Landslide... for Romney in Florida.

Says Drudge. The various cable news networks are showing Romney at 49/50% and Gingrich at 30%.

UPDATE: With the polls closed, FoxNews calls it for Romney with 48%. 31% for Newt. 13% for Santorum and 7% for Paul.

UPDATE 2: Mitt Romney's victory speech: "A competitive primary does not divide us. It prepares us." The campaign "is about saving the soul of America." He's about "restoring America's greatness." He wants you to remember "an America that is still out there.... Let's fight for the America we love. We believe in America."

"To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion..."

"... Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication."

"Newt Gingrich Robocall: Mitt Romney Forced Holocaust Survivors To Eat Non-Kosher Food."

"As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney vetoed a bill paying for kosher food for our seniors in nursing homes. Holocaust survivors, who for the first time, were forced to eat non-kosher, because Romney thought $5 was too much to pay for our grandparents to eat kosher. Where is Mitt Romney's compassion for our seniors? Tuesday you can end Mitt Romney's hypocrisy on religious freedom, with a vote for Newt Gingrich. Paid for by Newt 2012."

That Gingrich: He's a survivor.

"I’ve kept silent all these years because I didn’t want to hurt any of these [big Hollywood stars]."

"And I never saw the fascination. So they liked sex how they liked it. Who cares?"

Cynthia Nixon gets right with ideologues.

Originally, she said:

I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me... A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

In a second interview, she was pushed to use the term "bisexual," and she resisted:

"I don't pull out the 'bisexual' word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals... But I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met (her fiance) Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt."

Now, she's yielded to pressure. She gives an "exclusive statement" to The Advocate:

My recent comments... were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can't and shouldn't be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify...

Strictly legal?!

While I don't often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have 'chosen' is to be in a gay relationship.

... I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.

Interestingly, the comments over at The Advocate are about the way gay people disrespect people who say they are bisexual.

"I like fire escapes. To me, they're unintentional urban art forms."

"Think about West Side Story and the role fire escapes play in that production. Audrey Hepburn sang 'Moon River' out on a Manhattan fire escape in Breakfast at Tiffany's. How many spy thrillers have featured chases across rooftops and swings from fire escapes? Fire escapes are romantic. They're urban art, and they wait for adventure."

Citizen Dave (the erstwhile Madison Mayor Dave (Cieslewicz)) has an amusing intro to a column about a proposed project that would repurpose some elderly buildings on State Street near the Wisconsin Capitol. If you want to understand what opposition to new buildings looks like in Madison, Wisconsin, read the whole column.

It's funny the way Madison progressives revere tradition when it comes to buildings. I like the old things too, and I certainly wouldn't want to waste money on a rampage against fire escapes on the theory that they're a terrible eyesore. But it's quite another thing to reject urban development to preserve them.

It comes down to whether you can appreciate an urban aesthetic or not. It comes down to our tolerance for the grittiness of real urban spaces versus the idea of suburban tidiness — and the sterility that comes with it.

There's a continuum from the worst grit, which everyone wants to eliminate, to the most extreme sterility, which only makes sense to attempt in completely new development. The political battles take place somewhere along the continuum.

How should these battles be conducted? Do you like the "I'm urban, you're suburban/I'm gritty, you're sterile" gambit?

David Brooks: "we need a National Service Program."

"We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement."

Here's a value from my tribe (called We the People of the Unites States of America): Freedom.

"i think its totally awesome but the guy talks about money and making a living too much."

"sounds like he does this for money more than as his passion and thats really sad because this looks like an awesome place."

That comment, giving grief to this tree-house-building guy...



... is typical of the way everybody's always trying to keep the hippie down.

Instant nostalgia/protest art/fundraising for the Walker recall.

It's "Inside, at Night — Origins of an Uprising," a photo exhibit at the Tamarack Studio and Gallery here in Madison.

Produced with the help of $9,1700 in donations from a campaign on kickstarter.com, the show has a distinct political element: More than half the profits from the sale of photos and books, plus donations at the door, will be given to the gubernatorial recall campaign. Photos will be sold at a two-tier price, "so that everyone regardless of means can take home an image or three," [said John Riggs, the gallery owner]....

The photos in "Inside, at Night" are mounted to Tamarack Gallery's walls with blue tape reminiscent of the tape used to hang protest posters inside the Capitol....

Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the photos are accompanied by blocks of text written by protesters in the thick of things, excerpts from blog posts, emails, journal entries and Twitter feeds that create a real-time narrative. The exhibited photos themselves will be numbered, but photographers won't be individually credited for their work.

"The story isn't about who did it — the story is what's on the wall," said Riggs, who himself took a quarter of the pictures in the show.

The story isn't about who did it — the story is what's on the wall. Oh, the collective! Let's merge the individual into the whole. The wall. All in all you're just another brick in the wall. Says the owner, who is named and who claims virtue in not naming the other photographers.

AND: Much as I loathe the collectivist politics and the submerging of individual achievement, I salute Riggs as a businessman. It's a great idea to transform his gallery into a protest art business. You should see all the shops that sell "Wisconsin" T-shirts to Madison tourists. If people come to Madison to check out the protest vibe (or if they live in Madison because they love the cozy comfort of the left-wing cocoon), give them something relevant to buy. I know there are relevant T-shirts. But there's plenty of room in this market for a higher level of protest memorabilia in the fine art category.

Bobby Jindal compares Obama's encounter with Gov. Jan Brewer to something that happened to him.

It was a tarmac scene during Obama's first visit to Louisiana after the Gulf oil spill:

"He grabs me by the arm, takes me aside,” [Jindal] said, “Here’s the strange thing … I thought he’d be angry about the oil spill, the lack of resources; I thought he’d get down there and say, look governor, we’re going to do everything we can to work together. Instead, he was upset he was going to look bad; he was worried about some routine letter we had already sent to his administration, nothing important.”

Jindal said the reaction shocked him. “I was amazed at two things: one, that he was mad about the wrong things, and two, that he was so thin-skinned.” In a time of crisis, Jindal said the last thing he wanted or expected was for the president to stage what was “clearly a media stunt.”

“I wanted him to be the president of the country, and instead he was playing political theatrics.”

It seems like the "stunt" — if that's what it is — works pretty well. It sounds like Obama knows how to look cool — photographed from a distance — even when he seems "thin-skinned" to the person he's talking to, and then that person — with less attention to how it looks — interacts with him and looks angry and disrespecful.

Obviously, it was a media op, and a politician should be good at projecting the right image on those occasions. Of course, this TV appearance of Jindal's is also a media op, and Jindal is using this one well. I assume he also managed the theatrics of his tarmac encounter with Obama — since I don't remember seeing any pictures of that incident that were used against him, like the pictures of Brewer.

And that's not to say the pictures of Brewer hurt her. I don't think they did. I think the people who are going to like Brewer will like seeing her being feisty, standing up to the President. And she's got a book to sell them — "Scorpions for Breakfast" — and she got plenty of extra publicity for it. That last link goes to Amazon, where her book is #1 in the Government/Public Policy list.

"Registered voters in 12 key swing states are almost evenly split between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney..."

"... while giving a 14-percentage-point lead to Obama over Newt Gingrich. Swing-state voters also prefer Obama to Ron Paul and to Rick Santorum. Registered voters nationally express similar preferences, although Paul does slightly better at the national level than he does in the swing states."

Gallup.

In a "personal development seminar," Chantal Lavigne "was accidentally 'cooked to death' during a class called 'Dying in Consciousness.'"

