to "Mama Told Me Not to Come." This week it was... ugh!... I can't remember. Something about not having sex at too early an age. It wasn't "Mama Said"... which is the only other "mama" song that comes to mind at the moment. Bristol's not very good, but she's perfectly nice and has no attitude of entitlement whatsoever and she's taking the dancing perfectly seriously, which — I think I can tell after watching the show twice — is the way to win the support of the judges and the viewers who vote.

At the Rural Sunset Café...

... things feel so intense and random.

"But suddenly, the lawyer became so uncomfortably hot that he leaped up to move."

"He tried to put on his flip-flop sandals but, inexplicably, they were too hot to touch. So he ran barefoot to the shade."

The Las Vegas Death Ray targets a lawyer.

(Via Gizmodo.)

Hippie punch... it should be a drink!

I've had it with the "hippie punch" brouhaha. I want it to be a drink, like "Hawaiian Punch" or whatever. Help me devise a recipe.

ADDED: I'm recommending Ripple and... still water.

"Power, I said! Power to walk into the gold vaults of the nations, into the secrets of kings, into the Holy of Holies!"

"Power to make multitudes run squealing in terror at the touch of my little invisible finger. Even the moon's frightened of me, frightened to death!"



It's "The Invisible Man" with the magnificent Claude Rains and the lovely Gloria Stuart. Gloria Stuart — perhaps you know her from "Titanic" — dead now, at age 100.

The Devil's picnic.

Pictures taken yesterday at Devil's Lake, Wisconsin.

(Not to be confused with this.)

Is Obama waging cyberwar against Iran?

"[T]he worm appears to be a case of outright industrial sabotage or cyber warfare, created and unleashed not by rogue hackers but by a state.... [T]he time stamp on the Stuxnet virus reveals that it was created in January, 2010, meaning that if the United States is behind it, it’s Obama’s doing, not Bush’s. If so, and if the United States is behind it, then Obama is already at war with Iran."

I'm beginning to understand why that lefty blogger asked Axelrod if he knew the term "hippie punching"?

Tobin Harshaw reviews the incident in the NYT. He quotes me. You may remember that I said I'd never heard the term (and I've been something of a hippie since the original days of the hippie movement). The light bulb went off in my head when I scrolled down to the comments:

Hippy punch is frequently used on many blogs I read: Pandagon, Eschaton, Hullabaloo, to name just three. They've been using it since 2008, at least. They are among the more popular blogs on the left -- it shows that while the White House may have some sense that the so-called professional left is upset, they don't care enough to read what they are writing.

Ah! It's a shibboleth. This is a term used within an in-group. If you don't know the term, you reveal that you don't read those blogs. Here was Axelrod trying to get the lefty bloggers to help Obama out, but — gasp!!! — he doesn't even read their blogs. How devastating for them! LOL. Imagine if Axelrod sat around reading Pandagon, Eschaton, and Hullabaloo?

It's hard being a lefty in Madison these days.

You live on the east side, you support Barack Obama and all that hope and change... and high speed rail... in your backyard?!

"I think there will be some things that will be upsetting, kind of on a personal level. Like maybe you've enjoyed your backyard in a certain way or there's a tree you've enjoyed looking at. Maybe it's not your right to use them, but you've just had it there and benefitted from it, and then it changes."...

[T]here are concerns about the fate of several pedestrian and bicycle crossings, both sanctioned and unofficial ones. Right now, he says, the railroad tracks are not considered a barrier for anyone, from "10-year-olds to 90-year-olds," to cross and the freight trains pose little danger. But high-speed rail is a different animal, and the probability for fencing all the way along the tracks is high....

"I think people were more concerned about getting to Walgreens than getting to Chicago"....

Yeah, why do you need to go to Chicago? Compared to strolling around your own neighborhood, getting to Chicago is nothing.

For Ken Fitzsimmons, the Ohio-Farwell crossing is a key one, as is one on Corry Street. If both are closed, he and his immediate neighbors will be "boxed in," with no access to the west side of the neighborhood except by going east to Milwaukee Street first.

"We're a two-person household with one car, so we definitely at almost all times are dedicated to some alternate transportation," he says.

Ironically, the high speed rail is presented as an alternative to driving to Milwaukee, as if it's going to reverse global warming, but in real life, people will have to drive more, just to get around their own neighborhood.

[Ken Fitzsimmons] jokes that he and wife "aren't becoming Republicans" because of the high-speed rail line - referring to Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker's pledge to stop it from happening. 

Why not? What's stopping you? A fear of change?

Good lord, the rail line is a disaster — a disaster justifying single-issue voting this time.

"The train is coming through as far as we're concerned... We're not putting in any effort to stop it because it could be a really good thing... I think the important point I was getting at is if they're really receptive to some of these ideas, we've got ideas. We're not trying to stop this train, we're just trying to limit its possible damaging effects."

Why not stop the train? I don't get it. You just have to accept everything that's jammed down your throat by the party you've been faithful to all these years? It could be a good thing? Maybe it will work out for the best? Why would you support an immensely intrusive change that affects your daily way of life? Why isn't the presumption against change — or at least against drastic new things that look terrible? Why this trust?

