Maureen Dowd
Sen Edward Kennedy
Kim Stanley Robinson


Well, here's the point where I hope science and politics never mix. According to the Christian Science Monitor: "In one of his first films, “The Blob,” the King of Cool helps defend a small Pennsylvania town against an amorphous extraterrestrial mass of man-eating protoplasm. At the end of the movie, he realizes that the creature cannot stand cold, so he and a police officer attack it with fire extinguishers, freezing it. The film closes with a shot of a military plane dropping the the Blob into the Arctic.

And now the creature has apparently thawed. According to the Anchorage Daily News, hunters on Alaska’s northern coast noticed a mass of thick, dark, viscous matter drifting in the ocean. Officials took a helicopter to investigate and followed a strand of the stuff that they estimated to be 12 to 15 miles long." No one knows how long until it finds its way to Wasilla... whew, Sarah, ya bailed out just in time...

The tiny dilemma of who is to rule in Honduras, shows it has more to do with macho bluster than considering actual proposals: "Mr. Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his work ending Central American conflicts in the 80s, laid out a plan Saturday that includes allowing Zelaya to return to power to complete his term, which is to end in January. But the interim government of Roberto Micheletti has refused to consider that possibility.

Arias also proposed the formation of a national unity government that would include representatives from all of the country's political parties; amnesty for political crimes committed after the ouster; and the guarantee that Zelaya abandon any referendum on presidential term limits. He also proposed to move up presidential elections by a month, to late October.

Earlier in the day, a representative to Zelaya had said that their side agreed to the proposal "on principle." But the interim government says that no negotiation is possible so long as it includes Zelaya's return to the country as head of state." I know I'm too old for the MTV Generation, but putting these leaders together in a Death Match 2009 event seems like the best way to resolve this... hey wait man, that's not claymation!!!

It seems that the only way for Mr Zelaya is going to be able to return to his country, is if someone invites them into their house one, dark, night...

From the Huffington Post, which seems to be switching more to stories on slipped boob tape than items of subtance, comes this: "In a blog post Sunday morning, Paul Krugman said Hirsch "somewhat misses the point." It's not that Stiglitz is being excluded because of his criticism and his tendentious relationship with some Obama officials, Krugman says. Rather, an entire economic perspective is lacking in the White House.

The larger story is the absence of a progressive-economist wing. A lot of people supported Obama over Clinton in the primaries because they thought Clinton would bring back the Rubin team; and what Obama has done is ... bring back the Rubin team.

I think the real story is more about excluded points of view than excluded people. And when you are dealing with financial reforms and the upcoming health-care debate, you want to have as many viewpoints as possible represented. It may well be that Larry Summers wants to be the top dog who won't share his bones, but someone must discipline him for the good of the country... bad Larry, now spit it out...