Apple's Prices for E-Books May Be Lower Than Expected — Hmm.
Vintage robots
My new favorite sign, EVAR — I always thought if telephone psychics were any good, they'd call me up when I needed them.
truepenny elucidates the point I've been reaching for about the resonance between the Tea Partiers and early 1930s German politics — To be perfectly clear, she's not accusing the Tea Party of any moral equivalency to Nazism (and neither am I), she's making observations about political behavior patterns of know-nothingism and negationism which are, of course, available to any ideology. (Though they tend to be conservative behavior patterns, insofar as I can tell. I'm not sure it's possible to be a liberal-progressive and a know-nothingist at the same time.)Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right — But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny. It's exactly those disinterested voters, kneejerk heartland conservatives for the most part, who helped create the current problems by blindly supporting the GOP through decades of ruinous governance and more ruinous opposition. Now these 'real Americans' blame Obama and the Democrats, yet almost every one of their objections is to Bush administration policies and their outcomes. It was all fine when a white Republican was bailing out the banks and busting the budget, now it's tyranny when a black Democrat inherits the GOP mess.
Sarah Palin and the mutual loathing society — George Will, whom I generally find to be both tendentious and deliberately intellectually dishonest (see his writings on climate change, for which he quite deliberately distorts facts and public record in support of his ideology) with a curiously critical column on Sarah Palin. This is the old GOP fighting with the new, basically.
Palin, Paul and Mount Vernon — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on constitutionalism and conservatism. ...as far as actual constitutionalists are concerned "limited government" and the "rule of law" are just phrases for national security conservatives and not much more than that. In the eyes of national security conservatives, actual constitutionalists are practically traitors. This is not a gap that can be bridged by shouting, "Constitution!" in a loud voice. Reminding me again why I'm coming to enjoy reading him so much.
Conservatives Sign Hypocritical Declaration — And a leftie view of the same issue. Every single other person who signed that declaration in favor of "limited government" that stuck to its constitutional boundaries, as far as I can tell, was an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Bush administration when it utterly ignored the constitution on issue after issue.
?otD: Do you know where you're going to?
2/19/2010
Writing time yesterday: 0 minutes
Body movement: 40 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 7.5
This morning's weigh-in: 228.0
Yesterday's chemo stress index: 3/10
Currently reading: [between books]