A post on Occupy Baltimore led me to a Daily Pennsylvanian report that both the Occupy movement and something called the 99% Declaration Working Group plan summer conventions in Philadelphia over Fourth of July weekend.

... The 99% Declaration group and the Occupy movement are both planning national conventions this summer, but the groups differ in their philosophies toward governmental change.

The 99% Declaration, or 99D, is hosting a conference called “Continental Congress 2.0” in Philadelphia beginning on July 2. One man and woman will be elected from each Congressional district to attend the event. The 878 representatives will be elected through an online ballot open from June 1 to 3.

Each delegation will submit a list of grievances, which will be voted on from July 2 to 4. The petition of grievances will be finalized by July 4.

“The idea is to get the list down to about ten key grievances and give it to Congress, the president and the Supreme Court,” founder of 99D Michael Pollock said.

Yesterday, as I was riding in a taxicab through one of New York's Indian/Pakistani neighborhoods, next to its dreadful airports that are inferior to everything in China, the cab driver said something amazing to me.  "Every dog has his day," he said.  I thought about this.  I realize that it had something to do with dog racing.  And maybe even Thomas Friedman who, has a writer, generally makes a pretty good Greyhound.  Though, seriously, you should see the busses in Calcutta.  They don't just have Wi-Fi, they run on Wi-Fi, floating effortlessly above the pavement.

This morning, Joe Nocera writes an interesting column about the Facebook IPO which I think is ultimately wrong. Nocera's take is that, aside from people angry that the investment banks lowered their revenue forecasts without telling all clients (and simultaneously raising both the price of the IPO and the number of shares sold) that investors don't really have a lot to complain about.

At the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Virginia, Joe Biden stood in front of a room full of military families who had lost loved ones in the service of our country.  He stood with his wife, Jill, by his side and spoke from the heart in a voice thick with emotion, talking about his own losses--the deaths of his first wife and 18-month-old daughter

Remember back when Rand Paul got into trouble for saying that he wouldn't have supported the landmark civil rights legislation that outlawed such perverse practices as segregated drinking fountains and "whites only" lunch counters? 

While the Trayvon Martin case slowly unfolds in Florida, supporters of shooter George Zimmerman feel compelled to play up any sort of black-on-white violence to prove that it's all good. On local Baltimore TV, over the last month or so, we've seen endless replays of a white man getting punched to the ground by a group of black people at supposedly safe Inner Harbor.

Last week, Republican Delegate Patrick McDonough, whose district includes parts of Baltimore County and Harford County, but not Baltimore City, issued a press release, "Black Youth Mobs Terrorize Baltimore on Holidays." Claiming that state investments were at risk, he called for Gov. Martin O'Malley to declare the Inner Harbor a "no-travel zone." Despite accusations of racism, McDonough now has called for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to resign because she is soft on black-on-white street violence. It's all red meat for his district.

For conservative website WorldNetDaily, Colin Flaherty author of “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How The Media Ignore It,”  writes Call for crackdown on black-on-white terror. Yeah, terror.

 As I watched that hideous video showing Pastor Charles Worley's recent headline-grabbing rants about penning gays and lesbians inside miles-long electrified corrals until they die, I couldn't help but notice his surroundings. (Okay, go and watch it if you haven't seen it.  But then come back and we'll talk.)

Based on an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (right), the Guardian announces, Occupy Wall Street's people power loses popularity:

... the public's backing of Occupy has taken a hit. Nationally, most pollsters have not even bothered to survey Americans on their views of Occupy since the end of the Zuccotti Park sit-in. The only pollster who has reasonably consistently asked about Occupy has seen a decline in its support. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that the percentage of Americans who consider themselves a "supporter" of the Occupy movement has dropped by half since November.

I read this last week, and wondered, who of course, could be more impartial about Occupy Wall Street than the WSJ's pollsters? And who, I wonder are they asking?

