Oh, no, not the Prius too!

This is a brand crash of Tiger Woods dimension.

"The odd genius of the ad is that it is so weird that you will click on it online, and bloggers like me will link to it. The message is delivered."

Time Magazine's Michael Scherer passes on viral video then updates to act as if he's enlightening us about the fascinating phenomenon of viral video — as opposed to — oh, I don't know — apologizing for being an idiot.

"We exist! We exist! Please, let this mean something!"

Stephen Colbert being especially brilliant:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Cognoscor Ergo Sum
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Motivational...

... manslaughter.

Why Clarence Thomas went to law school: "I was lost."

Said yesterday, in answer to a student's question, at Stetson University College of Law.

"If the Democrats let health care reform die, they'll be looking at a turnout cataclysm."

Says Jonathan Chait, reading the tea leaves that come in the form of the Illinois primary results. ("GOP primary turnout is up 11% over 2004. Democratic turnout has dropped 29%.)

Liberal commentators doggedly push the theory that whatever happens, the heathcare bill must be passed. Ezra Klein works that theme here:

Today's televised session between Barack Obama and the Senate Democrats wasn't encouraging to those of us hoping the Democrats are spending their time worrying about how to pass the health care bill. There were questions on the deficit, on jobs, on partisanship, on energy and on judicial nominees. No one bothered to ask about health-care reform....

To Obama's credit, he valiantly twisted questions on things like jobs and partisanship into opportunities to talk about health-care reform....

If we don't pass this, he told the assembled Democrats, "I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys."...

Without healthcare, you don't know the difference between Republicans and Democrats?! There are 2 ways to respond to that:

1. National security, taxes, social issues, that $3.8 trillion budget, etc. etc.

2. Since people are drifting toward the Republicans, won't being more like them help you (despite what Jonathan Chait says)?

"[T]echnology has subverted the original idea of America."

Says Robert Wright:

The founders explicitly rejected direct democracy — in which citizens vote on every issue — in favor of representative democracy. The idea was that legislators would convene at a safe remove from voters and, thus insulated from the din of narrow interests and widespread but ephemeral passions, do what was in the long-term interest of their constituents and of the nation. Now information technology has stripped away the insulation that physical distance provided back when information couldn’t travel faster than a horse.

Yes, one wonders what the Framers might have thought of free speech.

Do we Americans really want our President doing "Question Time"?

I wonder how that would go. Should the President be spending his time like that? Would it undermine the independence of the second branch of government? This isn't Britain, you know. I think we should be careful about getting too jazzed up about Obama's performance at the Republican retreat last week.

"The thing that made Friday interesting was the spontaneity," Axelrod said. "If you slip into a kind of convention, then conventionality will overtake the freshness of that."

Yes, the Prez would get unfresh. That is: tired. And we need him to be doing things that are not done in front of cameras. American politics is already too much of a show. That's why we ended up with Obama as President in the first place! 

Anyway, there's this petition, "Demand Question Time." David Corn, Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief, says:

"None of us are naive and believe that implementing Question Time will cure what ails our country and our political process. We do realize that if QT does become a Washington routine, politicians and their aides will do what they can to game it to their advantage. But even though there are problems with the presidential debates — which have been taken over by the political parties and a corporate-sponsored commission — those events still have value. If you want more Question Time — even if only for its entertainment value — you can saddle up with dozens (and maybe it will turn into hundreds, thousands, and millions) of your fellow Americans in calling on our elected representatives to show us their best stuff on a regular basis."

That's an endorsement? It has some value. Bleh.

"[T]he BBC has become this country's most pernicious climate-change-denying media outlet in the UK."

"The BBC is continually painted as some liberal-left dominated haven, but it remains deeply institutional and rightwing."

Abdulmutallab is talking to the FBI.

FBI agents traveled to Nigeria and enlisted the help of his relatives, who "disagreed with his efforts to blow up American targets."

ADDED: Let's not forget all that criticism about telling Abdulmutallab about his Miranda rights:

Why are we reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights instead of taking him somewhere and forcibly finding out where he got the explosive underwear and whatever else he might know about Al Qaeda? Isn’t this, as well as the forthcoming federal court trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, proof that the Obama administration doesn’t really regard the war on terrorism as a war?...

Republican critics like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich have raised these questions in the past few days....

There were ways, apparently consistent with American criminal procedural rights, to milk Abdulmutallab for information. If the first-linked story is true, the success of the method used must be acknowledged and taken into account by those who say that terrorist suspects/enemy combatants must be treated differently from those accused of ordinary crimes.

Did any newspaper report what Ayaan Hirsi Ali actually said in her lecture at the University of Wisconsin last night?

