Open Threads

This is interesting:

On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when obesity has become a national concern.

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The Obamas will feed their love of Mexican food with cilantro, tomatilloes and hot peppers. Lettuces will include red romaine, green oak leaf, butterhead, red leaf and galactic. There will be spinach, chard, collards and black kale. For desserts, there will be a patch of berries. And herbs will include some more unusual varieties, like anise hyssop and Thai basil. A White House carpenter who is a beekeeper will tend two hives for honey.

I honestly don’t understand how people can dislike beets, but overall this is pretty cool. I’m actually throwing in a small garden at my brothers house this summer, and we talked about it tonight at dinner.

A Garden At The White HousePost + Comments (108)

Unmotivated.

Here is a three page story about people who have an infatuation with Captain Kirk’s chair from Star Trek and have one in their own home.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (199)

This is kind of interesting, given the negative reaction from GOP Congressional leaders (from Greg Sargent via Sully):

Rush Limbaugh recently said: “I am all for the AIG bonuses” and attacked the Obama administration for trying to undo them. He also blasted Dem efforts to get the names of the AIG bonus recipients as “McCarthyism.”

Fox News followed suit, also comparing Dems to “Joe McCarthy.” And Sean Hannity has now derided efforts to tax the execs by saying: “In other words, we’re going to just steal their money.”

And here’s Glenn Beck:

They have a contract. You want to break a contract, then you file Chapter 11. You let the company fail. If the government can just break a contract, well, then how do you know you’re safe? It’s their contract with AIG that they would have to break first! They would have to break two contracts, the one they made with AIG that Christopher Dodd wrote and then they would have to break the contracts that AIG broke. They have to break two contracts. “Well, if I can’t trust the United States government and their contract, why should I trust their money. Why should I trust the treasury. Why should I trust the Fed. I know I can’t trust Washington and congress and the White House. I haven’t been able to trust them for years.” Why should you trust the contract that you have with your boss? Why should the unions be able to trust their contract?

By the way, is everyone as excited about Glenn Beck as I am? I don’t just mean the 9.12 stuff, I’m talking about stuff like this:

The audience for Beck’s Friday night special were each given copies of two books. One of them was Cleon Skousen’s Five Thousand Year Leap. Skousen, who died in 2006, is one of the legendary cranks of the conservative world, a John Bircher, a grand fantasist of theories about secret conspiracies between capitalists and communists to impose a one-world government under the control of David Rockefeller.

I’ve become jaded about wingnuttia. Yeah, Erick Erickon’s an idiot, but even this kind of thing is starting to bore me. Secret conspiracies between capitalists and communists to impose a one-world government? Now that’s something I can get excited about.

The big three come out for AIG bonusesPost + Comments (103)

Chuck Butcher, longtime reader and friend of the blog, lost his son last night. Go pass on your condolences.

Sad NewsPost + Comments (16)

John Jon Stewart just referred to Ben Bernanke as Hamid Karzai’s stunt double and then went on to make fun of the tea party morons (has it been explained to them that taxes are LOWER right now than they were during the Bush years thanks to tax cuts the Republicans voted against), Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs.

This TDS looks like a keeper.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (71)

Here is your thread.

CBS Sunday MorningPost + Comments (38)

This is my last day in London. Thanks to everyone for their advice and suggestions. They were very helpful.

I’m currently trying to avoid being dragged to some annoying “hip” club in Chelsea or Belgravia by my friends, who are asleep.

Which brings me to a question about this place…what’s the deal with the 99-year leases in Belgravia and Chelsea and Mayfair? Do people here really accept the fact that the Duke of Westminster (a/k/a Client Number Six) owns so much of the city? Is that what Burkeanism is really about?

I don’t want to go to ChelseaPost + Comments (39)