Why is obeisance to a political party compelling you to defy everything that your common sense is screaming?

Was it "racially insensitive" to say to gay people — as Ann Coulter did — "Marriage is not a civil right. You're not black"?

That's what Talking Points Memo says. I'm trying to understand the theory by which it's racially insensitive. The only thing close, in my view, and I know it's not TPM's, is that the remark contains the unwitting assumption that gay people are white. TMP notes Coulter's explanation:

It was part of a larger argument on which she later elaborated, telling the crowd that the 14th Amendment only applies to African-Americans and that it does not, in fact, apply to women, LGBT people or other minorities.

Can I get a quote? I don't trust this paraphrasing. She said the 14th Amendment only applies to black people? Or did she say that the 14th Amendment should be understood with some reference to its historical context of insuring rights for the freed slaves? It's not the same thing, TPM.

French politician Rachida Dati criticizes investment funds for "looking for returns of 20 or 25%, at a time when fellatio is almost non-existent."

That's translated from French, in which the key word is "fellation," which she supposedly confused with "inflation."

Miss Dati was a love rival of Mr Sarkozy’s third wife, Carla Bruni, for many months as both battled for a place in the Elysee Palace bed chamber. 

Now, why is that relevant? 

The owner of Segway rides a Segway off a cliff...

... and dies.

On the road in rural Wisconsin...

... you can see right back to 1940.

"I had this belief that I couldn’t just accept to be treated as an object. It was a problem of dignity."

"But it wasn’t that. It was just that I couldn’t accept that they would call us by number, because I thought it would make it easier for them to kill us if they had to kill an object, a number."

Ingrid Betancourt describes her captivity... and its aftermath:

Betancourt says she made some immediate decisions about her new life: First, she would wear perfume every day; second, she would never deny herself the opportunity to eat cake.

"I promised to have ice cream in my diet, and I promised to change my priorities," she says.  In the jungle, one of the few books Betancourt had access to was the Bible, and she read it over and over again.  One passage stuck out:  "It says that when you cross the valley of tears, and you arrive to the oasis, the reward of God is not success, it’s not money, it’s not admiration or fame, it’s not power. His reward is rest. So that’s what I want for me now."

Her book is a big best seller. I wonder how many readers come to that cake-and-ice-cream part and think: Yes! I must eat cake and ice cream.... even though in their whole lives they've never left the oasis.

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Said Jesus, describing the final judgment. There was a point in Stephen Colbert's testimony to a House subcommittee when he dropped his act and answered a question as himself:

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) asked, “Why of all the things you could testify about did you choose this issue?” Colbert seemed to surprise himself as he fell out of character--he rubbed his head in thought and said:

"I like talking about people who don't have any power, and this seems like, one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don’t have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here and at the same time ask them to leave. That’s an interesting contradiction to me. And, you know, “Whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers”--and this seems like the least of brothers--right now. A lot of people are least brothers right now because the economy is so hard. And I don’t want to take anyone’s hardship away from them or diminish anything like that. But migrant works suffer and have no rights."

It was a powerful moment, all the more so because catching Colbert out of character for more than a few seconds of unguarded laughter is almost as rare as catching snow leopards mating. It was perfectly natural for Colbert, who has taught Sunday school at his Catholic church in Montclair, NJ, to quote Matthew 25:31-45 (“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”). The tender earnestness of that brief moment when Colbert slipped the mask undercut any suggestion that his snottiness was a self-promoting stunt.

I think Stephen Colbert is quite serious about Christianity — as I have written before in some detail.

Things that you'd better not have on you if you want to walk through Library Mall on Tuesday afternoon.

"Laptop computers, sharp objects, metal or plastic drink bottles, backpacks and bags or purses larger than a standard sheet of paper, posters, and any food or drink."

President Obama will be speaking on the UW-Madison campus, and obviously, they expect a huge crowd, but I have watched students walk through the mall, the central crossroads of campus, for years, and I think they mostly have their computers, they surely have backpacks or big bags of one kind or another, and there's lots of food and drink. So anyone who wants to go to the event and is paying attention to the rules will need to plan ahead.

You can't just come over after class, because you'll have your backpack and laptop. And if you're just passing through and thinking of hanging out, because you're somewhat interested, you're going to be turned away because you have the stuff you normally have, and suddenly it's a national security threat. The screening process begins at 3:30 and the event goes on for several hours, and you're supposed to get by without anything to drink.

I'm sure they'll get a good crowd here anyway, but it's got to be a big irritation for many students to be rejected simply for having your normal gear. What if you come to campus by bus or a long walk?

Also, obviously, they don't want people with signs. No "posters." But I'm sure UW students know how to concoct signage without getting snagged by any of the restrictions. At the Class of 1995 law school reunion on Friday, I saw a video that included — among other things — the way some law students spelled out "UW Law" on the 50 yard line at the football stadium. With 4 willing souls, one being 2 letters wide, they accomplished the free expression. They can take away your posters, but they can't take away your underpants.

