Par for the course, the "national dialogue" (read: what the MSM deems to be fit for their truncated list of trite and nonsensical talking points) regarding our current economic quandary has detiorated to the sort of semantic sophistry that every single anchor on CNN will be all too happy to entertain with brows furrowed and lips pursed just so, subtle psychological cues meant to persuade the viewer that they should take this earful of horseshit seriously.

Supposedly, everyone agrees that the economy is on the ropes.  It requires stimulus.  Everyone knows that.  Duh!

Is anyone as utterly and completely creeped out by the picture in the center as I am?

Also, apparently adding a little Obama to Bush is like giving him a facelift.

Original size is here.

Greta Christina has written a straight-forward piece at AlterNet that addresses what was wrong with all of the piety at the inauguration.  For my money, here's the quote:

Grappling clumsily with grand understatement, it has been a most interesting week.

Although it's been expected that there would be legal arguements both for and against the legal standing of California's Proposition 8, which amends the state's constitution such that only opposite sex marriages are recognized, the manner in which these arguments are playing out has just become more interesting.  State Attorney General Jerry Brown has asked the California State Supreme Court to overturn Prop. 8 in a recent filing.  From the SF Chronicle:

Or something like that.  At least that seems like it might the underlying philosophy behind Thank You for Throwing Your Shoe, where you can find pictures of people holding up their shoes in support of Muntadhar al-Zaidi.  It's definitely a mark of the Internet age and makes for a fun visual statement.

One of the interesting developments of the past several years has been what seems to be a more prominent place in American dialogues for the voices of non-believers.  Best-selling books on the subject of atheism have emerged from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchins.  A humorous examination of religious belief was offered up in cinematic format by Bill Maher.  All of this has more or less been part of rather uncharacteristically mainstream attention, much to the chagrin of self-labeled culture warriors.

There's this interesting theory floating around over at Crooks and Liars: Eliot Spitzer was investigating Madoff.  While the initial evidence offered up is pretty thin, to the tune of some anonymous comments made on an investment forum a couple of years ago, there's also this piece by Greg Palast and this one from Project Censored

It's hitting the headlines from the WaPo to the HuffPo.  In a terribly fun twist, Jesse Jackson Jr.

Not to steal any of the Dead One's thunder, but I'm going to do my own thing here with some questions that are on my mind.  There won't be ten of them, but rather the exact number that are on my mind at the time.  I also don't expect any answers.  Consider them rhetorical if you wish or offer your thoughts.  It's up to you.  Here goes.

Why can't Barack Obama close the deal?

Many of you out there share my disappointment in California's approval of Proposition 8.  However, over the last week I've heard too many voices, even those rising from prominent gay communities like the Castro district, that have been far too quick to blame black voters for the proposition's passage.  The evidence being offered here, we are told, comes from exit polls.  How solid is this data?  As it turns out, not very.

Today, I voted for a baby-killing, crypto-muslim, socialist, arugula-munching, elitist, black radical activist.

And it felt good.  It felt damned good.

I've had a number of things on my mind over the last couple of weeks, but I've been quite busy.  There are several topics that I've wanted to write about.  However, I really won't have the time before Tuesday.  I also doubt that anyone will care as much after that, so I've decided to plow through a few them of them as haphazardly as possible.  Here we go!

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From The Stumper, at Newsweek:

Deep thought: Did this scarf come out of the $150,000?