If I had attended — and I'm sorry I didn't — I would have taken copious notes and reported details of the things she said. I would like to read a report like that, and I certainly can't find anything in the local papers. The stories all report what they reported before she spoke, that she's controversial and various people don't think she should have been invited at all:

The decision to invite Hirsi Ali and pay her $10,000 speaking fee drew criticism from both Muslim student organizations and other groups.

"I see this as people slowly becoming suspicious of Islam, and suspicion leads to hatred and much worse things," said Rashid Dar, president of UW-Madison's Muslim Student Association.

"You shouldn't take Muslims as a subversive fifth column group that is planning to one day take over and start cutting hands off. We're normal people, too."

I think that article has more about what the students think than what the distinguished lecturer thinks. And it's not even what the students thought of what she said in the lecture. It's what they thought all along. And, ironically, what they keep saying is that they are afraid of generalizations and stereotypes. Why don't they pay attention to specific things that she, an individual, said in the particular talk that she gave to them?

ADDED: Isthmus has some detail about the talk:

She said there is a distinction between Muslim believers and the ideology of Islam, the latter of which she finds fault with. But she said that in the West, Islam has attained a special sort of protection, with intellectuals afraid to question or criticize the religion’s beliefs.....

She said that Islam would benefit from scrutiny and criticism and looking at other cultures and belief systems. “The Muslim mind can be opened by looking outside of Islam and then retaining what people find valuable about Islam, like hospitality,” she said. “I don’t think gazing at the Koran for hours and hours can help that.”

And she, added, “The emancipation of the Muslim woman is the key to reforming Islam.”

AND: The Badger Herald embedded the video of the entire lecture, which you can watch here.

ALSO: The Badger Herald has a pretty detailed report.

How much is the Obama adminstration doing to change Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

I'm following the news stories, but, I realize, I've been resisting blogging about this because I can't figure out what is being changed. This whole we'll get back to you in a year business strikes me as a political feint. And there's:

The Senate, which invited Gates and Mullen to testify Tuesday, is moving cautiously. Worried that they lack the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster, Senate leaders said they might try to add a temporary moratorium on discharges of gay service members to a defense spending bill, whose passage would require only majority approval.

It's Congress that must act to change the policy, so the Obama administration can get out whatever message it thinks sounds best without dealing with any real change. (Ah, change. That word! It's so wonderful as an abstract idea.)

If, marrying, you decline to forsake all others, does that limit what your spouse is allowed to feel when you have an other?

Glenn Reynolds notes that Governor Sanford's wife says he insisted on taking the vow to be faithful out of their wedding ceremony:

Okay, I remember going to a wedding back in the ’70s where a couple read vows they’d written themselves, making clear that they weren’t sexually exclusive. And yet, not too many years later, she was royally unhappy with his philandering. Was that unfair?

I don't know the precise scope of the understanding that this couple had when they got married. It wasn't a vow to gladly accept your partner's outside relationships, was it? It was the absence — or rejection — of a vow. But why? Perhaps it was some hippie-style amorphous philosophical belief that one person can't really own the other or that no one at a given time can honestly say for sure where they will be for the rest of their lives.

Maybe, if he never agreed to that particular rule, there's some argument against saying that Mark Sanford cheated. But what can it mean to say that it's "unfair" for her to feel "unhappy"? You feel what you feel, and your actions based on that feeling might be unfair, but if he chose a marriage that did not bind him, why was she bound to anything? She had her feelings, and like him, she gets to go where her emotions lead.

At the Truth-or-Kid Hotel...

... do you want to tell the truth this time... or kid?

Do not befriend...

... a goose.

Rare games.

Sarah Palin wants Rahm Emanuel fired...

... for calling someone "retarded" — actually, "fucking retarded."

Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the “N-word” or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities – and the people who love them – is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking. 

This is a good place for Palin to posture, but, seriously, I think that anyone who takes this trumped-up offense seriously is... pretty silly.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes to Wisconsin.

She'll speak on campus tonight as part of our Distinguished Lecturer Series... and it hasn't been uncontroversial.

A Drudgtaposition about streetfighting and a disquisition about "Disney Eyes."

Let's analyze Drudge's photos and headline juxtaposition for the Oscars:

I think he thinks it's funny to picture these 4 characters in a street fight. I'm saying 4, because I'm not counting the secondary figures in the bottom photographs, especially that female "Avatar" character, whom we don't enjoy picturing in a street fight, for reasons hilariously well-stated here:



(More of that sort of movie analysis at the RedLetterMedia YouTube page.)

The terrible things those "self-identifed" Republicans think...