Ah, but you need to be respectful and hear out what the President says, which is — I assume — that you really need to vote for Democrats in November. That's the message. It's nothing loftier than that. It's a big political rally, snarling Madison traffic — on our narrow isthmus — blocking passage through the center of campus, and depriving us of our computers and our freedom of expression.

Clay acorn birdbath...

... with oak leaves.

A still life open thread.

How LSD made Jerry Hall a model.

An excerpt from her autobiography that I'm highlighting instead of all the junk about Mick Jagger:

The idea of being a model started when I was invited to a party. A boy gave me LSD without telling me what it was. I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out, not knowing what was happening to me.

All I remember is looking in the mirror and thinking: ‘You’re really beautiful. You should be a model.’

She was 16 and 6 feet tall. I can't believe it took LSD to give her the idea of becoming a model. She was 6 feet tall! But anyway... I do believe that, given LSD and a mirror, she had a fine time staring at herself and reveling in her beauty. I don't quite believe that the idea of monetizing the beauty arrived psychedelically.

Oh, I can't resist dragging Mick into this blog post. I just love this sentence: "One evening in New York, I found myself sitting between Mick and Warren Beatty at a dinner party." I just found myself... Yeah, how does stuff like that happen?La la la... there you are, minding your own business, and suddenly — hey, here I am sitting between Mick Jagger and Warren Beatty!

Mick had told me he took LSD every day for a year in the Sixties. He also admitted he was smoking heroin. I was disgusted.

LSD every day, eh? Is that even possible? Did he stare in the mirror and decide he was gorgeous? Imagine yourself as Mick Jagger on LSD and staring into the mirror: What is that experience like? Feel free to answer that question via Photoshop.

This is good too: "He wasn’t nearly as rich as people thought... We bought homes in New York, London, Paris and Mustique...."

"Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done" for the economy.

Said "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

"He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse."

This medical metaphor makes me think of Obama's old red pill/blue pill scenario from the summer of 2009:

What I've proposed is that we have a panel of medical experts that are making determinations about what protocols are appropriate for what diseases. There's going to be some disagreement, but if there's broad agreement that, in this situation the blue pill works better than the red pill, and it turns out the blue pills are half as expensive as the red pill, then we want to make sure that doctors and patients have that information available to them.

Some people read that as "death panels" — that is, that what the government would really do is give cheap, painkilling pills and wait for death to extinguish the expense altogether. So: "When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse." That might be something some people would want to do.

There are inferences other than ineptitude.

At the Busted Puffball Café...

... you can talk about your broken dreams. I had a beautiful dream of a magic mushroom named Puff. Puff the puffball mushroom. I thought we were going to slice him up into a million little slivers and fry him in butter. But you saw fit to break up old rotten stumps and fling them away into the corner of the yard, without regard to the whereabouts of the puffball, whose magic proved limited to the power to attract hurled stump parts.



Ah, Puff! I wanted knife-sliced slivers, not cudgeled chunks. The puffball will therefore live out its days, uneaten, rotting and freezing in the salvaged iron birdbath, with the clay acorn, the iron bird, and — nearby — the unoccupied teapot birdhouse.

Which First Lady is taller?

Careful! Watch out for optical illusions!

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee writes: "Marie Antoinette's heir meets Marie Antoinette's hair."

Bill Maher's second attack on Christine O'Donnell: "Evolution is a myth?!"

Okay. Fine. But who is that woman next to Maher saying "Science is a reality"? What's with her? Is she under the influence of something? I mean, it's an immense distraction from the get-Christine-O'Donnell agenda.

We forgot to buy Bob Dylan tickets.

Damn. Didn't think about it until the evening of the day the tickets went on sale, and now they are sold out. I guess we aren't the biggest Bob Dylan fans in Madison, Wisconsin. Ha. Yeah. Madison, Wisconsin. I need to understand this place where I've lived for over a quarter century.

From a series of "10 Great Makeup Looks From New York Fashion Week."

Here's one:



No? Then try "bumblebee eyes."

Russ Feingold distances himself from the Democrats.

In this pretty damned brilliant ad:



At first, I was all Why are they showing him chewing?... but then, the camera pulls back... and Russ is the loneliest Senator of them all.

This ad reaches the part of me that would find it very hard to vote against Russ. I hate to lend support to what the Democrats have been doing over the last 2 years. But Russ... Our Russ...

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene tells the story of the time her mother rubbed Feingold's head and said "Such a nice boy."

The government keeps trying to get us to do something and we won't.

It happens to be something that would be good for us. (Eating vegetables.) But our resistance to doing things the government eagerly and earnestly promotes is a strength. Don't be disappointed. Be encouraged.

Q: "What are the biggest geopolitical factors affecting mustaches right now?"

A:

There is still the perception that leaders cannot have mustaches, at least in the U.S. there are less than 30 members of Congress that wear mustaches, and unfortunately some of the people that have been deemed by Americans to be tyrants or evil, such as Saddam Hussein, have been heavily mustached. So I think that there is a perception still that Mustached Americans are incapable of leading, are incapable of being role models, are incapable of living a just life by certain sectors of our culture.

