Walking on Broken Glass.

A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"The only real suspense in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is whether the Republican Party will persist in tying its fortunes to an anachronistic claim of white male exceptionalism and privilege.

Republicans' outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor's musings about how her identity as a "wise Latina" might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any "identity" -- black, brown, female, gay, whatever -- has to be judged against this supposedly "objective" standard.

...There is, after all, a context in which these confirmation hearings take place: The nation continues to take major steps toward fulfilling the promise of its noblest ideals. Barack Obama is our first African American president. Sonia Sotomayor would be only the third woman, and the third member of a minority group, to serve on the nation's highest court. Aside from these exceptions, the White House and the Supreme Court have been exclusively occupied by white men -- who, come to think of it, are also members of a minority group, though they certainly haven't seen themselves that way.

...when he [Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.)] brought up the "wise Latina" remark, as the GOP playbook apparently required, Graham said that "if I had said anything remotely like that, my career would have been over."

That's true. But if Latinas had run the world for the last millennium, Sotomayor's career would be over, too. Pretending that the historical context doesn't exist -- pretending that white men haven't enjoyed a privileged position in this society -- doesn't make that context go away."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Whose Identity Politics?

Let Me Love You.

New flava in ya ear!

Mario feat. Gucci Mane and Sean Garrett.

Break Up.

"Oh Won't You Smile-a-While for Me!"

"SARAH!"...

A Moment of Clarity.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Old School Funk for the True Funk Soldiers!

Baby ft. Clipse.

What Happened to that Boy?

Through the Looking Glass.

Lilly Allen.

22.

One Mic.

An MJ Moment of Clarity staring Jay Smooth.



I second that emotion.

Prison Break.

With T.I. & Mary J. Blige in,

Remember Me.

Reality Bites.

"We are FAMILY!"

Words.

"This week's hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court represent the opening skirmish in a long-term struggle to challenge the escalating activism of an increasingly conservative judiciary.

The Senate's Republican minority does not expect to derail Sotomayor, who would be the first Hispanic and only the third woman to serve on the court, and they realize that their attack lines against her have failed to ignite public attention, or even much interest.

...Yet none of this diminishes the importance of the Senate drama that opens today, because the argument that began 40 years ago over the political and philosophical direction of the judiciary has reached a critical moment. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, conservatives have finally established a majority on the court that is beginning to work its will.

Republican senators know that Sotomayor's accession to the high court will not change this, since she is replacing Justice David Souter, a member of the court's liberal minority. But they want to use the hearings to paint the moderately liberal Sotomayor as, at best, the outer limit of what is acceptable on the bench to justify the new conservative activism that is about to become the rule.

...If you wonder what judicial activism looks like, consider one of the court's final moves in its spring term.

The justices had before them a simple case, involving a group called Citizens United, that could have been disposed of on narrow grounds.

...Rather than decide the case before it, the court engaged in a remarkable exercise of judicial overreach. It postponed its decision, called for new briefs and scheduled a hearing this September on the broader question of whether corporations should be allowed to spend money to elect or defeat particular candidates.

What the court was saying was that it wanted to revisit a 19-year-old precedent that barred such corporate interference in the electoral process. That 1990 ruling upheld what has been the law of the land since 1947, when the Taft-Hartley Act banned independent expenditures by both corporations and labor unions.

...It is truly frightening that a conservative Supreme Court is seriously considering overturning a century-old tradition at the very moment the financial crisis has brought home the terrible effects of excessive corporate influence on politics.

...So when conservatives try to paint Sotomayor as some sort of radical, consider that the real radicals are those who now hold a majority on the Supreme Court. In this battle, it is she, not her critics, who represents moderation and judicial restraint."

THE WASHINGTON POST: The Real Court Radicals

"This is the song that never ends!"

A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"...Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.

The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

That resentment is in part about race, of course. When Palin referred to Alaska as “a microcosm of America” during the 2008 campaign, it was in defiance of the statistical reality that her state’s tiny black and Hispanic populations are unrepresentative of her nation. She stood for the “real America,” she insisted, and the identity of the unreal America didn’t have to be stated explicitly for audiences to catch her drift. Her convention speech’s signature line was a deftly coded putdown of her presumably shiftless big-city opponent: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” (Funny how this wisdom has been forgotten by her supporters now that she has abandoned her own actual responsibilities in public office.)

...Those Republicans who have not drunk the Palin Kool-Aid are apocalyptic for good reason. She could well be their last presidential candidate standing. Such would-be competitors as Mark Sanford, John Ensign and Newt Gingrich are too carnally compromised for the un-Clinton party. Mike Huckabee is Palin-lite. Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal — really? That leaves the charisma-challenged Mitt Romney, precisely the kind of card-carrying Ivy League elitist Palinists loathe, no matter how hard he tries to cosmetically alter his history as a socially liberal fat-cat banker. Palin would crush him like a bug. She has the Teflon-coated stature among Republicans that Romney can only fantasize about.