... according to a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll. Yes, we have to stop first and wonder how good are the Daily Kos/Research 2000 pollsters. I picked up this story at Talking Points Memo, where there's no information about why I should trust this poll. How did they locate their 2,000 "self-identified" Republicans, who, TPM tells us represent "the psyche of the minority party's base"?

And I know that plenty of conservatives won't call themselves "Republicans." I'd like to see a poll that delves into the reasons people who call themselves "Republicans" choose to call themselves "Republicans" and why others reject the label, despite being conservative.

Also, I wonder if some people who aren't conservative at all lie to pollsters — especially a poll with a lefty name like "Daily Kos" — so they can skew the results and give those folks the results they imagine the poll is designed to produce: that non-liberals are evil/stupid.

Nevertheless, let's read the results of this poll:

• 39% of Republicans want President Obama to be impeached.

• 63% think Obama is a socialist.

• Only 42% believe Obama was born in the United States.

• 21% think ACORN stole the 2008 election -- that is, that Obama didn't actually win it, and isn't legitimately the president, with 55% saying they are "not sure."...

• 53% think Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama to be president.

• 23% want to secede from the United States.

• 73% think gay people should not be allowed to teach in public schools....

• 31% want contraception to be outlawed.

Wonderful anti-Republican PR results. They justify the fears people who are not Republicans have about the Republican Party. I don't like thinking people are this extreme, and I wish I could see how the questions were worded. The full survey (and the questions) were not out at the time TPM put up this post, and releasing the results in this form reinforces my suspicion that the motivation of the poll is to generate anti-Republican PR.

How would you word questions to ask "self-identified" Democrats if it were your goal to generate anti-Democrat PR? How would you smoke out all the flaky and stupid suggestions they'd go along with if a pollster offered it in a rational-sounding form and didn't interject amazement at the answers? Then how would you reword the questions to publish the results to make the best propaganda for your side?

(I once submitted to a poll where I was asked various questions about abortion rights, and the pollster started coming back with "Really?" and "Are you sure?" in a shaming way that made it obvious they were trying to get people to say they supported laws restricting abortion so they could attack some politician — probably Russ Feingold. It was really unprofessional!)

ADDED: Here's the Kos post announcing the results of the poll. It begins with this mind-boggling sentence: "As I've mentioned before, I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book, American Taliban, which catalogues the ways in which modern-day conservatives share the same agenda as radical Jihadists in the Islamic  world." It turns out this poll was designed to help him with that theory.

How independent and reliable is Research 2000?

Sir Ian McKellan explains what acting is.

A brilliant bit from the Ricky Gervais sitcom — not to be confused with a "shitcom" — "Extras," the first 2 seasons of which we've been watching/rewatching on HBO Video on Demand.

ADDED: The source for that coinage:

Darren: It’s shit. It’s a shit sitcom.

Andy: It’s a shitcom.

They're about to announce the Oscar nominations!

Let's watch together.

ADDED: Very interesting having 10 Best Picture nominees. I cheered when they said "A Serious Man." I loved that one. "The Blind Side" is considered a surprise nomination for picture. (The Best Actress nomination for Sandra Bullock was expected.) Here's the trailer. And here's the "Serious Man" trailer.

Since there are only 5 nominees in the director category, it makes it kind of obvious what the 5 Best Picture nominees would be if there were only 5. The upstarts are conspicuous. By the way, there are 2 "up" movies in the Picture category: "Up" and "Up in the Air." "Up" is the upstart. It's also nominated in the separate best animated movie category. "Up" needs to get down and stop being such a category hog.

At the Fading Light Inn...

... we can spend the waning moments of the day together.

"Cognitive fluency."

People like to think about things that are easy to think about.

Because it shapes our thinking in so many ways, fluency is implicated in decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we find attractive to the candidates we vote for - in short, in any situation where we weigh information. It’s a key part of the puzzle of how feelings like attraction and belief and suspicion work....

Interesting. Now, how do you want to use this?

It made me think of this song:

ROD STEWART - Reason To Believe en Yahoo! Video

O'Keefe on Hannity.

Explaining the Landrieu incident.

The link goes to Gawker, which strains to make every little thing sound awful, but the video is there. I thought Jim O'Keefe did a good job justifying himself while showing some remorse related to security issues. He admitted that he needed to think more carefully in the future about how he does his exposés, but he defended the practice of tricking people to do an investigation. I note that the government tricks people when it does undercover investigations, so how wrong is it to pretend to be someone you are not to try to find out something valuable?

ADDED: This seems important:

O'Keefe... was "framed" by the media and the U.S. attorney's office, Andrew Breitbart, publisher of BigGovernment.com, told Fox News Monday.

