mad bike skills

Two German woman with bikes. Need I say more?:

Mark Levine--Strawman killer

Conor Friedersdorf with a good piece on the misogynist Mark Levin.

Certainly as a Democrat if I were in charge of running the GOP, I'd have Mark Levin as its prime mouthpiece (I'd keep Michael Steele as the frontman at times as well). Conor's piece highlights the Beck/Levin/F&F bubble mentality--one that confronted and was eventually overcome by Democrats. Simply unable to accept that their own policies were rejected by voters, they construct wild and wilder nefarious theories of people being hoodwinked by shadowy anti-Americans.

Keep the light shined on them.

Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

Some statements collected on TPM.

I'm particularly moved by John McCain's statement.

On Scalia's dissenting blast in Davis v Georgi

Lee Kovarsky with a nice post on Scalia's disingenuous

Alan Dershowitz with a nice example on the way to questioning Scalia's Catholicism in the case

Finally, Conor Clarke comes around.

While I was away...

Man with a girlfriend who isn't a good listener goes to Europe for two weeks

Health insurance reform follies

Some more Hawking pushback.

This is the kind of stuff I think that Democrats need to concentrate on. Dems are getting caught up talking about the tactics of the town hall confrontations, the lies in the ads, the distortions of what are in plain English in the bill, etc. This becomes a "he said she said" thing, which plays into the media who want to talk about any issue in simple conflict terms.

Dems need to run against the current system. There's plenty not to like, lots and lots of anecdotes that nearly everyone understands and can relate to, and even those who want a free market system would have a hard time defending one in which consumers are unable to get information to make informed choices.

The system, as it is, is a mess. Demonstrating how the plan will straighten out the clear problems should be the priority of those who want it passed. Everything else detracts from that.

Annoy the police and go to jail

Blogger jailed for annoying the police.

Horrible flight might spur airline passenger "bill of rights"

Passengers spend 6 hours on the ground.

Hard to argue with the need for passenger protection when airlines continue to do this kind of thing. For a highly subsidized industry, this is just not something that can continue to get passed over.

The days of slacker laptop users in coffeehouses are coming to an end?

NYC coffee houses cracking down on sponging laptop users.

hmmmm

Nurse of the Year found not to actually be a nurse

Sounds like my bachelor party...

Green NASCAR?

Pocono Raceway to utilize solar panels to offset electrical costs.

Good for them (really), but I think most environmentalists have troubles with NASCAR because of the massive fuel use, pollution, and noise.

Huge drought in Iraq

It can't make it any easier for the pullout.

Take back the beep

Bad enough phone companies charge for text messaging at all. Now the internets is getting together to try to do away with the 15 seconds of instructions about how to leave messages.