Tidbits

Angela Merkel's administration in Germany is phasing out that country's use of nuclear power over the next ten years.
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General Martin Dempsey, currently U.S. Army Chief of Staff, will replace Admiral Mike Mullen when he steps down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1.
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Mark Zuckerberg has adopted a practice of eating vegetarian except for animals he has personally killed. So far he's killed lobsters, goats, pigs, and chickens. I don't know whether he butchers the animals himself.

I like the idea: Meat doesn't come from supermarkets. It comes from animals we have killed, and a terrifying proportion of those animals are raised in brutal, torturous conditions in factory farms. "How many times must a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?" If you're going to eat meat, it seems right that you should get your hands bloody to do it.

My father was a hunter: Every year, he shot a deer or a moose, butchered it, carried it out of the bush, and put it in the freezer. (I recognize my own hypocrisy here; supermarket meat will be part of my next meal.)
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Apparently Sarah Palin's staff are calling her bus trip through the Northeast a "learning tour." Good luck with that one, Sarah.
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Rudy Giuliani led Republican hopefuls in the latest Gallup poll. Do you think name recognition might be a factor?
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I'm getting really sick of hearing Paul Ryan's proposal to savage Medicare described as "courageous." Republicans' constant drive to slash benefits to the poor, sick, and elderly while cutting taxes on their plutocrat base isn't "courageous": It's cowardly and evil.
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Refusal to raise the debt ceiling is the latest policy to have reached prominence in public debate, along with justification for torture, child labor, and elimination of collective bargaining. Quo vadis, America?
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Tim Pawlenty: "... any doofus can go to Washington and maintain the status quo." I respectfully disagree, Tim. You're a big fish in Minnesota, but you ain't going to Washington. So at least some doofuses can't make it.

More from Pawlenty, in the same interview on CNN: "I'm not running for comedian-in-chief or entertainer-in-chief. I am not going to light my hair on fire and shoot sparks up my ears or whatever." Well, unless the Tea Party tells him he has to.
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"If you live in New York, it is so funny, you just don't expect two lanes. You expect one lane and double parking."
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"I love that smell of the emissions!" Sarah Palin at the Rolling Thunder event in D.C. Yeah, it's the smell of money, Sarah, and oil company profits. What's not to like?
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More on the Palin tour (accidental juxtaposition there of the words "more on"): the New York Times reports that Sarah denies any political aspect to her tour: "Ms. Palin is acting as though her family is just like any other taking a sight-seeing vacation to see the country." Ah, yes, just like the PAC-funded tours most Americans remember from their childhood, in the $500,000 family bus plastered with images of the Constitution.
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Inquiring minds want to know: How sleazy can Andrew Breitbart get? Re the underwear shot purportedly tweeted by Anthony Weiner: "At best, Breitbart's site shot first and asked questions later; at worst, it helped fabricate an attack on Weiner." Actually, I retract my question; I don't want to know how far Breitbart is willing to go. The idea is repellant.
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Robert Reich, in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Who's more influential in the Republican Party -- the so-called Tea Party or Wall Street and big business?" That's the battle for the soul of the Republican party, and it's uncertain which will win out: corruption or wingnuttery.

Tea Partiers hate government more than they hate the national debt.... But the Street and big business dislike the national debt more than they dislike government.

Reich believes that at the moment, the Tea Party bozos have the upper hand:

Why is the Tea Party winning? Wall Street and big business hold the purse strings in the GOP, but the Tea Partiers are now the ground troops. House Republicans need those ground troops to get out the vote in 2012. And they figure Wall Street and big business will stake them regardless of what happens.

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How did the national debt come to dominate public discourse? Around the time of elections last November, the concern was jobs, jobs, jobs. I read an article back around then that said that a tiny, insignificant 56% of the people thought unemployment was the critical problem while a huge, massive 4% thought the biggest concern was the national debt.
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I love Paul Krugman. He and I are political soulmates. If I were a Nobel-winning economist with excellent writing skills, I would write the same things he does:

Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.

Krugman goes on to suggest job-creating options, but says:

In the United States, in particular, any effort to tackle unemployment will run into a stone wall of Republican opposition.