According to percentages, most Americans will not only not be rich, but will in fact go through their lives without even knowing anyone really rich. This explains why Mitt Romney can be a perplexing individual for average Americans to understand. You’d be thrilled if you found $250. He’s worth $250 million. There’s just no way to relate.

When November 6 rolls around, American voters will have only three meaningful choices in the presidential election:  We can vote for Barack Obama, we can vote for Mitt Romney,  or we can opt out of voting for a president altogether.  There will be other presidential candidates on the ballot but there's not a snowball's chance they'll win.  If we choose to vote for anyone other than Obama or Romney,  it'll have the same effect as not voting at all.  That's the reality--that's the way it is.  

So, I started blogging about Thomas Friedman's rah-rah piece about how Online. Education. Is about! To Change!!! EVERYTHING!1!!! But I've been slowed down by designing an actual online class, and by various things that tend not to slow Tom Friedman down, such as complexity, plausibility, and actual knowledge of the topic. I don't think online education is a glorious revolution in the making, as Friedman does, and I don't think it's a hopeless case either.

Demonstrating the shrewd political acumen for which he has become known, House Speaker John Boehner has come up with a new strategy to galvanize American voters before the election. Seeking to top his electrifying "Pledge to America" campaign from 2010, Boehner promised yesterday a bold new plan that may be the popular Republican campaign in history: Debt Ceiling Standoff, Take Two.

The Speaker is aware that the debt ceiling is a complicated legislative mechanism well beyond the understanding of most real Americans, so he asked me to help make sense of it. I will now take several questions from an imaginary interlocutor in order to help the ignorant electorate understand this exciting campaign.

Eduardo Saverin, something of a villain in the Facebook tale, is about the become a billionaire, assuming the social network's initial public offering, scheduled for this week, is successful.  From the $15,000 he invested to help Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg pay for servers, Saverin will get an estimated $4 billion payday.

We all did stupid things when we were young and the private preparatory academies of the type that Romney attended in the fifties and sixties were settings for all sorts of bullying and boorish behaviors and boys forced unnaturally together in search of A Separate Peace.

The big news yesterday -- no, the HUGE news -- was President Obama's interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, set up specifically so that he could air his own personal views about gay people being able to marry their same-sex partners:  After much soul-searching and a couple of decades of "evolving", he was finally ready to say out loud that he's all for it.

I am delighted by Obama's statement on gay marriage. I'm proud to be an American today.

For several years, Tim Johnson and his duck Miriam cohabitated peacefully. This Valentine’s Day, however, Johnson decided it was time to take the next step.

No, I'm not defending Naomi Schafer Riley as any art form, including the writing of an 800-900 word newspaper article can be practiced badly.  To not even read what you're criticizing is pretty low.  But Dr. Cleveland, Professor of Dagblog, sets a very high standard for columnists.  Paul Krugman, who sticks (usually) to his discipline, is praised while David Brooks and Ross Douthat are singled out for writing on a broader array of topics which they cannot, by definition, claim expertise.

So, Naomi Schaefer Riley has been fired from blogging at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Since I recently called the blog post that got her fired stupid and racist, I'm not sorry about her firing. I also pointed out that the kind of "anti-reverse-racism" racism that her post traffics in has become the refuge of losers and whiners making excuses for their failure.

In a scene from Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act by South African dramatist Athol Fugard, a small boy builds an imaginary house in the sand. It has two rooms for his impoverished family of six. A man sees him playing and encourages the boy to expand.

"If you're going to dream," he says, "Give yourself five rooms, man."

President Obama has been playing in the sand ever since the Republican-dominated 112th Congress convened last year, a body so divided and deranged that it can barely pass routine measures, let alone critical legislation. As the election looms, Obama's chance of getting any bills passed is asymptotically approaching zero, and his proposals are like imaginary houses that will never be built.

That has not stopped him from producing them. His latest gambit is a five-point "to do list" for Congress. Its elements are all measures that he has previously proposed without success, including various tax incentives to encourage hiring, mortgage refinance efficiencies, and a jobs programs for veterans.