Hours later, Jim Letten, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, recused himself from the case....

"James O'Keefe sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney, while the U.S. attorney leaked the information about his arrest, helping the media frame it as 'Watergate Junior,'" Breitbart said.

The charge against O'Keefe is entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony. What felony does the government say they intended to commit?

"Jon [Stewart] has always been a crypto-neocon."

"Could he be coming out of the closet? ... A neoconservative is a liberal mugged by reality."

Bill Kristol comments to Howard Kurtz who's trying to figure out what it means that Jon Stewart is making fun of Barack Obama.

I'd say it mainly means that Barack Obama is President of the United States. "The Daily Show" isn't going to work unless it makes fun of the powerful.

On not getting married.

"I don't see the point. We are married for all intents and purposes, everything's shared, and actually our fake marriage has lasted longer than a real one... but there's no point in us having an actual ceremony before the eyes of God because there is no God."

"Upon entering the theatre, two understudies/ushers arbitrarily chose audience members to be 'frisked.'"

"This theatrical choice is meant to prepare the audience for the show, but its use in 'Fat Men in Skirts' ends up making many of the audience members scared and uncomfortable."

At the Irony Café...

... you can search for new wrinkles of incongruity.

"If you thought those were ironic smiles and hoots of approval in the Congressional audience, you were right."

Ah! So now irony may be hooted. In Congress.

***

I'd love to witness a hooting Senator wearing an acid-washed denim suit and affecting the stylish air of JFK.

"Acid-washed is an 'ironic' fashion, never meant to flatter."

"... I am guessing that your boyfriend is one of the many people in the world who believes that irony is an attitude that is best expressed orally, not sartorially."

"Ironically, the part of driving that people fear the most turns out to be the safest part."

"... And here’s an even more striking irony: one of the major things that makes highways scary is also a major thing that makes them safe."

"If you believe that history is all about irony, paradox and unforeseen consequences, Howard Zinn is not your man."

"If you believe that history is the eternal struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and you like to cheer for the underdog, Zinn should be your hero."

Joseph J. Ellis, one of 6 historians opining on the value of the newly dead author's "People's History of the United States.

"We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique."

"Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony—he himself now owns up to the 'remoteness and detachment' of his governing style. We don't have in this republic the technocratic model of the European states, where a bureaucratic elite disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will. Mr. Obama was smitten with his own specialness."

Fouad Ajami analyzes the rise and fall of Obama. Are we ready to say the Obama has fallen? Is lack of irony the problem? Was it our unEuropeanness that defeated him?

At the Orchid Club...

... we could tell the truth. Or kid.

Skiing.

[Click for video.]

"There're some who say, 'Yes, banks are skanky'..."

"But we must stick with Ben Bernanke."

Don Surber recounts the 2008 electoral college using Obama's current state-by-state approval numbers...

... and figures Obama would lose if the election were held today.

But approval numbers don't answer the question whether Obama would win when pitted against a particular candidate. Even if a poll asked people whether they'd vote for Obama over an unnamed Republican candidate, those imaginary opponents tend to do better than real candidates. You've got to account for all the voters who disapprove of both candidates but still have to vote for someone.

Just how unscientific was that U.N. climate panel?

Very.

Once airline security uses its machines to see us all naked...

...the terrorists will have compensated by having their bombs surgically implanted.

"[M]ale bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants. Experts said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body before the wound was stitched up like a normal operation incision and allowed to heal. A shaped charge of 8oz of PETN can penetrate five inches of armour and would easily blow a large hole in an airliner. Security sources said the explosives would be detonated by the bomber using a hypodermic syringe to inject TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) through their skin into the explosives sachet."

So all we passengers need to do is keep an eye out for other passengers aiming hypodermic needles at their big breasts (or asses), and everything will be just fine. Unless you care that the authorities saw you naked. Better get used to it! This is war.

"Obama is always at his best when his back is against the wall, and he is perversely content when he has the challenge of the lion’s den."

Just purely on the level of analogies: back against the wall in the lion's den is not going to work out well for anybody.

Wielding that analogy is Maureen Dowd, whose next line is "He may lapse back into his Camus coma at any moment."

That's her first (and only) mention of Camus in her column (which also has "Camus" in the title, "Camus Fired Up"). It's anyone's guess what Camus— presumably the existentialist Albert Camus — and comas have to do with entering lions' dens, except to say that the lion would have an easy time with a comatose intruder. (The lion's den in question is that Republican retreat Obama favored with this presence. )

I'm thinking Camus was dredged up for the sake of alliteration. (Dowd downfall?) First the coma, then the Camus. Note that Frank Rich's NYT column today is "The State of the Union Is Comatose." That coma is contagious.

