Cogitamus

And they wonder why I drink - Blogging .20

I try and face the evening with a rye smile, but then I read (or watch) crap like this from our "professional" journalists and find that even the fifth or sixth trip to the bottle stops working:

- Jeanne Cummings of the Politico -- the short bus of online journalism -- writes of the "return of class warfare" to D.C.  That is to say that Obama allowing marginal tax rates for those earning over $250,000 to return to Clinton era levels is tantamount to a Leninist coup.  I've got news for you fuckface -- I've lived in this city for 26 years, and I arrived here right around the time that class warfare began in earnest, when Saint Ronald Reagan decided that nothing befit a great capital city more than having an army of homeless people straddle steam grates to survive the winter.  Since Reagan, working people have been subject to unrelenting class warfare and have watched their wages and standard of living decline.  Fuck you, Jonathan Harris, Mike Allen and Jim Vanderhei, and every other substandard intellect with whom you work -- and the freakin' horse you rode in on.  I assure you, when the revolution comes sweetheart, you ain't going to be worried about that extra 3% marginal tax rate.

- Dumbass poseur Jake Tapper of ABC News joins the chorus and suggests that Obama is raising taxes on small business by allowing the marginal rates on income taxes to increase from 35% to 39.6% for individuals making over $200,000 and families making over $250,000.  This is just plain fucking stupid and disingenuous.  Income taxes are assessed on individuals, not businesses.  As a partner in a small law firm -- 30 or so lawyers and about 20 support staff -- I am a part owner of a small business.  My taxable income is only derived once all of the business expenses, including the costs of employees, equipment, etc. is deducted from our gross revenues.  I am taxed on my share of the ultimate profits.  Like most businesses, we hire people on the basis of our clients' needs and the demands made upon us.  In sixteen years as a partner I can never recall a single discussion about marginal tax rates as a factor in any business decision that we have made.

The bottom line is that down the road we are going to need to tax the wealthy at higher rates -- and there is room for rates over and above the 39.6% rate for the truly wealthy.  The pissants in the media are completely out of touch with this fact.  But they are going to learn -- it is going to happen and it will prove successful.      

Sebelius To HHS

Oh well.

Hope springs eternal:  Maybe Sebelius will spend a couple years as HHS Secretary and still run for the Senate in 2010. 

David Bowie and The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men

This was a find and then some: old BBC footage of a seventeen-year-old David Bowie and his friends declaring their solidarity as long-haired men in Britain who will not stand for any more persecution and ridicule.

We're one big gathering of long-haired males (and female) in my house, so we heartily and retroactively endorse the work of this David Bowie person and hope that we'll be hearing more from the bright young man in the years to follow 1964.

(The clip has a Python-esque absurdist feel to it, no?)

Also at litbrit.

When I saw the cities burning, I knew that I was learning

Ending, but not yet over. President Obama announces today that US combat troops will be leaving Iraq by August of next year, and all US troops will be gone by the end of 2011, as stipulated by the Iraqi SOFA.

It's taken 6 years just to begin fixing the Bush Administration's mistakes, and there's a long way to go yet. But sweet merciful Christ am I happy today.

This calls for a song.

Cars

Via Atrios, this article has some good ideas on how to keep the costs of owning and driving automobiles roughly the same while making them more obvious to people.  The idea is that if people were made to think of the various costs of owning a car - maintenance, insurance, parking - they would want to drive less.

He has some good ideas.  Unfortunately, Perkins doesn't deal with the largest cost associated with our car culture, which is the money taxpayers have spent and continue to spend on the type of infrastructure that not only allows a car culture, but prioritizes it above any other form of transportation.  It's not just interstate highways, but the design of neighborhoods and shopping centers, where we put parks and playing fields, the lack of any room on our roads for buses to pull over to pick up and drop off passengers and especially the lack of any space to add streetcars.  And of course light rail construction raises the forces of NIMBYism faster than a combination hog farm/shooting range/skateboard park/halfway house.