This happened in Canada last year:

Participants were wrapped in mud and plastic, covered with blankets, and left immobilized for about nine hours. Cardboard boxes were placed over their heads and they were encouraged to hyperventilate. Lavigne died of hyperthermia when her body was unable to dissipate heat properly.

The seminar was held at a spa called Ferme Reine de la Paix and organized by Gabrielle “Séréna” Fréchette. In her work as holistic healer, Fréchette channels “Melchizedek,” a mysterious king and priest that appears in the book of Genesis. Lavigne had already completed 85 personal development seminars at the spa, for which she paid more than $18,900....

In audio recordings of the session, Fréchette allegedly states, “The time has come for this body of death that you believe is yours… Death is freedom… death is the truth.”

"When I read a book, I'm handling a specific object in a specific time and place."

"The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that's reassuring."

Jonathan Franzen worries that ebooks — in place of print books — will reorient us in negative ways.

"Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough."

For serious readers, Franzen said, "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience". "Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change," he continued. "Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don't have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government."

The acclaimed author of Freedom and The Corrections – which are published as ebooks – has said in the past that "it's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction". He seals the ethernet port on his own computer to prevent him connecting to the internet while he writes, also removing the card so he is unable to play computer games and wearing noise-cancelling headphones to prevent distraction.

Of course, the internet and the fluidity of etexts have changed us, and the changes should be particularly upsetting to fiction writers. In the future, who will sit down with a tome and become one with the sealed-off complete world created by a novelist? The internet is calling. Who can read a book? To read books now, I load them up in my iPad and read some of one and then another and another. I rotate the texts to give reading books more of a feeling of clicking all over the place on the internet. That feels more exciting and natural to me now.

Does my iPad book mix include any Frantzen? Yeah, I've got "How to Be Alone" — a collection of essays, nonfiction. And my audiobook collection, which I listen to in bits and shreds, includes "The Discomfort Zone" — which is nonfiction, a memoir full of relatively disconnected scenes.

Speaking of impermanence and dissolution, Franzen says:

"One of the consolations of dying is that... 'Well, that won't have to be my problem'... Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically."

Well, you could take off the noise-cancellation headphones, plug the ethernet back in, and flow and float through change on a minute-by-minute basis. But that would only deprive you of what Franzen sees as a basis for a positive attitude toward death. You'll still die in the end, but without the consolation of being saved from what you found unbearable — change.

Now, I'm seeing in Franzen's reasoning the notion that we ought to want to curl up with a good long fiction book in order to relinquish our hold on life. Is that what draws us, instead, into the vivid, roiling experience of ever-changing texts on the web? It's life, and we want to live.

"They're trying to crucify this man...."

Delving into a presidential candidate's record and criticizing him vigorously is crucifixion?

How about the way we failed — back in 2008 — to delve into Obama's record and failed to criticize him?

Here's a clue: Get yourself perceived as The Messiah and the good people of the United States of America will refrain from crucifying you.

Worrying about the 1,900 tiny plastic fibers released by each item of clothing made from synthetic fabric every time it's washed.

"Microscopic plastic debris from washing clothes is accumulating in the marine environment and could be entering the food chain, a study has warned."

Please do not confuse this pressing problem with "A Million Little Fibers."

Newt in '09: "We believe that... everybody should either have health insurance or if you’re an absolute libertarian..."

"... we would allow you to post a bond, but we would not allow people to be free riders failing to insure themselves and then showing up at the emergency room with no means of payment."

"The weirdest thing about the rumor that Kim Kardashian gets paid $10,000 for a Twitter endorsement is..."

"... that it’s true."

The biggest player in the pay-to-tweet market is Ad.ly, a social-media advertorial clearinghouse pairing brands with celebs to inject highly personalized advertising into their Twitter streams.

"She’s had a miraculous turnaround."

Said Rick Santorum.

"I know how she got through it... It was with the hands of these doctors and the prayers that guided those hands."

Religion and politics. Children and politics. Medical problems and politics. When is it too much? When will you say it's too much?

"But controlled rot tastes good in this case — at least to us (or most of us)."

"The key is to manage the decomposition in such a way as to get that desired flavor and to ensure that we don't get sick from consuming the food (in some cases, rot is actually necessary because the fresh version is poisonous)."

"It's all Gladys' fault! She's sending me straight to hell!"

Millie Jackson sounded too much like Gladys Knight and needed to distinguish herself.

Jackson's first hit song, a 1973 cover of "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to be Right," caused a furor. In the middle of the song, Jackson starts talking about being the "other woman" in a relationship, and loving it. The protests put her on the path to stardom, but they also created a niche Jackson has found hard to escape.

I heard the Luther Ingram version of this song the other day and — even without a spoken-word interval — I got the feeling this is a terribly dangerous song. It must have gotten an awful lot of people into trouble over the years.

A great collection of celebrity high school yearbook pictures.

Fascinating to see those who were always great looking, those who were always bad looking, and — most interestingly — those who looked awful in high school and got much, much better, the most extreme example of which is this:

At the Blonde Dog Café...

... curl up and get comfy.

Young brains.

1. Does homosexuality reside at the biological brain level? "There is substantial evidence of various connections between genes, brain, hormones and sexual identity... But those do not amount to a simple picture that A leads to B." So gay people aren't born gay? "I honestly have no idea if I was born this way. My memory doesn’t stretch to the crib. But I know that from the moment I felt romantic stirrings, it was Timmy, not Tammy, who could have me walking on air or wallowing in torch songs and tubs of ice cream."

2. Do kids with ADD have a different kind of brain that makes stimulants like Ritalin have a mysterious opposite effect, calming them down? "Putting children on drugs does nothing to change the conditions that derail their development in the first place. Yet those conditions are receiving scant attention. Policy makers are so convinced that children with attention deficits have an organic disease that they have all but called off the search for a comprehensive understanding of the condition."

3. Are teenagers defective at the brain level? "Brain research is often taken to mean that adolescents are really just defective adults—grown-ups with a missing part. Public policy debates about teenagers thus often turn on the question of when, exactly, certain areas of the brain develop, and so at what age children should be allowed to drive or marry or vote—or be held fully responsible for crimes. But the new view of the adolescent brain isn't that the prefrontal lobes just fail to show up; it's that they aren't properly instructed and exercised.... Instead of simply giving adolescents more and more school experiences—those extra hours of after-school classes and homework—we could try to arrange more opportunities for apprenticeship. "

New Rasmussen poll has Romney at 44%, Gingrich 28% in Florida.

Announced this morning:

These figures reflect a significant turnaround over the past week. Last Sunday, just after his big win in the South Carolina Primary, Gingrich led Romney by nine.  By the middle of this past week,  Romney was back in control with an eight-point advantage. Despite all the ups and downs, the results today are very similar to polling results found in Florida three weeks ago, coming off Romney’s decisive victory in the New Hampshire Primary.

What happened? Was it Romney getting tougher in the last debate? Romney's ability to advertise pervasively in the big state? All the conservative big shots who ganged up on Gingrich? That crazy moon-shot business?

"RECALL WALKER/Tell him: Keep it up/IT'S WORKING!"

Photo taken today by the commenter James.

"Apparently @TPM doesn't expense its employees' salaries."

Pithy takedown.

We've found a dog. UPDATE: "Soleil."

Meade rescued a lost dog and managed to coax him into the house. (It's 20° out.) He's got a collar, but we haven't won his trust to the point where we can read it.



