After a series of bizarre developments,...

Understatement of the century.

From my National Review Cruise journal
Day 2 - At sea

A sailor’s life for me. Fantastic night’s sleep despite them having made the two beds up as singles rather than combining them to make a king as they do for most cabins with married couples. The room steward says Candy specifically requested twins. I’ll have to remember to ask her about that.

As it was a sea day everyone stayed aboard and you could see more people out and about. Have been told Governors Huckabee and Romney are on the ship but I have not seen them yet. I did spot Tony Blankley on deck with one of those old reflectors held up to his face. Robert Novak sped by me in a big rush. He didn’t notice that he’d knocked a couple of passengers over and seemed bewildered when someone pointed it out to him.

He was probably in a hurry to get to breakfast which I can understand. Three eggs, pancakes, Canadian bacon, sausages, kippers, cottage fries and a couple of cinnamon rolls put me in good form for the day. The waiter suggested also having some juice or fruit but I told him I thought I had enough on my plate.

The morning panel was a fascinating look at “Using New Media to Attract New Audiences.” I didn’t think that many African Americans are online but maybe that has changed. If so it’s no thanks to liberals keeping them down by subjecting them to teachers’ unions. The panel participants agreed that the GOP platform is what America has always preferred and the brand is clear and compelling. Now we just have to find ways to reach the people who haven’t been able to hear our message because they never read newspapers like we do. There was a lot of discussion about “tweeting” which I had thought was some kind of lesbian joke only liberals would understand. Everyone else seemed to get it so I’ll defer to the younger generation on that.

The biggest decision made was that we should petition the RNC to put up a “Facebook” page called “Young, Black and Female Fans of the GOP.” Once it’s out there the young, black and female people will find it and our numbers will improve. We will also encourage the RNC to use its “cell” phone database to send hourly texts with cutting-edge slang messages like “GOP is in da house!” and “Republicans let you keep yo bling, yo bitch and yo hard-earned taxes!” I believe Michael Steele is already working on this.

The afternoon panel was “Harnessing the Palin Star Power,” moderated by Rich Lowry and featuring Bill Kristol, John O’Sullivan and others who picked up early on the governor’s huge potential. The panels are designed to go with the flow of current events so that rapid changes in anyone’s political or officeholding status can be accommodated. This is why Republicans are better at planning ahead.

Lots of disagreement on whether Sarah would be best as presidential candidate, campaigner in swing states or policy analyst. It was a great dialogue but I was distracted by several young men in the back who kept rolling their eyes and making armpit farting noises every time someone mentioned Palin’s beauty and naturalness. Later I was told that these were some of the Romney sons. Although I disapprove of their conduct here I am impressed that they are still helping their dad when they could have found other work after the 2008 primaries. This proves that they were serious about serving the public despite all the snipes from the left.

Candy spent the day in the casino. Unless they lack the normal feminine charms most women are bored by politics. I stopped by after the second panel and Candy introduced me to the casino manager, Sergei. He is a handsome fellow from Russia who has made the transition from helpless ward of the state to free-market success. Glad Candy has someone nice to talk to while I’m politicking.

Formal night tonight. Candy assured me that I looked dapper in my plaid bowtie and matching cummerbund. She was fetching in a sequined jacket and palazzo pants as I believe they are called. I was skeptical about the augmentation but it was worth the money as she has avoided the gravitational changes that plagued my other wives and most women her age. Better living through chemistry! I am thankful that men get more attractive as we age.

After dinner Candy went back to the casino and I headed to the disco where the band White Rage was playing. It was hard to find a dancing partner as for some reason few women are on the cruise. Pete DuPont was really “getting down” though. Mildly embarrassing moment when I asked Ramesh Ponnuru to refresh my drink. When I left the disco Candy was still in the casino. She and Sergei had their heads together giggling, probably strategizing over the hand she was dealt. Nice to have the casino boss on your side so I left her in good hands and went off to bed.

Dubrovnik tomorrow.

A compromise is a euphemism for CYA. You can always blame the other guy is something goes wrong.

Steve Benen noted:

* The Senate won't even try to take up the climate-change bill until after the August recess.

