She cheated herself. Like you knew she would.
I can’t say I was surprised by the new of Amy Winehouse’s death. When I heard about her last concert, and saw the video, I thought to myself, “She has a year, maybe more, unless somebody does something.”
And, yet, at the same time I knew that there was nothing anybody could do. No one, that is, except Amy.
Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for July 19th through July 20th:
I think I’m beginning to get Michelle Bachmann, after the whole migraine story.
The Minnesota Republican frequently suffers from stress-induced medical episodes that she has characterized as severe headaches. These episodes, say witnesses, occur once a week on average and can “incapacitate” her for days at time. On at least three occasions, Bachmann has landed in the hospital as a result.
“She has terrible migraine headaches. And they put her out of commission for a day or more at a time. They come out of nowhere, and they’re unpredictable,” says an adviser to Bachmann who was involved in her 2010 congressional campaign. “They level her. They put her down. It’s actually sad. It’s very painful.”
Bachmann’s medical condition wouldn’t merit public attention, but for the fact she is running for president. Some close to Bachmann fear she won’t be equal to the stress of the campaign, much less the presidency itself.
No, it’s not what you think.
Casey Anthony is free, having been released from prison and whisked away to a secret post-prison life.
Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for July 17th through July 18th:
"I want what I want when I want it."
Those are Eric Cantor’s words. No, they’re not words he said recently, but words he chose years ago, for his high school yearbook quote. And while it may seem unfair to bring them up now (After all, how many of us said or did things in high school that make us cringe now?), they’re actually a perfect distillation of not just Eric Cantor’s approach to the debt ceiling negotiations, but that of the tea party contingent he represents: They want what they want when they want it. Or else.
It doesn’t matter that most of the rest of us don’t want what they want. It doesn’t matter that what they want would be disastrous for the economy, and millions of American families. It’s what they want, and they want it now.
Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for July 14th through July 15th:
Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for July 12th through July 14th:
The latest Michele Bachmann gaffe once again has eyes rolling and heads shaking among the commentariat. The irony is, it’s not really a gaffe. In fact, it’s not even that far from today’s conservative mainstream. It might even be closer to conservative orthodoxy than right-wing fringe. And that raises a serious question: What — or, more appropriately, WTF — has happened to the party of Lincoln?
By now, everyone has heard about Michele Bachmann’s latest gaffe. This time, it wasn’t a statement she made, but a statement she signed. The Family Leader, an Iowa-based conservative Christian organization led by Bob Vander Platts, introduced a pledge last week — “The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMILY” — that Republican presidential candidates campaigning in Iowa were encouraged to sign.
Bachmann was the first to sign the pledge, which included this unfortunate statement as the first bullet point in its supporting argument.
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.
So, Newt Gingrich has refused to sign that anti-gay marriage pledge.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich refused to sign Iowa social conservative Bob Vander Plaats’s anti-gay-marriage pledge, saying through a spokesman that it had a long list of problems.
Mr. Vander Plaats already made one change, removing a sentence that suggested African American children fared better under slavery.
“We told him that we couldn’t sign it in its current form,” said Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman, R.C. Hammond. “We’re happy to work with him to get some more precise language.”
This? From America’s patriotic philanderer?
As of today, I’ve been clean and sober for 19 years. Nineteen years. Six thousand nine hundred and thirty five days, one at a time.
I remembered last night, while watching Intervention.
It’s kind of amazing when I stop and think about it, as I did this morning while we were getting the kids ready to go this morning; Dylan to daycare and Parker to day camp. It put our usual morning routine into perspective, because today I’m living I life I’d never have had if I hadn’t gotten sober when I did. In fact, I might not have been here at all, and I’d have missed all of this.
Now, one of the things that keep me going is that I never want to do anything that would take me away from the people I love.
A light bulb burned out in our house last night. It popped when I turned on the light switch and — as dim bulbs usually do — burned intensely bright just before it went dark for good. That bulb reminds me of the Republican majority in the House, which is set to vote on a measure to repeal energy efficiency standards for light bulbs.
Republicans in Congress are pressing for a vote on one of the stranger elements of their environmental agenda a ban on the adoption of energy-efficient light bulbs.
If passed during Tuesday’s scheduled vote, a bill championed by presidential contender Michele Bachmann and others would repeal a law phasing out incandescent bulbs from 2012.
The beautiful irony of it is that the efficiency standard sponsored by a Republican representative and signed by George W. Bush himself.
I’m livin’ in a box
I’m livin’ in a cardboard box…“Living in a Box,” Living In A Box, 1987
As my early obsession with funky looking eco-cars shows, I’m sometimes drawn towards quirky things that go against the grain of the mainstream. So, of course I was intrigued by this video about the Eco-Cube — a project to “build a compact home” no bigger than 10x10x10 feet “in which one person could live a comfortable, modern existence with a minimum impact on the environment.”
Interesting, especially when you take a couple of things into consideration about housing and the current economic crisis/recession.
Both Casey Anthony’s defense team and her parents issued statements after her acquittal. Her parents, in their statement, said something that the defense couldn’t say, but might have alluded to: We may never know what happened to Caylee.
