After reading this column, I have to scratch my head a little.

Check out Chuck Todd, NBC's chief White House correspondent, openly speculating that President Obama is going to embrace same-sex marriage because he needs money from gay people. "Gay money in this election has replaced Wall Street money," he reported. NBC's David Gregory agreed. For some reason, neither man seemed to think this theory reflects poorly on the president.

Or is it just that political commentators are always so obsessed with blowing trivial crap up into partisan "scandals"? The biggest trending news item for media mavens and bloggers today is apparently something Ted Nugent said and most of the rest of what's taking up attention is about as meaningful.

I'm struck by the diversity of comments here with regards to an interview given by the new Miami Marlins manager, Ozzie Guillen.

Guillen committed the nearly unpardonable sin of having kind words to say about Fidel Castro and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

A little background. The Miami Marlins baseball team opened a new stadium this season, right smack in the heart of Little Havana, la communidad el Norte for Cuban refugees. This casts an intriguing light on what Guillen said, for it's the older Cuban-Americans who have a problem with it, while later generations are more "Who's Castro?"

Y'know, the idiot numbnuts on the right ought to learn to shut up and not reflexively defend the white half of a murderous bastard against the black kid:

Sanford police Sgt. David Morgenstern on Wednesday confirmed that the video being shown by ABC News is of Zimmerman. The 28-year-old's head and face are visible throughout and he is dressed in a red and black fleece jacket. Police are shown frisking Zimmerman whose hands were handcuffed behind his back. They then lead him into a police station.

Andrew Breitbart is dead.

I'm not going to bore you with "say something nice," because I can't.

I wanted to. I wanted to find something to hang a hat on to be magnanimous. I wanted to think about his wife and kids, and to offer up my small slice of compassion and support in their loss.

And then I thought, "Shirley Sherrod had a family. A family she worked hard to support at a job that paid a decent wage and offered nice benefits to make up for the fact that she was not allowed to ask for a raise or more vacation or any of the countless hundreds of things people in the private sector can get."

Usually, when someone from the *koffkoff* loyal opposition dies, I can find something in my heart to say that's nice, or I'll just shut up.

Andrew Breitbart died last night.

Journalism is the better for it.

In "How Many Divisions Has State Got," Steve Hynd lays out a plan for "Pre-COIN," operations. That is, humanitarian or nation building interventions led by the US government without the involvement of the military. Bernard Finel, Associate Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College, posted a response at his blog noting that while he agreed with the premise, he didn't think it would work. Unfortunately, Finel's response strikes me as a case of forcing the arguments to match his conclusion.

Even rock ribbed conservatives are teasing about her "special status".

I see a lot of comments and rebuttals to Occupy Wall Street that boil down to this, no doubt spurred on by the Koch brothers and their minions:

I work three jobs. I own a house. I have a family to support. I am the 53%.

My question is this: why?

Almost everything we know about wages and prices tells us that the typical household has suffered a Lost Decade for market wages. Just as important, the price of necessities -- such as health care, a college education, a house, and energy to heat your home and run your car engine -- is growing faster than our incomes. [...]

I'm beginning to think there's a reason to believe the "Occupy Wall Street" movement has legs that can carry it into 2012, and smart politicians will start affiliating themselves with it.

To-wit:

As “Occupy Wall Street” spreads around the world – now in more than 185 locales, and counting – everyone from politicians to media pundits is scrambling to identify the protest movement’s leadership.

ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” put protester and blogger Jesse LaGreca in its roundtable spotlight Sunday even as he prefaced his answers with the words, “I’m only speaking for myself.”

One side effect of the Teabagger movement that I predicted two years ago was the rise of a leftie activist political movment.

It appears to be starting up.

Chicago. Denver. LA. All either started or slated to start soon to complement the protests on the actual Wall Street.

All without astroturfed money or influence. No Dick Armey. No Koch Brothers. Started out of a postal box in a UPS store.

An internet "troll" has been jailed for mocking dead teenagers on various websites. Public figures, including Stephen Fry and Miranda Hart, have also been victims of trolling. So what is it and why do people do it?

The word comes from a Norse monster but the troll is a very modern menace. For some it's the internet equivalent of road rage, vandalising a grave, or kicking a man when he's down.

Trolling is a phenomenon that has swept across websites in recent years. Online forums, Facebook pages and newspaper comment forms are bombarded with insults, provocations or threats. Supporters argue it's about humour, mischief and freedom of speech. But for many the ferocity and personal nature of the abuse verges on hate speech.

In its most extreme form it is a criminal offence. On Tuesday Sean Duffy was jailed for 18 weeks after posting offensive messages and videos on tribute pages about young people who had died. One of those he targeted was 15-year-old Natasha MacBryde, who had been killed by a train. "I fell asleep on the track lolz" was one of the messages he left on a Facebook page set up by her family. more at BBC

This might end up being a "tl;dr" essay, so please forgive me in advance. I'll try to be brief, but some of the concepts need exploring.

I woke up this morning at 3AM to the sound of garbage cans being emptied by the sanitation collectors. I couldn't get back to sleep, partly from the startle, partly because I just don't sleep so well anymore.

Mostly, because I started to think about Glenn Beck.

Well, sort of. His name came up in the monologue.

See, I started to think about the past twenty years of hatred and intolerance...really, fifty years, but liberal thought had managed to mask the undercurrent in American society and like mushrooms in a dank basement, hated took root and spored.

It looks like it's all over but the shouting in Libya.