Oh, quit whining and shave. Hitler ruined the mustache for all time. We can't go back...

The Prime Minister keeps his baby in a box.

"Nancy made her a cardboard box when we were in Cornwall as we didn't have a cot and decorated it and she's still in the cardboard box. She'll be able to say I was brought up in Downing Street in a cardboard box."

Emergency...

... brassiere.

Sunset on the second day of autumn.

On Picnic Point.



Bring it on. I can take it!



Whatever it is.



It is so beautiful

Camille Paglia relives her burst into our consciousness in 1990 with her NYT op-ed about Madonna.

The anti-sex feminists are all gone, she says: "And I'm still here." And so is Madonna.

"I was a corn-packer. And I know that term is offensive. To some people. Because corn-packer is a derogatory term for a gay Iowan."

Colbert responds to Iowa Republican Steve King.



IN THE COMMENTS: Quaestor said...

Some impression[s] I've formed on this matter:

1) A disgusting and puerile corruption of the legislative process. Thank you Colbert, the Comedy Channel, and the Democratic Party (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Comedy Channel) for your efforts to uplift the cultural milieu of our heretofore tawdry government.

2) Colbert has been jealous of Jon Stewert's bottom line for years. Being a witness before a Congressional committee adds product recognition at taxpayer's expense.

3) A "Punch 'n Judy" show aimed to distract the MSM from Christopher Coates testimony before the Civil Rights Commission.

4) Witnesses before Congressional committees are typically sworn. Is Colbert liable to perjury charges?

How am I supposed to search for "$#*! My Dad Says" on my DVR?

Here's the transcript of last night's show. Sample line: "If it looks like manure and smells like manure, it's either Wolf Blitzer or manure." Dad's a right-winger.

Oh, let's see what CNN thought about the show that called Wolf shit:

Through an unlikely combination of elements -- a popular Twitter site; CBS trying to be "hip" about social networking; the chance to work with "Will & Grace" producers David Kohan and Matt Mutchnick; William Shatner wanting to try something new -- "$#*! My Dad Says" boasts the new season's most annoying title and the sight of a wasted resource in Shatner.

He plays Ed, a grumpy coot who complains about anything and everything....

Shatner knows how to spoof himself, and in interviews, he's clever and self-aware. Exactly none of these qualities are in evidence on "$#*! My Dad Says." Ed is some combination of the too-clever-to-be-believed grousing father from Justin Halpern's Twitter feed plus Archie Bunker -- i.e., the sort of character that CBS' older demo won't find too frightening because he's a familiar type.

CBS' older demo... Is network loyalty still a concept? I've been hearing since the 1970s that older people watched CBS. But back then there were only 3 networks and lots of us didn't have remote controls. I would have thought that by now people knew how to change channels and find stuff — $#*! — they like and that they wouldn't even bother noticing what network it was.

"For some reason I feel like Ann Althouse saying this..."

Oh, really? I'm stoked.

"DEM CRACKUP: COLBERT ASKED TO LEAVE HILL HEARING, NO SPEAK."

Drudge headlines.

REP. CONYERS TO FUNNYMAN: 'I'm asking you to leave the committee room completely, and submit your statement'... MORE... Rep. Lofgren steps in: 'Many are eager to hear his comments' ... Colbert mugs: 'I'm here at the invitation of the chairwoman, and if she would like me to remove myself from the hearing room I am happy to do so. I'm only here at her invitation'...

What a screwup!

Here's Colbert on his show last night horsing around about it.

UPDATE: Colbert did go on. Here's his 5 minutes of testimony... in character as a right-wing blowhard ninny:



It's quite hilarious to look at the faces of the members of the committee as they don't laugh at his jokes... because they have to take these things seriously. It's all so painfully awkward. Colbert looks pretty awkward too. He's not hamming it up comically as he normally does on his show.

Now, the point of his testimony is something that you used to hear said a lot more: that illegal immigration fills jobs that Americans won't do. Colbert, of course, doesn't want to be a farm worker. (The joke is that he tried that work for a day.) The reason you don't hear this argument so much anymore is that unemployment is so high. Is Colbert's effort to revive the old argument effective? I don't know. I think it's really creepy to talk about non-Americans as good for demeaning or brutal labor that is beneath us.

"The electronic lynch mob that has attacked and harassed me—you should see the emails sent to me personally!—has made my family feel threatened and insecure."

Cries U Chi lawprof Todd Henderson, whom I'm accused of being insufficiently empathetic toward. Ah! I love the smell of irony in the morning. A libertarian demands that the community coalesce and feel for the poor rich-but-not-that-rich man. Last night, I tweaked Professor Jacobson for babying Henderson, and this morning I see his update:

[T]he issue is ... serious, and has nothing to do with whether one agrees with Henderson's assessment of his reality.  Criticizing someone's views is one thing, reaching out and touching him is something else, as are deliberate attempts to damage his reputation based on false or misleading characterizations, which we all know takes place in the blogosphere.