Now, Albert Camus has appeared in Maureen Dowd's column before, but not because he was a synonym for existentialism/ennui/whatever that begins with the letter C. In "Camus Comes to Crawford," she wrote about Camus because George Bush was reading "The Stranger."

It takes a while to adjust to the idea of W., who has created chaos trying to impose moral order on the globe, perusing Camus, who wrote about the eternal frustration of moral order in human affairs. What does W., the archenemy of absurdity as a view of life, kindle to in C., the apostle of absurdity as a view of life? What can W., the born-again monogamist, spark to in C., the amorous atheist? In some ways, Mr. Bush is supremely not a Camus man. Camus hated the blindness caused by ideology, and Mr. Bush wallows in it. Camus celebrated lucidity while the president keeps seeing only what he wants to see.

With that insight into what Camus means to Maureen, perhaps you are in a better position to delve into the significance of Camus to Obama's "coma." Perhaps not!

***

Back in 2006, Bush's reading of "The Stranger" inspired me to read it. My summary of the book:

An ordinary man receives the jolt: his mother has died. His response is ordinary but also extraordinary. He smokes, drinks coffee, and seeks new love, real sensation in his ordinary world. He seems numb and inexpressive, and he follows various characters who lead him into their more fully formed lives. Marie offers love and marriage. He follows without seeing the importance of it. Raymond draws him into jealousy and revenge, and he goes there too, and doesn't see a reason not to. Killing a man or not killing a man seem like equal chances on a coin flip, and, seeing life that way, he kills a man. On trial, his emptiness and his search for sensation, for some feeling of living, become the argument for the prosecution, the reason why he is guilty. Condemned, he thinks it through. He sees the significance of life, even a short life, even a hated life, and finally recognizes that he exists, which is enough, which is everything.

If a President of the United States were anything like that.... we'd be up against the wall in the lion's den.

"I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use."

"And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense....  I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may."

From the cover letter of Leonardo da Vinci, age 30.

Is President Obama the victim of "the stubborn complexity of his national security inheritance"?

That's Scott Shane's angle in the NYT:

For much of President Obama’s first year in office, his national security team worked to devise a secure plan to send dozens of Yemeni detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the largest single group at the prison camp — home to Yemen, perhaps to a rehabilitation program....

Since November, the administration had been preparing to move the highest-profile Guantánamo prisoners — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four accomplices accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — to Manhattan for a federal criminal trial.

It seems to me that the President is the victim of his own ideas about how to do things differently. If he had graciously accepted the inheritance left by George Bush, he wouldn't have had either of these problems. He squandered an inheritance that he failed to value!

Bush — despite his reputation for simplicity — did understand the complexity of the problem, and he had a solution. There was stability. After posturing about "change" in his political campaign, Barack Obama seemed to think that he could apply the immense power he had won to changing things in the real world. And there is no blaming Bush for failing to know the difference between what sounds good and what works well.

George Bush — the extreme contrast to Barack Obama — knew that he was doing a lot of things that didn't sound good and left him open to harsh criticism, but he made a decision early on to accept that and to do what he thought was right. He didn't get enough credit for that. Maybe he will some day. But he also avoided the torrent of justified criticism that would have fallen on him if there had been further terrorist attacks.

Fortunately, there is a limit to how far Obama will go in his dream world of "hope and change." I voted for Obama, but the Obama I voted for was Obama the Pragmatist. I'm glad to see OTP finally emerging, even if part of his pragmatism is blaming Bush. But he will throw that aside if it doesn't work, which it shouldn't. For now, I'm glad he's making some better decisions... even as those freed detainees roam around Yemen.

ADDED: Click and scroll here for all my "Obama the Pragmatist" posts. Like, remember in August 2008 when Joe Biden assured us that Obama "is a clear-eyed pragmatist who will get the job done"? And then there was the time I said:

Forced to choose between Clinton and Obama [in the Wisconsin primary], I voted for Obama — even though he stated positions that were farther from what I want than Clinton's — because I thought he had more mental flexibility and pragmatism, that he was more likely absorb and process evidence and advice and exercise sound judgment.

"Come the revolution, we'll own that place."

A union dream achieved... and turned to ashes.

Is the Tea Party movement "showing better political judgment than either of the two major political parties"?

Glenn Reynolds seems to think so. Of course, the Tea Party movement doesn't have to do all the things the Republicans and Democrats need to do. It's a lot easier to be appealing when you aren't sitting in any positions of power. It's all free speech and reaction to what other people are doing.

By the way, I wonder how many people think "the Tea Party" is the name of a political party. Right now, you have to refer to "the Tea Party movement" if you want to talk about something more than an individual rally. (I think!) If it actually became a party, would it be the Tea Party Party?