Sorry the picture is blurry. I don't want to trouble him, and he (or she) is walking around panting. Meade is great with dogs. I'm a dog novice, following orders not to pay attention to it.

ADDED: He/she's starting to get accustomed to us:



UPDATE: We were able to read the tag, called the owner, and now Soleil is gone. The sun has set on our bedogged life here in Madison, and so we must go on, dogless.

AND: Dog gone. Doggone.

MORE: Here's a sequence of pictures showing Meade winning the dog's trust. This happened after the dog was sitting on the floor between us for a while.
Meade saw that the dog had come over to me and sniffed. Then the dog went to Meade, smelled, paused, and re-smelled.





This is a kind of mother dog move that gives a feeling of security, I'm told:



After that, Meade is able to get the collar off (so he can read it).



Now, the collar is back on, and the dog is perfectly comfortable...



... enough to want to sit on Meade's lap...

"I walk like a runway model, but I shake hands like a lumberjack."

Says David Rakoff — one of my 2 favorite audiobook writer-readers — to Dave Hill — a comedian I'd never heard of — at the end of this amusing 2-and-a-half minute video.



Here are 2 Rakoff books: "Half Empty" and "Don't Get Too Comfortable." I've linked to the Kindle version, but you'll see the link to the audiobook version, which I personally love (in part because I use audiobooks to fall asleep and Rakoff's voice is expressive but gentle, like that of my other favorite audiobook writer-reader, Bill Bryson).

Demi Moore smokes something, and the real victim is Gloria Steinem.

I don't know exactly why Demi Moore was hospitalized.

Friends and family who were with Moore indicated she has smoked something “similar to incense” and was burning up, shaking and convulsing. They said it was not marijuana.

X17 reported doctors are speculating whether Moore smoked synthetic cannabis, which is also referred to as “K2,” “herbal incense” or “spice.” There are also reports Moore drank excessive amounts of Red Bull energy drinks.

Troubling. Sad, indeed. And there's also the divorce (from her 16-years-younger husband, the very cute Ashton Kutcher). But the person my heart goes out to is Gloria Steinem. Demi Moore has now had to pull out from the role of Gloria Steinem in a movie about Linda Lovelace, the star of the historic porn-flick "Deep Throat." Replacing her is Sarah Jessica Parker. Imagine, one day, one of the most beautiful Hollywood stars is playing the role of you in a movie. And the next day, they've recast the role with an actress who... is just not even very pretty at all.

What's Gloria Steinem doing in a biopic about Linda Lovelace? Here, read "Out of Bondage," by Linda Lovelace (with Mike McGrady), introduction by Gloria Steinem. From the 1986 Publisher's Weekly review at the link:

Steinem's introduction declares her belief in the integrity of the revelations that shocked the public when Lovelace's Ordeal appeared. 

Note: I've read "Ordeal." (And I've never seen "Deep Throat.")

With McGrady, Lovelace here writes a sequel, the story of her life after she escaped from the pimp she claimed forced her into prostitution and into filming "Deep Throat." Many of the hideous experiences detailed in the first book are repeated here, which readers will find hard to bear, unless they are intrigued by the brutalizing pornography that pays handsomely for everyone except its victims. Naming celebrities and mob figures, Lovelace makes a strong case against demeaned "entertainment." Now a wife and mother, the former "sexual zombie" is also an active supporter of human rights. She lectures at colleges on degradations suffered by women as sex objects.

So who's playing Linda Lovelace? I found an old news story that said Lindsay Lohan had the role. Ah, now, I see it's Amanda Seyfried... and that there's a second Linda Lovelace biopic in the works.

Competing films of the same variety sometimes meet poor ends, as studios start rushing to be the first to release their version, which can damage the quality of the end product.

If only they'd take their time! What a fulfillment we might achieve!

The moon base is to conservatives what high-speed rail is to liberals.

It's an extremely expensive project that springs out of a man's boyhood passions. You're begging for a toy, and I'm one of the smart, grounded mommies who know how to say no.

Actress Cynthia Nixon in trouble for saying her "gayness" is "a choice."

Nixon, who's been in a relationship with a woman for 8 years and (before that) with a man for 15 years, said:

"A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not."...

"Cynthia did not put adequate thought into the ramifications of her words, and it is going to be used when some kid comes out and their parents force them into some ex-gay camp while she's off drinking cocktails at fancy parties," [said Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen.] "When people say it's a choice, they are green-lighting an enormous amount of abuse because if it's a choice, people will try to influence and guide young people to what they perceive as the right choice."

Does he want truth to win out or something more like good policy or political pragmatism?

By the way, I vividly remember back around 1990, the progressive gay-rights-type people I knew were intent upon portraying sexual orientation as a choice. I won't name the famous lefty who snapped at me for entertaining the notion that homosexuality might have a biological basis: If it exists at the biological level, it will be perceived as a disease and people will try to cure it. That was really the same point as Besen's, oddly enough, in that it was about acceptance as opposed to treatment.

"40.6 trillion dollars in debt. Over 9% unemployment. But you know what Milwaukee? Those are just facts."

"And at its best, this country has never been about facts. It's been about belief. It's been about looking at the facts and saying, 'No.' "

"The Daily Show"'s John Oliver, doing standup comedy in Milwaukee last night, and (according to the Journal Sentinel) experiencing "one fleeting moment when he lost his crowd" — apparently, because he aimed some criticism at Barack Obama.

Romney ad uses archival news footage and Tom Brokaw is not pleased.

Brokaw — who wants the ad withdrawn — says: "I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad. I do no want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."

Extended use? The ad is 30 seconds long. And how does it "compromise" Brokaw's role as a journalist? Anyone can see it's the archival footage of the news from 1997, and the point of using Brokaw is that it makes it plain that this is the straightforward news of that time, not any pumped up, slanted presentation.

Unless...

... unless — ironically! — Tom Brokaw's role as a journalist is already — in the minds of viewers — compromised. I mean, when you look at this ad, do you think: Oh, there's that terrible left-leaning NBC News making what Gingrich did look as bad as possible? Or do you think: That's the regular, professional news as it appeared in 1997, informing us of some disturbingly bad things Gingrich did?

Obviously, Mitt Romney is using the clip on the theory that you'll think the latter, and therefore it boosts Brokaw's reputation as a neutral journalist. Brokaw's objection is self-undermining.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lem says:

I have the copy of the U.S. Constitution, and it doesn't say anywhere anything that anybody can make Tom extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of his personal image.

The Capitol Times — "Your Progressive Voice" — in Madison, Wisconsin, put up a poll about the Scott Walker recall.

See? It's over in the sidebar. Keep in mind that the Cap Times is not only based in Madison. It proudly skews to the left and, consequently, attracts an unusually liberal readership. So check out the results:



It's possible that some pro-Walker site has already linked to this poll, and that's why Walker is getting 54% of the vote. (I assume my linking now will have an effect.) But it's startling to see the Cap Timesters going big for Walker like this.

In second place, with 33%, is Russ Feingold, but Russ Feingold has assured us he's not running. I have — at various times — predicted he'll "reluctantly" jump in after playing coy, but I don't think he'll do it unless he feels pretty confident he will win... not just the primary, but win against Walker. And I don't think he's going to get that feeling.

The interplay between the Wisconsin recall and the November elections.

Business Insider has some analysis of a subject that deserves a lot of attention:

"It’s possible the recall elections will rally Wisconsin Democrats, spurring them to keep up the fight by heading to the polls in November. However, the recall election will not be cheap....