As with so many things, something that was simple and made sense 50-75 years ago has been institutionalized in our culture and public policy.  It's going to take a lot of work to change that.

Creating Jobs

Of all the GOP spin and nonsense that they've managed to turn into conventional wisdom, nothing is more infuriating than the idea that CEOs, small business owners and pretty much the upper class in general are behind all job creation.  Ezra highlighted part of yesterday's press briefing wherein a reporter just kept coming at Gibbs with one "question" after another that was straight from the GOP/Chamber of Commerce playbook:

Q On jobs, which is the big complaint up on Capitol Hill right now from Republicans, that this plan is a job killer, I mean, the $787 billion plan was all about jobs more than anything else, and now you've got a plan in place that -- how can you possibly tax people making over $250,000 something like $667 billion over the next 10 years and not have a downward effect on jobs?

MR. GIBBS: Well, Chip, how did it work in 1994 and 1995 and 1996 and 1997?

Q I guess their argument would be, imagine if they didn't have those -- those taxes, how much better it would have been?

MR. GIBBS: Isn't it interesting that there's always some little slip? Again, you know -- again, I don't do this by happenstance. There isn't a member of Congress, if they were to file a single taxpayer form, that makes above $200,000 a year.

Q Well, Congress. There's a lot of millionaires up there.

MR. GIBBS: Well, that's true. But it's on their income. I mean, I think it's interesting, as people listen to those complaining about some aspects of the budget, I think it's just interesting to note -- I think the President was pretty clear on Tuesday -- we're talking about people that earn in excess of a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Q And a huge percentage of those people are small business owners.

MR. GIBBS: Some of them are, sure. Some of them are big business owners. Some of them are home-run hitters in major league baseball. Some of them run kickoffs back for a living. Some of them are the President of the United States.

Q But a lot of them create jobs.

No they don't.  They really don't.  Consider, as an example, a company owned by a friend of mine.  It's a web hosting company that should reach around $5 million in revenue this year even with the economic crisis.  There's about 20 people employed by the business.

So that's 20 jobs created by my friend and his partner, right?  Nope.  They haven't created one job - both my friend and his partner were gainfully employed before going into business together.  For the first couple years of the business, they did everything themselves.  Long after they were tired of the early mornings and late nights, they still did it all themselves, until something very particular, something almost magical, really, happened.

They got more customers.  And with more demand for their services came more money, which allowed my friend and his partner to hire a network engineer.  This continued, letting them hire more engineers, some salespeople and operators to staff the Network Operations Center.  The company is building its third datacenter now, so various contractors are getting work, and the air conditioners, UPSs, the huge diesel generators and other equipment require maintenance and repair, and the power company has already had to upgrade the transformer outside the current main datacenter because of the amount of electricity used to keep so much equipment running.

And while it is correct to say that my friend and his partner are responsible for all this economic activity, it is also completely correct, using the same standard, to declare that they aren't responsible for one bit of it.  Their customers are the ones actually driving all of this.  Without the customers, there's no new datacenter, no engineers, no sales, accounting or operations staff.  There's no need for a larger transformer and emergency generator.

This new datacenter, which has local contractors in a bit of a tizzy trying to get the business, only became necessary, even possible, because the other datacenters got full.  Without clear evidence of demand, no bank was going to loan money for more supply.  Demand always precedes supply.  Always.  Even when someone comes up with a new product, the only way that product gets to the stage where it creates a business, or a share of an existing business, is when someone can demonstrate convincingly that there will be sufficient demand for it.  The American marketplace is littered with failed products for which there wasn't sufficient demand. 

There was a period of time in the late 1990s when rich people set about creating jobs - that is to say, using their money to allow people to skip the important steps of building a customer base before opening up multimillion dollar offices, complete with foosball tables and gourmet meals in the company cafeteria.  I am speaking, of course, of the dot com boom and bust.  Venture capitalists, drinking equally from the Kool-aid of Internet riches and their own myths of job creation, lost millions of dollars investing in virtual companies that had a catchy idea but no clue how to turn that idea into something that would generate profit.  Pets.com, anyone?