WiFi networks names are trying to scare you "Imunder-yourbed," "normanbates," "bedroomspy"...

... or tell you something "Turndownyourmusic,""stopsmokingweed"....

"We had a neighbor who my roommate John had a crush on, so I changed our Wi-Fi name to 'JohnwantsSarah'"...

At the Sunset Café...

... we see the sunset....



... observed by the photographer ...



... observed by her photographer....

"This reminds me of the final scene in the movie Titanic."

Lefauxfrog leaps over the mental block I had when I saw that picture on the White House Flickr page:



It's a spoiler, of course, but the main character in "Titanic" has died and is entering the afterlife:



Eerie!

Samuel Alito and John Roberts experience ecstasy, each in his own way.

Alito, so serenely beatific and floating in the moment ...



Roberts, beset with inner turmoil and straining to keep himself clamped in ...



... as the President arrived to deliver his State of the Union Address:



And so it would be not be the model of judicial restraint, Chief Justice Roberts, whose personal reaction would break the solemn decorum of the holy chamber. It would be Justice Alito, in a moment of selfless abandon, whose spirit would burst forth — open the floodgates — in a harrowing crisis of faith — the dark night of the soul that says not true.

President Obama goes to the GOP retreat and purports to promote the "absolutely essential... the process of disagreement."

I said I was going to watch the the video of Obama's speech to the GOP retreat and the the Q&A session. (Transcript.) Here's my edit with commentary, beginning with the frist thing that made me laugh:

I've said this before, but I'm a big believer not just in the value of a loyal opposition, but in its necessity. Having differences of opinion, having a real debate about matters of domestic policy and national security; that's not something that's only good for our country, it's absolutely essential.

It's only through the process of disagreement and debate that bad ideas get tossed out and good ideas get refined and made better. 

Would the bad ideas have been tossed out of the health-care plan if the congressional Democrats had gone through a "process of disagreement" that included the Republicans? It's way too late to talk about some kind of "absolutely essential" process that the Democrats never even considered following back when they thought they had an invincible supermajority. Republican support is a necessity now, but not because of some dialectical ideal of policymaking proceeding by debate. You need the votes now, and you didn't then.

The only thing I don't want -- and here I am listening to the American people, and I think they don't want either -- is for Washington to continue being so Washington-like.

The people reacted and are continuing to react to what the Democrats did with their supermajority. The objection isn't to discord and obstruction. The objection is to the rule of a single party rule that has seen fit to ram through policies people don't want.

You're telling the Republicans to be more acquiescent, right when they are well-positioned to win elections in the fall. And isn't that what the people want, a better balance of conservatives and liberals in Congress? And isn't that the way to get to real bipartisanship, with a second party that has some voting power? You're only saying what you are now because Scott Brown won in Massachusetts and took away the overweening power of the Democrats in the Senate.

... I don't believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security.

But you really are focusing on reelecting Democrats here. It is about their job security, as you see Republican challengers on the horizon.

Let's dig into the Q&A:

PENCE: ... Republicans offered a stimulus bill.... It cost half as much as the Democratic proposal in Congress. And using your economic analyst models, it would have created twice the jobs at half the cost. It essentially was across-the-board tax relief, Mr. President.... [W]ould you be willing to consider embracing... the kind of across-the-board tax relief that Republicans have advocated...?

I cut down that question to its essence, so I've made it look easier to see than it was, but does Obama answer the question? The closest he gets is:

OBAMA: ... 95 percent of working Americans got tax cuts. Small businesses got tax cuts. Large businesses got help in terms of their depreciation schedules... [T]he notion that I would somehow resist doing something that cost half as much but would produce twice as many jobs -- why would I resist that? I wouldn't. I mean, that's my point, is that -- I am not an ideologue.... The problem is, I couldn't find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made.... There may be other ideas that you guys have....

Pence cuts through the verbiage, and restates he question clearly:

PENCE: Mr. President, would -- will you consider supporting across-the-board tax relief, as President Kennedy did?

Obama's answer:

OBAMA: ... I think is important to note, you know, what you may consider across-the-board tax cuts could be, for example, greater tax cuts for people who are making a billion dollars.... [a]nd... if you're calling for just across-the-board tax cuts and then, on the other hand, saying that we're somehow going to balance our budget, I'm going to want to take a look at your math and see how that -- how that works. Because the issue of deficit and debt is another area where there has been a tendency for some inconsistent statements.

AKA "no."

RYAN: ... [W]hy not start freezing spending now? And would you support a line-item veto and helping us get a vote on it in the House?

