It was sunny this afternoon so we went to rails to trails, and after Lily went to the bathroom for the eighth time, I caught myself singing:

I’m sure Slick Rick would kill himself if he heard me.

With FSM as my witness, I used to be cool. I swear.

Consider this an open thread, as I’m going out for dinner.

Even the liberal Mark Shields misses George W. Bush.

SHIELDS: We have a president of real intellectual horse power who is cool, detached and analytical and if anything you can watch the emotional side of him emerge in this whole process. … There’s an emotional aspect, the comforter in chief as well as the commander in chief. Both roles. And I think it makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.

(via)

Update. I watched it again and I’m pretty sure he’s being sarcastic. If I’d known he was from Weymouth, I would have guessed this right off.

It’s easy to romanticize the past, of course. But I distinctly remember that 20 years ago, things like sudden increases in the number of people going hungry were considered important issues. Nowadays to even muse about whether this is something we can do something about as a society marks you as an unserious hippie. Even as we speak, Slate/Levitt/TNR are probably writing something along the lines of “you think that having a high percentage of the population without access to food is bad, but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords, you’ll see that blah blah blah.” David Brooks is probably on the Snooze Hour telling E. J. Dionne that the only solution is food vouchers and, anyway, in Red America, the hungry can always visit the Applebee’s Salad Bar for free. Robert Samuelson and Fred Hiatt are cooking up some bogus figures to tell us that there is no way that we, as a society, can do anything about this. And, anyway, Michael Moore is fat, so how can anyone really be hungry?

What the hell happened? How did all the conservative talking points become so thoroughly internalized in this country?

Since it has been about six days since we have had an OS flame war, let me state that one thing I hate about Apple is that no matter what program I want to use, whether it be firefox, itunes, office, photoshop, dreamweaver, or acrobat, any time I try to use a program I have to install critical updates for five minutes first.

Now you can say this is not Apple’s fault, per se, but I do not run into these issues on Windows Seven. They just install themselves at night. I swear to God Itunes updates more than Drudge.

This sucks:

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children—more than one in five across the United States—were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

I’m going to give more money to local food banks this year than in the past. But only a glibertarian would think that personal charity is the solution to this shameful problem.

James Joyner provides a rebuttal to the notion that KSM should be tried, and it is notable for the fact that it contains actual arguments and not screaming and wailing and wet underpants.

Top stories at memeorandum:

1.) Sarah Palin’s numbers and whether she could run for President.

2.) We’ve moved from whether or not it was treasonous for Obama to bow before the Emperor to an in-depth discussion of whether Obama used the appropriate technique. No matter what, Allahpundit assures us that Obama was in the wrong.

3.) John Yoo telling us that trying terrorists is an intelligence coup for the terrorist.

Same shit, different day.

Andrew, Golden Gate Sunset.

fallsroad, Sunburst.

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.

I was interviewed last week by Erik Kain at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. You can read it here.

Nothing to see here:

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming years.

The Prescription Drug Plan really was fiscal conservatism at its best.

I don’t know why Erick Erickson hasn’t already announced a fund-raising drive to bring this… unusual… artwork celebrating President Obama’s visit to China back to a venue where it can really be appreciated…

(via WGNtv.com Chicago)

Perhaps the Red State Strike Farce simply can’t decide who’ll get custody. Or possibly $15k is some $14,913 $14,999,913 more than Red Erick’s Army can scrape together?

(I really liked the YouTube video “Obama Marketing Hits China“, but Reuters has chosen to disable video embedding.)

Is Erick Erickson going to make every single race a “hill to die on” for conservatives?

Update. Is est bonus novus pro conservatives.

I love stuff like this:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama’s health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation’s economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.

The e-mail, written by the Chamber’s senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a “respected economist” to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.

Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: “The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document.”

From the Malkin piece John linked to:

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

What are the odds that one of the half-dozen prominent wingnut movie stars was present at a 9/11 test run? Not saying it didn’t happen, but how come I didn’t hear more about it? Is this yet another example of the liberal media failing to cover stories that illustrate the courage of conservative Americans?

Update. Snopes says it’s true. We are all James Woods now, I guess.

I’m hoping this turns out well, because I lost interest in V and Flash Forward in record time.