Bush signs a law but notes he won’t follow it.
Great.
On the other hand, there are two good things to come of the South Dakota mess. One: Cecilia Fire Thunder of the Oglala Sioux has volunteered to start a Planned Parenthood clinic within Sioux territory. Two: Someone has written a very funny cartoon which will greatly inconvenience a senator.
Wednesday we went to Hartford to pay our respects to the matriarch of Bookdwarf‘s family, Aunt Marge. She’s in hospice now, and groggy, but laughing and smiling as her extensive network of friends, family, and fellow parishoners come to visit. She said, “we’re having the wake in the hospital.”
A nurse came in while we were there and said “Well, you look like you’re holding court!”
On the way out, I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said “it’s an honor,” and she held out her hand for me to kiss, and everyone laughed again.
I’m not going to the parade this weekend. But Slate has a great article on the global commodification of Irishness.
These “boot camps” seemed like a good idea at first, but remember that they’re still basically a cross between summer camp and jail. And that they are populated by the most troublesome teenagers in the area. So it’s not that surprising to find that a kid got beaten to death by the guards at one. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t happened more.
At first, I thought this headline read “Bush Defends Mediocre Plan.” But that wouldn’t make sense: I haven’t known him to make any plans that good.
Spite is often considered to be the one action that truly distinguishes humans from the lower beasts: only we are foolish enough to hurt others even if it hurts us as much, or more. This isn’t technically true– swans are known to engage in spiteful behavior, and I think chimps got caught at it once or twice as well.
Still, it’s worth bearing in mind when you think of the fact that a 100-year-old adoption-oriented charity has shut down rather than comply with state anti-discrimination law.
See the Slate article on family law and gay parents for more detail on what it means to seek “the best interests of the children,” as the legal standard specifies we must do in these sorts of cases.
First: 85 percent of US troops in Iraq say that the war is mainly to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks. There are no words.
DeLong quotes Krugman’s pay-only column about how Bush and his lackeys equate disagreement and warnings as disloyalty, and how that’s lead to bad programs badly implemented, and thence to the predicted bad results.
What hurts me the most is that this kind of incompetence, even though it hurts and kills people, is not a crime.
I often run into people I haven’t seen in awhile, and they say to me, “You weren’t kidding about that mustache.”
No, I was not. Nor am I kidding about the existence of a store called “Lucky Wang.”
Erin Flynn is a Cambridge-based illustrator and artist. Incredibly interesting drawings.
I’m tempted to compile a list of the best Vice-President-shoots-some-dude jokes I’ve seen, but with the exception of the one about Ted Kennedy (“Sure, I’ll go hunting with you, but I drive”) and the one about gun control (“You know, you’re right, no gun control law will stop dangerous criminals from getting guns”) the vast majority are over at Tod Goldberg’s site, which features the perfectly aimed one-liner “Say what you will about Dick Cheney, but shooting a lawyer in the face is a strong message about tort reform.”
Of course the Daily Show clips are priceless, but that goes without saying, doesn’t it?
Secretly Ironic 