Demand always precedes supply.  Always.  I'm proud of my friend and happy for him.  He has a successful business, and it's having a positive impact on the economy around here, employing and/or contracting quite a few people in the area.  But it's the customers, the companies with 50 servers, the little business with just one server, the website hosts with thousands of websites they manage on their boxes, all of these customers that are actually creating these jobs.  If my friend and his partner had actualy set out to "create jobs" - if they had hired a bunch of engineers and operators back when all they had was their dinky first datacenter, they'd be out of business.

When this is applied to the American economy as a whole, it's clear that the millions of Americans who don't have $250,000+ in taxable income on their 1040 forms have created far more jobs than those who do.  Both groups have their role, but if we were to tax the rich into oblivion, people would still need groceries and gas and clothes and oil changes and diapers and all the other little things that us little people spend our money on.  And even if the Titans of Wall Street were to all disappear - a guy can dream - that demand would continue to create job after job after job.  Hell, taking the game-players out of the equation would probably make the system more efficient.

Why Journalism Is In So Much Trouble

I was reading this article which fact-checks the GOP's claim that Obama's tax plans will increase taxes on most small business owners.  It's a pretty good article, laying out the reasons why Eric Cantor is so full of shit on this issue.  Though it doesn't use that language, which is understandable.

Toward the end of the article, however, there are two small paragraphs which declare that Obama's claim of a tax cut on "95% of Americans" is wrong.  This claim is ascribed to Obama's supporters.  They are not named, and no instance is given of anyone actually saying that.  The author does quote Obama saying that he's proposing "a middle-class tax cut to 95 percent of hardworking families."  The difference between "95% of Americans" and "95% of American families" may or may not be significant.  Is it?  We don't know, because the author doesn't tell us.

Then the author tells us that "[a]n independent analysis estimated that 75.5 percent of all U.S. households would get his tax credit for workers. A higher percentage of working families would get it."

What analysis?  Who did it?  Where can I find it?  What's the difference between all households and working families, and how significant is it?

I increasingly read articles as if they are blog posts, and frankly, these articles by honest-to-God journalists, who probably don't wear pajamas when they're writing, are just terrible.  Any blogger would get crucified in comments for such lazy, content-free reporting.

Journalism is in trouble because the majority of Americans have come to expect more than vague assertions and pre-written storylines.  Some are admittedly looking for things that confirm their preconceived notions and keep them comfortable in their prejudices.  But many of us are looking for evidence, for facts, for something that is as close to the truth as we can get.  Unfortunately for traditional print media, neither those who desire confirmation of a warped worldview nor those who want to be informed that the sky really is blue, dammit, no matter what Rush Limbaugh says, are going to be satisfied with "[a]n independent analysis estimated that 75.5 percent of all U.S. households would get his tax credit for workers." 

That analysis, by the way, was conducted by the Tax Policy Center, which is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.  It can be found here.  What I cannot fathom is why it was apparently so hard to write "[a]n independent analysis by the Tax Policy Center estimated. . ."

Blog Display Difficulties

Is anyone else having trouble with this website's display?  At home it's no problem - thanks to my sweet-ass 19-inch widescreen HD monitor, w00t! - but at work it's too wide for the monitor.  I'm getting that dumb side-scroller at the bottom thing.

I've played around with the design, but nothing seems to work.  If no one else is having issues then I'll not worry about it, but if you are, let me know and I'll fiddle some more.

It Really Is About Punishing Sluts

Writing about the despicable Colorado State Senator Schultheis Atrios says,

The Lord Saletans of the world think we're crazy when we try to explain to them that the pro-life movement (not all pro-lifers, but the movement) is all about punishing women who have sex they disapprove of.