Touched him? Where? I have an anatomically correct blogger doll, and maybe you can point to the spot. What does it take to get something specific around here? Henderson's good-bye-to-all-you-mean-people post says "you should see the emails sent to me personally!" and my response is: Okay, show me! Don't just tell me about your feelings: Give me the concrete facts or I don't know what you're talking about. Electronic lynching. Come on. You went on the internet — and from a position of considerable power. You made a good argument, and you got a response, one that you had to know you'd get. All is normal on the web as far as I can see.

Henderson admits:

The reason I took the very unusual step of deleting them is because my wife, who did not approve of my original post and disagrees vehemently with my opinion, did not consent to the publication of personal details about our family.

And there is the real problem. Henderson displayed very personal details about his family without asking his wife's permission. She has reason to be royally angry with him. I'm not going to ask to see a transcript of the dialogue the couple had about the blog post, but I'll bet it hurt a whole hell of a lot more than whatever is in those emails that we also haven't seen. Don't write about your family on the internet unless they consent. That is a basic responsibility that Henderson lost track of. To point to the vigorous pushback of political debate about taxing the most well-off citizens is to distract from that fundamental problem.

Now, I can read the mocking on other blogs. This ABA Journal piece sent me to Michael O'Hare and Brad DeLong. O'Hare digs into the numbers that Henderson himself provided:

Why a couple with a half-million dollars of debts decides it needs a million-dollar house in Chicago, where the Hyde Park average price "near their work"  is a third of that, is not entirely clear....

This leaves about $90,000, a lousy $245 a day,  for food, clothes, vacations, cable TV, and like that...

So how does our third-of-a-million-a-year law prof/doctor couple and their three kids, barely scraping by already and falling before our eyes to the very bottom of the top 1% of US families by income, make out under Obama’s rapacious soak-the-rich commie attack on all that is holy and American and fine?...

His taxes will go down $3700... And this guy is threatening to fire the gardener and the house cleaner, take the kid out of art class, turn off his cell phones, and try to raise competent adults with only basic cable.  Prof. Henderson, I’m ashamed to share my profession with you.

That is completely fair and astute comment. If O'Hare is wrong about Obama's taxes, he should be corrected. But I can see why Henderson can't fight with O'Hare: He'd have to have an endless public discussion of how he spends his money on himself and his family. It's humiliating and absurd, and his wife is pissed. (You want expensive? Try divorce.)

DeLong said:

Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx's problem is that he thinks that he ought to be able to pay off student loans, contribute to retirement savings vehicles, build equity, drive new cars, live in a big expensive house, send his children to private school, and still have plenty of cash at the end of the month for the $200 restaurant meals, the $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, and the $75,000 automobiles. And even half a million dollars a year cannot be you all of that.

But if he values the high-end consumption so much, why doesn't he rearrange his budget? Why not stop the retirement savings contributions, why not rent rather than buy, why not send the kids to public school? Then the disposable cash at the end of the month would flow like water. His problem is that some of these decisions would strike him as imprudent. And all of them would strike him as degradations--doctor-law professor couples ought to send their kids to private schools, and live in big houses, and contribute to their 401(k)s, and also still have lots of cash for splurges. That is the way things should be.

But why does he think that that is the way things should be?...

Is it pathetic that somebody with nine times the median household income thinks of himself as just another average Joe, just another "working American"? Yes. Do I find it embarrassing that somebody whose income is in the top 1% of American households thinks that he is not rich? Yes.

Again, fair and deserved criticism. Henderson had to expect it, but he doesn't want to have to deal with it. He can't really. He just plain lost a fight. He hurt his cause. And I'm still not empathizing.

"Only Eddie Fisher, as a boyhood friend of the frantic playgirl, seems like something dragged in from left field."

"He plays a music writer who lives in a dark room in Greenwich Village and acts as if he wishes they would all go away and leave him alone."

From the 1960 NYT review — by Bosley Crowther — of "Butterfield 8," the movie Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for playing "the slut of all times" in. Fast-forward to 2010 and Eddie's dead.

When Eddie Fisher's best friend, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a 1958 plane crash, Fisher comforted the widow, Elizabeth Taylor. Amid sensationalist headlines, Fisher divorced Reynolds and married Taylor in 1959.

The Fisher-Taylor marriage lasted only five years. She fell in love with co-star Richard Burton during the Rome filming of "Cleopatra," divorced Fisher and married Burton in one of the great entertainment world scandals of the 20th century.

Fisher's career never recovered from the notoriety.

Eddie, like Todd and Burton, is now dead. He made it to 82. What did he do after Liz? Did anyone pay attention to anything other than Liz? Even now, the old man finally gone, we hear of his death, and we think — don't we? — of the goddess Elizabeth Taylor.

What do alumni attending their 15th law school reunion want to hear a lawprof talk about for 15 minutes...

... over dinner at 8 p.m. tonight?

UPDATE: Thanks for all your help! I quoted quite a few of the comments a the end of the speech, which I think was pretty well received.

"The tax man's taken all my dough and left me in my stately home... and I can't sail my yacht — he's taken everything I've got..."