OBAMA: ... [I]f you either increased taxes or significantly lowered spending when the economy remains somewhat fragile, that that would have a destimulative effect and potentially you'd see a lot of folks losing business, more folks potentially losing jobs. That would be a mistake when the economy has not fully taken off....

With respect to the line-item veto, I actually -- I think there's not a president out there that wouldn't love to have it....

Obama cuts Paul Ryan off when he starts to explain why this new version of the line-item veto is unconstitutional. (The Clinton-Era Line Item Veto Act was unconstiutional.)

CHAFFETZ: [W]hen you stood up before the American people multiple times and said you would broadcast the health care debates on C-SPAN, you didn't. I was disappointed, and I think a lot of Americans were disappointed.

You said you weren't going to allow lobbyists in the senior-most positions within your administration, and yet you did. I applauded you when you said it, and disappointed when you didn't.

You said you'd go line by line through the health care debate -- or through the health care bill. And there were six of us, including Dr. Phil Roe, who sent you a letter and said, "We would like to take you up on that offer. We'd like to come." We never heard a letter. We never got a call. We were never involved in any of those discussions.....

OBAMA: ... I think it's a legitimate criticism. So on that one, I take responsibility.

All right! Guilty as charged. But are you going to do anything about it now? That's what "responsibility" really means. Not just, yep, we did that.

BLACKBURN: [T]hank you for acknowledging that we have ideas on health care. Because, indeed, we do have ideas. We have plans. We have over 50 bills. We have lots of amendments that would bring health care ideas to the forefront....

And if those good ideas aren't making it to you, maybe it's the House Democrat leadership that is an impediment instead of a conduit....

OBAMA: Actually, I've gotten many of your ideas. I've taken a look at them...  If you can show me and if I get confirmation from health care experts, people who know the system and how it works...  I'm game....

If you look at the package that we've presented -- and there's some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating -- we were in the process of eliminating.

For example -- for example, you know, we said from the start that -- that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you've got, you can keep it; that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decisionmaking. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.

Snuck in...

[F]rankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot.

That made me laugh... but he just admitted that things got snuck in, so that does sound like a plot, and "Bolshevik" is just a funny way to say: I know this looks really left-wing to you. The question remains: Is it?

[W]e've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality.

I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything, whether it's on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

Now, Obama is known for his rhetoric, and any politician uses rhetoric. The Republicans have to say too much government.  It's very effective, and it matches their ideology. Of course, it's annoying to the Democrats.

It's not just on your side, by the way. It's -- it's on our side as well. This is part of what's happened in our politics, where we demonize the other side so much that when it comes to actually getting things done, it becomes tough to do.

That's a fine point, but scrape away the nasty tone that's sometimes there, and politicians still need to state their ideological positions clearly. People need to know that the 2 parties are different. If Obama really believes in the ideal he stated at the outset, that there is an essential process of "real debate about matters of domestic policy and national security," then there needs to be crisp definition of conservatism and liberalism.

If you're going to say people need to be compliant and lawmaking shouldn't be tough, then you don't what happened to your ideal of the "absolutely essential... the process of disagreement"?

John Yoo and Jay Bybee are cleared of anything but "poor judgment" in a report that was "softened" by a senior Justice Department official.

Newsweek reveals the findings of the report from the Office of Professional Responsibility:

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) ...

A Justice official declined to explain why David Margolis softened the original finding, but noted that he is a highly respected career lawyer who acted without input from Holder....

So it wasn't a political decision, we're being told. It wasn't that the Obama administration would like  the "torture memo" issue to go away. But consider this new development in the larger context:

For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset...

And the 9/11 trial isn't going to be in NYC anymore.

Speaking of Shakespeare, what are the theater snacks? Oysters!

Oysters, crab, sturgeon, mussels, whelks, periwinkles, dried raisins and figs, hazelnuts, plums, cherries and peaches, blackberry and elderberry pies.

For the groundlings and stinkards, it was mostly oysters, which was what poor people ate back then. Oysters were the popcorn.

Did Shakespeare ever refer to oysters? Of course, including the most famous oyster-expression: "The world's mine oyster." But there are a bunch more:

I did her wrong/Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?/No/Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house/Why?/Why, to put ’s head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case.

I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I’ll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. 

Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench...

He kiss’d, the last of many doubled kisses/This orient pearl... ‘Good friend,’ quoth he/‘Say, the firm Roman to great Egypt sends/This treasure of an oyster....

He is my father, sir; and, sooth to say/In countenance somewhat doth resemble you/As much as an apple doth an oyster, and all one.

Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house, as your pearl in your foul oyster.