"Not all pro-lifers, but the movement."  Why would this be true? Why would it be necessary to think this in the face of all available evidence?

This puts me in mind of a recent comment thread at Jamelle's place, where I participated in a completely useless, but entertaining, discussion regarding this very issue.  Jamelle made the entirely reasonable assertion that anti-choicers simply want to control the sexuality of every woman in the country, to which one commenter took umbrage, saying,

If I wanted to control female sexuality and didn’t care about life issues, I would ensure that every 15-year-old girl in this country were to get pregnant, then have an abortion (while watching on an ultrasound, just to see exactly what was going on). The long-term effects of abortion on female sexuality (along with mental and physical health) are horrible.

Why yes, that is an oddly specific, tangential reply, something of a specialty for this commenter.  For example, this person called me a selfish jerk who is bad in bed and, in the next comment, accused all liberals relying exclusively on ad hominem attacks.

Memo to Lord Saletan

Re: Your Recent Travesty in the New York Times

You are an arrogant, delusional, self-satisfied , smug, worthless, quisling motherfucker.

You think that there is some kind of common ground that can be reached with the retrograde knuckledraggers who have the temerity to style themselves as "pro-life."  You're wrong -- deeply, sadly, and profoundly wrong.  Why I have to be subjected to your adolescent squeamishness and fatuous "third way" drivel in my Sunday Times is beyond me.  

Our friend Steve Balboni brings us this heart warming example of the deep reverence for life that animates our right wing brethren -- Colorado State Senator Dave Schulthies rooting for children to be born with AIDS so as to teach their mothers to feel bad about being the promiscuous sluts that they are.  You think I am making this shit up?

  "What I'm hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that."

Atrios picked this story up too, linking to this article detailing what an appalling alleged human being Mr. Schulthies is. 

Earlier this week, one of Schulthies fellow GOP Senator equated homosexuality with murder.  These are the people with whom Will the Shill thinks we can make common cause.  It is bad enough to have to simply share the planet with these people -- the notion of reaching political accommodation with them and compromising our principles is beyond the pale. 

David Brooks Actually Speaks the Truth

Following up on nimh's post below about Rich Lowry's reaction to Obama's chance to massively shift the ideological debate going forward, we have David Brooks' withering critique not only of Jindal's horrible response, but of the neo-Goldwater tone being struck by most of the Republican Party, especially in the House.  Even Brooks understands that this is simply not responsive to the situation currently confronting the country.     

You Never Know With These People

When I saw the headline to this post, I thought at first that they were the same person.

Worry I can believe in

Over at the National Review, Rich Lowry reflected on Obama's address to Congress last night, and is worried. Gravely worried:

He’s trying to redefine extensive government activism as simple pragmatism, and if he succeeds, might well shift the center of American politics for a generation.

Hell yeah. That's worry I can believe in!

Bobby Jindal - The Right Wing Mr. Rogers

What a strange little speech. The Katrina anecdote is, of course, an indictment of the Bush FEMA, a fact which seems utterly lost on Piyush.  

He used the phony Las-Vegas to California train anecdote -- and he made it from Las Vegas to Disneyland and turned it into a Mag-Lev train.  Jesus cries when you lie Bobby.

Does Jindal think anyone admires Louisiana as a model for the country?  I know that Washington is often criticized, but rarely is it found wanting when compared to Louisiana. 

He believes Americans can do anything.  I personally can fly by grasping my scrotum in an oh-so special fashion and thinking real hard.  (Well it feels like flying to me.)

Why does he keep mentioning Louisiana like it's universally admired in America?  Does he really have no sense that the land that gave us Huey Long, Edwin Edwards, and David Duke is not really the magical place of American dreams unless you have an affinity for boogie woogie piano and puking in public.     

Our troops can also do anything too!  Because they're fucking Americans too.   Can they fly like me?

And let me repeat -- Motherfucking Americans can do motherfucking anything. 