Three years later, and we don’t know what happened to this child. Let’s remember there are countless missing children whose names we don’t even know. We don’t know what happened to them either, and may never know. There’s 48 cold cases of missing kids in Maryland alone.
“If there was any justice in this world…” People usually say that when they believe they’ve witnessed a miscarriage of justice in either the legal or cosmic sense. Someone walks away scott free, though common sense and everything but concrete evidence says they’re guilty. Someone with little to recommend them in the way of talent, intelligence or ambition falls ass-first into good fortune, while others more talented and deserving toil in obscurity. Someone gets way more than their 15 minutes in the spotlight, while others get no time at all.
We’ve probably all said it, after witnessing things like those described above. “If there was any justice in this world,” somebody would be getting what we think they deserve. Of course, we don’t stop to think that “If there was any justice…” is just the flip side of saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
And so, we’ve finally come to the end of the Casey Anthony trial…
On the one hand, this doesn’t feel like justice.
Don’t look now, but someone rolled a Trojan Horse right into the middle of the debt deal negotiations. Funny thing is, Democrats don’t seem to recognize it as such. Maybe nobody’s ever told them the story of the Trojan Horse.
The good news is that there are no Greek warriors hiding in this Trojan Horse. The bad news? This Trojan Horse’s name is “Chained CPI,” and what he’s hiding inside are big cuts to Social Security benefits. My fellow blogger Richard Eskow explains it better than I can.
So, just when it looked like President Obama was finally calling the GOP’s bluff debt ceiling negotiations, it turns out he was preparing to fold.
Obama administration officials are offering to cut tens of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid in negotiations to reduce the federal budget deficit, but the depth of the cuts depends on whether Republicans are willing to accept any increases in tax revenues.
Administration officials and Republican negotiators say the money can be taken from health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes without directly imposing new costs on needy beneficiaries or radically restructuring either program.
Before the talks led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. broke off 12 days ago, negotiators said, they had reached substantial agreement on many cuts in the growth of Medicare, which provides care to people 65 and older, and Medicaid, which covers lower-income people. Those proposals are still on the table when Congress reconvenes this week, aides said, and are serious options that Democrats could accept in exchange for Republican concessions that raise revenues.
“Congress smells blood,” said William L. Minnix Jr., the chief lobbyist for nonprofit nursing homes.
If I could give the administration’s apparent strategy on the debt deal a name similar to many special forces operations, I’d call it “Operation Conditional Surrender.”
Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 30th through July 5th:
I haven’t written much about it but, crime buff that I am, I’ve been following the Casey Anthony trial pretty closely. The armchair psychologist in me was pulled in by the strangeness of both the accused and he family. Now, it seems there’s going to be a verdict in half an hour.
The 30 minute advance notice has been given for the verdict of the Casey Anthony trial. The verdict will be read at 2:15 p.m.
Court administration spokeswoman Karen Levey today gave reporters covering the Casey Anthony case a rundown of what will likely happen once a verdict is reached in the murder trial.
Chief Judge Belvin Perry will warn those in the courtroom not to express approval or disapproval with the verdict.
Then jurors will return to the courtroom and the foreperson will hand verdict forms to a court deputy. The judge will review the forms and then hand them to a court clerk, Karen Delpilar, to read aloud.
Perry will then have jury members polled individually to confirm that their verdict is true and correct.
If Casey Anthony is convicted of first-degree murder as charged, there will be a 48-hour break before the penalty phase of the trial begins.
If I had to hazard a guess…. (more…)
It’s not that I don’t trust the guy, and maybe the whole Weinergate thing has me a little gun shy, but am I the only who thinks Obama tweeting for himself may not be the best idea?
I’m no fan of Margaret Thatcher, by any stretch, but she gets a nod of respect from me for telling Sarah Palin “Don’t bother dropping by.” I guess Ms. Thatcher doesn’t regret she’ll be unable to lunch with Sarah. They don’t call her the “Iron Lady” for nothing.
Bill Cosby may not have scolded Eddie Murphy for saying “filth flarn filth,” as Murphy claimed in Eddie Murphy – Raw, but Cosby reportedly told Russell Simmons to “Get the fuck out of my face!”. Russell wanted to patch things up, as Cosby didn’t appreciate Simmon’s 2009 open letter asking Cos to ease up on his criticism of African American youth. It looks like Cosby can’t take criticism quite as well as he can dish it out. Or maybe he’s so “old school,” that he expects young’uns to just listen to his pronoucements as an “elder” and not talk back.
Surprise, surprise. Among other things, the GOP’s budget cuts would hurt tsunami warning centers, undermining their ability to act. But don’t worry. Defending the Defense of Marriage Act should be all the tsunami prevention we need.
I wondered how much stuff would change when the Huffington Post was bought by AOL. Now I know. I attempted to cross post the “War on the Middle Class” post, and after a day got an email that it exceeds their 500 to 800 word limit. I thought about breaking it into parts, but then I’d have to post it over a couple of weeks to stay in line with their two-posts-per-week limit.
So, I withdrew the post, rather than rewrite it. These days everyone loves lists. So, unless I have a “top 10″ or some such blog post, I’ll probably not bother posting it at HuffPo. Not that it matters much.
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