Matt Yglesias claims this isn’t a parody:

I love the voice-over guy. Almost NFL Film quality.

How many of you have read Harrison Bergeron?

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his
intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his
ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a
government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would
send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair
advantage of their brains.

That is sort of what it is like trying to work while following the top conservatives on twitter (#tcot). Every twenty seconds or so, tweetdeck will chirp, and up comes something so stupid that it just jars you, and by the time you have recovered, lo and behold, another top conservative will want to share their deep thoughts.

The Ohio Attorney General, Richard Cordray, is swinging sweet, sweet lullabies:

Ohio’s attorney general sued Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings on Friday, asserting that they provided misleading credit ratings that led to hundreds of millions of losses for state funds.

The official, Richard Cordray, filed the lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on behalf of five Ohio funds that assert they lost more than $457 million because of “false and misleading ratings” of mortgage-backed securities by the ratings agencies.

Officials at Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which is owned by McGraw-Hill, could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesman for Fitch Ratings, which is owned by Fimalac S.A., had no immediate comment.

I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time.

John and I were just discussing Chuck Todd’s unbelievably idiotic tweet defending McCain’s latest primary-induced flip-flop. Todd’s an idiot, but not as dumb as Howie Kurtz—was John’s take on it. Mine is that neither Todd nor Kurtz is dumb in the usual sense. To stay in the good graces of elite media is simple—just keep saying everything is good news for conservatives, that we are a center-right nation, that John McCain is a principled maverick and so on. Criticize the Iraq war and you get shit-canned—ask Ashleigh Banfield or Phil Donahue. Any reporter interested in having a cushy, high-paying gig for the rest of his or her life would be foolish not to keep repeating the Village-approved talking points.

It really is that simple.

I realize that, per Forrest Gump, one could argue that stupid is as stupid does. And obviously, saying things that aren’t true, making incorrect predictions, etc. is in some sense stupid. So I see that point.

Here’s how I look at it: once a barnacle finds a good rock to attach itself to, the barnacle eats its brain, because it doesn’t need the brain anymore. The barnacle would be stupid not to eat its own brain. The same applies to Chuck Todd, Ben Smith, Mike Allen, Howie Kurtz, etc.

***Update*** Due to a miscommunication, I believed (my fault rather than his) that IndieTarheel took the pic that he sent. The top picture was in fact taken by Flickr user sweber4507. I apologize for any confusion.

To clarify my policy for this series, I prefer to run pictures sent in by the photographers themselves, as the email indicates consent. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed so far.

IndieTarheel sweber4507, Lower Lewis River Falls, WA.

Mr. Furious, The Upstate.

Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

Click on the photos for a link to the photographer’s website. To see all photo threads, click on ‘photo blogging’ at the bottom of the post.

If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.

This came across my feed thirty seconds ago:

Hrmm. I wonder if anyone else has had this unique insight? I wonder what Google News says…

I seriously need to remove some people from my twitter feed.

Mr. Wrong About Everything, Bill Kristol, signs his political death certificate:

The new Rasmussen poll for the 2010 Arizona GOP Primary—John McCain 45%, J. D. Hayworth 43%—will generate a fair amount of buzz. But August is a long way away, and I assume that when McCain gets back to Arizona and campaigns, he’ll pull it out.

I hear McCain will be greeted with flowers and the primary will pay for itself.

Mein GOTT twitter is frustrating:

Yeah, the problem here is Obama has not reached out enough.

Some of these guys never learn anything, ever. John McCain has never been a maverick. He has never been a major player in legislation- his only signature bill is McCain/Feingold, and that is due in large part out of guilt and an effort to rehabilitate himself (Keating Five, anyone?). He flips and flops depending on what is best for him, personally, at that very moment, and some talking head somewhere will excuse his lack of consistency as “John McCain being a maverick” or “John McCain being John McCain” or some other nonsense. For chrissakes, he put Palin in a position where she could have been a heartbeat away from the Presidency. That alone should tell you that John McCain is in it for himself, and himself only. That is all he cares about.

So put two and two together, guys. John McCain is looking at a very tough primary against Hayworth and Simcox, a Minuteman, and he senses he needs to run to the right to shore up his flank. The Obama White House didn’t “lose” John McCain, John McCain is just doing what he always does- looking out for himself.

In fact, you can almost bet that the next couple of months leading up to his primary, McCain will step up his criticisms of Obama, will become louder and more vocal and more strident, and will move to the right of his past stated positions and his alleged “core beliefs.” And you know what else you can bet on?

Some beltway bobblehead looking at McCain’s behavior and wondering- “Gee, what did the Obama administration do to piss off John McCain?”

Ausgezeichnet:

In January, Mike Rowland was so broke that he had to raid his retirement savings to move here from Boston.

A week ago, he and a couple of buddies bought a two-unit apartment building for nearly a million dollars. They had only a little cash to bring to the table but, with the federal government insuring the transaction, a large down payment was not necessary.

“It was kind of crazy we could get this big a loan,” said Mr. Rowland, 27. “If a government official came out here, I would slap him a high-five.”

In its efforts to prop up a shattered housing market, the government is greatly extending its traditional support of real estate, including guaranteeing the mortgages of middle-class and even upper-class buyers against default.

Personally, I would just slap the person responsible for this.

I really don’t see what other options the military has here:

Sarah Palin kicked off her book tour in Michigan this week, and thousands gathered outside a Barnes & Noble chanting her name, giving the event the feel of a political pep rally. The Army wants Palin’s appearance at Fort Bragg on Monday to be much quieter.

