A clown in tights

More from the Bill Shatner poetry beat, plus ballet. Huh?

Dreamland

Chris Bodenner, guest blogging on the Dish, highlights a quote that does a better job than anything I've heard in capturing the complete ignorance of the right wing, in a quote that would be hysterical if it wasn't so freightening:

“I’ll be danged if I am going to give up my Social Security because of socialism,” councilman LeRoy Schaffer, addressing Michele Bachmann at a town hall.

Fortunate Son

Ted Kennedy has passed away. Kennedy's passing comes on the one-year anniversary of this speech on the floor of the Democratic National Convention.



"For me, this is a season of hope - new hope for a just and fair prosperity for the many and not just for the few. New hope - and this is the cause of my life - new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American, North, South, East, West, young and old, will have decent quality health care as a fundamental right and not as a privilege."

Perfect wife

My wife isn't perfect, but she is the best person I know. In her honor, here's another installment in my ongoing series of Shatnerian beat poetry.

Passing Through

I will leave it to Matt Yglesias and Ryan Avent to tear into all of the logical flaws in Robert Samuelson's Washington Post anti-high speed rail hackery.

Many men running wild

I was actually composing this post in my mind on my flight back home this afternoon, only to discover, via Josh, that Rick Perlstein beat me to it (and, of course, probably did it better). The key, of course, is the ending:

The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest. Latest word is that the enlightened and mild provision in the draft legislation to help elderly people who want living wills -- the one hysterics turned into the "death panel" canard -- is losing favor, according to the Wall Street Journal, because of "complaints over the provision."

Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill -- because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.

Brain sucking wind twinin', hummin' funkenstain

Just checking in quickly from my vacation to point out that John Mica, my Gerrymandered congressman, is a schmuck, a liar and a fool.

Look, it's no surprise that I have policy disagreements with John Mica. But I expect at least a small amount of honesty and decency from my Congressman. I have not voted for the man, but I have defended him on a number of issues, influenced in part by what I perceived as intellectual honesty on the issue of high speed rail.

The reality, however, is that Mica doesn't deserve that graciousness. His support of rail is obviously and simply local politics, because the man has no decency or intellectual honesty. He endorses some of the most vile and obvious lies about some of the most important issues people will face in their lives, just to curry favor and votes from the extremists, helping to conjure up blind and ignorant hatred that is undoubtedly going to lead to violence and which is splitting the country at its seams. And for what? To prevent people from having a basic level of health security? No, that's just a casualty in his political game. Consequences don't matter, other than vote getting and stirring the pot.

Schmuck.

China Doll

Here's some Abby to hold you over while I'm away.

They say he's gone

No guest bloggers, so you'll have to entertain yourselves while I'm on vacation. Check out the blogs on the left for the latest on heath security, crazy birthers, the latest offenses by Eric Cantor, and whatever else happens in my absence.

Take it away, Donald.

Take me all the way back

Conservative apoplexy over Bill Clinton's mission to North Korea to free journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee reflect the complete bankruptcy of the "conservative movement." Read a disturbing summary of the right wing's deranged rantings here (just a taste: "JPod" thinks Ling and Lee should be "held accountable"; Dick Morris thinks they should "live with the consequences"). If you needed any more evidence.

The core of conservatism consist of little more than reflexive hatred of anything done by a Democrat; compound that a hundredfold when the word Clinton can be invoked. Their actual words are beyond parody.

Meanwhile, the rescue, and the homecoming, are extraordinary, an impressive feat by President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and, the man at the center, Bill Clinton. No drama, no bluster, no conceit, just success. Good job.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Nuclear magnetic resonance stomp

Figures. The CERN Large Hadron Collider would have to break a week after I pointed it out as an example of how humanity was still doing great and visionary science.

I had missed Bill Shatner's Tonight Show encore, on the poetry of Sarah Palin's tweets.

Getting Rich

I'm making a Sunday habit of telling you to go to the New York Times and check out what Frank Rich says.

The rice was gone four hours ago

Tom Friedman on Israeli settlements and "settlers" (which term I really dislike), and U.S.-Israel tensions on putting an end to them.

As Bradley Burston, a columnist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, put it last week: “The settlement movement has cost Israel some $100 billion. ... The double standard which for decades has favored settlers with inexpensive housing, heavily subsidized social services, and blind-eye building permits has long been accompanied by a kid-gloves approach regarding settler violence against Palestinians and their property. ... Settlers and settlement planners have covertly bent and distorted zoning procedures, military directives, and government decrees in order to boost settlement, block Palestinian construction, agriculture, and access to employment, and effectively neutralize measures intended to foster Israeli-Palestinian peace progress.”

For years, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the pro-Israel lobby, rather than urging Israel to halt this corrosive process, used their influence to mindlessly protect Israel from U.S. pressure on this issue and to dissuade American officials and diplomats from speaking out against settlements. Everyone in Washington knows this, and a lot of people — people who care about Israel — are sick of it.

The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, captured the we-are-untouchable arrogance of the settlers last week when he quoted Rabbi Yigael Shandorfi, leader of a religious academy at the settlement of Nahliel, calling Mr. Obama in a speech “that Arab they call a president.”