This has been floating around for a couple of weeks, I think: Camille Paglia, always good for a chuckle, in an interview with the Globe and Mail:

This whole thing about global warming, I am absolutely incredulous at the gullibility of people. What is this hysteria over drowning polar bears? And finally I realized, people don’t know polar bears can swim! For me, the answer is always more facts, more basic information, presented without sentimentality and without drama. To inflict this kind of anxiety on young people is an outrage.

Mercy. Has Ms. Paglia gone all Emily Litella on us?

I think Ms. Paglia is entirely correct in thinking more information, presented without sentimentality and without drama, is our saving grace here. So here’s what I propose: assuming Ms. Paglia can swim, we drop her in the middle of Lake Michigan. That way, she gather more facts at her leisure and can tell us what her conclusions are when she gets back to Chicago.

Here, in its entirety, is my letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which was printed in edited form yesterday:

Dear Editor:

As an educator, I have followed with alarm the various cuts to the education budget in the General Assembly: larger class sizes, less support for the arts, fewer teacher aides, and now, in the Senate, the complete elimination of the Governor’s Honors Program, the crown jewel of the DOE.

I believe, however, I have found a solution to at least part of our funding woes.

The Republican governor of Puerto Rico has submitted a bill to slash the size of their legislature by 30%, saving nearly $11 million in the process.

Surely we could do the same thing here? I’m thinking it would be easier, math-wise, to cut the Assembly by 50%, so that all you would have to do is have each remaining legislator double up on his or her district. I haven’t done the math about how much we would save, but surely it would be enough to fund a few teacher aides, and maybe tide Governor’s Honors over until the economy picks up.

As for the increased duties the legislators would face, it’s the same as increasing class sizes for teachers, isn’t it? If larger numbers in the classroom is not supposed to have any real impact on instruction and learning, surely it won’t hurt our representatives to double up for the people they represent.

After all, times are hard, and we all have to make sacrifices.

Dale Lyles, educator

Ron Kirkland, Republican candidate in Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District, and a Vietnam vet, commenting on why repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would be a bad thing:

“Things don’t go well in military barracks when you have 50 guys sleeping on top of each other.”

Yes. Well. There you have it.

Go read.

http://juanitajean.com/2010/04/01/hummm/

It’s short, and if you don’t click on the Previous or Next button, you’ll back here in a few seconds. Don’t close that window, though, because you’ll want to go back and read one of Juanita Jean’s real tirades.

I came across this blog via alicublog.blogspot.com, who is always entertaining in a snarky kind of way. Juanita Jean is not quite Molly Ivins, and don’t you think Molly Ivins is kicking at the gates of heaven to be allowed back?, but she’s ‘pert-near close,’ as we say in Lubbock.

I had a scathingly brilliant idea this morning, but unfortunately I think it’s too late to get rich off of it. Because I could have made a bundle.

The idea is simplicity itself: from my CaféPress store, sell t-shirts that say, “Count Me Out: just say no to the Census.”

See? Wingnuts would have purchased them by the gross. I probably could have sold at least 1,000 to the Teabagger Express or whatever they’re calling it. Heck, as long as the Koch brothers are paying for it, I could have sold them 50,000, and then they could claim they had that many participants in their dog-and-pony show. As opposed to the 500 who actually show up.

It is beyond me, of course, why these people have suddenly taken it into their heads that the Census is an unimaginable governmental intrusion into their privacy. First of all, they spend their days screaming about how Obama, the Antichrist, is robbing us all of our personal freedoms. (Exactly which freedoms those are is a little unclear to me. And to them: I’ve never heard any teabagger actually enumerate a constitutional freedom that we’re in danger of losing. Hold that thought, though, I’m coming back to it.)

So if their rallying cry is “Bring back the Constitution,” I truly don’t understand why they’re suddenly against one of the very clear items in that estimable document. You don’t even have to read very far into it:

Article I, Section 2:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

And no, the questions on the form are not new. They’ve been asked for over a hundred years, at least. And it’s the friggin’ law, people.

All of this is especially astounding when you consider that this very same subset of the population leapt to the defense of George W. Bush’s flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment, and still do. Surveillance of U.S. citizens without a warrant? No problem. No problem at all. Apparently that’s governmental intrusion into our privacy we can all believe in. (However, once they realize that Obama is continuing this vile practice, they may decide it’s an outrageous violation of all we stand for.)

So yes: a built-in market for a wonderfully simple idea. If only I had had it two months ago, I could have suckered these pitiful, delusional, fearful pawns of the right wing power structure into giving me all their money while promoting a self-defeating idea. It’s a win-win for all of us.

Go ahead, read this. I’ll wait.

So, if I’m reading this gentleman’s post correctly, the American Family Association is all down with a) stoning a whale, and b) the manager of SeaWorld alongside him.

My only takeaway from this is that I hope that the crew who continually quotes Leviticus to keep the rest of us from eating shrimp realizes where the trajectory of their logic takes them, and us, if we’re not diligent in our exposure and ridicule of them.

I clicked on a link from my Google homepage to a news article about the teabagger convention’s deciding it would put together an organizing strategy for national elections.

Generally speaking, I’m a marketing department’s worst nightmare: I ignore context, up to and including ads, banners, and in this case, even the website I was on. But as I read the article, I began to think that perhaps it was a bit clumsy for a news article linked from the front page of Google, the glaring apostrophe in it’s where it didn’t belong was a clue, so I glanced up at the top.

Foxnews.com. Oh. And then I got to the last sentence:

Don’t let anyone tell you this is not a big deal. If this gathering is unimportant and this movement is a mirage, why are it’s detractors so upset and it’s participants so upbeat?

Wow. Let me count the ways: second person direct address, editorializing (based on schoolyard logic, no less), and two incorrect it’s. The only thing missing is the phrase liberal media.

Honey, please.