Via Gerard.

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I'm sorry, but I love this idea. And CalTech Girl got to have it for breakfast today! As it happens, my favorite breakfast is a not-too-sweet pie like pumpkin or apple.

If that slice of apple pie were topped with a bacon lattice, life would be pretty darned good.

I must make one of these. Must.

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Ling Carter, again:

New York City - "Tiffani" wearily peered down a deserted Bronx street, muttering, "A lot of nothing — again." The 29-year-old prostitute hadn't had a trick since the previous evening and wondered how she would support a growing drug habit, a pimp, and the need to update her work wardrobe. "Everyone thinks these Jessica Simpsons last forever," said "Tiffani," referring to her high-heeled ankle boots. "But the seams are splitting and winter's coming on. I need new boots. Where's the damn government?"

Where indeed? RTWT.

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Oy.

t's starting to feel like one of those epic nights at the bar in Washington, DC. You know, the evenings where you know you're running up a tab much bigger than you intended, but the bartender has your card, and it's just so easy to order one more round for the gang.

For those too sozzled or bozwozzled to track what we're spending on on bailouts these days, here's a quick tally:

• $29 billion for Bear Stearns

• $143.8 billion for AIG (thus far; it keeps growing)

• $100 billion for Fannie Mae

• $100 billion for Freddie Mac

• $700 billion for Wall Street, including Bank of America (Merrill Lynch), Citigroup, JP Morgan (WaMu), Wells Fargo (Wachovia), Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and a lot more

• $25 billion for The Big Three in Detroit

• $8 billion for IndyMac

• $150 billion stimulus package (from January)

• $50 billion for money market funds

• $138 billion for Lehman Bros. (post bankruptcy) through JP Morgan

• $620 billion for general currency swaps from the Fed

Rough total: $2,063,800,000,000

That's a little over $6,800 for every man, woman, and child, or just under $15,000 for each of America's 140 million taxpayers.

Remember—a few billion here, and a few billion there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money.

You know what I could go for, just about now? Another Great Depression.

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Excellent.

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Neocon Blonde is looking for single, hot right-of-center chicks to date one of the funniest guys in the blogosphere.

N.B. thinks the woman should be able to cook, but I have a feeling Treacher is flexible on that point . . .

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Join Operation Leper, over at Thornton's place:

I pledge to publicly expose and actively oppose all of John McCain's staffers smearing Sarah Palin and will oppose any candidate who hires these people for a 2012 race. These smear artists must become political lepers for the good of the country and the Republican Party.

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It's brutal, and beautiful.

h/t Hot Air.

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More from Eric on the aftermath of Prop. 8:

By any standard, the conduct displayed by the bigoted gay demonstrators is outrageous, inexcusable, and indefensible. However, speaking as an individualist, I don't think it any more reflects on gays as a whole than it would reflect on blacks as a whole if some angry black demonstrators hurled epithets at gays or Jews. The people who do these things are the ones who do them. That they are in a crowd of demonstrators might reflect poorly on the other demonstrators, but the problem with extrapolating from angry demonstrators to the group they claim to "represent" is that they are rarely more than a small percentage of that population. So, if a half a dozen gay bigots use the N-word at a demonstration, it no more reflects on all gays than something shouted from a crowd at a McCain rally would reflect on all Republicans.

Yes. But it gives me a queasy feeling, like the black-Jewish schism, which has always struck me as so counter-historical, and so unnecessary. And so stupid. Of course, my species is not that bright; I must remember that.

Where I must disagree with Pam Spaulding is with her view that these awful incidents somehow constitute an "escalation of the 'blame the blacks' meme that has been swirling about the blogosphere and the MSM." She also refers to "the desire to scapegoat blacks for Prop 8's defeat" as "not-so-latent racism in our movement." Well, at least she said "in our movement." Because, at least in my case, I don't see how observations based on a statistics can constitute a "blame the blacks meme."

Statistics are not memes. Saying that 70% of blacks voted for Prop 8 is no more a meme than saying that 30% of gays voted Republican.