Rachel Maddow shares my speechlessness.  And she has not been drinking the exquisite Michter's Single Barrel Rye that I am enjoying with such, well, liberality.  (I am going to get an endorsement deal out of this gig, I swear.) 

The Republican Party -- still batshit insane.  Logically they would turn in their hour of need to a man who thinks a women he knew in college who wanted to get laid needed an exorcism.   

   

Stimulus popularity watch

The Republicans obviously seem to think they've got a real winner on their hands in their near-unanimous opposition to the stimulus bill. Their gusto for opposition certainly seems to have the Beltway journalists impressed. It has them going with the trusty storyline of a close race, marked on a day-to-day basis by the impact of whoever's PR offensive of the day is more bold. No wonder that Ben Pershing in his Capitol Briefing for the WaPo a few days ago asked: Who's winning the spin war over the stimulus?

So what do the polls on the question actually say? How has public opinion evolved since I posted an overview a week or two ago on Observationalism? Pershing gave it a stab and observed that the latest CNN poll "sheds some interesting light on this subject": it found that just 53% of respondents "thought that the stimulus would improve economic conditions, while 44 percent thought it wouldn't." Ergo, a closely divided nation.

That's not entirely a fair measure, though. I, for example, don't think economic conditions will improve any time soon either, and I fully support stimulus packages - the bigger the better. The first thing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is intended to ensure is to make the upcoming crisis at least less bad than it would otherwise be. So the question whether people expect the economy to not just be less bad, but actually improve thanks to the stimulus is really a separate one from whether they think the stimulus is necessary in any case. And on that latter question, the public opinion seems to clearly veer in Obama's direction.

Striking

The President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the House:

And only one is a white dude.

Still hasn't stopped amazing me.

And let me just say (admitting unreservedly that this is not a fair comparison) that this part of Obama's speech:

And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country — and this country needs and values the talents of every American.

made me immediately think of this, from Obama's immediate predecessor:

To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done.

And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States.

Chesley Sullenberger - Hero or Whining American?

Not content with trying to claim the Sex Pistols or Terry Gilliam as their own (I giggled when I wrote that) -- right wingers are now trying to claim union member and former union safety official, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, hero pilot of the Hudson, as the representative figure for the new conservative "responsibility" era.  How will conservatives react when they find out that Sully is just another whining union member, complaining about his wages and pension, when he should just be grateful that he has a job.  Here's what he told Congress about being a pilot:

... while I love my profession, I do not like what has happened to it. I would not be doing my duty if I did not report to you that I'm deeply troubled about its future. Americans have been experiencing huge economic difficulties in recent months, but airline employees have been experiencing those challenges and more for eight years. We've been hit by an economic tsunami. September 11th, bankruptcies, fluctuating fuel prices, mergers, loss of pensions and revolving-door management teams who have used airlines employees as an ATM have left the people who work for the airlines in the United States with extreme economic difficulties. It is an incredible testament to the collective character, professionalism and dedication of my colleagues in the industry that they are still able to function at such a high level.

It is my personal experience that my decision to remain in the profession I love has come at a great financial cost to me and to my family. My pay has been cut 40 percent. My pension, like most airline pensions, has been terminated and replaced by a PBGC guarantee worth only pennies to the dollar. While airline pilots are by no means alone in our financial struggles -- I want to acknowledge how difficult it is for everyone right now -- it is important to underscore that the terms of our employment have changed dramatically from when I began my career, leading to an untenable financial situation for pilots and their families. When my company offered pilots who had been laid off the chance to return to work, 60 percent refused. Members, I attempt to speak accurately and plainly, so please do not think I exaggerate when I say that I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps

In fact, he sounds like a union boss, extolling as he does seniority, higher pay, and collective solutions reached through bargaining by labor and management:

Segregated Proms

In her post on the segregated proms in Charleston, Mississippi, Amanda has forgotten to include one key point, a glaring omission, really.