* On a related note, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is going to disappoint a whole lot of people when she puts coal's short-term interests above everyone else's long-term interests.

* Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) insisted on the House floor today that Alan Carlin, a global warming denying economist, is "a 35-year veteran scientist at the EPA."

Few things are more important to the Republicans and "moderate" Democrats than protecting the trillion dollar profits of their patrons in the fossil fuel corporations.

So, now that the Congress is slowly moving to pass legislation to reduce CO2 emissions -- however belated and inadequate -- expect the campaign of deceit and denial of anthropogenic global warming to reach ever more hysterical levels.

Also, please note that the important issue about Alan Carlin is not whether he is an economist or a "scientist" (he reportedly has a degree in physics, although he is not a practicing scientist in any field related to climate).

The issue is that he submitted an unsolicited memo that was not only utter garbage, but that simply cut-and-pasted content from various denialist blogs and websites without attribution, misrepresenting it as his own work, which is plagiarism.

Obama and the Democrats assured the American people that GM wasn't going to become Government Motors. That didn't last long:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090708/AUTO01/907080412/1148/rss25

I can't even begin to fathom what's going on in Pennsylvania. ***Update! Just found this follow up article. Even more relevant to the political animals- Democratic Senator Arlen Spector steps in.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Campers-Complexion-No-Problem-for-New-Pool.html

I am always struck by the usage of the word "believes". As in the HHS Secretary... "believes" some vaccine ....

Would not a better word be "expects"

Topic for discussion: Myke K - over-medicated or under-medicated?

Mildly embarrassing moment when I asked Ramesh Ponnuru to refresh my drink. -- Myke K, @17:36

But quite natural, especially if he was wearing a white tuxedo. On my very first visit to a country and yacht club, I observed that, while all the diners were white and dressed in black, all the servers were black and dressed in white. Made for an interesting balance, from an artistic perspective... My prospective Virginia family was quite dumbstruck by my acuity of perception; I suppose they didn't expect such smarts from a Polack...

exlibra wrote: "... while all the diners were white and dressed in black, all the servers were black and dressed in white ..."

Wasn't that the plot of an old Star Trek episode starring Frank Gorshin?

SecularAnimist, that Star Trek episode was, indeed about race, but in that instance it was about which side of the face was white and which side black.

Exlibra's comment reminded me more of something George Lucas used and commented on in his Star Wars movies. I don't know how familiar you are with old cowboy movies, but the good guys usually wore white and the bad guys usually wore black or darker colors. Lucas intentionally turned that upside down with the Jedi (good) wearing black or darker colors, and the Stormtroopers (bad) in white. The notable exception was Vader, of course, but that's probably because he went back to being good in the end.

King insisted yesterday, "Liberals want to amend our country's history to eradicate the role of Christianity in America and chisel references to God or faith from our historical buildings." In the world where grown-ups live, it sounds like King doesn't know what he's talking about.

It's impossible to "amend the role of Christianity in America", although we've tried to arrest as many of the pedophiles as we could.

On the other hand, he's right about the chiseling.

I recognize this is a minority view among liberals, but it's a growing minority.

Religion sucks my asshole.

Chewbacca was Han Solo's pet, for fuck's sake.

Another salvo has been launched in California over the Prop 8 fight.

Calif. Bill Would OK Out-of-State Gay Marriages

The California Legislature is getting back into the Proposition 8 fight with a bill that would recognize possibly thousands of same-sex marriages performed outside of California before the measure was passed.

SB 54 , introduced late last week by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, also would ensure that gay and lesbian couples who have married in other states or countries since Nov. 5 -- when Prop 8 became official -- receive all the rights and obligations opposite-sex California couples enjoy, with the exception of the designation of "marriage."

wow, Myke, I do appreciate your reports showing such impressive attention to detail. The Novak and Blakely lines, and Romney's kids' public service (but did he bring the dog there on top of the car?) - good stuff. Has the Love Boat theme song stuck in my head, however.

I don't know, zeitgeist. Myke's mention of the lack of women makes me think he's on a republican version of an RSVP Cruise. Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;) Oh, except the hypocrisy.

Actually, hubby and I took one about ten years ago and had a lot of fun. No avowed republicans that I remember, however.