Democrats outside the state have expressed concern about sinking money into a statewide election so soon before the presidential race. There is also a chance that adding another hot contest to the year’s election calendar will induce voter fatigue, leaving would-be voters unwilling to summon the energy to make their way back to the polls again in November. In a state as evenly divided as Wisconsin, voter turnout is critical....

In the background, Wisconsin is also considering a proposal that would change the way it allots its Electoral College votes from a winner-take-all model to a representative one based on congressional districts. Maine and Nebraska are the only states that currently determine their Electoral College votes this way.... [I]f the proposal did somehow pass, it could deprive Obama of the last few votes he needs to win a close race, even if he narrowly carries Wisconsin.

"Possibly the biggest gap between how much I loved it as a kid, and how unwatchable I'd find it now of any show."

From a discussion of "Welcome Back Kotter," on the occasion of the death of actor Robert Hegyes (who played Epstein).

On his website, Hegyes wrote that he modeled the swaggering, skirt-chasing Epstein after Chico Marx, whom he played in a national touring production of "A Night With Groucho." He was a big fan of the Marx Brothers: "They were immigrant Jews, and I was an immigrant Italian. Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo, and Zeppo were intellectuals ... They all played the piano and took music lessons, and they were all juvenile delinquents; I could definitely relate."

It's sweet to see that connection to the Marx Brothers tradition of ethnic characters played by actors whose own ethnicity is at odds with the character's ethnicity. Heyges came from Hungarian and Italian ancestry and the Epstein character was Jewish and Puerto Rican.

"Welcome Back Kotter" wasn't a show I watched. I was in my 20s in the 1970s, and didn't watch much TV in those years. It's the TV shows of the 50s and 60s that are seared into my memory. Are there shows that I truly loved that I'd find really unwatchable now? Maybe "The Red Skelton Show."

Reporter challenges State Department official to explain how the U.S. Constitution gives Jay Leno the right to make fun of religion.

State Dept. spokesperson Victoria Nuland is grilled about a Jay Leno joke that has offended Sikhs. Here's the joke, which targets Mitt Romney:



The joke-writers probably did a Google image search for something like "fancy palace" without realizing that the glorious image they retrieved depicted a site revered to the exclusion humor.

I love the way Nuland keeps a fully dignified straight face as she encounters the challenge from the Indian reporter:

VIDEO.

As I conlawprof, I find this line the most amusing:

"As India celebrates tomorrow the Constitution Day of India, I have the copy of the U.S. Constitution, and it doesn't say anywhere anything that anybody can say anything or abuse or accuse anybody's religion."

Much funnier than a Jay Leno joke.

I also think it's interesting that CNSNews — which conceives of itself as an antidote to liberal news bias — seems to fault Nuland for citing, in her response to the reporter's question about the U.S. Constitution, the "freedom of religion and tolerance for all religions" but not the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Obviously, Jay Leno has a free-speech right to mock religion and to label the Golden Temple Mitt Romney's summer home. (Maybe Nuland fretted about whether Leno had violated the photographer's copyright.)

Should Nuland have boldly celebrated the American free-speech tradition or was it appropriately diplomatic to murmur assurances about respect for religion?

"From his father Jobs had learned that a hallmark of passionate craftsmanship is making sure that even the aspects that will remain hidden are done beautifully."

"One of the most extreme—and telling—implementations of that philosophy came when he scrutinized the printed circuit board that would hold the chips and other components deep inside the Macintosh. No consumer would ever see it, but Jobs began critiquing it on aesthetic grounds. 'That part’s really pretty,' he said. 'But look at the memory chips. That’s ugly. The lines are too close together.'"

Page 133, Walter Isaacson, "Steve Jobs" (p. 133). That was called to mind both by the last post — the one about Fred Stoller's uninspiring mother — and by a conversation we had last night about the value of doing one's own work according to your own high standards, even where your supervisors/clients/audience do not perceive the final increments of quality you have put into your craft.

If you are religious, you may believe that God sees and knows about this care and discernment and achievement of yours and even that you will be rewarded for it in the afterlife, but you can also work to this high standard purely for yourself, for the intrinsic value of the work and the work product. Somewhere in between is the idea that you do beautiful work because you learned it from your (earthly) father.

"My mother tried her best, but was saddled with many fears that she passed onto me with the highest anxiety."

Writes Fred Stoller:

I'm pretty sure I'm the only nine-year-old who set up a lemonade stand, whose mother reacted by panicking: "What if it goes under? Don't do it, Freddie." And my mother also panicked about my imminent rejection when as a teenager I wanted to work at Burger King to earn my own spending money. "Yeah, right! They're waiting for you," she brutally informed me.

From "My Seinfeld Year," a Kindle Single book that I blogged about — and read in its entirety — yesterday.

"Mr. Zuckerberg had been reluctant to push forward with an IPO."

R"People familiar with his thinking said he has been fearful of the damage an IPO could do to the company's culture. He wants employees focused on making great products, not the stock price...."

In the Cocktail Lounge...

... you can talk about anything.

"Could the United States establish a moon colony and develop a new propulsion system for going to Mars?"

"All within eight years of a Newt Gingrich presidency, as Mr. Gingrich promised this week? The answers seem to be technologically yes, economically iffy and politically very difficult."

Newt's idea for a lunar colony is...
	... lunacy.
	... intriguing but misguided.
	... exactly the kind of thing we need.
pollcode.com free polls

Skulking turkeys.

Today... in Owen Park.

"The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant."

"CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle."

Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

"It’s like asking a priest not to pray..."

"... they have acquired skills and want to use them in real life."

"Dublin dole office bans those in pyjamas."

"There is a psychological aspect and pyjamas are associated with sleeping at night and comfort in the home...  You have to get into the mindset of what you are doing that day. So if you are wanting to get a job, go dressed prepared to get a job."

Oh, come on. People dress to express themselves. These "pyjama"-wearers are telling the government something important about the way they feel about the "dole." Don't squelch the communication. Don't stanch the flow of information between citizen and government.

How Romney's new debate coach seems to have affected what Romney said about religion.

Sarah Posner looks at his new answer to the debate question about how religion would affect what he does as a President and compares it to what he said back in October.

Romney's answer was clearly aimed at making sure no one thought that his Mormonism would impact his decision-making, but that his embrace of the Christian right's "Judeo-Christian values" framing would.

Valentine's...

... gifts.

"What about low IQ and Liberal beliefs? Did the study link those to anything?"

"Say, gullibility? Conformity? Susceptibility to cults of personality? Unhealthy narcissism? Vanity? Shouting down governors? Locking one's own head to gallery railings? Chanting? Drumming? Occupying? Incessant blowing of vuvuzelas? Did those questions make it into the study?"

"This stuff stings, man."

Lethal injection. Last words.

"The Secret Power Of Introverts."

Jenna Goudreau, writing in Forbes:

In the last few decades, this “Extrovert Ideal” has transformed workplaces, says [Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking]. Independent, autonomous work that favored employee privacy was eroded and practically replaced by what she calls “The New Groupthink,” which “elevates teamwork above all else.” Children now learn in groups. Ideas are formed in brainstorming sessions. Talkers are considered smarter. Employees are hired for “people skills,” and offices are designed to be open and interactive.

Yet, according to Cain, it’s only worked to damage innovation and productivity. Research shows that charismatic leaders earn bigger paychecks but do not have better corporate performance; that brainstorming results in lower quality ideas and the more vocally assertive extroverts are the most likely to be heard; that the amount of space allotted to each employee shrunk 60% since the 1970s; and that open office plans are associated with reduced concentration and productivity, impaired memory, higher turnover and increased illness.