Whenever one brings up an example of institutional and personal racism in the American south, it's necessary to point out that the North is really racist.  Really, really racist.  I've been told many times, by friends and family, that it's the American North which really has the race problem.

So when pointing out that it's not just Charleston, Mississippi that has segregated proms(reg. req.), but the surrounding counties as well as high schools in Georgia and Louisiana, it's also necessary to mention that Northern states are really racist.

I haven't been able to find one example of a segregated high school prom anywhere outside the old Confederacy.  But I'm confident that there must be scores, perhaps hundreds, of them.  Because, as has been said over and over and over and over and fucking over, "racism is much worse in the North than the south."

And it must be true, because the only alternative is that the racist fucknuts of the American south - which happens to hold most of the racist fucknuts in the entire country and makes sure that they're still able to run things no matter how bad they make it for everybody - are also a bunch of whiners living in culture of victimization and resentment.  They'd also have to be caught in a terrible cycle of self-hatred, since they're engaging in clearly racist behavior, but obviously know that it's wrong since none of them are capable of admitting it publicly.

Some people might say that the region which started the Civil War because their efforts to force legal slavery upon the rest of the nation failed, which brought us Jim Crow, which has brought us constant legal and illegal fights against every single effort ever made to bring about equality before the law, that flies the flag of a band of murderous traitors, that has monuments to those who betrayed the very nation of which we are all a part, the region that still fights for the "right" to have segregated high school dances, that this region is clearly the seat of racism in America, whatever problems the other regions of the country might have.

Some people might say that, but I won't, because I've been trained by white southerners to believe that real racism, like the responsibility for the Civil War, lies north of the Mason-Dixon.

Well-Off White People, Unite Against Good Government!

I live about two miles from Rep. Dennis Moore's (D-KS) Overland Park office.  I had no idea that this was going to happen and no idea that it did happen until just a few minutes ago. 

Far be it from me to suggest that the Overland Park police were generous in their crowd estimate to make a ragged band of ineffectual protestors feel better about themselves. . .

This site suggests it was 750 people, and has pictures!  I'm guessing the bulk of the crowd was somehow always just outside the frame whenever the camera's button was pressed.

Tierra Del Encanto

Two quick hits from God's Own Country:

• IATSE Local 480 has unanimously endorsed Diane Denish for New Mexico governor.  Why does it matter that a New Mexico filmworker's union has made an endorsement for the New Mexico Governor's race?  Well, because Val Kilmer has decided that hanging out in Santa Fe's art galleries entitles him to the Governor's mansion, that's why.  Oh Val, New Mexico is not California.  No one cares about you and your hipster friends in Santa Fe and Taos - except to deride all of you for coming in to the state and driving up property taxes for families that have lived on their land for five centuries.  But maybe when Denish wins 95% of the primary vote it will discourage other actors from thinking that being famous for their ability to play pretend is no substitute for experience - California's dysfunctional political system notwithstanding.

• The New Mexico House has passed the National Popular Vote proposal, which, if enacted by enough states to equal 270 Electoral Votes, would pledge New Mexico's electors to whoever wins the nationwide popular vote.  It's a way to bypass the Electoral College.  I'm not sure if enough states will pass it, or if they do, whether this proposal would bring about the changes those of us who want a national popular vote or not.  But it's impressive that the legislature of a battleground state would pass this.  Usually small-population states that enjoy an outsized influence on our presidential elections jealously guard their privileges with a toddler's zeal.  Yes, I'm talking about you, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Newbie checking in

Hi all,

The bloggers here have been so kind as to let me join Cogitamus as the latest addition to its roster, and I am suitably pleased. I've long followed and commented on this blog, and it was really the only blog I wanted to move to!

I hope to add to the eclectic mix of scrupulous wonkery, political passion and whimsical digression that's characterised Cogitamus with my own random mix of interests. They pretty much follow the same lines, except, as a European, I'll throw in a fair share of stuff on the political and peculiar this side of the ocean as well.

