Last week I had a little stint guest blogging for Esquire while the unstoppable Charles Pierce took a vacation.  On of my topics was the Larry Summers for Fed Chair debate and my take was that even if you really, really like Larry Summers there's nothing about him that makes him so singular a talent that he and only he should run the Fed. Summers faces opposition from Wall Street, Congressional Democrats and prominent women, among others.

Poor Reza Aslan who participated in a cringeworthy Fox News interview about his new book about the historical Jesus only to be asked repeatedly why he would even write such a thing since he is a devout Muslim.

These are the minor incidences in life that fill me with dread.  They are the reminders that it is very hard to talk to a lot of people.  Worse, that other people very much control the conversation.

The New York Times comically believes that Anthony Weiner should drop out of the New York City mayoral race because... he sexted some willing people online?  Ah, we're told, it's a big deal because he kept sexting willing people online after having resigned from Congress for sexting willing people online.

Sexting willing people online.

Dear White People,

I understand through the Internet and mainstream media that some of you are "deeply concerned about urban riots," as the Zimmerman verdict approaches.  Please, white people, keep this deep concern to yourself.  Your concerns sound quite patronizing to the, um, no doubt multicultural assemblage of rioters that you imagine is gathering informally on the streets of Miami.

Hey, wow.  This fall, a movie version of Ender's Game is coming out.  It's based on a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, originally drafted in 1977, when I was 2 years old.  I read it in high school and I really liked it.  It's the story of Ender Wiggin, tormented at battle school as part of his training to become the ultimate weapon that saves humanity of a nasty enemy from space called "The Buggers," who remain mysterious in the first book and are explored later in the series.  

I'm impressed and a bit surprised to see that The New York Times has become the most consistent progressive voice against the post 9/11 security state.  Today, the Times very gently criticizes U.S. snooping on the private communications of our friends and fellow Earth inhabitants of the European Union, who are our collective largest trading partner and our strategic allies.

Two items in the op-ed most intrigue me.

I admit it, my underdog leanings are with Edward Snowden.  I'd like to see him avoid prosecution.  Beyond that, I don't think it's necessary or important to prosecute him.  Oddly enough, commodities trader and former fugitive villain Marc Rich died today.  When I think about the U.S.'s real interest in Snowden, I can't help but thinkof Rich, safely snowed into Zug, Switzerland, making billions of dollars for years, out of reach of Rudy Giuliani, the man who had him indicted him for trading with Iran and for tax evasion.

Larry Meyer of Macroeconomic Advisers is a smart guy and, as a former Federal Reserve Governor, is one of the more looked to voices for opinions about Fed policy moves and appointments.  He believes that Obama has essentially fired Ben Bernanke and that the president wasn't kind about it.

Just some things I don't want to see on any blogs anymore, anywhere.  These words and phrases are now banned until further notice on all of the Internet.  I will be working with my friends at the NSA to enforce this. By the way, they aren't all that prevalent at Dag.  This is just stuff irking me on the rest of the Internet.

The List

We the people...

Duly appointed officials...

Duly elected representatives (or president)...

He (She/They/It) broke his (her/their/its) oath... (I'm so sick of it).

This morning, my favorite columnist in the world, David Brooks, gave his quick take on Edward Snowden, ultimately condemning him for antisocial behavior driven by a hyper-individualistic morality formed out of his refusal to conform to various social norms (he didn't finish high school, or community college, didn't want to be friends with his neighbor, hadn't put a ring on his girlfriend, no organized religion, etc.)

Back in the 2008 primaries (ah, those days that no progressive blogger out for anything other than a fight really misses) I though it was a big deal that Senator Obama didn't support people's right to bring class action civil suits against telephone carriers who broke privacy laws in order to share information with security agencies.

As we head into the long weekend, you Daggers are probably wondering what you're going to read.  Might I suggest a short and cheap solution to your entertainment needs?  It's got more action than My Dinner With Andre.  More laughs than The Deer Hunter.  More insight than the entire oeuvre of David Brooks.  It is:

I don't think there's much doubt that, in terms of law enforcement we are headed down a path that will lead to the prosecution of a journalist for publishing something classified.  My guess is that the first target will not be a strictly mainstream journalist, but I could be wrong about that.  It will almost certainly be a target that doesn't have much public sympathy.  It's not going to be somebody who has revealed unmitigated wrongdoing.  The Attorney General, whoever it is that first goes down this path, will want to contend with at best, a divided public.

...played out in the wrestling ring, years ago.

When Irwin R. Schyster (always announced as "I...R...S!")

Fought the red, white and blue blooded (but orange-skinned) Patriot!

That's all that needs to be said about this latest scandal, right?

Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is a fable.  It is not a fable now, years after it was written.  Fitzgerald structured it as a fable and intended it to be read as such.

I worry when I write about the Middle East because I have no confidence that I know what I'm talking about and probably less interest in the differences and similarities between a Shiite and an Alawite than I do in whether or not I think that Richard Foreman's latest play at New York's Public Theater was any good (it was not.)  I sometimes confuse Wahabi with the condiment for sushi.  Heck, I don't even feel bad about this -- if the sectarian issues of

At Esquire, Charles Pearce flags a National Review article wherein some person named Dennis Prager complains that free breakfasts for public school children in Los Angeles will damage the character of the city's young, who will grow up thinking that life is nothing but a bunch of government hand-outs.  Oh, and, he says, it encourages lazy parents not to feed their kids before school.

An Oxford University economist and a Stanford University epidemiologist have combined their considerable breadth and knowledge to conclude the Great Recession and accompanying austerity have caused 10,000 suicides and a million diagnoses of depression in the U.S. and Europe.  If you find that hard to stomach, here's something more concrete -- AIDS is once again a full blown epidemic in Greece where budgets have been cut from HIV-prevention programs.

This afternoon, Reuters published an Op-Ed from me about the online investigations into the Boston bomb attack.  I am very concerned about the "if you see something, say something culture," and how it has mixed with technology to create something of a society full of amateur detectives and complainers.

This morning, Thomas Friedman writes that it is unfair for lefties to criticize Obama's Chained CPI Proposal.  In his words:

"It was good to see President Obama put out a budget proposal that addressed all three needs. The attacks on him from the left are unfair because, ultimately, we will need to do all three even more. As Bloomberg News reported on Monday: 'Typical wage-earners retiring in 2010 will receive at least $3 for every $1 they contributed to the Medicare health-insurance program, according to an Urban Institute study.'"