* The Senate won't even try to take up the climate-change bill until after the August recess. -- Steve Benen

Weeeelll... It's still bloody hot in DC in September. Turn off the AC in -- a perfectly sensible, cost-cutting, measure -- lock the doors, tell them that nobody leaves the building until the bill gets hammered out to the progressives' satisfaction... By my calculations, the bill will be on Obama's desk loooong before the October 15th reconciliation kicks in.

Secular Animist, @19:06,

Wouldn't know (about Star Trek); never watched any episodes (I assume it's a TV series, not a film series?). The scene I described (and the observation I voiced) was for real; happened in a Norfolk, Virginia, country and yacht club (can't remember its "proper" name), in July of 1973. My future MIL and SIL were appalled, my future husband didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The faux pas was, after about a minute of total silence (talk about conversational "lead balloons"!) covered up with an intense bout of idle chatter. I was forgiven, on the basis of being a dumb Polack, a newcomer to the country (and the country club ""scene"), who didn't know any better.

Except that, of course, my quip was quite intentional; even if I weren't commie-raised, my own mixed heritage (I'm half Polish and half Jewish) has made me very, very "race-sensitive" and certain "triggers" never fail to raise my hackles. The rest of the time, I'm as mild as milk and twice as bland and quite safe to be around.

Oh... And that crowd hasn't changed one whit since '73... I was at a wedding of my SIL's son in June of '06. The wedding was in CA but the groom wsa from Norfolk, VA and the bride from somewhere in NC. My son brought his girlfriend -- another "hapa" (half Polish/Irish and half black; wholly from NYC). At the reception before the "groom's dinner", when I offered to go and "sweeten" the drink of one ladies (my SIL's friend), she casually turned around and said "no need to; here's the young lady who'll do it, perfect timing". Ie, the *exactly* same situation "Myke K" described in "his" summer-reading-bodice-ripper.

Can hardly wait, BTW to see the Sergei/Candy affair develop under Myke's nose. Will Myke have to pay Sergei off, I wonder, on top of swallowing the humiliation of being played for a cuckold? Will he rediscover true love and passion for himself in his solitary, single, bed? Will he buy Slovenian lace in Dubrovnik, or will he wait till Idria?

worldfocus.org

Apparently, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Faux News hired investigators to hack into celebrity cell phones - a few names mentioned was Princess Diana, Gwyneth Paltrow....

Murdoch apparently used the information to publish in his UK tabloids...and now they are expecting lawsuits from American celebrities.

Speaking of the G8, somebody order a truckload of fainting couches for the American RightWing:

OBAMA SHAKES HANDS WITH LIBYAN PRESIDENT MOAMMAR GADHAFI

Exlibra, yes, Star Trek started out as a television series in the mid-1960s. It spawned four spin-off series (ST:The Next Generation, ST: Deep Space 9, ST:Voyager and ST:Enterprise), plus a lucrative movie franchise, the latest of which was released last month or the month before, I believe.

I'm a sci-fi geek, so I've thoroughly enjoyed all of its incarnations.

Oh, and Exlibra, I'm with you on wanting to know more about the Sergei/Candy situation and the rest of the cruise. Myke K has always been good at satire, but this goes beyond expectations.

Myke K is calling for an ass-whipping!!

Where do you get off calling black women bitches?

That's the problem with GOP, the claim they want to recruit everyone, yet, they have no clue about people and their lives.

After the stunt at the swimming pool incident, turning away black and latino kids. Good luck with your dismal future endeavors.

Steven Teles ponders, "What Makes a Compromise Good?"

The real problem I have with wonks like Ezra Klien and Steven Teles taking the position that the healthcare exchange is the really essential part of healthcare reform is that it seems to be a position tailor-made to keep non-wonks from having any influence on the process. Unlike a public plan, where there are a number of necessary features I can understand (outlined by Howard Dean with admirable clarity), I have no idea what features are essential for an exchange to do the job, and would have to rely on (rarely unanimous) wonks to tell me whether legislation is a good deal or a sellout.

