28-10, Steelers over pretenders.

One of the better halves of football in recent memory.

Hope your team wins.

Just finished the latest additions to the Lexicon, section I – P. I think we need more quotes being mean to Liberals. Also, I didn’t include Lucky Duckies, or John Stewart’s brilliant Leave It There (We’re Gonna Have to… ), or McNaughton, It’s A … the first because I’m not sure it’s necessary, and the latter two because I don’t have good links for them. Any assistance or opinions greatly appreciated.

I’m kind of otherwise occupied with stuff, so an open thread seems appropriate.

I know it is only 9 am, but I think it is late enough in the day to reflect on the many ways Barack Obama has let you down today. As an additional thought, why does Rahm Emmanuel hate you?

The other night at dinner, our seminar speaker started to explain to us about how the Community Reinvestment Act caused the subprime crisis. There was a new twist in the story, he claimed there was a flawed study (which he surely made up or at least misrepresented) that had showed that whether or not people made their mortgage payments, and, as a result, the courts/federal government (he didn’t explain the mechanism) forced banks to lend to anyone who wanted it. He had all of this on very good authority from his father-in-law at Morgan Stanley. May FSM strike me dead if I am not relating his story accurately. I thought of that when I saw this from Atrios:

5 years from now it will probably be a “fact” that ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act caused the housing bubble.

And I thought of that again when I saw (on Fallows) that the Washington Post still hasn’t amended its Nobel for Neda piece to note that Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously. And again when I saw this bizarre explanation of it all from Howie Kurtz:

Fairfax County, Va.: Hi Howard, This Sunday, I read the editorials in The Post and The New York Times about the surprise Peace Prize. I liked the NYT editorial (which was pro), but like most of us, including Obama, I could certainly have handled an editorial that was anti this choice.

When I read The Washington Post editorial, I felt so sad for what this paper has become. Their whole idea was that the prize should have gone to Neda, the woman who was murdered by the Iranian police. Nobel Peace Prizes can’t be given posthumously. It’s a basic, easy factcheck. There are other fact problems, too (the protests hadn’t happened by the nomination date, Neda may not have been a protester).

So the idea that the committee made a careless or inappropriate choice is refuted by a slapdash editorial “choice” that nobody bothered to check? It just screamed out to me “we laid off almost all the copy editors.” I feel so sad for The Post I grew up with. It’s great to have an opinion. It’s bad to look dumb.

washingtonpost.com: Post Editorial: Our Laureate: Neda of Iran (Post, Oct. 10) andTimes Editorial: The Peace Prize (The New York Times, Oct. 9)

Howard Kurtz: I take your point about no posthumous awards, though by that standard Martin Luther King couldn’t have won after being assassinated (yes, I know he won the prize earlier). My reading of the piece was that Neda was being used more as a symbol (though the rule should have been mentioned). But it’s an editorial. It is by definition opinion. Of course some readers are going to disagree.

It’s not “by that reasoning”, it’s a rule the Nobel Prize committee has! How hard is it to understand that?

Were things always like this? Did newspapers always fill their editorial pages with factual inaccuracies they refused to correct? Were criticisms of the inaccuracies always defended with non sequiturs about other events? Was it always common for ostensibly reasonable, intelligent people to go around repeating stories that are not only not true but couldn’t possibly be true?

Update. I see that Mediactive wrote about Kurtz’s strange answer as well. There are some good points there.

By request. Sorry, Max.

I’ll be watching the game and Curb Your Enthusiasm, because a Cowboys loss and Larry David are about the only think that can salvage the suck that was the last 24 hours of football. Of my teams, everyone I like lost except for Georgia.

Winger Tim Graham on WaPo’s Swayze obit (via Steve Benen):

[T]oday’s Adam Bernstein obituary for Patrick Swayze begins obviously by noting his big hits “Ghost” and “Dirty Dancing,” but doesn’t get to “Red Dawn” until paragraph 23. Even then, Bernstein wrongly suggests he had a supporting role.

[...]

There are clearly no fortysomething Reaganites working in the Washington Post newsroom.

You can’t spoof this stuff.

I’ll miss it today, but here is your morning thread.

Also, vote for Bitsy:

From Clusterstock:

Dallas News: A Washington veteran with experience in media, politics and diplomacy will take over the most controversial arm of George W. Bush’s presidential library – the policy institute that some SMU faculty members and Methodist leaders did not want.

Over lunch this week in Dallas, Bush offered former White House official James K. Glassman the opportunity to run the think tank that the former president has described as a place to foster debate on democracy, education and other global concerns.

Glassman co-authored Dow 36,000.

I think this is the third weekend I have made it without watching the Sunday shows and instead have done something different in the morning. Today I just went to the rails to trails with the dog, then worked on stuff I would normally do on Monday while watching the history channel. I felt better for it, although I may have wondered what President McCain thought once or twice.

Spent the afternoon working, and went to Petco with Tammy and Sam and Lily, because that is where the pets go. Everyone behaved and I got Lily a new collar. I am gonna keep the Steelers collar for game day, but I think the new one looks better for everyday. The new collar:

For dinner, I went to Brian and Tammy’s again, and we had a spectacular meal. My uncle (who was a WWII navy vet and is super cool) and my cousin went fishing in Alaska last week, and they caught several hundred pounds of halibut and salmon, and a bit of it found its way to my house, so Brian cooked up a feast. So delicious, and the difference is just unbelievable. The salmon was cooked with a beurre blanc, and the halibut was served on a bed of spinach with mushrooms and tomatoes. It was to die for, and the texture was unbelievable. The fact that the meat was so perfect is a testament to how flash-freezing fish as it is caught preserves the cell structure. Probably one of the best pieces of fish I have ever had. The chef deserves mad props, too.

