Things are going pear-shaped, and the pears are going wobbly.

Maybe they can all gather around, light a campfire, sing some songs? Maybe that will help?

Hey guys (and yes, they are all guys), newsflash, you fucked up!

And, only because I love these videos (this one with full, bonus, pre-mansplaining!):   Read more…

So anti-cell phone fanatics like me have been doing cell phone users a favor:

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. He's a managing director at a top Wall Street firm, and I was put in touch with him through a colleague who knew I was writing a story about the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation. He agreed to talk with me only if his name wasn't used, so I'll call him Jim. He explained that the tumor was located just behind his right ear and was not immediately fatal—the five-year survival rate is about 70 percent. He was 35 years old at the time of his diagnosis and immediately suspected it was the result of his intense cell-phone usage. "Not for nothing," he said, "but in investment banking we've been using cell phones since 1992, back when they were the Gordon-Gekko-on-the-beach kind of phone." When Jim asked his neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of a major medical center in Manhattan, about the possibility of a cell-phone-induced tumor, the doctor responded that in fact he was seeing more and more of such cases—young, relatively healthy businessmen who had long used their phones obsessively. He said he believed the industry had discredited studies showing there is a risk from cell phones. "I got a sense that he was pissed off," Jim told me. A handful of Jim's colleagues had already died from brain cancer; the more reports he encountered of young finance guys developing tumors, the more certain he felt that it wasn't a coincidence. "I knew four or five people just at my firm who got tumors," Jim says. "Each time, people ask the question. I hear it in the hallways."

Izvestia:

Encouraged by a group of influential New York Democrats, Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee, is weighing a bid to unseat Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in this fall’s Democratic primary, according to three people who have spoken with him.

Some of the donors who have urged Mr. Ford to consider a run expressed alarm as Ms. Gillibrand, who as a congresswoman represented a conservative upstate district, has abandoned some of her previous positions on issues like gun control and immigration as she prepares to run statewide.

Wait, she's too far to the left?! Delicious!

The discussions between Mr. Ford and top Democratic donors reflect the dissatisfaction of some prominent party members with Ms. Gillibrand, who has yet to win over key constituencies, especially in New York City.

And who might these "key constituencies" be?

I used to think Dem on Dem violence was a bad thing. Now, not so much*.

In fact I think it is a very good thing to see Booman going all "Kevin Bacon in Animal House" with his "All is well!" exhortations. Unfortunately for Booman, everything is obviously NOT well.

But one of the cats Booman has trouble herding (using his own definition) is Booman himself:

News Corp.'s Chase Carey expects Fox signals to be pulled from Time Warner Cable

I really don't care how this ends.

TPM has the latest NBC/WJ poll showing that those against the "health care plan" are growing, mostly due to loss of "the president's core support groups, folks upset about lost public option" according to Chuck Todd (sheesh, what an upsidedown world this has become). But don't fear, little ponies, because ""Still, large majorities of the president's core support groups believe his plan is a 'good idea,' but the margins have shrunk." Rasmussen (yes, I know, but they're so conservative! go read Ian) has against at 56%. Btw, Ian is on fire today on health care.

[Welcome, Reclusive Leftist readers!]

Pony riffing, I kid you not.

If the answer is Yes, Texas may just have outlawed all marriages, not just gay marriage:

Texans: Are you really married?

Maybe not.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively "eliminates marriage in Texas," including common-law marriages.

I bet I know why the Christianists who pushed this amendment used that wording, too: They think the FSM created marriage, so they don't want the state of TX doing it, too.

Chortle.

http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.asp...

Weiner just lived up to his name by withdrawing his amendment, which would have substituted single-payer for the House bill favored by Democratic leaders. That coward sickens me right now even more than Obama, Pelosi, Emanuel, Hoyer, and Reid put together.

Haw.

That phrase jumped out at me over at Angry Bear; I'll be interested to see if it propagates.

E-mail from MoveOn.org:

They're double-crossing Obama

Breaking news on health care: The Washington Post is now reporting that insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield "is putting the finishing touches on a public message campaign aimed at killing a key plank in Obama's reform platform."

The Huffington Post sums it up as "Insurers Planning on Double-Crossing Obama."

We knew the insurance companies would eventually turn on the president, but this is much sooner than expected.

Remember, there's a right time and place for core values to be sold out... but not so soon!