... “Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women living in a man’s world,” says Cain. “Our most important institutions are designed for extroverts. We have a waste of talent.”

A good reason to stay out of institutions, if you ask me.

"I promised the Almighty God that if he took hate out of my heart I would never hate again... He did and I have not."

Justice Clarence Thomas, in a speech yesterday, describing an experience that occurred "on the morning of April 16, 1970."

Does the ABA Journal shed any new light on last year's troubles in the Wisconsin Supreme Court?

Well, there's new junk commentary from far-off observers, like this:

Also, it’s possible that some of [Chief Justice Shirley] Abrahamson’s colleagues have had problems taking directions from a woman, says Deborah Rhode, a Stanford Law School professor whose work focuses on gender, law and public policy. She notes that many studies suggest women in leadership positions face trade-offs that men don’t.

“What’s assertive in a man is abrasive in a woman,” Rhode says, mentioning a report on women in leadership roles by Catalyst, a nonprofit group that focuses on expanding opportunities for women in business. It surveyed female executives, and many of them attributed some of their success to finding a management style that made men feel comfortable.

Speaking of things that are "possible"... it's possible to say something more generic about the relations between men and women in the workplace.

And there's this from Leah Ward Sears, the former chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court:

“You have to know when to hold them, and know when to fold them. Sometimes people don’t know when to walk away... Because everybody is a sovereign state... sometimes you have to push hard, because some justices can be bullies. But that doesn’t mean you choke anyone or push anyone out the window.”

Noted.

Hillary Clinton climbs down from "the high wire of American politics" on the theory that "it's a good idea to just find out how tired I am."

She says "It’s a little odd for me to be totally out of an election season... But, you know, I didn’t watch any of those debates." And "I am happy to work with Vice President Biden, who does an excellent job..."

Credibility assessment please.
	I take the lady at her word. True until proven otherwise.
	She's a diplomat. It's essentially true, but slathered in niceties.
	She's a Clinton. That says it all. Anything that's not lies is there because it's useful.
	These options don't express my subtle insights. Write polls that sound more like my thoughts.
pollcode.com free polls

"I feel like I'm prepared emotionally to perform in a state like I've never been prepared before."

"When you're exposed to some slightly crazy people in arctic conditions, there's no way the state can hurt me now."

That's "The Daily Show"'s John Oliver, who's performing in Milwaukee tonight, and the preparation he's referring to is his coverage of the Wisconsin protests last year. At the link, there are 3 clips from that coverage, and we just laughed hysterically at this one where he interviews state senator Jon Erpenbach, as if he's a terrorist, hiding out in his "cave" in the tribal stronghold of Illi-no-EEZ.

"You have a movie coming out, a fragrance, a new album and a tour—and now the Super Bowl. Was this a master plan?"

"No, everything kind of converged in a bottleneck. I was always planning on making a record when I finished my film but I ended up finishing my film much later than I had expected so, because I had already scheduled time with all the producers and writers for my record, I had to multitask and work on my record at the same time I was finishing my film. And then somehow it worked out that the record was being finished right around the time the movie was coming out. Then I got talked into doing the Super Bowl."

Madonna sounds quite smart, normal, and appealing in this interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Larry David hired Fred Stoller to write for "Seinfeld," but then it turned out...

... as Fred tells it, that "Mr. David had hired Mr. Stoller, at least in part, because his schnooky personal life might lend itself to story lines."

At one point, Mr. Stoller finally got up the nerve to pitch an idea to Mr. David and to Jerry Seinfeld, and Mr. David immediately interrupted, asking: "Where'd you get that shirt? Do people help you? What's the process of someone like you buying a shirt?"

"Larry would just look at me and go: 'How do you talk to a woman?' " Mr. Stoller recalls.

From a WSJ article on Stoller, whose $1.99 book "My Seinfeld Year," is #1 on the Kindle Singleslist.

"Wouldn’t it be nice if people didn’t make accusations somewhere else that they weren’t willing to defend here?"

"I think it’s important for people to make sure that we don’t castigate individuals who’ve been successful."

Last night, Romney owned Gingrich.

ADDED: The phrase "Romney owned Gingrich" also appears in this MSNBC piece, introducing this text:

If Mitt Romney wins the nomination, we'll look back and say the first hour of last night’s debate and say that was when he finally put it away. Romney dominated Newt Gingrich -- from the opening barbs over immigration to his effective response to Gingrich on Freddie/Fannie money (“Mr. Speaker have you checked your own investments?”) to squashing Gingrich’s attempt to co-opt the audience once again (“Wouldn’t it be nice if people wouldn’t make accusations somewhere else that they aren’t willing to make here?”). Romney was aggressive without being petulant. He finally looked comfortable sparring. He looked for the first time like he deserved the moniker “front runner” on stage. And it certainly helped that he had a new debate coach. Romney just wasn’t the same guy.

"The most important debate yet" — according to the intro to the CNN debate starting now.

I'm not going to say I'll live-blog, because such promises seem to sap my energy these days, but feel free to talk about it in the comments, and I'll update if I've got anything to say (beyond the mundane descriptions and transcriptions).

ADDED: "I want anguish to be the official language of government," says Newt, or so it it almost sounds, as he pronounces "English."

AND: My son John is live-blogging, and I really do think he's an ace live-blogger.

"This is what your brain on drugs really looks like."

Fascinating!

Psychedelics are thought of as ‘mind-expanding' drugs, so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity," explained [neuropsychopharmacologist David] Nutt in an interview with Nature's Mo Costandi. "Surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to decrease in areas that have the densest connections with other areas."...

Decreased activity within and between the brain's hubs, conclude Nutt and his colleagues, allows for "an unconstrained style of cognition."

Polls in sidebar.

Keep an eye out for polls in the sidebar on this blog. My ad service, BlogAds, is gathering info that might be useful for getting more ads. Like right now, I'm seeing a question on the extent to which you like Sarah Palin.

The return of Joe Biden's "slight Indian accent."

That's our VP.

"Despite a heavy tax burden, Warren Buffett’s secretary last year was able to purchase a second home in Arizona..."

"... a residence complete with a swimming pool and a 'professional PGA putting green'..."

Oh, now, now. I clicked through to the pictures of the house, pool, and putting green and it's not really that nice.

In the 1980s, Gingrich "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism."

"Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong." — Elliott Abrams.

ADDED: That article is regarded as one element of a concerted effort by conservatives to destroy Newt.

AND: Newt himself seems to be joining the effort:



He totally lied.

Scott Walker's State of the State speech...

... and the protesters who made it an occasion for themselves.

Protesters gather for State of the State speech: fox11online.com

Slate's Jessica Grose is surprised the internet wasn't cruel after "Queen of the Mommy Bloggers" Dooce announced her separation from her husband.

Grose says "the tone of the response has been extraordinary in its relative kindness."

We think of Internet commentary—especially toward women who write about their personal lives—as full of vindictive bile. Certainly, Armstrong is not immune from such cruelty, and some bloggers are taking her to task for making her every move so public. However, most of the response to Armstrong’s split has been concerned and sweet.

Do we really expect the internet to be such an asshole?

It's just plain upsetting to see this idealized married couple break up... which Grose eventually gets around to:

Many of her readers want and appreciate what she appeared to have—a thriving home business with a “[l]over, business partner, best friend,” which is how Armstrong described Jon three years ago. Her marriage seemed aspirational, yet attainable—particularly because their lives weren’t entirely perfect, given Armstrong’s depression and anxiety, and her husband’s own mental health issues.

