"Terror Baby"

Rachel Maddow celebrates Barack Obama's 50th birthday (which was yesterday) with a send-up/mash-up of all the "birther" conspiracies. Pretty funny until she gets to the part about how politicians and commentators are STILL hawking confusion and fear about Obama's birth, even after the release of his birth certificate.

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Shilling With and For the Children

Santorum is NEVER going to let you forget he has a lot of children. (See post below for older family pic.) This is his new Iowa campaign video.

Suffer the Children

Rick Santorum is on the stump arguing against early childhood education, well, all public education it seems. Here's a choice nugget:

“We need to get the federal government out of that business. We need a leader in Washington to start talking with the states and the communities to rally parents to demand that the educational establishment in this country start meeting the needs of their child, not children. See, that is the difference. Obviously, socialists love children, just like they love people in groups of one million or more,” he said.

This seemed like a good excuse (not that we needed one), to look at this photo of Santorum's family again. The photo was taken during his concession speech after losing his Senate bid in 2006.



It never gets old.

The Power of the Piano (and the People)

Put some musical instruments in public spaces, and musicians (even homeless ones) will come play them. An idea worth stealing! From The Denver Post:

There's lots of love downtown. The Downtown Denver Partnership began placing pianos along the mall in late 2009, said spokesperson Sarah Neumann. All of the instruments were donated; the partnership received many of them just by asking on Craigslist. They started with eight pianos but grew the roster to the current 17. All of them are painted to match the seasons by local artists.

A Break from Downer Posts

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

The Lessons of Lincoln

In The New Republic, John Judis argues that Obama needs to take a closer look at Lincoln and his uncompromising acts of courage.

Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today’s Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to, and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

He also argues for Obama to exercise the 14th Amendment option.

His comparison of the 2011 Republican Party with the antebellum South Democrats pre-Civil War is rather chilling. And of course, the fact that it is our first black president experiencing an "insurrectionary party" comparable to the 1860s is a bitter repetition of history.

The Faces Tell the Story

A Norwegian website has posted photos and bios of all those killed in the massacre. We are disappointed not to be able to read about them, but their beautiful young faces give us perspective on the magnitude and heartbreak of this tragedy.