lookin

At last! A contest I've got a shot at winning. Starting at 1440.

It plays for me, both last night and this morning. You might want to try again. Watching Paul Ryan channel the Koch brothers and finding out exactly how the Tea Party got started - and why they're not likely to go away - is worth the price of admission.

If you can watch one hour of TV this week, try this one. It's a stunner. Once you hear these people speak, you'll know what's happened to the American Dream. Whether we can still salvage our democracy remains to be seen.

Careful, you'll give him a big head.

AdamSmith asks his bar-mates if they've tried the chimichanga. They follow him up to his room.

Never mind! That little correction at the end does appear to take some of the steam out of the kettle. Still, it's a juicy tale, and I bet Karl Rove is kicking himself for not knowing about it a week ago. Wonder how long till he declares the election invalid.

Yes, my name really is Lion, but my friends call me Kitty.

They don't call me the Feckless Fawner for nothing!

Not by me he wasn't, and it remains a source of wonder why we have this enduring need to set people up as 'examples' and then rend our garments when they fail to live up to our expectations, as they nearly always do. The guy may be a terrific general, but I've never seen a particularly strong correlation between running a war and being a faithful husband. I wonder if we really believe that "This time it's different! This is a leader who will never cheat on his betrothed. He will always pay his taxes and he will never tell a lie." We must know better. All anyone has to do is look back over this very Forum and we'll find lots of threads dealing with idols who have feet of clay. We can't keep making that same 'mistake' over and over again unless we're just plain nuts. My current working hypothesis is that we set people up as 'examples' just because we get so much pleasure from gloating when they fall off the pedestals we construct for them. If anyone was ever crazy enough to try setting me up on a pedestal, I'd kick the damn thing over before the plaster was dry.

What happens in Kabul stays in Kabul.

I try to stay away from generalities, where discomfort may arise from cloudy intentions, and focus on something more specific. Rather than tell a guy he looks like he works out, I might try telling him he's a dead ringer for a guy in the book I just started reading. If, in spite of my objectivity, he still feels a bit uncomfortable, I find that dropping my voice an octave and adding a friendly "Bro" or "Dude" can sometimes ease any temporary awkwardness.

Not once Paula Broadwell got ahold of it.

Rarely go to a nice restaurant except with friends (see Budget thread) but when I eat alone at my favorite dives, it's always with a book. In fact, it's about the only time I get any pleasure reading done. One thing I enjoy about this thread is imagining living near you good folks and having the occasional dinner out. I'm sure we'd get stared at plenty, but we could always blame it on the other guy.

Tell me! I could shadow mine everywhere it goes and still be home for breakfast.

What struck me about that article is that it could have been written before the election - well before - but it wasn't.

I really enjoyed Cloud Atlas. Didn't see how they could make a movie out of that book, but they did! And I could watch Ben Wishaw for days.

Perhaps I was a Nate Silver follower somewhat early in this election, but MsGuy was the one who showed us how to make money off of it. If we'd bought 75-cent Obama when they were selling it, we'd have had a 33 percent return in a month. And those who had bet a hundred dollars on the chance that Obama would win the Electoral College by 91 points would now have enough to spend an hour with someone like Benjamin Nicholas! Plus twenty bucks worth of Handi Wipes. Talk about cleaning up! (Please note this is not a picture of Benjamin Nicholas and is for illustrative purposes only.)

You've lost Lucky again?? Either you have become rather careless of late, or our friend Lucky is even slipperier than we thought. But I think this thread does highlight the need for a new level of membership. I recall wondering, not so long ago, if I would ever reach the rarefied status of Olympian Member. At a thousand posts, it gave me something to shoot for. Now, even I have reached that exalted level, while others have qualified five times over! Isn't it high time we have a new level of membership to reflect the heroic efforts of our most prolific posters? In keeping with the current theme, I'll suggest Rampant Member for those topping five thousand posts. Any other ideas for a suitable honorific? Shall we have a contest? Maybe even with prizes?

And Israel.

There are two other California propositions that will have a major effect on state finances and political power, and both took a surprising turn today when a curtain was lifted to reveal the big money involved in passing one and defeating the other. Proposition 30 is Governor Jerry Brown's attempt to avoid major cuts in education by raising the state sales tax and increasing taxes on high-income earners. And Proposition 32 would limit the role of unions in California politics by preventing them from collecting campaign funds from members, even though there are no such restrictions on the corporations who wrote and support the proposition. Not only are the typical suspects spending millions to defeat Proposition 30 and pass Proposition 32, but last month an Arizona nonprofit donated $11 million to California groups trying to torpedo the tax and muzzle the unions. Something smelled fishy to Governor Brown who wondered where a minor Arizona nonprofit would come up with $11 million and why it would spend that much on two pieces of California legislation. He wanted to know, and thought California voters had the right to know, who was behind the money. And he wanted voters to know before they voted tomorrow. If this were a national election, we wouldn't know until after the election, but California laws are different from federal laws and the California Supreme Court told the Arizona group they had to come clean. Which they did today, one day ahead of voters going to the polls. Through a convoluted set of maneuvers, which State Attorney General Kamala Harris has branded political money-laundering, the money trail leads from the Arizona group, Americans for Responsible Leadership, backwards to a group called Americans for Job Security, and back again to a group called The Center to Protect Patient Rights. The Center to Protect Patient Rights has pumped millions into the Romney campaign in recent months, and tens of millions into the 2010 mid-term Congressional elections in support of conservative candidates. The Center's president is a guy named Sean Noble who, wouldn't you know, turns out to be a front for - wait for it - none other than the fabulous furry Koch Brothers! If they'll pull this kind of shit to cover their tracks in a state ballot, imagine what they're up to at the national level. Of course, thanks to Citizens United, corporations are people too. Just not the kind of people I'd casually turn my back on.

Whatever you do, please don't spritz the kneepads.

isn't the Presidential vote, although I can't wait to hang my chad on that one. But even more important for me is California Proposition 34, which does away with the death penalty. For the first time, it's started leading in the polls. Some of the recent support comes from folks who have concluded that it's just too expensive to kill other folks. Fine by me if that's what brings them into the tent. I'm just hoping California can join the seventeen other states, and the District of Columbia, who don't have it. Not to mention all the other countries who manage to get along without it.

I was poking around with the Sony TV I got from Costco last year, and found it already knows how to hook up to the internet. So, as far as I know, I can sign up for Netflix or Roku and stream it without a separate box. If you have a recent TV, it might be worth checking to see if it already has built-in WiFi. Still haven't decided between Netflix and Roku, as I just don't watch enough TV to be lured in. Like some of you, I also dumped everything but Comcast Basic and the only thing I really miss is the Property Brothers.

Don't know if it's related but I also noticed an anomaly with logging out. After I logged out, the mini-profile screen - the one that pops up when you hold the cursor over your screen name - would show me as still being ONLINE . I didn't test it by trying to post or anything. I just logged in and logged out again, and the ONLINE symbol would be replaced by the OFFLINE symbol, as it should have been the first time. This happened regularly for a week or so, right after the site was rebranded, but I haven't noticed it lately. Perhaps just a bit of sand in the gears that's worked its way through. Mac with Safari browser.

Wedding bands sterilized, glasses dipped in bleach, and the flower boy sprayed for lice, guests prepare to toast the Happy Couple.