It’s precisely because of this notional attainability that Armstrong’s separation is so jarring for her readers. Fans of Seal and Heidi Klum might be sad about their split, but I doubt many of them could imagine themselves in the shoes of an uber-wealthy Teutonic supermodel. But plenty of Armstrong’s readers would love a companionate marriage that meshed work and life seamlessly, and her separation may dash those dreams.

Adam Clymer says Newt Gingrich may seem to relish denouncing journalists, but actually he "enjoys consorting with the enemy."

Here's Clymer's column in the NYT. You may remember him as the Times's Washington correspondent back in the day.

(Speaking of politicians' denunciations of journalists, Clymer received the best one ever.)

""[I]t’s no surprise that a visiting professor is teaching Admin; professors at Yale love to dump..."

"... the black-letter teaching duties on visitors, so the YLS tenured professors can teach 'Law and Literary Theory' or 'Law and Robots' or 'Law and __' (yes, blank in the original; this meta-course was all about the interdisciplinary study of law)."

David Lat, discussing a current student problem at Yale Law School, in the larger context of the differences among law schools. He continues:

In the grand scheme of things — global poverty, domestic unemployment, the war in Afghanistan, climate change (presumably you believe in it) — the inability of third-year students at Yale Law School to take Administrative Law is not a huge problem. But it is an interesting illustration of the very real differences between law schools. At how many other law schools would students take to the streets — Occupy 127 Wall Street, if you will — over being denied the right to wallow in the nuances of Chevron deference?

"Even though the percentage of incoming freshmen who identify as conservative has stayed relatively stable..."

".... those students and the rest of their peers are shifting away from hard-line conservative stances on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, marijuana legalization and affirmative action...."

Even though on an issue-by-issue basis the opinions of incoming freshmen are becoming less conservative, the number of liberal students per se is not necessarily on the rise.

As students over the past couple of years have become more likely to self-identify politically as “middle of the road” (47.4 percent in 2011, up three percentage points since 2009), the percentage who consider themselves “liberal” has actually declined more than that of those who say they’re “conservative.”

"Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm..."

"... asked applicants to send links representing their 'Web presence,' such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog. Applicants also had to submit short videos demonstrating their interest in the position."

ADDED: Here's the link. Sorry for the omission.

"The Beatles, 'Revolution,' cut up, scrambled, and looped. The Beatles sing 'one two three four' for an hour."

"All of Billy Joel's greatest hits played at once. Celine Dion screams for 1.5 minutes. Please enjoy responsibly."

Yes, indeed. You can end up feeling a little ill.

Like, if you go here: "Have you ever wondered what each Beatles album would sound like if you played all the songs together at the same time? No way! Me too!"

And they recommended this...



... which seems pretty entertaining while it's going on, but I don't feel so good now.

"American commandos raced into Somalia early Wednesday and rescued two aid workers..."

"... an American woman and a Danish man, after a shootout with Somali pirates who had been holding them captive for months."

One American official said an assault team of Special Operations troops parachuted in from fixed wing aircraft, not helicopters, under cloak of darkness to a landing area about a mile’s walk from the actual target. The paratroopers landed, then walked to an encampment where the kidnappers where holding the two hostages.

Within minutes, shots rang out. The hostages were located and secured. Nine Somalis were killed and an unknown number wounded in the ensuing firefight with the commandos. No Somali prisoners were taken....

"Gov. Scott Walker holds single-digit leads over several potential Democratic opponents in hypothetical recall matchups..."

"In the survey of 701 registered voters, Walker leads his 2010 opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, 50% to 44%. He leads former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk 49% to 42%.  He also leads two other Democrats, former congressman Dave Obey and state lawmaker Tim Cullen."

In the same statewide poll, President Obama leads Republican Mitt Romney in a hypothetical matchup 48% to 40%.

Maybe Wisconsinites just like incumbents. Seriously, what's going on there? We've got Obama 8 points ahead of the supposedly kind of moderate Romney, yet the supposedly staunchly conservative Walker is beating all the potential Democratic opponents?

Looking through to the full results — PDF — it's interesting that on the right direction/wrong track question,  70% of the respondents think the country is on the wrong track (24% say "right direction"), but when the same question is asked about Wisconsin, 50% say "right direction," and 46% say "wrong track."

Check out question 30: "In general, which of the following statements do you agree with more? I'd rather pay higher taxes and have a state government that provides more services, or I'd rather pay lower taxes and have a state government that provides fewer services?" 50% prefer the lower taxes approach, compared to 41% who want more services. 

And question 38: "Thinking about all the changes in state government over the past year, do you think Wisconsin is better off in the long run because of these changes or worse off in the long run?" 54% say "better off," over 40% that say "worse off." 

Interesting results. I think it's predictable that Scott Walker will survive the recall election.

Nancy as the new Marianne?

What's this supposed to mean? Drudge has been pushing it as "PELOSI THREAT: NEWT WON'T BE PRESIDENT/'THERE IS SOMETHING I KNOW.'"

Is Pelosi implying possession of some secret knowledge nugget? The clip is creepy. I feel like the network is teasing us with another woman — after last week's ex-wife interview — who's going to step into the spotlight and say a few words that will supposedly be sufficient to take down Gingrich.

It's interesting that it's John King doing the little sequence with Pelosi, because it was John King who moderated last Thursday's debate and began it by confronting Newt Gingrich with what his ex-wife had said. Newt pounced on John King that night. (For a visual depiction of the pounce, you've got to watch this. Go to 2:17 for the kill.)

Anyway, what's up with Nancy? In that clip with King, she seems weirdly woozy. I can't tell if she's claiming to have her own personal anti-Newt stink-bomb or if she just feels like she has ESP: "It isn't going to happen... There is something I know."

Now, Newt is saying: "I have a simple challenge for Speaker Pelosi...you know, put up or shut up." Ooh! He really knows how to talk to the ladies. I mean... we've certainly reached a new milestone in the advancement of women.

UPDATE: Pelosi's office says she meant it in the ESP way, not the own personal anti-Newt stink-bomb way.

Disparaging Obama's SOTU because it "was written at an eighth-grade level."

Eric Ostermeier relies on the Flesch-Kincaid test, which calculates the readability of written text, based upon the length of sentences and words. He notes the prevalence of sentences like:

"There are plenty of ways to get this done. So let's agree right here, right now: No side issues. No drama. Pass the payroll tax cut without delay."

Hey, it would be on an even lower grade level if it weren't for that colon. You see my point? The punctuation says nothing about the difficulty or ease of the material in a text written for oral delivery. It's a signal to the speaker, indicating the length of pauses, the degree of flow. But I could just as well have written the previous 2 sentences as one sentence, with a colon in the middle, so quite aside from the oral/written distinction, the Flesch-Kincaid test is a pretty simplistic device to leverage an argument that a text is simplistic.

Obama repeats himself in State of the Union speeches.

I hear the ominous chimes, but how bad is this, really? He repeats platitudes. (Via Instapundit.)

"Which way am I going? This way or that?"

After the State of the Union.

SOTU.

You watching?

ADDED: Who decided that Obama should start pronouncing the word "business": bid-ness. Is that supposed to make us feel that this country is back to work?

AND: What are those beams of light shooting in from the upper right? It's nighttime. Did they set up some spotlights? Or is that the light of God?

ALSO: Amazingly unbelievable assertion: "I'm a Democrat, but I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: The government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves and no more."