...It’s more likely that she will never get anywhere near the White House, and not just because of her own limitations. The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.

...These are the cries of a constituency that feels disenfranchised — by the powerful and the well-educated who gamed the housing bubble, by a news media it keeps being told is hateful, by the immigrants who have taken some of their jobs, by the African-American who has ended a white monopoly on the White House. Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

For a week now, critics in both parties have had a blast railing at Palin. It’s good sport. But just as the media muttering about those unseemly “controversies” rallied the fans of the King of Pop, so are Palin’s political obituaries likely to jump-start her lucrative afterlife."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It

4 My People.

A Moment of Clarity.


"Reach out and touch, somebody's hand!"

Words.

"I am confident that the United States of America will weather this economic storm. But once we clear away the wreckage, the real question is what we will build in its place. Even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before. For if we do not seize this moment to confront the weaknesses that have plagued our economy for decades, we will consign ourselves and our children to future crises, sluggish growth, or both.

There are some who say we must wait to meet our greatest challenges. They favor an incremental approach or believe that doing nothing is somehow an answer. But that is exactly the thinking that led us to this predicament. Ignoring big challenges and deferring tough decisions is what Washington has done for decades, and it's exactly what I sought to change by running for president.

Now is the time to build a firmer, stronger foundation for growth that not only will withstand future economic storms but that helps us thrive and compete in a global economy. To build that foundation, we must lower the health-care costs that are driving us into debt, create the jobs of the future within our borders, give our workers the skills and training they need to compete for those jobs, and make the tough choices necessary to bring down our deficit in the long run.

...Providing all Americans with the skills they need to compete is a pillar of a stronger economic foundation, and, like health care or energy, we cannot wait to make the necessary changes. We must continue to clean up the wreckage of this recession, but it is time to rebuild something better in its place. It won't be easy, and there will continue to be those who argue that we have to put off hard decisions that we have already deferred for far too long. But earlier generations of Americans didn't build this great country by fearing the future and shrinking our dreams. This generation has to show that same courage and determination. I believe we will."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Rebuilding Something Better

Oh Word?

"You got a friend in me!"

Words.

"It's clear by now that President Barack Obama wants to turn the United States into something more like Germany or Belgium -- a "social democracy" in which redistribution ("spread the wealth around," as Mr. Obama explained to Joe the Plumber during the campaign) is an expanding government's main concern.

Europe, for its part, has reciprocated our president's apparent love of their system by treating him like a messiah. He is the man, they sense, who will finally make good on George H.W. Bush's famous promise in 1988 to make America a "kinder and gentler nation."

Alas, this mutual love is self-defeating. That's because Mr. Obama will doom the low-growth, weak-defense European model to the extent he gets the U.S. to emulate it.

...The great irony here is that the European model American leftists envy couldn't survive without its despised cowboy counterparty. If the U.S. economy weakens because of increased regulation, heavy-handed unionization, and higher taxes and debt to support an expensive social agenda -- all policies Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are pushing hard -- it will hurt Europe."

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Europe Should Hope Obama Fails

"DO THE HUSTLE!"

A Moment of Clarity.

Words.

"The president has got the second coming of the best and the brightest working for him down there in Washington (think of Larry Summers as the latter-day Robert McNamara), and they’re crunching numbers every which way they can. They’ve got more than enough data. They understand the theories and the formulas as well as anyone. But they’re not coming up with the right answers because they’re missing the same thing that McNamara and his fellow technocrats were missing back in the 1960s: the human equation.

The crisis staring America in its face and threatening to bring it to its knees is unemployment. Joblessness. Why it is taking so long — seemingly forever — for our government officials to recognize the scope of this crisis and confront it directly is beyond me.

...Virtually all of the job growth since the start of the 21st century (which was nothing to crow about) has vanished. If you include the men and women who are now working part time but would like to work full time, and those who have become so discouraged that they’ve stopped actively searching for work, you’ll find that 16.5 percent of Americans are jobless or underemployed. Nearly everyone who is fortunate enough to have a job has a spouse or a parent or an in-law or a close friend who is desperate for employment.

...There was a time when Americans could think on such a scale and get it done. We used to be better than any other nation on the planet at getting things done. It would be tragic if the 21st century turns out to be the time when that extraordinary can-do spirit disappears and we’re left with nothing more meaningful and exciting than lusting after tax cuts and trying to pay off credit card debt.

The joblessness the nation is experiencing is crushing any hope of a real economic recovery. With so many Americans maxed out on their credit cards and with the value of their homes deep in the tank, the only money available to spend in most cases is from paychecks. The best and the brightest in Washington may have a theory about how to get the economy booming without dealing with the employment crisis, but I’d like to see that theory work in the real world."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Human Equation

"So Long! Farewell! Auf Wiedersehen! Good Night!"