The base has asked Palin not to make a speech at a public book-signing at the base exchange; she also will not write personal notes, pose for photographs or sign anything besides her new memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Fort Bragg also wanted to bar reporters from the event. Garrison Commander Col. Stephen J. Sicinski determined that by keeping out the media, the base would prevent Palin, a Republican and possible candidate in 2012, from having a platform from which to attack President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

“Fort Bragg, nor any other Army installation, cannot be used or appear to be used as endorsing criticism of the commander in chief,” said base spokesman Thomas D. McCollum. “Because this book signing is turning into a political platform with the addition of media coverage, we are restricting the media coverage.”

They really don’t have much choice in this matter.

From the NY Times:

New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.

The advice, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is meant to decrease unnecessary testing and potentially harmful treatment, particularly in teenagers and young women. The group’s previous guidelines had recommended yearly testing for young women, starting within three years of their first sexual intercourse, but no later than age 21.

Arriving on the heels of hotly disputed guidelines calling for less use of mammography, the new recommendations might seem like part of a larger plan to slash cancer screening for women. But the timing was coincidental, said Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians’ group that developed the Pap smear guidelines. The group updates its advice regularly based on new medical information, and Dr. Iglesia said the latest recommendations had been in the works for several years, “long before the Obama health plan came into existence.”

There was actually a really good piece on NPR yesterday about the decisions behind the breast-screening guideline changes that explained the reasons for the change in the guidelines. According to one of the doctors, the problem people are having understanding the reasoning for the guidelines is that the statistics are saying something that is counter-intuitive and goes against our long-held belief that earlier detection is better in regards to cancer. Here is the relevant snippet:

BLOCK: We have been getting a lot of email from listeners, as you might imagine. And a number of people have stories of their own. And I want to read a couple of those letters. This is one from Wendy Hickey(ph) of Pittsburgh who says that three years ago when she was 45, a mammogram identified suspicious tissue in her breast. She had a needle biopsy excisional surgery and is now cancer-free, taking daily tamoxifen.

And Ms. Hickey writes: I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had delayed my mammogram for five more years. But I feel safe in guessing that the outcome and treatment would not have been as positive.

Dr. Lerner, what would you say to Wendy Hickey about that?

Dr. LERNER: If people can take away from this show the notion that what she’s saying may be true but may not be true, I think they would learn a lot.

What the data is showing us is that this woman, even though the mammogram found the suspicious cells early on, the argument is that her overall prognosis would not have changed. She would have gotten treated then as aggressively or more aggressively as when it was found by mammogram, and she would have done exactly the same.

That’s what the point is of this data. It’s hard conceptual leap for people to make, even for a doctor, but that’s what the data show.

BLOCK: And you would assume though that the earlier you find something, the better your results would be.

Dr. LERNER: That has been the guiding principle of cancer research since the early 20th century, but the data for some cancer shows that things are not that simple, and that’s what we’re trying to deal with now.

You can listen to the whole piece here. I thought it was interesting and worth the time.

I forgot to post the recipe for the weekend:

1. Marinated Chicken w/flaming pineapples
2. Cuban Black Beans & Rice
3. Ensalada Cubana
4. Fried Plantain

Also, I need someone with mad photoshop skills for a “big” job involving a cat and a Bengals uniform. The innocents always suffer the most.

This is insane:

Freelance journalist Nick Martin has an update on Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Stoddard, who last October was caught on video swiping a file in open court from defense attorney defense attorney Joanne Cuccia.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe held a hearing on the matter, and on Tuesday ordered Stoddard to hold a press conference to apologize. It’s a weak and odd way of admonishing Stoddard for such a brazen trespass on attorney-client privilege (not to mention Stoddard’s arguable violation of a number of other laws, rights, and rules of procedure).

You really have to watch the video. The cop just walks up, starts snooping through her notes, calls over another deputy, pulls stuff out of her folder, hands it to another cop, and he walks out with it.

And, he will most likely get away with it. Time to break out the foam USA fingers. You can’t get justice like that in a Banana Republic! Oh, wait.

Why is this a big deal:

The 2,074-page Senate health care bill would take 34 hours to read cover to cover—and that’s just what Sen. Tom Coburn wants done on the Senate floor.

The Oklahoma Republican has threatened to invoke parliamentary rules to force the Senate clerk (or more likely, a team of clerks) to read the massive bill before the full Senate begins formal debate on the legislation.

The move is strictly according to Senate rules, which say any senator can demand a bill be read in its entirety before debate begins. While Democrats could, if they wish, repeatedly make motions to end the soliloquy, Republicans on the floor could object, and the reading would continue.

Thirty-four hours seems like a pretty short amount of time in the scheme of several decades of trying to attain health care reform. Let them read it. Who cares?

Am I not understanding something here?

The story:

Here are a few pics of my cat, Chompers. My partner and I adopted her a little over a year ago from Pets in Need, a small rescue group in eastern Massachusetts. She was 5 months old when we got her; she’s now a year and a half. My partner and I frequently remark that getting her was the best thing we’ve ever done. She wakes me up in the morning by rubbing her face against mine or walking all over me. In the winter, if we’re sitting on the couch under a blanket, she likes to climb under it and onto our laps, or huddle on top of our feet. Every once in a while, she gets a crazy look in her eyes and suddenly streaks across the apartment at full speed. This occasionally ends with her slamming headfirst into a wall, but this does not appear to faze her.

Here, also, is a link to a series of pictures in which Chompers picks a fight with, and loses to, an empty tissue box.

I also want to plug Southwest Collie Rescue. My stepmother, Lee More, helps run it, and it is really a stand-up organization. They take in any collie, no matter how old or how sick, and make sure they get great care and loving homes. They go to great lengths to make sure that every placement is right for dog and owner.

Consider this an open thread