The Supreme Court "signaled sympathy with the 'mosaic' theory of privacy..."

"The mosiac theory holds that aggregating lots of pieces of information about an individual that in themselves may be harmless may nonetheless, taken as a whole, constitute a search — even if all the data is public."

That reminds me of one of the most useful books I've ever read: "Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed."

"The Brown-Warren agreement does not seek to equalize spending between the two candidates, both of whom are well funded."

"It is a sort of suicide pact, providing... that the two 'donate to charity half the price of ads that are run in their name in the state.' Says Brown: 'By having 50 percent of that negative or positive ad buy go to charity of the other person's choice, it's an incentive to keep those groups out.'"

Brown is pandering to Massachusetts liberals who hate Citizens United and don't understand the underlying principles of free speech.

It's been observed that young Newt Gingrich looks like "The Office" star Rainn Wilson.

Now, check out Rainn Wilson's Twitter photo, and this tweet:

Congrats to @NewtGingrich on his win! If he's still into the whole 'open marriage' thing I'm VERY interested.

Why are there 9 — not 5 and not 10 — Best Picture Oscar nominations and which are the real nominees...

... that is, the nominees that would be the nominees if, as in the old days, there were only 5 nominees. My 28-year old son Christopher Althouse Cohen does the analysis:

This year there are 9 nominees. There's a reason there are 9 instead of 10 (or 5). The category originally got expanded to 10 nominees after 2008, probably because a lot of mainstream moviegoers were upset that The Dark Knight was "snubbed" in favor of The Reader. The Academy figured that, if only there had been some more slots, The Dark Knight would have been nominated and the viewers would have been more happy.

The next year, there were 10 nominees, and it was a much more commercial lineup that included at least 5 box office hits (Avatar... District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Up, and The Blind Side). They probably liked seeing District 9 and Up nominated, but the critics largely didn't consider The Blind Side to be Oscar material. The next year, Inception and Toy Story 3 got nominated, probably because of the expanded category, but so did the not-particularly-good-for-ratings Winter's Bone and The Kids Are All Right.

The Academy probably thought the category was getting watered down, but they wanted to keep the category big enough so that some hit movies would keep getting in. So, they came up with some formula where there are at least five nominees, and other movies can get nominated (but no more than ten) if they meet a certain voting threshold. It happened to be 9 this year, but it could just as well have been 8, etc.

Here are the nominees:

The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

So, let's figure out which of the 9 are the "real" nominees that would have made it into a normal, 5-nominee list, and which are the extra ones.
We just have to eliminate four of these movies. But first, there are two movies that are locks on the 5-nominee list, the ones that got by far the most nominations: The Artist and Hugo. Those have to be nominated, so really we just have 3 open slots and 7 movies to choose from.

The easiest to eliminate is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was such a surprise the journalists in the audience yelled out and gasped when they heard it announced. It only had one other nomination -- Supporting Actor -- and that too was considered a major surprise.

Now we're down to 6, and exactly half of these would have gotten nominated: The Descendants, The Help, Midnight In Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse. That looks like a strong list, but since we can see what other Oscar nom's these movies got, it should be easier to whittle it down.

War Horse is the first of the remaining I'd remove from the list. It was considered a strong contender at one point, but Steven Spielberg didn't get a Director nomination, and even though it got six nominations, all of them other than Picture were in technical categories. It's never happened that a Spielberg movie got nominated for Best Picture without getting any other major-category nominations (though he did get snubbed in the Director category for The Color Purple).

I'd also get rid of The Help, because its other three nominations are all in acting categories. It didn't even get nominated for Adapted Screenplay.

So, finally, we have four movies left, one of which must be elimated: The Descendants, Midnight In Paris, Moneyball, and The Tree of Life.

Now the elimination is harder. The Descendants is probably the strongest of these. It just got 5 nominations, but they included Director, Actor, and Screenplay. Moneyball is the only one that wasn't nominated for Best Director. But almost every year when there were 5 Picture nom's, the Picture and Director categories didn't line up exactly. Moneyball did get a Screenplay nomination and two acting nom's, so it's fairly strong overall. What's most likely is that one of the remaining two -- Midnight In Paris or The Tree of Life -- would have been the movie nominated for Director but not Picture, and Moneyball would have been the Picture-but-not-Director movie.

Midnight In Paris is (from my count) the third Woody Allen movie to get a Best Picture nomination (after Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters), but it's his sixth Director nom, so it's happened three times that his movie got the Director-but-not-Picture thing (Interiors, Broadway Danny Rose, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Bullets Over Broadway). Midnight In Paris could have been the fourth one. But maybe not. Midnight In Paris was commercially successful in a way that those Picture-snubbed movies weren't. Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters were hit movies with broad appeal when they came out. Midnight In Paris was kind of a hit, technically his highest grossing movie ever. With the expanded category, it was considered something of a lock. The Tree of Life, however, does not have broad appeal, is clearly an art movie, and feels like the sort of thing directors love but that gets fewer votes from other branches. Keep in mind, the nominations in each category are chosen by their respective branches, but everyone votes for the Best Picture nominees. Both of these movies got three nominations each this year. Midnight In Paris got Picture, Director, and Screenplay; The Tree of Life got Picture, Director, and Cinematography. I think it's close between the two, but I would go with The Tree of Life as the one that would have gotten left out.

So, with that, here are the real nominations for Best Picture today:

The Artist
The Descendants
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball

or, perhaps:

The Artist
The Descendants
Hugo
Moneyball
The Tree of Life

I'd go with the former.

Romney vs. Gingrich at last night's debate.

Effective?

Fantasy author poses like female characters on the covers of fantasy books.

"My sense is that most of these covers are supposed to convey strong, sexy heroines, but these are not poses that suggest strength. You can’t fight from these stances. I could barely even walk."

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

"I'm heading to Capitol Hill soon to deliver my third State of the Union address."

"Before I go, I want to say thanks for everything you're doing.... Barack."

Email, just received. Nice to know the President appreciates whatever it is I'm doing.

"Newt is a Vessel: He Won South Carolina Because He Articulated Conservatism."

Speaking of articulation, I thought Rush Limbaugh articulated this really well on his show yesterday:

To those of you in the Republican base, this isn't complicated.  Newt is winning. He is on a momentum roll here because he can articulate conservatism, that and he's willing to take it to Obama.  I have said for the longest time that whoever does that, whoever articulates conservatism with passion, with love, cause that's love of country, with good cheer.... cannot be beat....

Now, this presents a huge stumbling block potential for Newt.  He is vulnerable on the very thing he can do better than anybody else.  He had better fully embrace his conservatism and not make it a part-time thing.  The days of being able to keep this momentum going by ripping on the media are over.  The standing ovations for taking on the media are over, or they have a very short life span.  He can't live on that anymore.  Been there, done that.  It's gonna get old and it's gonna look like it's been set up....

I was just talking to someone who expressed the belief that the standing Os were orchestrated, that — at the South Carolina debate — you can hear them begin and end as if a leader were giving hand motions.

Now, Newt keeps pushing off any questions on his anti-conservative statements.  And he better not.  I think Newt is just as vulnerable on his anti-conservatism as Romney is on Romneycare.  "What do you mean by that, Rush?"  Very simple.  Newt has made it plain two or three times that he's very open to the concept of manmade global warming.  He can blow this by sitting on the couch with Pelosi again or something that is equivalent.  Newt has in the past had some unflattering things to say about capitalism.  His time at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a vulnerability. Saying that FDR is the best president, his favorite president, that doesn't jibe with being a conservative.  His open support for single payer health insurance with a mandate.  I'm just telling you, Newt's not out of the woods here....