A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"Sarah Palin's resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take. They mean to rebuild a great party. They need to do it on solid ground.

Her history does not need to be rehearsed at any length. Ten months ago she was embraced with friendliness by her party. The left and the media immediately overplayed their hand, with attacks on her children. The party rallied round, as a party should. She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.

...The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do."

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: A Farewell to Harms

F(or). U(s). B(y). U(s).

A Moment of Clarity.


"Get up, Stand up!"

Words. For Your Consideration...

"Our state's protracted budget crisis sometimes seems unsolvable. But part of the problem may be that those who are trying to solve it don't fully understand its cause

...But before we can fix things, we have to understand how we got to this point.

...Each and all of the following bear responsibility.

* Schwarzenegger: Despite his good heart and mind, our governor seems to be lacking proficiency in basic mathematics. While he has said the budget can't be balanced by cuts alone, he hasn't proposed solutions that would close the gap. And many of the cuts he has proposed would cost the state more in the long run.

* The Democratic majority in the Legislature: There is no denying that Democratic lawmakers failed to create a sufficient rainy-day fund, preferring to spend money when times were flush -- often using one-time revenue sources to fund ongoing projects. They did this both to protect services for needy Californians and because they are overly responsive to public employee unions, especially those in public safety.

* The Republican minority in the Legislature: Unlike their predecessors, who joined Govs. Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson in meeting Democrats halfway, the current crop of Republicans in Sacramento seems unwilling to compromise. All but one has signed the "no new tax" pledge of Washington crusader Grover Norquist, whose stated ambition is to shrink government to "a size where we can drown it in the bathtub." This may make for good rhetoric, but it produces little in the way of sound public policy.

* We, the people of California: Voters in our state have repeatedly passed initiatives lowering taxes and earmarking funds for pet programs, thereby inhibiting the ability of legislators to make rational decisions about state spending. Voters seem to want an unsustainable combination of increased services and lower taxes.

That, in a nutshell, is how we got into this mess. It is the job of our current Legislature and governor to lead us out of the disaster, but it's the responsibility of all of us to understand the issues they face and demand a sound, long-term solution."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: How did California get into this mess?

Just a thought.

Come on in. There's enough room for everybody?

Words. For Your Consideration...

"To achieve the goals of health-care reform -- universal coverage and reducing costs -- is it really necessary to overhaul our entire health-care system? The answer is probably yes. No one would design anything like our current system if he or she were starting from scratch. Why try to renovate this ancient mess of leaky pipes and rotting wood? Why not tear it down and replace it with something shiny and new?

...people, even liberals, are starting to get unnerved by the cost of all this. We now talk of trillions the way, even a few months ago, we spoke of billions. In mid-June, the Senate health committee put out its version of reform and was horrified when the Congressional Budget Office figured that it would cost a trillion dollars over 10 years (over current spending) and would still leave millions uninsured. The committee retreated to its lair and re-emerged in early July with a revised plan "scored" by the CBO as costing only $600 billion and leaving only 3 percent of the population uninsured. Six hundred billion doesn't sound like all that much to achieve, or come close to achieving, an important and long-standing goal such as universal health care. But keep in mind that health-care reform is supposed to save money. Its premise is that the current path is unaffordable. In that sense, a "mere" $600 billion extra is total defeat.

Why doesn't the president give himself a well-deserved treat and slow down a bit on health-care reform? Instead of going for a total overhaul, go for some smaller successes, or what business executives and gorillas call the "low-hanging fruit"? Pick half a dozen, get Congress to swallow them and see where we stand?"

THE WASHINGTON POST: Health Care's Low-Hanging Fruit

Don't Stop Believin'.

New flava in ya ear!

Twista.

American Gangsta.

Here, There, & Everywhere.

With Jenny Lewis in See Fernando.



Video spotted over at

Stereogum. That's what's up!

Higher Learning.

A "Post-Racial" Moment of Clarity.


Melting Pot.

Words.

"If a visitor from the first half of the 20th century were plunked down in America today, he'd find, among other things, that drinking fountains in the South are no longer segregated, black women in the workforce are no longer overwhelmingly maids and baby-sitters, and interracial marriage is no longer against the law as it was in 30 states in 1950. When he figured out how to use a remote control and managed to get his TV tuned to CNN and saw the ubiquitous image of the country's new president, he'd no doubt collapse in shock.

The United States has undergone a profound and remarkable transformation -- but what exactly does it mean? To some Americans, it means that today, 145 years after the abolition of slavery, we can finally check race relations off the list and move our focus to the other pressing problems that face the country. Others say that's ridiculous and that, Obama or no Obama, the work of creating a truly egalitarian, nondiscriminatory society remains far from finished.