That's the song playing in my head after reading about University of Chicago lawprof Todd Henderson, who's desolated that people don't sympathize with how hard it is to get by in Chicago on $250,000 a year. The pushback he got was totally predictable, and, indeed, it was only the anticipation of criticism that made it an interesting thing to say in the first place. How much courage does it take — especially for a highly privileged and experienced speaker — to state an opinion and stand by it when it's criticized? I really don't see why William A. Jacobson and Glenn Reynolds are babying this man.

UPDATE: I continue here.

"[F]or Axelrod to plead with liberal bloggers for their help turning out the base, only to get accused of 'hippie punching,' is an iconic moment in Campaign 2010."

Interesting... but what the hell is "hippie punching"?

That tension burst out into the open when [Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars] directly asked Axelrod: "Have you ever heard of hippie punching?" That prompted a long silence from Axelrod.

"You want us to help you, the first thing I would suggest is enough of the hippie punching," Madrak added. "We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day."

Ha ha. Long silence. Axelrod did exactly what I think I'd do. Keep silent, because I don't know what it means, and I don't want to be embarrassed by admitting it. But now that I've worked a bit Googling and searching Urban Dictionary, I'm not embarrassed to say I don't know what it means. And I don't know what it has to do with under-bleacher sex, but that's a creepy metaphor to throw at Axelrod. I don't much like the man myself, but when you get access, ask some good questions in plain English. Don't be weird.

"Tonight the death machine exterminated the beautiful childlike and loving spirit of Teresa Lewis."

Said Lewis's lawyer.

Lewis' life took a deadly turn after she married Julian, whom she met at a Danville textile factory in 2000. Two years later, his son Charles entered the U.S. Army Reserve. When he was called for active duty he obtained a $250,000 life insurance policy, naming his father the beneficiary and providing temptation for Teresa Lewis.

Both men would have to die for Lewis to receive the insurance payout....

On the night before Halloween in 2002, after she prayed with her husband, Lewis got out of bed, unlocked the door to their mobile home and put the couple's pit bull in a bedroom so the animal wouldn't interfere. Shallenberger and Fuller came in and shot both men several times with the shotguns Lewis had bought for them.

At the New Lawn Café...

... you can get your bare feet all wet.

Puff the Magic Mushroom...

... lives by the tree.

"Velma Hart, an Obama supporter who, employing an O'Donnellesque unidiomatic preposition, told the president she was 'exhausted of defending you.'"

Ha ha. James Taranto is, like me, distracted by the wrong preposition. (I said, about O'Donnell: "It bugs me more that she says 'dabbled into' than that she actually did it (or claimed to).") Taranto is writing about Margaret Carlson's response to Hart, which is important because Carlson "personifies liberal Beltway conventionality."

"It's all about the insularity. Otherwise how do you explain how a group who came in with more goodwill in decades squandered it?"

A quote from "a longtime Democratic strategist who works with the White House on a variety of issues." He says that Obama and his inner circle "miscalculated where people were out in the country on jobs, on spending, on the deficit, on debt... They have not been able to get ahead of any of it."

From an article about how members of that inner circle are going to be leaving:

The inner circle - Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs and Vice President Biden - is breaking up, or at least breaking open. Emanuel is widely expected to run for mayor of Chicago, and Axelrod is likely to leave this spring to prepare for Obama's 2012 reelection effort.

Obama will soon lose other top advisers. His chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, announced that he will return to Harvard, where he is a professor; Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina is expected to join Axelrod in Chicago; and national security adviser James L. Jones is said to want out by the end of the year.

Some former aides and allies of the president expressed hope that Obama will take advantage of the departures - which are common at the two-year point in any presidency - to bring in outsiders who will challenge the president's current team.

Like some sort of "Team of Rivals"? If only he'd thought about that at the outset of his presidency!

Hey, what happened to Kausfiles?

I was complaining yesterday that in 3 days, there were only 2 paragraphs showing on the front page of the blog that got all us bloggers noticing that it went to Newsweek.

Today, I go there and not only is there no new post on this, the fourth day of the blog, the whole page is blank. The original 2 posts are gone!

I do see some sidebar links to other stuff in Newsweek, like "GOP 'Pledge to America' Looks Unlikely to Inspire." Ha. Well, to me, Newsweek looks unlikely to inspire. What ridiculous writing! How does one look unlikely to inspire? What a phrase. Could they hide their bias a little better? They can't report on something new that the other side does without getting the jump on it and assuring their brain-dead readers that it can't possibly be any good.

Jeez, the Kausfiles blank page looks likely to be the most readable thing over there.

UPDATE: Now, the page is back, with the original 2 posts, plus a new post, "Isn't Anybody Against Porn?"

Are we really such an advanced nation that even an extreme "staunch social conservative" has to deny opposing pornography? There's something depressing about that. If not Christine O'Donnell, who?

Not just "staunch," but "extreme 'staunch'"! What's that like?

"I tell you if there's anything worse than dealing with a staunch woman... S-T-A-U-N-C-H. There's nothing worse, I'm telling you. They don't weaken, no matter what."