Yup. This next part is pivotal:

As far as blaming or scapegoating goes, while I'm against Prop 8, I'm more or less neutral where it comes to gay marriage, because I'm highly distrustful of government involvement in a minority lifestyle which, like it or not, goes to the heart of human privacy. Gay marriage advocacy is inextricably intertwined with forcing people out of what is called "the closet." The closet (as any regular reader of Andrew Sullivan knows) is said to be at the root of much evil. Therefore, closeted gays need to be liberated -- for their own good and for the good of society. Because of the nature of the hegemonic bureaucracy which surrounds family law, family courts, family services, once gay marriage is established it will inevitably have a spillover effect, and gays who want to live their lives in privacy will be unable to do so. Sure, there will continue to be sexual flings, but once lovers move in together, there will be no way to guarantee privacy, because the state will have created not merely a sense of entitlement, but legal rights of the same sort which customarily flow to heterosexuals thanks to the evolution of family law. There are many gays who want privacy and who live in the closet. While I realize that this is immoral to Andrew Sullivan's way of thinking, I think it's fair to ask, how would they opt out?

Perhaps by simply living together, as heterosexual couples do who don't want to make the ultimate commitment—or who have, themselves, mixed emotions about the institution of marriage?

But your larger point is well-taken: people have the right to privacy. There is a right not to wear one's love life on one's sleeve, and there is a middle ground between being quiet and discreet vs. the type of "living in the closet" one associates with the 1950s in America.

What are the implications to the right to simply to be left alone?

The closet being what it is, though, I don't think this concern is likely to be voiced. I mean, who's going to voice it other than a kooky libertarian theoretician? Angry, in-your-face, "in-the-closet-and-proud" activists. (What this means, of course, is that whatever the extent of the right to be "in the closet," it will remain largely undefended, no matter how many of its immorally discreet members are taking advantage of it. This leaves Andrew Sullivan and other activists are free to blame people who are in "the closet" for almost anything they can think of -- the latest being Prop 8.)

Game, set, and match.

But speaking of blame (and scapegoating), I noticed that in other posts, Pam Spaulding looks at Mormon and Catholic churches and sees them (unlike blacks or black churches) as proper targets of Prop 8 protests. While I don't know what she thinks of angry gay demonstrators chanting "Mormon scum!" (and I do not suggest that this compares to the use of the N-word), she does not hesitate to condemn the Mormons as bigoted:

The amount of hot air and vapid defensiveness from an institution that has a history of bigotry and oppression against black people has earned every second of this bad press brought on by this media exposure and demonstrations. That the Mormons have trained that bigotry onto gays and lesbians families only confirms that the LDS is what is erroneous and it is repeating that sorry history.

Both Catholics and Mormons are accused of calling for theocracy:

These extremist statements and positions are nothing less than a call to establish a theocracy. Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation, should be moved to name this behavior of these institutions for what it is -- and question the tax-exempt status of these institutions.

By that logic, taking a religious position against abortion is also a call to establish theocracy. That is not what the word "theocracy" means.
And if it is "theocracy" to invoke a religious argument against gay marriage, then why isn't Barack Obama a theocrat, as Glenn Reynolds suggested? [In ironic imitation of the left's standard.] I don't think Barack Obama is a theocrat, any more than the Mormons or the Catholics are theocrats. But you can't just draw a line and say that Mormons and Catholics who voice religious objections to gay marriage are theocrats, but Democratic United Church of Christ members who voice the same objections are not.

There's altogether too much bigotry for comfort and too many double standards for comfort.

Absolutely.

And, the clincher:

I can't help notice that completely left out of this debate are Muslims. While an LA Times article in April noted that "U.S. Muslims share friendship, similar values with Mormons" and that "the connection is based not on theology but on shared values and a sense of isolation from mainstream America." Can there be any doubt about the Muslim position on gay marriage? While there are no statistics on the Muslim vote, I would be flabbergasted if support for gay marriage mustered more than the single digits.

Yet Mormons have been singled out as bigots.