...As many conservatives see it, we're living in a chastened, post-racial America in which discrimination has been largely dismantled, Jim Crow is dead and gaps are being narrowed. With a growing black and Latino middle class -- not to mention a "beiging" of America thanks to intermarriage -- it's time to end our obsession with righting the wrongs of the past. More specifically, we should do away with morally troublesome policies such as affirmative action, minority set-asides and "pre-clearance" that aid minority groups at the expense of the majority, and revert, instead, to the sounder principle of colorblind justice for all.

Are they right? This page agrees that race-conscious policies such as affirmative action should be temporary -- existing only until they are no longer necessary because society's inequities have been addressed. But it is naive to think we have arrived at that moment. Despite the enormously significant changes since the civil rights movement, the simple fact is that the great American race problem has not been resolved. To be sure, it's different today than it was when 14-year-old Emmett Till was beaten, shot and thrown into the Tallahatchie River for whistling at a white woman in 1955, or when Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered by the Klan in 1964 for trying to register black voters in Mississippi. That doesn't mean it's gone."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: In the struggle against racism, we haven't overcome yet

Right Here, Right Now.

A Moment of Clarity.



Words. For Your Consideration...

"The resolution of the Honduran conflict will be known in time. Yet we need not see into the future to know that this incident should serve as a wake-up call for the hemisphere. We should recognize that such events are not random acts. They are the result of systematic errors and missteps that many of us have been warning about for decades. They are the price we pay for one of our region's greatest follies: its reckless military spending.

This coup d'état demonstrates, once more, that the combination of powerful militaries and fragile democracies creates a terrible risk. It demonstrates, once more, that until we improve this balance, we will always leave open the door to those who would obtain power through force -- whether a little or a great deal, approved by the majority or only by a few. Furthermore, it shows what happens when our governments divert to their militaries resources that could be used to strengthen their democratic institutions, to build a culture of respect for human rights and to increase their levels of human development. Such foolish choices ensure that a nation's democracy is little more than an empty shell, or a meaningless speech.

...At one time in the history of the Americas, weapons and armies were associated with liberty and independence, and with new opportunities for our peoples. At one time in the history of the Americas, there were liberating armies. But today, we have seen far too many stories of tyranny, violations of human rights and political instability -- stories traced in the dust by the boots of our militaries. The liberating army we need in the Americas today is one of leaders who come together in peace, in the spirit of cooperation. We need an army of doctors and teachers, of engineers and scientists. We need a force that recognizes that only through development and liberty, through education and health care, through better priorities and wiser investments, can we achieve the stability we seek."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Fuel for a Coup

"TURN THE LIGHTS ON!"

New flava in ya ear!

Beyonce.

Sweet Dreams.

Because of the Times.

Pushin' Weight.

Words. For Your Consideration...

"...Is a time of unsustainable debt and economic contraction really the right moment to add massive spending and debt, along with the taxes they eventually require? In what economic universe is this rational? Not even, apparently, in the pleasant, alternate universe of California, which last week began issuing $3 billion in "registered warrants," also known as IOUs. "We don't have the money to pay our bills," admitted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "It's a sad story."

By the time the health-care debate begins in earnest, these challenges at the federal level will be unavoidable. Perhaps $1 trillion in spending will be on the table. Some of the resources necessary for a "revenue-neutral" bill may come from savings in the health system. But administration and congressional officials are already hinting at the need for new revenue, including some type of tax on employer-provided health benefits. "The important thing at this point is . . . to keep the discussions going," says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, even if discussions include such taxes. "We haven't drawn a lot of bright lines," explains White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

To pass his health proposal this year, Obama would first need to violate his word. As a presidential candidate, he pledged that "no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase" -- the most memorable number of the 2008 campaign. Taxing health benefits would certainly cross this very bright line and add to the public stock of cynicism.

Second, Obama would need to abandon economic common sense -- adding debt to debt or new taxes to a struggling economy. Either way, it would be a sad story.

Or maybe the captain could wake the passengers, end their dreams and announce the obvious: Because the economy has not improved, ambitious health reform must wait."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Obama's Iceberg

For Your Consideration.

New flava in ya ear!

Death Cab for Cutie.

Little Bribes.

"A-tisket, A-tasket!"

A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"You can say that all of us who ever took Sarah Palin seriously -- or pretended to take her seriously -- should be deeply ashamed. And you can say that John McCain should publicly apologize for putting the nation he loves at risk by choosing Palin as his running mate. Imagining Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency should be enough to make even die-hard Republicans shudder.

...Palin has far-right conservative views, and while I disagree with her on almost everything, there's certainly nothing inappropriate or illegitimate about her philosophy. But I feel sorry for conservatives who look to her as a champion because she's going to let them down. Articulating a political vision and inspiring people to believe in it are true accomplishments, and no one can take that away from her. But realizing that vision through legislation or executive action requires discipline, persistence and rigor. To return to stating the obvious, these are attributes that Palin lacks."

THE WASHINGTON POST: A Starter, Not a Finisher

EARLIER:

Panic (!) at the Disco.

Panic (!) at the Disco.

Words. For Your Consideration...

