Looking for a Hero by George Oswalt

You will find me at the JRB Gallery on the Paseo tomorrow evening. I can’t wait for this opening.

Tonight, I’ll be on lower Bricktown in front of the Harkins Theater from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. watching Cami Stinson. Watch this and you’ll know why I’ll be out tonight.

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Daily Kos on Oklahoma’s 2d Congressional District election in wake of Rep. Dan Boren announcing he won’t seek re-election:

Yesterday morning, ex-Rep. Brad Carson emailed me to let me know that his plans have changed and he will not be seeking his old seat back in the wake of Dan Boren’s retirement. Fortunately, Democrats have a strong bench here despite the red hue of the district, and there are several other possible candidates, including ex-state Sen. Ken Corn (who previously said he’s “very likely” to run) and state Rep. Ben Sherrer. The Hotline also mentions state Sen. Josh Breechen as a possible GOP candidate.

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When Ezra Klein at Washington Post looked at the deficit negotiations, he found the GOP rejected their own proposals and walked out. Who’s the dick?

So when the GOP’s economic policy team sat down to make the strongest case they could for growth-inducing deficit reduction, they recommended a mix (of) 85:15 (blogblah’s note: of spending cuts to tax increases), not a 100:0 mix. And then, when the Obama administration agreed to an 83:17 mix, the Republican leadership walked out of the room and demanded that taxes be excluded from the deal altogether. How do you negotiate with that?

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Here’s a novel way to get past the debt ceiling crisis: rely on the 14th Amendment and just ignore it. According to CNN Money, it’s one of the answers to the puzzle proposed by the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner.

The 14th Amendment states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

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The chairman of the state legislative ethics committee in Indiana may have a slight problem, according to local reports.

a very attractive 26 year old woman who has connections to a strip club in Lawrenceburg, Indiana was in the car with 59 year old Republican State Representative Robert Mechlenborg at 12:08AM when he was pulled over by the Indiana State Police and subsequently tested positive for alcohol and Viagra.

Blogblah note: enjoy the schadenfreude my droogies.

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Time magazine editor and MSNBC political analyst for the Morning Joe show Mark Halperin gets suspended and apologized for saying President Obama was “kind of a dick” during last night’s press conference. Obama should consider the source.

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If you do nothing else today, please watch THIS VIDEO. Please, please please. DO IT! It’s the most inspiring thing I’ve seen in an age. It will change your attitude.

Blogblah!

Post Script:
I haven’t really had much to say about the New York legislature passing gay marriage equality legislation because, well, I don’t know much about it. However, I couldn’t resist the video below. In it, Howard Zinn, a counter-historian (my formulation), introduces part of an oral history of the so-called Stonewall Rebellion and actor Tim Robbins reads (with such wonderful verve) the eyewitness testimony of Martin Duberman. This is just so good, it’s awesome sauce!

Tim Robbins reads Martin Duberman, “Stonewall” from Voices of a People's History on Vimeo.

An Obama Speech Live Blog by Andrew Sullivan

LiveBlog of speech by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

“Progressives” LiveBlog Obama’s speech at Daily Kos

ABC.com LiveBlogs the speech with Twitter Twist

I didn’t bother to watch — I don’t have TV at home now, and I didn’t want to go out — but that doesn’t matter as much as the blogosphere and CW reax in tomorrow’s papers, for which I am not going to wait up. If I have anything of substance to say, I’ll do it after digesting some likely bloated pontificating by pundits of all stripes.

DID TUESDAY MAKE ME LOOK FAT?

Historically Carnival has been a last hurrah before the Christian season of Lent40 days of fasting and penitence beginning on Ash Wednesday. But its roots reach at least as far back as ancient Rome’s Saturnalia, a hedonistic winter celebration of Saturn, god of the harvest.

National Geographic

A Saturnalian Moment in Brazil

I haven’t heard from my son, who lives in New Orleans, about his experiences, but I’ll give him a couple days rest before I make him talk to me on the phone. I did notice a tweet from him about missing the Vieux Crew ball, but I’m not all that sure I want to know what goes on at the Vieux Crew ball. Compared to my children, I’m not nearly as mature. In fact, compared to most people, I may not be that mature, but that’s another matter.

Blogblah

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

ISAAC ASIMOV

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

Minnesota Still Without Senator

Former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-MN, has strung out last year’s election and is still going and we’re not yet to the appeal level. I don’t think most people believe he has a chance of being successful in this challenge to Al Franken, but that’s not the immediate point. If he strings it out, as he’s done so far, it is one less vote for the next big bill, the budget resolution, universal health care, whatever, and one more Republican that’s needed to break the filibuster deadlock at 60-40 in the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, his legal position becomes more and more attenuated and ludicrus, as this day’s entry in the soap opera demonstrates.

This is about topical politics, but I’m not linking to any one particular headline, but I must admit to being puzzled by GOP decisions to oppose Obama as a bloc. Let’s take U.S. Rep. Mary Fallin, R-OKC, who voted against the stimulus bill along with her caucus. Trouble is that the stim bill includes beaucoup money for Oklahoma, including a HSR system that will go from Tulsa through Oklahoma City down to Dallas and from there to either San Antonio or Houston. Seems like this will create 100s of Oklahoma jobs and pour millions into the local economy. Unemployment is rising and those with jobs are crazy afraid and she votes against funding unemployment checks? She voted against a tax cut for 97.36% of her constituents? What’s next? Put Tinker up for closing? What the hell is she thinking? I mean, really? (The link in this paragraph will take you to her constituent access page where you can send her an email asking such questions, if you’d like)

Chairman of the Bored