Alan Simpson has issues

“This is a fakery. If they care at all about their children or grandchildren, and sometimes I doubt that – I think, you know, grandchildren now don’t write a thank-you for the Christmas presents, they’re walking on their pants with the cap on backwards listening to the enema man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg, and they don’t like them!”

Alan Simpson, scolding old folks for complaining about possibly having their Social Security funds reduced, quoted by Politico.

It’s assumed he means Eminem and Snoop Dogg. I’d say Simpson has regularity problems. This is the asshole President Obama had co-chair his deficit commission.

Best line of the day that will not be heeded by any policy makers

It really is worth repeating: no matter how much the right-wingers may like to claim that the US government is “broke”, it’s not, in any normal sense of the term. Investors, putting real money on the line, are willing to lend funds to the Feds long-term at an inflation-adjusted interest rate of only 1 percent. There is nothing in the markets or the cash flow requiring immediate austerity.

Yes, there is a long-run problem — but this requires long-run solutions. Slashing spending now now now is neither necessary nor helpful.

Paul Krugman

Fat Tuesday, Laissez les bons temps rouler

Mardi Gras, literally “Fat Tuesday,” has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the “last hurrah” before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That’s why the enormous party in New Orleans, for example, ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday, with battalions of streetsweepers pushing the crowds out of the French Quarter towards home.

Carnival comes from the Latin words carne vale, meaning “farewell to the flesh.” Like many Catholic holidays and seasonal celebrations, it likely has its roots in pre-Christian traditions based on the seasons. Some believe the festival represented the few days added to the lunar calendar to make it coincide with the solar calendar; since these days were outside the calendar, rules and customs were not obeyed. Others see it as a late-winter celebration designed to welcome the coming spring. As early as the middle of the second century, the Romans observed a Fast of 40 Days, which was preceded by a brief season of feasting, costumes and merrymaking.

There are well-known season-long Carnival celebrations in Europe and Latin America, including Nice, France; Cologne, Germany; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The best-known celebration in the U.S. is in New Orleans and the French-Catholic communities of the Gulf Coast. Mardi Gras came to the New World in 1699, when a French explorer arrived at the Mississippi River, about 60 miles south of present day New Orleans. He named the spot Point du Mardi Gras because he knew the holiday was being celebrated in his native country that day.

Mardi Gras literally means “Fat Tuesday” in French. The name comes from the tradition of slaughtering and feasting upon a fattened calf on the last day of Carnival. The day is also known as Shrove Tuesday (from “to shrive,” or hear confessions), Pancake Tuesday and fetter Dienstag. The custom of making pancakes comes from the need to use up fat, eggs and dairy before the fasting and abstinence of Lent begins.

Above all from Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras.

The February Revolution

… began in Russia 94 years ago today (1917).

The February Revolution was the first stage of the Russian Revolution. Mostly bloodless, it led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Ultimately, the regime that began in the February Revolution was replaced during the October (Bolshevik) Revolution.

Here’s some contemporary reports from The New York Times.

(Russia was still using the Julian Calendar in 1917. Hence, March 8 elsewhere was February 23 in Russia.)

March 8th, 2011

My favorite non-fiction writer, John McPhee is 80 today.

He writes for The New Yorker and has published more than 30 books, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. His most recent collection of essays is Silk Parachute (March 2010).

His father was a doctor of sports medicine, so McPhee grew up on the Princeton campus knowing, he said, “the location of every urinal and every pool table.” As a kid he spent football games on the field. One day the weather was bad and he was wet, cold, and miserable. He looked up and saw writers in the press box — warm, dry, and comfortable. He decided he would become a writer. He wrote a novel for his senior thesis at Princeton. It wasn’t very good, but he said, “You just don’t sit there and write thirty thousand words without learning something.”

He was rejected by The New Yorker for 10 years before publishing an article there. He said, “I used to paper my wall with rejection slips. And they were not making a mistake.” They made him a staff writer in 1965.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Jim Bouton, pitcher and author of Ball Four, is 72.

Micky Dolenz of the Monkees is 66 today.

Baseball hall-of-famer Jim Rice is 58.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was born on this date in 1841. Three times wounded in the Civil War, Holmes survived to become a prominent legal scholar, Chief Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1902-1932. He is considered one of the greatest of the Supreme Court justices.

But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done…. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force…. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Schenck v. United States, Baer v. United States, 249 U.S. 52 (1919).

Just gotsta dance

Bodies in motion: Dancing around the world

The dictionary defines it as “to move one’s feet or body, or both, rhythmically in a pattern of steps, especially to the accompaniment of music.” People around the world, however, have their own definitions of dance, as exemplified by these images taken since the first of the year. And such expressions can celebrate a culture, win a competition, make a living, entertain a crowd, and play a role in propelling social change. Get those bodies and feet moving. — Lloyd Young (40 photos total)

The Big Picture

Best line of the day

“On Monday, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a terrorism warning, asking all Americans to be on high alert this week…. I think I speak for all Americans when I say, ‘Bitch, I can’t be any more alert than I already am. O.K.? I’m opening my mail with salad tongs. I take my passport in the shower with me. I am watching so much CNN I am having sex dreams about Wolf Blitzer.”

Tina Fey on SNL in late 2001, from a brief profile in The New Yorker.

In another article, The New Yorker has lined up some vintage Tina Fey videos.

More from the Huckster

Now Huckabee is going for a trifecta: “HUCK RIPS PORTMAN’S PREGNANCY” is the headline at Politico. It seems Huckabee has gone on yet another right-wing radio show to accuse Natalie Portman, who is expecting a baby with her fiancé, of being among those who “glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-wedlock children.”

Huckabee has not extended his disapproval of bastardy and its enablers to Sarah Palin, mother of Bristol and grandmother of little Tripp. Perhaps it is a question of worker solidarity with a fellow toiler in the Fox News sweatshop. That seems more probable than that it’s simply because the Palins are Christians, whereas the Portmans, er, aren’t.

Hendrik Hertzberg : The New Yorker

Best line of the day

“I ruled Snyder an asshole and gave him 4,999 points, which I calculated as the highest score a non-violent asshole who is not George Will can receive.”

Taibblog | Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy

Over the course of the last weeks the Supreme Court of Assholedom has considered several pressing cases, and the deliberations have been fierce. Responding among other things to popular demand that the Court consider routine behaviors as well as the characters of major public figures, we delved into a few routine matters intended to provide guidance to the difficult question of how all of us can avoid being assholes in our daily lives.

Among those considered in addition to Snyder — Rahm Emanuel and Elton John; also the key issue of whether a person can look like an asshole.

Best lines ever on a March 4th

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933

Girls and Boys Together

Gail Collins reports on a new status of American Women report, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt prepared one for President Kennedy.

At the time, there were 454 federal civil service job categories for college graduates, and more than 200 were restricted to male applicants. It was perfectly legal to refuse to hire a woman for a job because of her failure to be a man, or to refuse her credit unless she had a husband to co-sign her loan. The median age for marriage for a woman was 20, and the only job open to most women that involved a chance to travel was flight attendant.

The median age for American women to marry today is 30.

Another insight from Collins, as women still earn just 80 cents to the male $1.

There has always been a big difference: in 1979, women made only 62 percent of what men did. And the report suggests that part of the problem is because of the fact that women tend to pursue the lowest-paying professional careers, notably teaching. Perhaps part of the answer is just to increase compensation for people who devote their careers to education. Perhaps the governors could take that up next time they get together to discuss public employee unions.

There’s more.