"I like Sarah Palin (though I don't know her well). I respect her (though I'm aware of some of her limitations). I wish her well (though I'm not convinced she should be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee).

I am convinced, though, that she should have a chance to compete and make her case. In this, I seem to differ from many of my friends in the mainstream media and the Republican establishment. They tend not only to dislike and disdain Palin, they also want to bury her chances now as a presidential possibility. What are they so scared of?

...the panic among mainstream media commentators and the GOP establishment suggests real worry that if she does, she might pull off an upset. Why else the vehement assertions that she's clearly made a terrible mistake? Why else the categorical insistence that her political career is finished? Aren't they all protesting too much?

...Palin will have to endure some fair criticism for abandoning her office before her term ended. But she should also get credit for not using her state office as a means of campaigning for a higher one.

She won't get that credit. For psychological and sociological reasons too deep for me to grasp, a good chunk of elite America hates Sarah Palin and what they've decided she stands for. But if she wears their scorn as a badge of honor, comports herself with good cheer and personal dignity, studies up on national issues and takes the lead in selected debates on behalf of conservative principles against Obama administration policies, she has a shot."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Panicked Over Palin

EARLIER:

In Defense of Palin and Sanford: by Stanley Fish.

Ball of Confusion.

Thrilla.

In Defense of Palin and Sanford: by Stanley Fish.

Smooth Operators.

Words.

"I did not vote for Sarah Palin in the November election, and had I been a resident of South Carolina, I wouldn’t have supported Mark Sanford. But I find their failings and, in the case of Sanford, sins more palatable than the behavior of the pundits who are having so much fun at their expense.

Both Republican governors made rambling and sometimes halting statements of about 18 minutes (is that the canonical length for this kind of thing?), and in response the commentators speculated endlessly about why they had said what they said. The one explanation they didn’t seem capable of coming up with was that they meant it, that their words were coming from the heart, from an interior that may have been fissured and rocky, but was nonetheless (dare I use the word) genuine.

...they [pundits] were committed to believing that the real reasons lay elsewhere, and were strategic. They couldn’t fathom the possibility that she was just giving voice to her feelings. It must, they assumed, be a calculation, and having decided that, they happily went on to describe how bad a calculation it was.

..Sanford’s actions were without doubt foolish, reprehensible and incredibly maladroit, but they were also real.

So what’s the bottom line story? Simple. Sanford is in love. Palin is in pain. Sometimes what it seems to be is what it is."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: THINK AGAIN: In Defense of Palin and Sanford

Ball of Confusion.

"Run, run, run but you sure can't hide."

Words. For Your Consideration...

"...She said yes. It wasn’t the right thing to do, in hindsight, but it was certainly the human thing. She was coming off a charmed rise through statewide politics. John McCain was offering her a spot on a national ticket. It was the chance of a lifetime.

And now, seemingly, it’s over. Oh, maybe not forever: she’s only 45, young enough (and, yes, talented enough) to have a second act. But last Friday’s bizarre, rambling resignation speech should take her off the political map for the duration of the Obama era.

One hopes that was intentional. A Sarah Palin who stepped down for the sake of her family and her media-swarmed state deserves sympathy even from the millions of Americans who despise her. A Sarah Palin who resigned in the delusional belief that it would give her a better shot at the presidency in 2012 warrants no such kindness.

Either way, though, her 10 months on the national stage have been a dispiriting period for American democracy.

...This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It’s been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

But it’s also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her.

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

...Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don’t even think about it."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Palin and Her Enemies

EARLIER:

Thrilla.

HELP.

It's on the way?...

Words.

"The Congressional Budget Office has looked at the future of American health insurance, and it works.

...Let me start by pointing out something serious health economists have known all along: on general principles, universal health insurance should be eminently affordable.

After all, every other advanced country offers universal coverage, while spending much less on health care than we do. For example, the French health care system covers everyone, offers excellent care and costs barely more than half as much per person as our system.

And even if we didn’t have this international evidence to reassure us, a look at the U.S. numbers makes it clear that insuring the uninsured shouldn’t cost all that much, for two reasons.

First, the uninsured are disproportionately young adults, whose medical costs tend to be relatively low. The big spending is mainly on the elderly, who are already covered by Medicare.

Second, even now the uninsured receive a considerable (though inadequate) amount of “uncompensated” care, whose costs are passed on to the rest of the population. So the net cost of giving the uninsured explicit coverage is substantially less than it might seem.

Putting these observations together, what sounds at first like a daunting prospect — extending coverage to most or all of the 45 million people in America without health insurance — should, in the end, add only a few percent to our overall national health bill. And that’s exactly what the budget office found when scoring the HELP proposal."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: HELP Is on the Way

Hill Street Blues.

Rescue Me.

Words. For Your Consideation...