Also, there's a difference between "opposing pornography" and wanting opposition to pornography enacted into legislation. Her old statement about pornography and adultery was her interpretation of religion. You can have a very high standard as a matter of religion and still leave people alone as a matter of law.

Major Madison photo-op: "Obama rally to take place at Library Mall."

It should be a huge crowd. I'm certainly planning to go.

Obama asks faith-based groups to help him get his message out about the Democrats health-care-reform legislation.

Politico reports:

With health reform’s popularity steadily slipping, top administration officials turned to faith-based groups that supported the law to do their part explaining it. On an hour-long conference call Tuesday, they outlined the Patients’ Bill of Rights and asked faith-based and community groups to get the word out on the new provisions. “I wanted to have this call because we have a big day coming up, the six-month anniversary of health reform’s passage,” President Obama told leaders on the conference call, hosted through Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Obama later added that, “The debate in Washington is over, the Affordable Care Act is now law. ...I think all of you can be really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors, to help explain what’s now available to them.” Joshua DuBois, head of the White House’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, got even more specific: “Get the word out there, get information out there. Make use of the resources described on this call: the website, door hangers, one pagers and so forth. We’ve got work to do.”

Religion as the handmaiden of government, serving as really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors. Worldly power seeks to inflate itself with whatever credibility religion can cede.

Once you are the really important validator of government, can you be a really important validator of God?

***

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."

Rush Limbaugh thinks Obama is icy cold — like Michael Dukakis... and Buck Turgidson.

Don't let the horrible photo chosen by Media Matters here stop you from listening to the audio. It's an excellent performance by Rush, including his approximation of the George C. Scott performance:



The transcript — along with the Dukakis and "Dr. Strangelove" clips — is here. He's talking about the new Bob Woodward book:

Woodward asks about terrorism, terror attacks, and so forth. Obama says, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, we absorbed it, and we're stronger." That, to me, is the equivalent of Dukakis being asked, "If your wife were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" So Woodward says, "What about terrorism?" Obama figures, "Ah, we can handle it. We can absorb it. We're even stronger." That's not cool. That is cold, and it reminded me of something. One of my all-time favorite movies is Dr. Strangelove. A Stanley Kubrick movie. And one of the characters in this movie is General Buck Turgidson....

And Buck Turgidson is one of these stereotypical generals. He just wants to nuke the world. He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies. He just wants to nuke everything. And Buck Turgidson said, "Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching the moment of truth, both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always pleasant thing. But it's necessary now to make a choice: To choose between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments, one where you get 20 million people killed, the other where you'd get 150 million people killed." Turgidson was saying, "Let's send more B-52s! Let's just wipe these people out while we're at it, since we can't call this one back. Let's just be rid of them. We'll kill 20 million of them and that's it. They can't kill any of ours. It's a livable situation, Mr. President."

Peter Sellers playing President Merkin Muffley says, "You're talking about mass murder, general, not war," and Turgidson replies, "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed but I do say no more than ten to 20 million killed tops, depending on the breaks." Here's a guy totally cold and unaffected by the possibility of ten to 20 million people being killed in an accident and wants to say, "Let's go wipe 'em out even further." The president can't believe what he's hearing. You have Dukakis, "If your wife was raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" "No, Bernard. As you know, I've long and consistently opposed the death penalty during all my life." Obama is asked, "Mr. President, what is your attitude on terrorism?"

"Well, we could absorb one of those, a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it but even a 9/11, but even the biggest attack ever we absorbed it and we're stronger. We can deal with it." All these examples are of leftists and they are cold, removed, unemotional, unaffected, uninvolved.

Did he just call Turgidson a leftist?

Anyway, you know how it must pain the average-citizen leftist to hear that Obama, like Dukakis, is cold and unemotional. It can't be true! Obama is about empathy.

[Click here for video of George Lakoff explaining Obama's "empathy campaign."]

Remember when Bill Clinton made us — some of us — think he feels our pain? Obama, aloof, observes that we have an excellent capacity to absorb pain. We're pain sponges, apparently, so there's nothing to get too worked up about.

I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks....

It's the new Contract With America: the "Pledge to America."

The written document.

"The momentum is with us."

Sayeth... Nancy Pelosi.

Boiling Springs.

Oh, there's an apt name.

"[T]heme weeks forcing folks out of their wheelhouse are out, and stay-within-your-box-and-make-the-box-awesome with decade-based theme weeks is what's in."

"American Idol" update. So, if you're country, you'll be allowed to sing country, every week, and not prove that you can do, say, disco.

And Jennifer Lopez and Stephen Tyler are the new judges, joining Randy Jackson, the only original judge left:

Tyler, the first new judge Seabiscuit announced, bounced out on stage like a rat terrier hot on the trail of something rodent-y, grinned, and began to sing/scream "American IIIIIIIDOL," in his adorable, screechy, Steven Tyler way....

Shortly after Tyler skipped off stage, Jennifer Lopez rose from under the stage in a cloud of white faux-smoke.

"It's all about concentration! You have to concentrate -- and just live!" J-Lo advised auditioners in the audience....