That's because it's wrong to bash Muslims, silly: even when they are enslaving women, carving away their genitals, and killing them more or less at whim. Don't you know anything?

The Pam Spaulding post we've been quoting is here.

I read Eric's post yesterday, of course—because he linked me—and considered responding, but was busy / too self-centered / tired. When Glenn Reynolds linked to it again today, though, it reminded me of what a bitchin' guy that Eric Scheie is.

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Uh-oh. Someone's been sliming Joe Biden:

WASHINGTON D.C. - Best known for verbal fumbles, gaffes, and crazy talk, Democratic vice president elect Joe Biden often uttered quiet, self-aware statements in private. An anonymous aide to the senator recalled Biden saying, "My helicopter was never forced down in Afghanistan by terrorist gunfire. I guess I wanted to appear braver and more experienced than I am. Kinda silly of me, huh?" Terri Ambrose, spokesman for Senator Biden, denied the charges. "What you see is what you get. This lie is an attempt to smear Joe's colorful personality . . . ."

Read the whole thing.

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

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After we danced, I told him that it was an honour to meet him, and then stopped myself, "oh, wait."

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"Well, I think you died in 1991. Therefore, even if this dream is taking place as early as 1992—and that's a stretch—you're already dead."

"Don't take it to heart," he remarked. "Anyway, does it really matter?"

"It matters to me."

"My dear," he told me. "You aren't making any sense. It wouldn't make any concrete difference if you'd dreamed about me while I was still alive, because it would still only be a dream."

"I did dream about you while you were alive," I insisted. "You were a big part of my life; I even knew you were from Zanzibar, and was properly shocked when I learned about Mary Austin."

"Doesn't that only prove how little you knew me?" he replied. "I mean, what about all those songs I wrote about her? Didn't that give you some kind of a clue?

"Now you're the one who's being silly," I spat out. "That 'clue' colloquialism won't be gaining currency for at least another decade. Right now, it's 'wake up and smell the coffee.'"

"You're the only person I've ever met who nitpicks in your dreams."

"I'm sorry," I told him. "It's just that I'm rather in awe of you. Except that, well . . . you know."

"Yes, I know: you feel bad about not loving 'Bohemian Rhapsody' as much as you love the rest of the Queen canon. But it doesn't really hurt my feelings; after all, it's your prerogative, and it got to a point where I was sick to death of 'Rhapsody' myself. Besides, you never read Catcher in the Rye, and you're one of J.D. Salinger's biggest fans, just based on his writing about the Glass family."

"It's because he captured so well the life of the intellectual misfit," I remarked. "Anyway, you seem to know a lot about me."

"Don't flatter yourself. Remember: this is your own dream. So what you really mean is that you know a lot about you."

"Fine," I told him, irritated again. "But you shouldn't underestimate self-knowledge."

He laughed. "Oh, I don't. Say, did I tell you I've moved to the country and started farming sheep?"

"Oh, right. Like you're living this Ian Andersen agrarian-type existence, with the salmon and all that."

"No, really. I'm a terribly down-to-earth person. I even cut my hair in 1980."

"Yeah," I told him. "I didn't like that. I preferred it long. And I hated the moustache."

"Well, I don't have it on now," he remarked. "And my hair's long again. But that was your decision. Wasn't it?"

"I am trying for some verisimilitude," I pointed out. "You do have a streak of grey in your hair, and you're getting thin."

"Oh, thanks," he told me. "I love it when people notice that. You're as bad as the bloody press."

"Am I, really?"

"No, not really."

"So maybe this is normal?" I asked him. "Like people seeing Elvis?"

"Elvis is a special case," he reminded me. "People see Elvis when they are awake."

"Does that make him some sort of musical saint?" I enquired.

"Well," he replied, "it certainly means he's transcended some kind of barrier. But I've got to go."

"Why?"

"Because you are about to wake up, and since you're using your cell phone as an alarm clock right now don't want to have to listen to those tinny notes coming out of it."

"Why, Freddie," I told him. "I do believe you're a bit of a snob."

"When did you first figure that one out?"