"Access to affordable healthcare in the United States is an entitlement, a perquisite or a fantasy, depending on a seemingly arbitrary matrix of factors. Government insurance programs are available for the elderly, the permanently disabled, people with failing kidneys, the impoverished and children from low-income families. But how poor one has to be to qualify varies from state to state and from year to year. Employees at most large companies and many small ones can take advantage of group insurance plans negotiated by their employers. But millions of people who work in low-paying service, retail or contracting jobs have to seek individual insurance policies, which may be unaffordable or unavailable because of their medical histories. Others obtain insurance with deductibles so high or coverage limits so low that one bad accident or illness could bankrupt them.

It's an irrational system with inhumane and costly results that extend beyond the 47 million uninsured. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than half of the adults without insurance have "no regular source of healthcare" other than an emergency room. They are more than four times as likely as the insured to delay a trip to the doctor, and six to eight times as likely not to get treatment because of the cost. The consequences for the uninsured include more serious ailments and a higher premature death rate; for everyone else, the consequences include the loss of productivity attributable to worker illness, a higher risk of infectious disease and about $50 billion in medical bills passed along by those who couldn't pay them.

...A portion of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid or Medicare but haven't signed up, often because they haven't been shown how. Another group is the so-called invincibles, typically young workers who could buy insurance but choose not to. To bring them and others into the system, Congress should require adults to carry health insurance for themselves and their children. It's intrusive, but the logic behind the individual mandate is the same as with auto insurance: to make sure that people have coverage when they need it, and that everyone pays a share of the cost of caring for the ill and injured. More important, it deters people from waiting to obtain insurance until they need expensive treatments -- a problem economists call "adverse selection.

...In short, shifting to universal coverage will generate a mix of costs and benefits, with some segments of the economy taking on more of the burden and others less. The biggest potential winners would be healthcare providers, whose services would be in greater demand from the newly insured, and private insurers, who stand to pick up millions of new, federally subsidized customers. In fact, the expansion could yield a windfall for insurers or healthcare providers that dominate a market.

...We can't kid ourselves: Expanding insurance coverage is expensive. It also raises thorny questions about how far to go, including whether to cover illegal immigrants and how to enforce the individual mandate. But the payoff is a real one, with the benefits mounting over the long term in the form of a rational healthcare system that delivers increasing value for the money. It's a price worth paying."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Covering the uninsured: A cost that pays

Oh Word?

NAH RIGHT: Video: Loon on Al Jazeera

"CAN YOU FEEL IT?"

New flava in ya ear!

Franz Ferdinand.

Can't Stop Feeling.

Thrilla.

From Wasilla, with Love.

Words.

"Is Sarah Palin the answer the Republican Party is looking for?

Not likely. Palin's abrupt announcement that she's quitting as governor of Alaska may be part of a long-term strategy that leads to the Oval Office. But at the moment, it looks more like the impulsive act of a hot-headed politician who can't abide criticism -- poor attributes for anyone who hopes to run for president.

...And she had a few laurels to rest on. After two years in office, she had accomplished her three main goals: higher taxes on oil production, legislation authorizing a new natural gas pipeline, and ethics reform. The rest of her agenda -- a new budget, education reform and negotiations over the pipeline contract -- looked more difficult and less rewarding. Another year in the governor's office could merely have diminished her standing. She quit, in short, to cut her losses while she could still plausibly claim to be ahead.

...The problem for Palin and her party is that she doesn't have what Republicans need most: an idea."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Sarah Palin lacks what the GOP needs most

"Now, you know what this is!"

"IT'S A CELEBRATION BITCHES!"

Featuring Twista and his Birthday song.



[ED'S NOTE: Ain't gon lie, I totally thought this was going to be a Celebration Ode to the Good old U.S. of A. Boy was I wrong...]

Harder, Better, Faster, STRONGER!(?)

Our work is never over.

Words.

"Tuesday, the U.S. "stood down" in Iraq, finalizing the pullout of 140,000 troops from Iraqi cities and towns -- the first step on the long path home. After more than six years, most Americans are war-weary, even though a smaller percentage of us have been involved in the actual fighting than in any major conflict in U.S. history. We have relegated the car and suicide bombings to the inside pages of newspapers, accepting at face value that the "surge" has calmed things down enough so we can finally leave the whole sorry Iraq adventure behind us.

But not. So. Fast."*

LOS ANGELES TIMES: The U.S. in Iraq: An economics lesson

*[ED'S NOTE: Extra periods added for a more dramatic effect]

Girl Talk.

New flava in ya ear!

Drake.

Best I Ever Had.

"Food" for Thought.

ALCOHOL: The leading cause of this.

Words.

"College presidents who have been blaming drinking-age laws for drunkenness at their schools had better look at their own policies. While the amount of binge drinking — downing five or more drinks in a row — remains high at colleges, it has dropped sharply among people of the same age who do not attend college.

...There was some talk that the minimum age for drinking should be reduced back to 18.