It's a weird world we live in, all of a sudden. It seems like, for so long, we've been battling one extremist dictatorship after another. Now all we seem to have left as adversaries are Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il, and Kim looks like he's pretty much neutralized by his own megalomania. Who's left? Chavez, who's barely a blip of a threat to US interests-- and in fact, extends a hand to the poor of this nation thru Citgo oil? Castro? Some tin-pot African terror?

Norway's response to the terrible tragedy over the weekend that stripped the innocence of the nation from terror attacks and mass murder?

Intelligence

Norway's prime minister said Wednesday that the response to twin attacks that have rocked his country will be "more democracy."

Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday that Norwegians will defend themselves by showing they are not afraid of violence.

The vicious attack in the normally placid country has left Norwegians appalled and shaky, but determined to move forward. Some government workers were planning to return to work in their offices in the buildings where the bomb blasts blew out most windows.

The "common wisdom" regurgitated ad nauseam (to include Maddow and other "lefties") is that Wall St is expressing its acute anxiety over a potential Federal debt default to any elected official or staffer they can catch with great enthusiasm.

Apparently, that "wisdom" is at odds with the "facts on the ground". FDL's founder and fire-brand Jane Hamsher has posted an entry this morning recounting her meanderings throughout the halls of power in recent days. She reports seeing exactly zero (0) bank lobbyists and that her inquiries with staffers as to the observed dearth of said bankster weasels was told - nearly unanimously - that there has been no focused or defocused (large or small) effort by banksters to access office-holders toward influencing their positon regarding debt default.

Did you know there was a Republican Presidential Debate last night?

Don't bother looking for repeats of it on CNN or video on YouTube.

It was held on Twitter

Now there's the @140townhall, hosted by the Tea Party, for a few hapless GOP 2012 candidates.

I don’t think enough attention has been paid to how terrible, asinine and embarrassing it was. It was almost funny. The only way it could possibly have been worse would have been if Romney had showed up.

Why I quit my job by Kai Nagata.

best wishes to Kai!

In Europe, the government fears the people:

Britain's biggest police force faced a staffing crisis today after 95 per cent of its 999 call handlers failed to turn up for work because of the national strike. [...]
It comes as hundreds of thousands of public sector workers have begun to strike across the country, closing or disrupting schools, colleges, courts, Government offices and job centres.

Port and airports are being affected, causing travel chaos for holidaymakers trying to head abroad. Anyone arriving in the UK today is likely to be among those facing long queues.

...I would think Anthony Weiner's "mistake" wasn't.

While the nation has been focused on one dick, a bunch of other dicks in the White House have been fighting a shadow war in Yemen:

A major American newspaper is reporting that the U.S. government has intensified its covert war in Yemen in recent weeks, deploying armed drones and fighter jets to attack militant suspects seeking to undermine the shaky Sana'a government.

Citing U.S. officials, The New York Times said that after nearly a year-long pause in American airstrikes, the U.S. has accelerated its campaign in an attempt to keep militants linked to al-Qaida from consolidating power. The attacks are being led by the U.S. Defense Department's Joint Special Operations Command in close coordination with the CIA.

There's an awful lot of butt-hurtitude going on in Blogtopia (© Skippy) over the Anthony Weiner revelation.

"Oh, he should resign! Oh, he lied to us! Oh! Oh! Oh!"

Oh, grow UP!

The funniest meme to me has been the "Liberals are showing an awful lot of hypocrisy by standing up and defending this jerk. After all, if he was Republican and conservative, liberals would be all over him for lying and being a perv!"

There's a kernel of truth there, just as there's a kernel of truth that Paul Revere warned the British. And it's about as relevant to the story. Yes, a conservative would have stood up to a lot worse treatment from me, and many other liberals. Let's look at the differences.

Every so often, maybe every two or three years, I'm asked by at least one person why I haven't run for office. "You'd make a great Congressman/Senator/President," they'll say.

I suppose it's true: I am pretty bright, can communicate well, have a large measure of compassion, and get the human condition without being a soppy bleeding heart. My passion in life is to make connections that other people miss, to understand why something happens, which is the first step in making sure it does or does not happen again, as the case may be.

There are plenty of reasons why I have not. I suck at fundraising, for one thing. I never ask for money, even if I could, absent the occasional ad to sell my photographs or to hawk a book or my writing, or what have you.

The fallout from Coward James O'Keefe's latest stunt is starting to build.

I mean, it's hard to add to Glenn Beck's deconstruction...yes, Glenn Beck...of the 11 minute faux NPR sting that O'Keefe cobbled together out of two hours of tape. I'm surprised O'Keefe is still standing and not curled up in some corner, sucking his thumb.

Comes now Time Magazine:

In the video, NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller and a colleague met with two members of a fictional Muslim group dangling a $5 million donation. Prodded by the "donors," Schiller said liberals "might be more educated" than conservatives, described Republicans as "anti-intellectual" and said the GOP had been "hijacked" by the "racist" Tea Party.

Yesterday, the SCOTUS made one of the single biggest boneheaded decisions, from a court full of them (Citizens United, anyone?):

The Westboro Baptist church were sued for emotional distress by the family of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, after members of the church picketed his funeral with signs that read: "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "You're Going to Hell".

But the US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the family and said that the church was entitled to protest under the Constitution's First Amendment, the right to free speech.

You might think otherwise, the way this story is getting spun, but that headline is the truth.

The 345-page General Accountability Office report pinpointed 34 areas – from defense and job training to social services – where federal agencies, offices or programs have redundant objectives or are fragmented across several departments.

For example, there are 15 agencies that deal with the nation’s food-safety system, which the GAO said has led to inconsistent oversight and an inefficient use of resources. There are 80 programs across multiple agencies that focus on economic development.