Purchases of the day.

From the February 18, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Cottonelle Fresh Care Flushable Moist Wipes - 294 ct. (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.51)

(2) GE 12983-6 25 Watt Globe G25 Light Bulb, Crystal Clear, 6-Pack (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $3.12)

ch ching:

Leonard Bernstein - Young People's Concerts / New York Philharmonic (1961) Bernstein (Actor), New York Philharmonic (Actor) | Rated: NR | Format: DVD (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $26.84)

aden + anais Cozy 4-Layer Sleeping Bag-Star Light (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $3.60)

Hamilton Beach Stovetop Slow Cooker - Black/silver (6 Quart) (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $4.21)

Fitbit One Wireless Activity Plus Sleep Tracker (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $7.99)

... and 80 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — all of which convey the unmistakably soft cozy slow dreamy flushably warm harmonic message: Blog on, Wisconsin blogger. Blog on.

Thank you.

Anti-abortion man, who yelled from a tree at the Inauguration, is charged with a crime.

Rives Miller Grogan was charged "with violating a previous order to stay away from the U.S. Capitol, and with violating laws that require authorities to 'preserve the peace and secure the Capitol from defacement,' and with 'preventing any portion of the Capitol Grounds and terraces to used [sic] as playgrounds ... to protect the public property, turf and grass from destruction.'

He had just been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct last week, after police said he shouted from the gallery of the U.S. Senate. He’s been convicted five times in the District since 2009, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct and disobeying police....

Police said Grogan once dropped to the ground in the Capitol Rotunda while clutching a doll and screamed in front of 60 visitors. Another time, police said, he paced the Capitol steps holding a bible and shouting, “Stop killing the babies.”....

Officer Shennell S. Antrobus, a U.S. Capitol Police spokesman, said officials decided to leave Grogan in the tree until after the swearing in to avoid disruptions. Police said he came down on his own after five hours.

Some of this reminds me of our tenacious Wisconsin protesters, whose deep convictions and emotive righteousness have led them to specialize in loud annoyingness and innumerable petty violations. Grogan is different from them too. He's driven by religious fervor, and he's not on the left.

What are the limits of protest?

ADDED: This story reminds me of an old Sunday School song:



I remember singing that as a child and feeling embarrassed by how cute the adults found it whenever a child did the spoken-word part, "Zacchaeus, you come down." Are children's songs written to amuse children or to lure children into performances that will amuse adults? If the latter, is it wrong?

Here's the Bible story, in chapter 19 of Luke:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Jesus looked with favor on the tax collector, it was his method to conspicuously reach out to those who seemed conspicuously to be sinners when there was a more subtle point that all are sinners and he is reaching out to all of us.

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Lefties and righties can argue about what (if anything) Jesus meant to say about taxation. One might say, as I suggested above, that Zacchaeus was chosen because the people had a stereotype equating tax collection with sin, so he easily became The Sinner, for Jesus to bounce his lesson off of. But you might say that Zacchaeus's conversion shows the importance of taxation when it is used to take accumulated wealth from the rich and to distribute it to the poor. That's not the way the taxation of the time was used, and Zacchaeus had become wealthy through his tax collection work. So he's more like a typical rich man, and he is declared saved because he instantly gave half his possessions to the poor, without regard to whether that wealth was ill-gotten. Zacchaeus makes a second promise, to give quadruple restitution of any ill-gotten gains.

What is the proper tax rate for the rich? The Bible implies that it's 50% and that the spending should go toward alleviating poverty. And that's not a 50% income tax, by the way, Mr. Buffet. That's a wealth tax. You should cough up about $15 billion to get right with God.

"Working in the Coal Mine."

At Meadhouse this morning, we're talking about the song "Working In The Coal Mine," not because of the abysmal jobs situation these days, but because... well, because there was a little too much milk in my coffee. (This stream of consciousness has nothing to do with the suffering of unemployment and working in coal mines, so please forgive me.)

Meade decided to make me a double-shot, and I — helpful in my usual abstracted way — started playing "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" (by the Swingin' Medallions) — a song about a woman who "loved [her man] so hard" that he woke up with... "the worst hangover [he] ever had."

That got me talking about the frat rock cassette recording that I bought when my kids were very young. It had "Double Shot" along with stuff like "Hang On Sloopy" and "Louie Louie." It was one of a series of tapes that I bought to play in the car after I realized that rock and roll oldies were good children's music. (Well, not "Double Shot.") I first had this realization back in the 1980s when, for some reason — maybe a toddler said "ya ya" — I started singing "Sitting in Ya Ya Waiting for my La La." Baby talk!

"Who sang that?" I ask, playing it on YouTube. Meade says "Sam Cooke." No! It's Lee Dorsey! Do you know any other Lee Dorsey songs? There's only one other that you might remember. It's this. "Working in the Coal Mine." (Not to be confused with this Sam Cooke song, which is, frankly, much better... as a recording. I will not compare the degree of workplace suffering described in the 2 songs.)

But check out these 2 other recordings of "Working in the Coal Mine" — this and this. I can't picture any of those people actually working in a coal mine, but in a pinch, if I had to say, I'd pick The Judds.

Have you had enough coffee this morning? I have.

ADDED: "Get your ya-yas out." Remember when Barack Obama said it? Back in June 2008, when he was thanking his campaign workers for "submerging their egos." The "Ya-yas" remark comes at 10:45. But start here:



Based on that part — before the "ya-yas," I think he didn't expect to win in Iowa. "If I'd lost Iowa, it would have been okay." But: "Because we won, we now have no choice." It seems as though he'd intended to make his mark, then reemerge in 2012 or 2016 as the frontrunner. But he won. It came too soon. Yet he had to plunge forward. It was all a crazy miscalculation. He just didn't expect to be that loved in Iowa.

And now, it's 2011, primary time once again, and our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, Iowa, ya ya ya.