You can see they didn't think much of oysters then. Presumably, the oysters/shells were thrown at the actors, and these lines inspired humorous punctuating splats of oyster onto the faces of hams.

The people instinctively know what Caesar knew: Don't trust skinny men.

In Shakespeare's telling of the tale, Julius Caesar says:

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

And according to a new study, people consider fat men in politics more "reliable, honest and even more inspiring" than thin men.

[Dr. Elizabeth Miller," a political scientist at the University of Missouri and a co-author] split 120 volunteers into four groups. Each group was presented with descriptions and photos of four separate phony candidates who had the same gender and body type: obese male, skinny male, obese female, skinny female. Within each group, each phony candidate's political views differed.

The study subjects then rated the candidates based on a series of criteria, including honesty and ability to perform. The obese males were viewed 6% more positively than skinny males, while skinny women were viewed 5% more positively than their full-figured counterparts. Overall, obese females were viewed 10% less favorably than obese males.

Yes, the preference was for non-skinny men. Women still need to be thin. "Let me have men about me that are fat." Men. What we trust in men and what we trust in women are 2 different things, then and now.

I'm going to write about Obama at the GOP retreat, but only after tossing a bludgeon of law professor debate at Marc Ambinder.

There's a lot of enthusiasm about Obama's appearance at the GOP retreat — enthusiasm among Obama supporters. I skimmed the transcript late last night without finding something I could say. Obama seemed to be haranguing the Republicans about bipartisanship again, as he did during the State of the Union address, and I didn't see what this added, other than that it was nice/bold of him to show up at their event — give them some face time. But obviously, he's reaching out now because he needs them, as he did not before. Why, then, should I be impressed, and, more importantly, why should the Republicans help him now?

But given the amount of enthusiasm — e.g., Marc Ambinder gushing about "An Amazing Moment" — I decided — now that it's not late at night anymore — to take the time to watch the video and, as I go, blog from the transcript. Since that will take a little time, let me end this post now, so you can get the conversations started. Here's the video of the speech, and here's the Q&A section.

To give you something to chew on, here's Ambinder:

The moment President Obama began his address to Republicans in Baltimore today, I began to receive e-mails from Democrats: Here's an except from one of them: "I don't know whether to laugh or cry that it took a f$$@&$* year for Obama to step into the ring and start throwing some verbal blows... I'm definitely praying at mass on Sunday morning that this Obama doesn't take another 12 month vacation." 

Well, that's a funny contrast to Obama's big theme of bipartisanship!

This e-mail comes from a very influential Democrat. 

Hmm. Who? Some Catholic. Some Catholic who's praying to God that his guys kick the other guys' asses. 

Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months. Debating a law professor is kind of foolish...

Heh heh... bring it on, baby!

... the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama's weakness -- his penchant for nuance -- into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president. (By the way: can we stop with the Obama needs a teleprompter jokes?) 

Okay, I will be looking for the strengthful nuance that knocks down all arguments.

More than the State of the Union -- or on top of the State of the Union -- this may be a pivotal moment for the future of the presidential agenda on Capitol Hill. (Democrats are loving this. Chris Hayes, The Nation's Washington bureau chief, tweeted that he hadn't liked Obama more since the inauguration.)

Got it. The Prez's people loved it. Maybe this wasn't really about inspiring bipartisanship but firing up the base. That's fine. If he does anything well, he deserves credit for the thing he does well. Let's just be clear about what the thing is.

During the presidential campaign, it was John McCain who proposed a form of the British Prime Ministers' questions for the president. It was derided as a gimmick. This is no gimmick. I have not seen a better and perhaps more productive political discussion in this country in...a long time. 90 minutes worth!

Like the spending freeze, it was a joke when it was McCain's idea.

Maybe since Al Gore debated Ross Perot on NAFTA. Republicans may have wished they had spoken to John McCain about what happened to him in the presidential debates before they decided to broadcast this session. 

No, it's the Democrats who shut down the cameras when they think things won't look pretty.

The president looked genuinely engaged, willing to discuss things. Democrats believe that he tossed away the GOP talking points and lack of real plans into a bludgeon against them. 

How do you toss away the lack of something into a bludgeon? To be fair, it was the "lack of real plans." There could have been some fake plans that, when tossed away... but even if the packet of fake plans hit somebody, it wouldn't feel like a bludgeon. Maybe paper cuts.

"The whole question was structured by a talking point," he told Jeb Hensarling....

"He"? Who's "he"? Obama? That Catholic guy? (And sorry about that last link. I thought it was "Hensnarling.") And what "whole question"? Is that a way to refer to all the questions?And is Ambinder's whole blog post copied (sloppily) from a Democratic talking point?

UPDATE: Here's the post I promised to write.