So he grinned, and then he vanished. And then, sure enough: the cell phone rang.

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1 If you feel like it, you can pay your respects to Freddie here: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2164 BTW, until recently I had no idea that ol' Faroukh was an Indian Parsi, or Zoroastrian. Apparently he's the most famous one of all time, and is seen as a big hero in that somewhat obscure ethnic/religious enclave.

Posted by: Mike at November 09, 2008 09:03 AM (3dXbO)

2 Except that the local Muslims prevented the rest of 'em from the mass celebration they had planned for what would have been his 60th birthday. Of course, the British claim him as well. But they always do that. I mean, how can they say that both T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden are English? I think they should have to choose one. Probably Auden. After all, Eliot was American--and I want more recognition for my own obscure enclave . . . what? I left daffodils; he once remarked that he was "as gay as a daffodil."

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 09, 2008 09:20 AM (TpmQk)

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America's favorite little girl is home again, and putting together her exploratory committee.

Via AllahP at Hot Air.

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Is it the age issue, or is he just hesitant to be on the front lines of a government headed up by a black man?

The bad news: he's still in the Senate, and still on his committee.

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Ta Naehisi-Coates runs the numbers on California's Proposition 8:

Yesterday, I tried to outline a humanistic case against the whole "Teh blackz did us in!" argument. I also linked some math. Now we have better math. The basic idea is that you need black folks to have been about 10 percent of all votes cast on Prop 8 to make a difference. Black folks are one of the smallest minorities in California, making up about six percent of the total electorate, which numbers at about 17 million. At 6 percent, black folks are worth about a million or so votes. There were just over ten million votes cast on Prop. 8. For blacks to cast ten percent of those you would need a turnout of 90 percent in the black community. Lemme repeat that--90 percent. It's possible, I guess. I leave it to you to weigh the odds.

Obsidian Wings reads the stats slightly differently, speculating that black voters may well have reached that 90 percent turnout in the Golden State:

If the following standard analysis assumptions are true the answer is probably a very close ‘no’, but at least one of the assumptions seems very possibly false and with other fairly likely assumptions the answer looks like a ‘yes’.

My assumptions are:

1. that the vote among black people was as reported (69% Yes on .
2. that black people make up 6.7% of the CA population
3. that black people represented a share of the votes equal to their share of the population

I further assume that 8 passes with 52% which seems the likely number at this point.

Given each 1000 voters, black people in CA represent 67 of them.

There are 520 Yes votes and 480 No votes for each 1000.

At 69%, Black voters voted 46 Yes and 21 No for each 1000.

If they voted like White voters (55% No) they would have voted 31 Yes votes and 36 No votes.

That would make the final tally 505 Yes and 495 No votes. (50.5% to 49.5%). [numbers very slightly rounded]

But this analysis is VERY sensitive to assumption #3. It appears that black people in CA may have voted in a greater share than that of their representation of the population. Right around 10% of the vote.

That would mean that given each 1000 voters black people in CA represent 100 of them.

At 69% Yes on 8 that would be 69 Yes and 31 No for each 1000. If they had voted like White voters they would have voted 45 Yes and 55 No. That would make the final vote equal 496 Yes and 504 No (proposition loses 49.6% to 50.4%).

Interestingly, at the 10% vote share level, if a small majority of black people voted against the measure it would have lost (49% Yes, 51% No gives the measure a loss at 49.9%).

Basically, if the black voter share is 10% or higher, the black vote difference from the white vote made the difference so long as the final total is at or below 52%.

This, of course, makes my head hurt; I was an English major. But I do have a couple of suggestions:

1) If we truly want to achieve gay equality, we should be concentrating a lot more on eliminating "don't ask, don't tell" in the Armed Forces than we are on marriage. In fact, in a time of war that notion is likely to have much broader appeal than galloping toward gay marriage at a faster trot than the population at large is ready to do.

In one case, to the casual observer, you have a country so self-destructive that it fires Arabic translators (among many others) for being gay, and you have men and women who serve their country, but are susceptible to losing their jobs because someone might "read" what their orientation is.