After that, for fun, we chilled with the dogs and watched Goodfellas. The temperature outside was perfect.

Today was a good day. I got work done, I hung out with my dog, I hung out with my friends, I just got off the phone with mom and dad and they are doing well after spending the week in Pittsburgh celebrating the 41st anniversary, and sitting here right now before I got to bed, I just realize how damned good it all is.

This really is a good thing we humans have going.

Picked a big popcorn bowl full of ripe tomatoes from our two dozen plants, first real bounty of the summer, and only a month behind the usual ETA.

Pleasant surprise of the season, so far, is the Black Pear, replacement for the Black Prince plant I couldn’t find even through the Dave’s Garden website.  It’s one of the ugliest useful plants I’ve ever seen—looks like somebody was trying to breed organic Truck Nutz, creepy potato-leafed vines crowded with clusters of twin & triplet fist-sized, sac-shaped fruit ripening to an angry, transluscent maroon-purple with lime green highlights.  But the flesh is succulent and delicious, not too tart, not too sweet, with rich flavor undertones.  They’re so delicious fresh, on burgers or rye bread, that I haven’t tried slow-roasting yet, but that may change tomorrow.

Second best for us, so far, has been the Juliet  ’salad tomato’, which I remember from last year as prolific but not extraordinarily tasty.  This year, a rainy overcast June and July encouraged lush foliage but kept even my “emergency backup” plants—one Early Girl, a Roma, a Sweet Million cherry tomato—from setting fruit.  Only the Juliet and the Sun Gold, an orange (low-acid) cherry type, have been producing since the second week of July, when the Ripeness Rush usually starts around here.  And the Sun Golds just have not been up to most year’s standards, but the Juliets are sweet & flavorful.  Only problem is that they’re a little thick-skinned for my tastes, but after the last few weeks they have moved up next year’s shopping list from “dependable, not striking” to “must find.”

On the other side of the ledger, my basil plants—one Genovese, on small-leaf globe—have gone to flower, overnight, without ever reaching a decent size.  Fortunately, my taste buds aren’t so refined that I can’t make do with supermarket or even frozen basil cubes…

How’s everybody doing at the end of another hot,  sticky weekend?

Novak did a lot of sleazy stuff, but the Evans-Novak report was excellent and he could be thoughtful on some issues. I liked his columns better than the average WaPo column.

There sure has been a lot of hand-wringing today, hasn’t there?

A commentor on an earlier post complained:

Believe me, I would love to have a realist-libertarian party that I could vote for.

Then go run for your local school board, or find a similarly-minded Realist-Libertarian you can support to do so. Srsly. The “Permanent Republican Majority”, such as it was/is, came about because the Republican true believers spent 30-plus years finding & supporting anti-science school board candidates and anti-choice city council candidates and anti-government state drainage commission auditor candidates. These tiny community nuisance larvae, nurtured by wingnut welfare and protected by low-information-voter apathy, eventually pupated in state legislatures, before emerging as full-blown leeches, ticks, and lampreys battening on our misfortunate nation’s lifeblood during the anti-Clinton congressional “Class of 1994” and the Bush/Cheney Kleptocracy. (It also bound the sane conservatives into a death pact with the Insane Klowns Posse, but that’s their problem to solve, or not.)

The Realist-Libertarians—and their counterparts on the other axis, like the Greens—believe they can find a magical all-purpose Savior Candidate, like Ralph Nader, whose enormous logical appeal and sheer personal charisma will make all us disaffected voters smack our foreheads and change our party registration. And also possibly bring in a whole! new! wave! of former non-voters enchanted by the MESSAGE, which has never before been so brilliantly embodied. This is like trying to change the Titanic’s direction by tying Leonardo DiCaprio to the bowsprit—no matter how much media attention it may attract, the laws of political physics will not work in your favor.

Of course Green and Libertarian candidates do sometimes run for one of those humble bottom-level civic offices, and even win. But all too often, prospective third-party Political Leaders leave the field, if not the party, after their first loss. The voters are too stupid, apathetic, or abused to appreciate one’s political genius, so they don’t deserve a second chance. Or the Entrenched Interests are too evil and/or powerful to understand that immediately surrendering their picayune personal fiefdoms to the New Perfect Goal is the only logical choice if they are not to be swept into the dustbin of history. Compromising, horse-trading, persuading other individuals (many of them self-involved greedy hacks and nutbags of dubious intellect and no obvious achievements) to vote in favor of the New Paradigm is tedious and soul-soiling.

It’s much easier to stomp off the field and then sit on the sidelines bitching, but Rush Limbaugh only achieved his current status because thousands of other Republicans were willing to expend their efforts in the actual political game. Even President Obama’s “overnight” success came as the culmination of many years of not-obvious-to-the-mainstream-media work and planning on his part and that of hundreds of other Democratic professionals and committed amateurs.

*****
On a semi-related topic, I found this particular one-star review
of Duck for President entertaining:

“America has a broken electoral system, a polarized electorate, and a dysfunctional Congress, yet somehow this book is amusing?
The book could be construed as funny if we ignore the fact that we have a representative form of government. When we remind ourselves that we’re a self-governing society, we are reminded that what we now call Duck is what we used to think of as a citizen in public service.
In a representative democracy we are all Ducks. And while it may not be fair to judge a light-hearted children’s book on the basis of underlying sociopolitical assumptions, it’s our responsibility as citizens to accept that we are ultimately responsible for the what’s wrong in government, not just teach our children to blame it on Duck. We have met the Duck, and it is us.”

Would a bill with no public option be better than no bill at all? Or not?

Took three hours, but the home internet situation is sorta kinda fixed. For now.

Up next- the website.