A Clinton tattoo:
Luis Salgado, 28, owner of the Ill Skillz (4948 N. 5th) tattoo parlor just got a portrait of Clinton inked on his leg at a tattoo convention in Baltimore. Artist Buffalo Bill, of Sunbury, offered a free Hillary tattoo to any takers because his daughter Sarah Taby is a big Clinton supporter and thought the tattoo would give Clinton good exposure.
I will have nightmares tonight.
Among college-educated poll respondents, 19 percent of Republicans believe that human activities are causing global warming, compared to 75 percent of Democrats. But take that college education away and Republican believers rise to 31 percent while Democrats drop to 52 percent.
Robert Kaplan has an op-ed in the New York Times today making the case for intervention; Matt, meanwhile, sorts through the political gesturing around using force in Burma:
Realistically, you’re not going to see a forceful U.N. intervention in Burma because no country capable of mounting such an operation (basically the U.S. and maybe Britain and France) would want to mount one, while Russia and China (and probably even post-colonial democracies like India) would be opposed to anyone mounting one, and democratic countries would be secretly glad that Russia and China would block a move like this because they could blame inaction on Russia and China (or, like Fred Hiatt, toss blame vaguely in the direction of "the U.N.") for a domestic audience even though they wouldn’t want to step in themselves.
Ross counters that liberal hawks will eventually tire of inaction and return to a "UN-skeptical approach to the world’s troubles that at present is defended primarily by neoconservatives."
Gawker has some TV clips to crack a smile. O’Reilly is a very ill-tempered fellow. But I prefer that to cynicism myself. I’m not sure he or Hannity quite know what’s about to hit them this year.
A reader writes:
I live in SD and I am a candidate for the State House. I was out walking my district last month and spoke to a woman about the primary. She has a statue of the Virgin Mary in her front yard and was wearing several crosses around her neck. Here is our conversation:
Woman: "I don’t know about that Obama guy."
Me: "I’m an Obama supporter, do you mind if I ask what you’re unsure about."
Woman: "He’s a muslim and there is a biblical prophecy that a muslim will take over our country and destroy the world."
Me: "You’re aware he is not a Muslim."
Woman: "He can say anything he wants."
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) holds seven-month old Kabian Allen after speaking at Macomb Community College May 14, 2008 in Warren, Michigan. By Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
A big one in Britain: worth 5,510 8 oz steaks. No steroids, apparently.
Another reader reminiscence:
Reading todays Squirrel updates triggered some old memories of my youth. I spent my summers in southern Ohio on my grandparents farm. I had 10 aunts and uncles, all of whom
had 2-5 kids of their own, so I had plenty of cousins to keep me company on summer break. We all slept in the hayloft of the barn.
Out of neccessity grandpa sent out all the cousins who were old enough to gather food. I’d spent many a hot day picking all sorts of berries, fruits and vegetables (blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, japanese raspberries, cherries, apples, etc), gigging frogs, catching catfish, bluegill, crappie and carp, shucking corn, stringing beans, helping grandpa slaughter and carve up a hog… As one of the older boys, I got to handle the singleshot .22LR rifle and crammed 15-20 cartridges into my pocket. We’d bring back anything we could kill for meat. Groundhog, opossum, raccoon, rabbit, and squirrel… Even a car-struck deer was fair game, if we could get to it quickly after the collision.
Grandpa loved his squirrels. On a good afternoon, I’d bring in 10 or so squirrels. Grandma would make thick, lumpy buttermilk biscuits, with a dollup of butter on top, a ladle of squirrel gravy over top of it. But grandma would save the best for grandpa. He’d have his own plate of biscuits and squirrel gravy, and another with scrambled eggs and squirrel brains.
Though I’m told there’s a version of Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad-Cow) disease in squirrel…
Andrew Stuttaford ponders the meaning of the Tory victories:
Cameron’s achievement is the way that he appears to have ‘decontaminated’ the Tory brand, and thus made the Conservatives into the electorally viable alternative that they were not in 1997, 2001 and 2005. They have become strong enough to take advantage (at least for now) of Labour’s weakness. To do that, Cameron has taken the party in a direction that many of a more Thatcherite set of mind (including yours truly) have not, to put it mildly, always liked.
I’d still argue that Cameron has gone further along that route than was either necessary or productive, but I’d also argue that he was right to understand that you have to face electoral realities before you can change them.
There can be little doubt that McCain is going to have to do the same. With an unpopular Republican in the White House and about six months to go until the election, that’s going to be very tricky indeed. This process is not always going to be easy for those of us on the right to accept (and there’s nothing wrong with a vigorous debate on this side of the aisle over some of McCain’s proposals), but the alternative, defeat in the fall to Obama, will be far, far worse. And as for those who talk about principled defeat and a quick bounceback in 2012, they should take a look at what happened to Britain’s Conservatives in the years after Blair’s first victory: they lost, and they kept on losing.
It’s a surprise to Clinton. They’ll be campaigning together in Michigan.