I mean, I understand that this doesn't fit the conventional lefty template of treating the military as if it's composed of icky, warmongering spiders and snakes. One might have to treat those murderous soldiers, sailors, airmen/-women and Marines as if they were human beings. (Ick. I need a bath now.)

Seriously, fellow warmongers: if the badasses in the Israeli Army and in Britain's Special Forces can integrate gays, we can do the same thing in the States.

2) Quit trying to use the courts to get this done! Gay rights should be determined through legislative means, rather than handled by judicial fiat. Judges who legislate sensitive moral matters from the bench inevitably create resistance and resentment. It's worth taking a few more years, and doing this the right way.

Less backlash; steady progress.

3) Do something practical, for crying out loud: get a gun. Self-defense is the most basic right of all, and you may not feel like you're at the mercy of public sentiment if you join Pink Pistols, or Second Amendment Sisters. Or take a shooting course through the NRA. Or join Black Gun Owners.

Heinlein: "An armed society is a polite society." Yup. And right now we all need to mind our manners a bit more.

* * *

Previously, on "Gay Rights and Proposition 8"—

"How the Obama Campaign Assured the Passage of Propsition 8"

"On Racism and Homophobia"

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The CITIZEN OUTLAW!

For every one hour of community service work I give to Obama, IÂ’ve decided to spend two hours tagging Whole Foods stores with ornate graffiti describing, in lurid detail, the secret life of Herbie, the closeted gay arugula.

– Then I’ll use up the rest of my hours standing guard with a crossbow . . . .

I wouldn't recommend a crossbow, though; I'd definitely go for a more traditional design: perhaps a compound bow, or an old-fashioned longbow (for which I know Jeff has the upper-body strength; I've seen his arms).

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a nice essay on the history of oil in Alaska—and a reminder that even if we can buy time by utilizing fossil fuels from ANWR, the Gulf, and both coasts—and we must—it's important to move forward with alternative energy sources and alternative liquid fuels.

And there is, indeed, a "gold rush" going on with respect to alternative fuel/energy. The difference is that prospectors in California, Alaska, and the Yukon were not taking concrete steps to improve their country's security and the environment.

Those who are shaping America's energy future are. Yet they will get even richer than the most successful gold miners ever did.

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

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It's a pretty good summary of the reefs we will have to steer around for the next 2-4 years: health care, energy, increased union thuggery/organized crime.

Not a pleasant prospect, but the challenges have to be faced, and those three things together will very likely gut the economy.

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"Office of the President Elect [sic; I guess they don't believe in hyphens]"?

A ".gov" domain name?

And Obama's team is still taking contributions? Is this in case we wanted a head start on the tax burdens we'll be shouldering soon?

Is it even legal to give money to a nascent Presidential Administration?—with or without an AVS on the credit-card processing?

I guess not only do we need to reform "campaign finance reform," but while we're at it we must reform "pre-Administration finance," which no one had even thought about attempting before.

Anyone want to place odds on whether any of this money will end up either 1) helping out Obama's indigent family members (in the U.S. or in Kenya) or 2) going to the school named after him in Kenya, which he has abandoned, and which has been adopted by a blogospheric coalition headed by Baldilocks?

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She didn't wait for McCain to deliver a smackdown to the idiots from the campaign who are maligning her; she did it herself.

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The stock market is "behaving like a Federal worker."

NEW YORK - In a disturbing trend, the stock market has begun to call in sick, take long lunches, and behave in a surly manner previously unseen on Wall Street. "This is really creepy," said Dan Stover, senior analyst at Miller Tabak & Co. "Take Monday: bell rings at 9:00 and the market doesn't show up until 9:14, muttering something about car trouble. No one believed it. Then it went out for lunch at noon and didn't come back until 2:20. You could smell the beer a mile away. God help you if you ask what's wrong. The market'll drag its feet and go on a slow down that kills any trading momentum."

Experts speculate that large inflows of federal money into the private sector may have triggered the behaviour.

Hm. I fear that this is funny "because it's true."

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