Times:

[caption] Jerry Levy, [46, who lost his job at a hedge fund last summer], attending a PTA meeting where his experience in the financial industry is a plus with members.

Mr. Levy joined the PTA and immediately noticed that he tends to tackle matters with a bluntness honed in the financial industry, while the women, whether stay-at-home mothers or professionals, he said, communicate more diplomatically.

He has zealously bounded into the PTA, becoming its liaison to the Pelham Board of Education on financial matters. Recently, he announced his candidacy for a seat on the school board, a move applauded by several longtime PTA members.

Yeah, so he can tackle matters with "bluntness" elsewhere.

Anyhow, when was finance ever an industry?

As elegant and ignorant as swans.

High snark from Glenn on Jane Harman's sudden conversion from Serious advocate of extra-legal surveillance to civil-liberties Extremist.

...as serious as it is when a member of Congress is the target of government eavesdropping, can we really afford to investigate this? After all, we have so many very important things to do. It really seems like we need to be looking forward, not backwards. The Bush administration is gone. This all happened in 2005 -- years ago. Is this really a time to be pursuing grudges, to be re-litigating old disputes? What kind of partisan witch hunt is Harman after?

Detroit Free Press columnist Susan Tompor pulls a reverse Marie Antoinette, for the win:

So let's get this straight, the only bonus most of us now get at the end of the day is a hug from a loved one. And guess what? We feel extremely blessed to get it.

But no hugs for the AIG executives. Let 'em hug their money.

There are no epic take-downs, or anything much that hasn't already been said, but I think "Let 'em hug their money" could have legs. She also brings up a good point about the toothlessness of applying the terms "distasteful" and "inappropriate" to these bonuses:

Hilarity from Aravosis:

Obama: We have to be able to agree to disagree
Great, then where are the racists, Mr. Obama? We don't see you embracing too many of them in the name of learning to agree to disagree. Or does your desire to create a new "atmosphere," and reach out to our enemies, stop when it's your own people, your own children, you'd be betraying? Funny how you only reach across the aisle when it's someone else's family, gay families in particular, getting the shaft.

John -- if I may call you John -- you ask "Where are the racists?" And I think I have the answer for you!

"We gave thousands of dollars..."

Could the stars be aligning for a Google-N.Y. Times merger?

As the New York Times Co. is negotiating with lenders over its debt, speculation has been floating around the blogosphere, pushing the premise that Google Inc. should acquire the beleaguered Gray Lady. The thesis (or, rumor, as some would put it) has been around since the beginning of the year, with SpliceToday on Thursday reintroducing the idea of the unorthodox union of the stalwart of old media with the scion of new media.

Al Gore sits in Google's Board of Directors. I hope Google makes him publisher of the NYT.

Read this article in Vanity Fair and remind me again why Our Betters are better? Vanity Fair:

Even those who have plenty left to spend aren’t spending it. “I ran into a couple I always see at the antiques show,” one Upper East Side woman recounts of her visit to the Armory show on Park Avenue. “They always buy something fairly grand. ‘What have you bought this time?’ I asked. ‘Oh, nothing!’ they said. ‘We’d feel … ashamed.’”

Oh, now they feel shame?   Read more…

Harvard: Not So Smart After All:

Savings on fund management staff: $50 million

Losses on endowment fund: $ 8 billion and counting

Finding out the supposedly smartest college in the nation is run by idiots: Priceless.

That's because all the "creative [cough] class types on Wall Street are hanging out their shingles as consultants, and they need office supplies (or think they do).

The Howler lets WKJM have it with both barrels:

Hasn’t the public suffered enough from the actual Andrew Sullivan? Defending Bush, avoiding Campaign 2000, Josh makes himself a Serious Person. But you can’t build a progressive politics by respecting the need of people like this to shape-shift the recent past.

Josh wants to be a Serious Person. It’s time for Josh to go.

And schadenfreude is far too mild a term for what Tom Watson feels.

Via McClatchy. (Let me say that McClatchy blames McCain's grandstanding in the headline, which let us remember that editors write, but the story makes clear that (a) all the blame is being cast by Dems, big surprise, and (2) it's the House Republicans who are really the cause of the trouble, because they don't buy into the famous "principals." I mean, these are the guys who kept the House open to do some political theatre for drilling even after Pelosi turned off the cameras and the lights, and Pelosi ultimately caved, so why on earth would they give in now? To help Bush? To help McCain? Haw.)