Now comes new evidence that the age-21 requirement has been generally effective in reducing binge drinking — except among college students. That was the conclusion of a study by researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, published in The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Binge Drinking on Campus

The Final Chapter.

A Moment of Clarity.

Words.

"As the United States prepared to invade Iraq in 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell famously warned that "if you break it, you own it." In many ways, the U.S. did break Iraq, ousting Saddam Hussein's quarter-century regime without ensuring that a stable government would take its place. That ushered in a bloody, six-year occupation that cost the lives of more than 4,300 U.S. troops and nearly $700 billion. Americans will always bear responsibility for this misbegotten war of choice, but now, at last, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities marks the beginning of the country's return to its rightful owners -- Iraqis.

...Although U.S. combat troops have been moving to bases for months, Iraqis sang and set off fireworks to celebrate an end to foreign tanks in their streets and uninvited soldiers in their homes. Some Americans will remain as trainers and advisors, but President Obama has committed to withdrawing all combat troops by 2011. This page opposed the invasion of Iraq, then supported a surge of U.S. troops to stabilize the country and allow our forces to leave. Now it is time to close this shameful chapter."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Iraq for Iraqis

Two of Hearts.

"New" flava in ya ear!

Britney Spears.

Radar.

Here Comes the Wavves!

With their No Hope Kids.

A new flava in ya ear production.



Big ups to the folks over at

Stereogum for putting this on my radar. That's what's up!

How Soon is Now?

A Moment of Clarity.


Words.

"Back during the initial fuss about "don't ask, don't tell," I went over to the Pentagon to see the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We mostly discussed the situation in the Balkans and the pressure on President Bill Clinton to militarily intervene. Then I asked about gays in the military and the chairman, who was opposed, asked me what I thought the reaction would be if two male soldiers took to the dance floor at some military base. No different, I answered, than if a black man danced with a white woman at the same base about 50 years earlier. Colin Powell seemed taken aback and I thought, naively, that "don't ask don't tell" was doomed.

Now it is 16 years later and "don't ask, don't tell" is still the law of the land. Since 1993, more than 13,000 troops have been discharged for being gay. Last year, 619 military personnel got the boot, a number that has held more or less constant in recent years. Some of them had invaluable specialties, such as fluency in Arabic.

In the view of many present and former military officers, changing the policy to allow openly gay people to serve would prove a disaster. In a letter to President Obama, more than 1,000 of them argued that valuable officers and noncoms would leave the services if gays were tolerated, while concerned parents would withhold permission for their sons or daughters to enlist if, God forbid, homosexuals were openly in the ranks. This is nonsense."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Open the Military Closet

The Next Episode.

Up, Up, & Away...

Words.

"BAGHDAD --Today is the deadline by which U.S. troops are to withdraw from major Iraqi cities. This clear line in the sand must provide some relief to many Americans, whose sacrifice has been extraordinary. But as the United States shifts its attention from Iraq to Afghanistan and other issues of grave importance, none of us can be lulled into believing that Iraq is a "mission accomplished." That sense of security is simply false. June 30 is not an historical endpoint to be celebrated by political philosophers; it is the beginning of a highly uncertain chapter in Iraqi democracy and self-governance.

...Our choices are between tribalism and nationalism, and everything in between; parties backed by foreign powers and homegrown grass-roots movements; secularists and Islamists. These choices will set in motion Iraq's rendezvous with destiny. If the coming weeks and months are reasonably peaceful, if progress continues against corruption and basic services continue to be restored, we will have taken a huge step forward. With next year's general election and American troops long gone from our cities, Iraqis should come close, at last, to ruling ourselves."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Iraq: Mission Not Yet Accomplished

Taking care of Business.

Words. For Your Consideration...

"Under Obama, Bush's commitment to winning in Iraq has all but vanished. Convinced from the start that the war was a mistake (a conviction fortified by the Bush team's post-invasion bungling), Obama has for years been the salesman in chief for a narrative of failure: Iraq is seen as a colossal disaster -- a senseless distraction that drained U.S. resources while alienating the rest of the world. While recognizing a vague obligation to help Iraqis forge a better future, Obama's bottom line comes through loud and clear: The war was a strategic blunder, and the sooner the U.S. can wash its hands of it and re-focus on our "real" priorities in the Middle East, the better.

...deeply uncertain about America's long-term commitment to their future, Iraqis are starting to hedge their bets in unhelpful ways. Accommodating themselves to the agenda of the coming Iranian hegemony rather than their departing American liberators is increasingly the order of the day.

Although the Bush administration made many costly mistakes in Iraq, the surge was a resounding success that put the goal of an independent, democratic Iraq back within reach -- as evidenced by January's successful provincial elections. Obama is in position to achieve that goal, but only if the U.S. military withdrawal is offset by a corresponding deepening of high-level diplomatic and economic engagement. That, however, will require the president spending far less time signaling his eagerness to get out of Iraq and more time working with Iraqis to figure out how best we can stay."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Is the job done?

