Mitt in.

WaPo reports:

Romney’s announcement was a marked contrast to his presidential rollout four years ago. Then, he delivered a soaring speech before some 800 supporters at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., that covered an array of issues from jihadism to American ingenuity. Then he flew by private jet to campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire and Florida before staging a major fundraiser in his hometown of Boston.

This time, Romney aimed for a lower-key rollout, with a simple gathering on a rolling hayfield in New Hampshire.... Tickets to the kickoff event say, “A Cookout with Mitt & Ann,” and indeed campaign volunteers were serving his wife Ann Romney’s favorite chili recipe from a line of crockpots.

The announcement this time, compared to last time is:
	Touchingly modest and down home.
	A bigger steaming pot of phony.
	An equally ham-handed effort at seeming in tune with the times.
	As before, Mitt strikes just about the right note.
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"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth."

The true believer is Jill Abramson, the new executive editor of the New York Times, replacing Bill Keller (who replaced).

Let's analyze the analogy. A newspaper is like religion, believed in, and taken, unquestioningly, as true. Then what happens when you are in charge of it?

1. You have a deep moral obligation to insure that it is absolutely true, to respect the faith that others put in it and to preserve and grow the community of believers because of your dedication to truth, or...

2. You are embedded in the faith, carrying on the commitment to the idea that it is the truth and impressing that faith that it is the truth on readers, so that they keep looking to you as the mouthpiece of truth and don't go wandering off looking for some other viewpoints.

It could be #1 or #2 or both or neither.

Happy birthday to the 2 people in our family who have birthdays on the same day.

Do you have a co-birthdayist in your immediate circle? What's that like for you?

Of course, everyone has celebrities born on their birthday. For example, born today, were the Marquis de Sade... and Cornel West!

"Snigdha Nandipati is up first. Her word is 'meridienne' and she gets it right!"

"She likes collecting coins and reading mystery novels. I love her geeky cheer."

It's time for the National Spelling Bee again, and that means the best place to hang out — other than in front of ESPN — is at Throwing Things, where they are bursting with knowledge... and geeky cheer.

I appreciated the prompt to go set the DVR. I hate when I find out from the news that the spelling bee was on because so-and-so spelled some word. The whole point is to live through the dramatic emotions of young kids who really care about doing something difficult really, really well. I'll watch it on HDTV, pores and all. Are the kids self-conscious about the close inspection they're getting? They never seem like they are, which is cool.

Please don't tell me I should watch one of those movies about the spelling bee. I've seen them and find them tedious, in part because they skip over the tedium that you need to live through to feel the highs.

"Porexia."

A newly coined word for people who've gone all obsessive about the size of their pores.  And speaking of words...

High-definition television has arguably upped the ante. Consider the celebrity with glistening teeth and yogic arms, but a jarringly pock-marked nose in close-ups. Viewers think, “If her pores look like that, what do mine look like?” said Dr. Mary Lupo, a clinical professor of dermatology at Tulane University School of Medicine.

... somebody needs to tell the New York Times that pock marks are not pores.

And maybe somebody needs to show these porexic whiners what real skin damage looks like.

"I can’t say with certitude" ranks "somewhere below ‘no controlling legal authority’ and above ‘wide stance.'"

Said Chris Lehane, according to the Washington Post, which called him a Democratic "crisis-management specialist." (Cool job title.)

Lehane was comparing Anthony Weiner's statement about whether the notorious panties-pic depicts himself to "the infamous phrase that Vice President Al Gore used in 1997 to describe questionable fundraising activities, and then the one that then-Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) used in 2007 to explain how he came to be arrested for lewd conduct after tapping the foot of an undercover officer in a restroom stall in the Minneapolis airport."

Ah, yes! It's a new entry in The Annals of Ineffective Denials.

Steal a laptop and have the worst pictures of your ugly mug up on the web for all to laugh at.

And then the police arrest you for theft... all because the laptop was spying on you the whole time.