Dear friends,

Dagblog will turn six years old this September, which is 42 in blog years. Like many of us in our forties, the site has become a little chunky. OK, I'll be blunt. Dag's fat. Way fat. 9290 blog posts, 442 creative posts, 5250 news links, and 109,567 comments. Along with williamkwolfrum.com, who hangs out on the same server, dagblog often violates the 640 MB RAM limit, which is why it's been stalling and crashing so often.

Oh, wow.  Anne Marie-Slaughter has resurfaced in The New York Times to upbraid Obama for not having acted to stop the formation of ISIS in Syria two years ago. She begins:

As someone who dreaded Penmanship class, and who always–and I mean always–got poor grades in it, let me just say if writing in cursive goes away I’ll be right up there in front mourning the loss.  (Cursive:  flowing letters all connected to make one word.  What we used to call “handwriting”.)

We learned the Palmer Method in grade school, where every letter had to follow a pattern and fit between the lines, and where loops and curlicues had to loop and curl, but not too little or too much.  Just right.
 

I read Robert Kagan's essay "Superpowers Don't Get To Retire" with an eventual blog post in mind, likely one that would attempt to rebut Kagan's latest call for greater American military action in the world, including dangerous neighborhoods like Syria and Ukraine. But I think that those of you who know me know where I stand on that and for those of you who don't (Hi!) I have to admit that my anti-war arguments are not particularly novel.

Interesting post at Business Insider about how the loss of Eric Cantor is a blow to Wall Street.  The establishment Republicans love the Street while the Tea Party insurgents are enemies of finance and friends of the real economy.  I used to actually buy something like that when, during the financial crisis, I saw an opportunity for anti-bailouts liberals and libertarians to make common cause but... that was a mirage.

Anton Chekhov probably never actually said that "If a gun is on the mantel in act one it must go off by act three," but there is something in that little aphorism that tells us how to write drama and also warns us about how to live life.

In an insightful article about the upsurge in anti-government hate groups and the murderous rampages they spawn, John Avlon calls them "Hatriots"--those people claiming that true constitutional patriotism requires them to disavow, disown, and destroy the United States government--and anyone who g

If revolutions eat their children, then Eric Cantor is the plat du jour. Just a couple years ago, he was the supposed leader of the right-wing House insurgency. The press waited hungrily for him to revolt against John Boehner and claim the Speaker's crown for himself. But Cantor chose to wait it out, and now the same insurgent spirit that bolstered his ambition has tossed him out of the House entirely.

The shootings in Isla Vista have left me too angry to blog. But now we have yet another shooter on a college campus, at Seattle Pacific. Fortunately, this murderer was stopped after killing one and wounding three. And he was stopped in the way the gun-rights community says he can never be stopped: he was stopped without a gun.

If you'll forgive me repeating parts of a blog post from two years ago, written after another of our endless repeated mass murders:
 

"This means that the feminist prescription doesn’t supply what men

slipping down into the darkness of misogyny most immediately need: not

lectures on how they need to respect women as sexual beings, but reasons,

despite their lack of sexual experience, to first respect themselves as men."

We got word that Maya Angelou died today.  When her picture flashed on the TV this morning I held my breath, hoping it wasn't bad news.  When they announced that she was gone, I shouldn't have been shocked, considering her age (86) and ill health, but it took me a few minutes because it never occurred to me that she might someday leave this earth.
 

I was interested in Brittney Cooper's take on the Santa Barbara Killer because I think she's definitely on to something about the white male snapping.  It's an old story that goes back to the age of "Going Postal."  It's happened enough that it should be addressed.

But Cooper's take is all privilege without nuance and so it leads her down this road:

The Case For Reparations is as good an essay as everybody says.

Discuss?

Thomas L. Friedman: The bathrooms are much cleaner than the bathrooms at La Guardia airport.  Another triumph for the fast growing Empire and proof that “small moon” is another word we can remove from the lexicon of our hyperspace-connected  age where average isn't good enough because your job might be pulverized into atoms at any time.

Nicholas Kristof: There are no girls on the Death Star except for one kidnapped Princess.  Maybe if there were girls on board it would be a Peace Star.  That’s an idea we can all get behind.

I'd be way late to the game if I tried to mock the recent David Brooks column where he says we need less democracy at the top and more Simpson-Bowles commissions.  It's all been said and I didn't blog about it right when I read it because you've heard it all from me before. Anyway, here's a good way into the issue, if you're interested.

From Publishers Weekly:

From 1904-1912, the American political system underwent enormous growing pains, and political writer Wolraich (Blowing Smoke) gives this decade an exhaustive, detailed examination, from the first “creeping sense” of a new political body into a “war with only two sides” that birthed America’s enduring bipartisan identities.

In the 21st century controversy over the legitimacy of the 19th century Confederate battle flag, one question remains unanswered:  What does it mean to those who want to fly it?

The answer:  Anything they want it to mean.
 

Can the other 29 NBA owners force Donald Sterling to sell the LA Clippers? Let's put it another way: can the other 29 owners be forced to remain Donald Sterling's partner? Of course, private citizens shouldn't be forced to sell privately owned businesses. But how much of Sterling's business exists if you take away his association with those other 29 businesses? If you take away the other 29 teams, what does Sterling own?

Monica Lewinsky is now 40 years old.  In the late 1990s, when she was barely into her twenties, she met Bill Clinton, flirted a bit and caught his attention.  Before long she was having an affair with the President of the United States.  Heady stuff for a bedazzled young girl and of course she had to tell somebody.

Hey folks, as you may have noticed, dagblog hasn't been feeling well today. I apologize for the downtime and log-in problems. Dag is feeling a bit better now, so blog away.

Meanwhile, we're working on an upgrade and a new daghouse that will make poor dag happy and peppy again. Stay tuned.