For the past four or five months I've been doing that on observationalism.com, which was my first venture into blogging. (I long derided the idea of blogging for myself, so the fact that I do so enthusiastically now after all raises the frightening spectre that one day I'll end up Twittering too.)

As for my background, I'm Dutch; I moved to Hungary a few years ago, where I work for an international NGO; I'm a news addict with a special weakness for anything that involves graphs and charts; and I like photographing, having tea and cake in coffeehouses, and old punk music. So I've got the eclectic covered, anyway.

Binyam Mohamed Released from Guantanamo

“I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares. Before this ordeal, torture was an abstract word.”

-Binyam Mohamed, British citizen, just released from Guantanamo, where he was tortured.  He was also tortured in other countries, under the Bush administration's so-called "exraordinary rendition" program.  Was ever a name more apt?  Extraordinary for its cruelty and barbarity. 

Rep. Bill Delahunt, Democrat from Massachusetts, is urging Eric Holder and the Obama administration to release the full details of Mohamed's detention and torture.  Here's hoping millions of Americans do likewise, by flooding their representatives and the White House switchboard with demands for same.

News Of The Insane Death Cult

I've been meaning to write a post on what I, at least, perceive to be a dangerous sense of triumphalism in the liberal blogosphere.  There's a bit too much talk of the GOP becoming just a regional party - and only appealing to a small group of retrograde douchebags in that region itself.  I was all set to explain, with examples, how all the talk of the GOP's complete self-destruction was uncomfortably reminiscent of the talk of the Democrats as a "permanent minority" during the early Bush years.

I still feel that way, somewhat.  It's just that whenever I'm all set to self-righteously pontificate on the liberal blogosphere's excesses, some prominent member of the Republican party decides to do something like this (via):

Another local resident asked [Senator] Shelby [R-AL] if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”

If the GOP doesn't become a pathetic husk of its former self, consisting entirely of old, racist white men and those unfortunate enough to personally depend upon them, it won't be for lack of trying.

I Want Angelina's Earrings: Assorted Oscar Fashion Thoughts

litbrit's favorite dress: Beyoncé Knowles' breathtakingly well-fitted black-and-gold brocade mermaid
gown by House of Deron.  Notice Beyoncé's gorgeous posture, simple hairdo, and minimal accessories (small earrings, actually).  Really, what could one add to this?  She's perfection.

While looking at last night's fashion parade (People's slide show is here--go look; we'll wait), I came to the conclusion that if I were in charge of such things, I'd institute an outright ban on the wearing of diaphanous, pale-to-colorless evening gowns by waifish, pale-to-colorless women (myself included) (*cough* Anne Hathaway, Sarah Jessica Parker, Nicole Kidman *cough*).  Michelle Obama's queenly white Inaugural gown looked so fabulous precisely because she is not a waifish, pale-to-colorless woman.  That said, I did love Tina Fey's slinky silver-beaded Zack Posen dress and Jennifer Aniston's strapless, white-and-silver Art Deco beaded Valentino gown.

Really,  though, give me color, please!  And as long you're shopping for me, you can start with this lovely shade of green, as worn last night by the incomparable actor (and SextoMom) Angelina Jolie:

These sweet little emerald baubles would set off my eyes quite nicely, and you know,
I just happen to have the perfect dress...

Good Sunday Morning to All

"The Blues are Still Blue" - Belle & Sebastian

I needed something cheerful to start the day.  This may be the nerdiest looking band of all time -- if you picked 7 or 8 of your friends at random and started a band this is what it would look like.  But I love them.

Didn't post a Saturday Night song due to wasting the evening going to the late show of "The International."  Do yourselves a favor and skip it.  Really dreadful.  If you want a dose of Clive Owen's hulking, brooding presence rent "Children of Men" or "Croupier" -- but not the horrible "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" unless suicide is on your to-do list for the evening.