So let a long campaign happen.  Let a long, drawn-out campaign happen, let's flush 'em out here....

"I’ve got to think Monday night’s debate further swelled the groundswell of support for Mitch Daniels."

It's Bill Kristol again:

The liveliest part of the debate was at the beginning, when Mitt went after Newt—and Republicans all over America watched with fascinated horror at the thought that these are the two GOP frontrunners. The only spectacle in American politics more off-putting than Newt Gingrich in self-righteous defense mode is Mitt Romney in self-righteous attack mode. I thought Mitt’s attacks were somewhat more dishonest than Newt’s defenses were disingenuous, but it was good to move on to the rest of the debate, where little further damage was done.

My conclusion: If Mitch Daniels’s effective tax rate is 30 percent rather than 15 percent, and if he was never paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac, he can be the next president.

By the way, Mitch Daniels was my original, provisional choice for the GOP nomination, in part because I'm sentimental about Indiana.  Kristol's recent Mitchomania interests me!

I'm working on slogans playing off the similarity between the names Mitt and Mitch... but I keep including the word "bitch," so I'll spare you the examples.

"How Not to Listen to the State of the Union."

Not turn it on?

No, seriously... from TNR's Jonathan Bernstein:

You can see the typical press approach in The New York Times preview of the speech earlier this week. The piece is almost entirely focused on Barack Obama’s strategies to win the American public to his side; we’re told that he’s expected to “dra[w] a stark contrast between the parties” and to “define the election” in various ways. The Washington Post says that “how he delivers the argument will test his rhetorical dexterity and set the tone for the year ahead,” and focuses on the speech as a campaign document.

But the truth is that presidential speeches rarely have much effect on public opinion. For one thing, most people already have opinions about the president, so they’re not particularly open to changing their mind even when they hear something they like....

So it’s unlikely that the State of the Union can produce any short-term bump in any president’s approval ratings. Even less likely is that the speech could have any effect on voter choice in the upcoming elections, which are still over nine months away....

Which is a reason to ignore the whole thing, but Bernstein says it's worth paying attention to because "the State of the Union is usually a reliable guide to White House priorities for the next legislative year and even beyond."

But I don't have to watch (or listen) to get that. The State of the Union is usually very tedious because of all the applauding and standing ovations... with half the people in the audience grimly enduring it. Maybe the first 5 minutes are worth it. I like to check out which Supreme Court Justices are there.

They're required to sit there, right in front and act like they are completely disaggregated from politics. But Obama might chastise them, and maybe one of them will silently mouth a simple response and get all the attention the next day. Will Samuel Alito be there tonight? Frankly, the interaction with the Supreme Court is the only aspect of the speech that interests me. With the big Obamacare case coming up this year and a pending decision that will have an impact on the fall election, I'm wondering what Obama might do.

"You can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students."

"But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland."

Strange mixed metaphor! (The red pill is supposed to get you to reality, but Wonderland is a dream.) But mixing metaphors doesn't make your idea wrong, and Sebastian Thrun is a professor of computer science, not a professor of rhetoric. He's leaving his tenured position at Stanford to found Udacity:

Romney's federal tax returns: "he is likely to pay a total of $6.2 million in taxes on $45 million in income over the two tax years of 2010 and 2011."

The NYT reports:

Mr. Romney said last week that his effective tax rate was “about 15 percent,” a figure lower than that of many affluent Americans. But his returns suggested that he paid an effective tax rate of nearly 14 percent.

That's a heavy-handed "but." 14 is "about 15."

“I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more,” Mr. Romney said during Monday night’s debate. “I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”

Exactly! The question isn't what he paid — unless he cheated — but what his tax policy for the country would be. Still, he really needs to be able to explain cogently and persuasively why capital gains are taxed the way they are. And he really needs to be able to convey why we should want a man who mostly worked in private finance to help us out with our finances.

Mr. Romney, a Mormon, has long said that he had promised to give 10 percent of his income to his church. His tax return shows that over two years he and his wife, Ann, gave $7 million in charitable contributions, including $4.1 million to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

So he gave more money to his church than to the federal government. Is "gave" the right verb for both of those payments? Perhaps it's not the right verb for either. Tithing is compulsory in the church, is it not? In both cases, he's relinquishing what is due under a requirement.

CORRECTION:  Romney gave more money to charity than to the federal government. The amount given to his church was $4.1 million, which is less than the $6.2 million given to the federal government. He gave $7 million total to charity.

Remember when Joe Biden released his tax returns in 2008 and we saw that he gave about 0.15% to charity? That same year, we saw the Obamas had given 5.8% - 6.1% of their income to charity. McCain was way up in the 27.3% - 28.6% range. To be fair, Democrats' idea of government is more of a replacement for charity. Let everyone hand over the appropriate amount and government will rationally/politically determine how to deal with all the needs. If you think that's a good idea — isn't it, in the abstract? — then you probably lean Democratic. I do think it's a good idea — in the abstract — but I lean back to the center when I think about concrete reality, and I don't trust the government to determine the needs and dispense the money properly. I also don't trust people to choose charities well. (They'll give for the cure of diseases that attack sympathetic people and shell out big time for dogs and cats.) And I don't trust charities to handle vast pools of money properly. Unlike many conservatives, I don't care about the warm feelings of self-love that flood the brains of charitable givers. I care about competently dealing with real needs and avoiding waste and corruption.

"Were there any Oscar surprises?"

The nominations were announced this morning.

The nominees for best picture are “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “The Help,” “Moneyball,” “Hugo,” “War Horse,” “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” “The Tree of Life” and “Midnight in Paris.”

I've only seen "Midnight in Paris," so I'm not a good judge of whether any of this is a good idea, though I will say I've seen the trailers for “The Help” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and believe them to be the kind of sententious treatment of an important subject that I avoid. All the others, except "War Horse," I could be prodded to see, except that I already feel overprodded about "The Artist," and I'm getting cranky. (Sorry, movies are mainly about emotions, and these are mine.)

The nominees for best actress are Michelle Williams (“My Week with Marilyn”), Meryl Streep (“The Iron Lady”), Viola Davis (“The Help”), Glenn Close (“Albert Nobbs”) and Rooney Mara (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”).

Is there an iota of suspense about that one?

Watching the GOP debate tonight.

1. Yes, again. I'll do numbered updates.

2. Gingrich — who looks tired and badly made up — is asked about electability. He says "a solid conservative... who has the courage to stand up to the Washington establishment" is exactly what the American people want.

3.  Gingrich will have a website responding to the "at least 4 things" Romney just said that are false.

4. Santorum gives a great answer to the question why he lost his Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

5. Romney isn't going to apologize for his success or for free enterprise, and he's critical of Gingrich for picking up the "weapons of the left," attacking capitalism.

6. Romney and Gingrich are given free rein to go back and forth against each other, with Romney accusing Gingrich of "influence peddling" and Gingrich seeming quite angry and defensive.

7. Gingrich opines that Castro will not "meet his Maker," because he's going to Hell. I suddenly figured out what's likeable about Gingrich: his unlikeability.

8. From my son John's live-blog: "Brian Williams asks Gingrich a ridiculous question: whether he'll shift in his views on foreign policy in order to get Ron Paul's endorsement. Williams seems like he isn't even trying to do a good job of moderating the debate." Ha ha.