Back, back, forth, and forth.

Turn around.

Words.

"...It’s a press cliché that “gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: 40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans

In Memoriam.

New flava in ya ear!

Jay-Z.

D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune).

Electric City.

New flava in ya ear!

Kanye West.

Street Lights.

Oh Word?

Jokes.

Man in the Mirror.

Words.

"America's serious news media -- whether print, broadcast or cable -- are in the grip of a collective nervous breakdown. Embracing popular culture and its icons seems somehow therapeutic on several levels: It appears to address charges that serious media are elitist, as well as the manifest indifference of younger readers and viewers to conventional news. Then there's the fact of simple, brute commerce; popular culture in the form of film, music and TV now provides an outsized share of the financially strapped media's advertising revenue. Finally, there's that source of the news media's anxiety and confusion -- and that great enabler of popular culture -- the Internet.

...Whatever they say, many newspaper editors and TV news producers have begun to allow website hits and social media volume to function as a kind of sub rosa ratings system whose numbers dictate coverage and the play of news stories. What's wrong with that? For one thing, it leads to the sort of irrational excess we've all been through since Thursday. No reasonable editor or producer should ignore the kind of public interest we're seeing. But surrendering utterly to it ultimately undercuts what's genuinely valuable about serious news media.

A serious newspaper or broadcast news outlet must simultaneously be a mirror and a window to its audience -- a look at themselves and an opening to the wider world."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Too Much Michael Jackson?

Stranger in Moscow.

THE WASHINGTON POST: Perils of a Prodigy

Words.

A Moment of Clarity.

STEREOGUM: Indie Rockers Eulogize The King Of Pop

Little Big Man.

I woke up yesterday the same way I do prior to any workday. If the mood is right I exercise. If not I head straight to shower, come out “so fresh and so clean”, turn on my television and plop down in front of my computer, getting cozy with some online news. Yesterday, the stories pretty much remained the same: Iran, Healthcare, Governor Sanford, and a few others in between. I came in search of updates, developments, information on the new. And then, something wicked this way came in the form of an overtly sensational headline on some news site regarding Lil Kim, North Korea, and his, in my words, desperate, desperate need for attention and to be accepted in the world, at a moment, where other countries/superpowers around him are fighting to be heard on serious grounds, worrying about their imports/exports and domestic currency, healthcare, unemployment, etc. Another day, another threat, another shout from the little boy itching towards could in the corner. (And another roll of the eye/suck of the teeth from me). Look, I am not underestimating the man’s status/threats/capacities whatsoever (just in case, you know, he’s reading this), I’m just saying, brotha, there are better ways to get your point across, better ways to sit at the Big Kids table, better ways to make your presence known diplomatically and internationally, and this (/these actions/words/threats) ain’t it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Welcome to the Jong-il
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

Inside the Actors Studio.

With Jenny Lewis and Elvis Costello.

Carpetbaggers.

One Mo' Gin.

Ciara feat Missy Elliot.

Work.

"You say you want a Revolution?"

"There has been a lot of worthless chatter about what President Barack Obama should say about Iran’s incipient “Green Revolution.” Sorry, but Iranian reformers don’t need our praise. They need the one thing we could do, without firing a shot, that would truly weaken the Iranian theocrats and force them to unshackle their people. What’s that? End our addiction to the oil that funds Iran’s Islamic dictatorship. Launching a real Green Revolution in America would be the best way to support the “Green Revolution” in Iran.

...Let’s get serious: An American Green Revolution to end our oil addiction — to parallel Iran’s Green Revolution to end its theocracy — helps us, helps them and raises the odds that whoever wins the contest for power, there will have to be a reformer. What are we waiting for?"

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Green Revolution(s)

St. James Infirmary Blues.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
President Obama's Health Care Plan - Howard Dean
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

Words.

"Congressional Democrats warn that the president's ambitious plans to overhaul the nation's health-care system may be in danger. Sensing political opportunity, Republicans ramp up their criticism, warning of a government takeover of health care. Business groups balk at the notion of an employer mandate.

Is this health-care deja vu all over again, the Clinton disaster of 1993-94 revisited?

When it comes to the prognosis for overhauling health care, pessimism is a safe bet, and there's been ample basis recently for that gloomy assessment. The Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of one proposal at $1.6 trillion. The Senate Finance Committee, reeling from the sticker shock, postponed action.

"I don't know that he has the votes right now," California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said of President Obama. "Health-care reform is on life support," warned Tennessee Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper.

So the whole effort could well fall apart once again. But my money is on the side of a significant legislative accomplishment -- something short of immediate universal coverage but more than cosmetic change. In conversations with veterans of the Clinton effort, all said the turbulence was expected, inevitable and almost certainly not the last buckle-your-seatbelt moment. But most were cautiously optimistic about the final outcome."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Deja Vu on Health Care?