Furthermore, it seems almost certain that the important features would be set in the regulation-writing process, not the legislative process. So while I can appreciate Steven's argument in an abstract way, I think we're better off fighting the political battle against deep-pockets insurance lobbyists where our side can engage the grassroots, rather than one where all we have are public-interest policy wonks.

annjell! Have you met Gandalf?

The thing you have to remember about Glenn Beck is --he's a baby!

He's about nine and he's standing in his backyard trying to remember something about something he's sort of heard so they can play 'tv show'.

In the "open vein" thread (or "open thread" vein):

Blow me down with a feather... Harry Reid... Harry Reid! of all people... seems to have noticed (if ever a tad late)that it's springtime... one-spine-disc-at-a-time growth time... Read for yourselves and marvel, while I look for the teeth I managed to knock out when my jaw hit the floor:
http://tinyurl.com/nl7d6r

The Senate won't even try to take up the climate-change bill until after the August recess.

We might as well just go slit our throats. Read the very good article in the Thursday LA Times on the subject of China, India and Brazil refusing to go along at the G-8 summit on targeted carbon emissions reduction. The article goes to great lengths to point out that without their participation, the Senate is unlikely to approve this bill, and yet, without the bill being approved and becoming law, Obama has little if any chance of getting these countries to change their minds at Copenhagen.

Homo Sapiens - the hairless biped that's well-evolved for life in small tribes of under 100 people, in adverse weather. We did 90,000 years that way, 10,000 years of so-called "recorded" civilization (a record overwhelmingly against any sort of altruism on the part of the killer apes in any circumstances beyond very limited, very small ones), and 250 years to evolve under industrialism.

Thank the goddess that even if my lifespan is at the upper end of my family history, I have about 20-odd years left. And further thank the goddess I didn't inflict any offspring on the planet.

When the deer overpopulate the meadow, it's the deer who suffer worst (along with everything else alive in the meadow).

I am more and more coming to the conclusion that the best outcome for the planet is the extinction of the greatest evolutionary failure in the planet's history - us.

On a related note, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is going to disappoint a whole lot of people when she puts coal's short-term interests above everyone else's long-term interests.

This can't be a surprise. Have you considered other coal state Dem. Senators: Byrd, Baucus, Levin? You don't really expect them to make their constituents bear the brunt of Waxman-Markey, do you?

It's nice that CA doesn't burn a lot of coal, but CA imports cars and trucks from KY and OH that do burn a lot of coal, and where the coal produces the electricity used to make the cars and trucks. Surely the coal state Senators will share this information with Sens. Boxer and Feinstein?

I dug further into why there's not much news about the 2 Americans beaten and shot to death in Mexico

www.ericvonwade.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=289&catid=57:evw-blog or just pull up title under ericvonwade of "Americans Beaten, Shot to Death in Mexico"

apparently, the community of Colonia LeBaron is founded by ex-communicated Mormons from the U.S. in the 1940s, Polygamist (some practice today, not all) ****Willard 'Mitt' Romney is Mormon

This one has a pix of the hostages with their abducters.

www.chicanonews.net/index.php/american-death-toll-in-mexico-drug-was-surges/

www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/05/18/mexican-drug-was-threatens-to-move-to-US/UPI-33971242661326/
***this talks about the cartel gave shoot to kill anyone, including U.S. Law enforcement

www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/07/09/Two-US-citizens-killed-in-mexico/UPI-92611247143241/

***I forgot which of the sites above talked about a congressman from Texas that negotiated the release of a Mexican National, but refuses to do so for American citizens - he is latino!!!!

**Dec. 31, 2008
American, Ronald Weisel, 58
Dominican, Hillary Toussaint

arrested in BVI, caught with 56 kilos of cocaine. Boat impounded - street value of $5.6 million

case reconvenes 9-11-2009 pending psych evaluation of Weisel.

this is so sad, drug addiction have claimed many, whether illegal or legal (presciptions), yet, with the power the GOP wants, they will probably get it with the majority of Americans addicted to drugs & alcohol.

I'm glad to see Iraq is safe and free. Surely Freedom Bombs for Iran is next.

Regarding the treatment of the black kids at the PA swim club. And they wonder why these kids grow up and want to lob bombs at them. Sheesh....