You have to concentrate -- and just live.... Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do.

Philosophy is everywhere.

"They say that all good things must end someday. Autumn leaves must fall."

Equinoxiously yours,

Chad and Jeremy

P.S. It's the Super Harvest Moon tonight.

"Jean [Harlow] did not like to wear bras and was advised by her mother to ice her breasts to keep them firm."

"Similarly, she did not like to wear underwear because she disliked lines and she also preferred to sleep in the nude. Although these clothing practices were considered racy, especially due to her sex-symbol status, she actually approached them with a child-like freedom from confinement."

That all makes sense to me. Except the part about ice!

I ran across that by accident after searching — unsuccessfully — for the old Clairol ad with the tagline "If I have only one life, let me live it as a blonde." While it made being blonde seem awfully important, I always thought it was bizarre to remind us that we're all going to die. How much compensation for that calamity could we get out of blondeness?

Another commercial from the same era tried to encourage us to use the product (Schlitz) with: "You only go 'round once, and you've gotta grab for all the gusto you can."



Wow. They really rub it in with the sharks that ate the guys in the shipwreck. Must drink beer! I guess it takes a heavier hand to use death as leverage against guys.

Anyway, what's this post about? Freedom, commerce, death as an incentive to live, an icy brew and... for the adventurous: icy breasts!

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...

"President Barack Obama is helped by Vermont Governor Jim Douglas to move a couch in the Oval Office, Feb. 2, 2009. Governor Douglas met with the President about the economic recovery plan."

Obama to Bob Woodward: "We can absorb a terrorist attack... even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."

From Woodward's new book.

Obama also said that of course, he's trying to prevent any attacks, but his point about absorbing whatever hits us and getting stronger... it's true, isn't it?

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

It's true, right?

Classier version of the same: "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger."

(Hey, check it out: "Twilight of the Idols" has a Facebook page.)

AND: Make the Althouse blog stronger. Use this link if you buy the Woodward book.

Sorry, I deleted my blogroll last night. It's Mickey Kaus's fault.

I put his new, Newsweek blog on the roll, then, trying to remove his old, dead link, I clicked a button that said "remove." Apologies to all whose links I've deleted. I'll rebuild it over the next few days.

Meanwhile, while I'm on Mickey's case, let me say that I hate the format of his new blog. There's one post a day, and you have to click through a separate page to see that there are multiple topics. So, on the main page, yesterday's post — there's no more recent post (get on it, Mickey) — is headed "Andrew Breitbart 'Pissed' at Glenn Beck?" And you can see the first 10 lines or so before clicking.

Do you click? Maybe not. Maybe you don't care about AB and GB. But if you do click, you get to additional stuff that's got nothing to do with AB and GB:  "why I can't get too worked up about GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's alleged ethics violation"... "the DREAM Act... a familiar tradeoff—compassion in the short term vs. preventing large social problems in the long term..."

So why are those subjects stuck where you might never see them? It's Mickey's old style of collecting in one continuous post what most bloggers would put up as separate posts, combined with Newsweek's format of limiting what is on the front page. That format is, I believe, motivated by a desire to boost page views. This turns something that was fun about Mickey's old blog — the rambling, gossip-column style of going from item to item — into bondage to Newsweek's commercial interests. Blech!

And the truth is, I didn't click through on Mickey's first post until just now — because I didn't bite on the first-page teaser: "Get Me More Sarah Palin! Her secret weapon? She gets hit on." Ah, I realize now that he's making the point I just made. He's grasping after page views. Ha. Anyway, on the inner page, he says:

--kausfiles on Newsweek won't be quite the same as kausfiles on Slate. My early New Year's resolution is to be a lot more interactive (e.g. responding to comments), a bit less insidery, and a lot more Instapundit-y--emulating the wildly popular Tennessee blogger who posts lots of short links to worthy articles by others. Please let me know how I'm doing.

Of course, Instapundit doesn't have comments — except on a very rare occasion when a Madison, Wisconsin revolutionary storms the gates — and I think comments will be great. But this post-page business that I can't stand is something Instapundit doesn't do. One reason we love to click on Instapundit is that there will be so much stuff there right in view, on the main page. Yeah, there are a lot of links, but the vast majority of readers don't click on any given link. He sends a lot of traffic to the people — like me — whom he links, but that's because so many readers go to Instapundit, not because everyone clicks. Why does he start with so much? Because there is so much there to be seen at the first click — exactly what Mickey is not doing.

You can go back to Instapundit many times a day and get your instant reward of something new right there. By contrast, Mickey's blog, with all the fresh attention it's getting for the first 3 days, still only has 2 posts — 2 paragraphs on that front page. That's negative reinforcement for clicking. You can say you want to be Instapundit-y (and therefore wildly popular) but you've got to give and give. You can't withhold. And if you are withholding because big media is hungry for page views, the readers — me at least — are the ones who will withhold.

ADDED: Lots of links on one page is also the charm of the Drudge Report. Talk about wildly popular. It's harder to stay off it than to indulge your addiction and check it out one more time.