The Wonkette's prayer

From the perspective of your Wonkette, Michael Steele has been an extremely effective RNC chair, as he has supplied us with a near-endless stream of mockable things to write posts about. But those who actually care about the health of the Republican Party are starting to question how well he’s actually doing his job...That’s why a whisper campaign has begun about a better candidate for this important task … a universally beloved team player who works hard and succeeds at whatever she does. YES OBVIOUSLY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT SARAH PALIN PLEASE GOD LET THIS HAPPEN OH IT WILL BE SO AWESOME WE CANNOT STAND IT.

link: Wonkette : RNC To Replace Michael Steele With Even More Hilarious Sarah Palin?

Is this selfish?

NEW YORK – In the latest snag for the iPhone 4, AT&T Inc. said Wednesday that a software defect in its network is limiting data uploads from the phone in some areas.

link: AT&T network glitch limits iPhone 4 upload speeds - Yahoo! News

See what I'm hoping is that all this yipping about "snags" with the new iPhone slows down sales just enough so I can friggin' get one for myself sometime before the end of the year.

Seriously.

Mad dogs and Englishmen, and me

Yes I do go out in the mid-day sun.

Bunky, this is the week I was dreaming about all through January and February. You don't think I plan to miss it, do you?

Heat, glorious heat

We're going to push 100 again today, just not quite so hard as yesterday, and then go on shedding a degree or two each day until maybe Sunday we'll be back in the high 80's, or at least that's what the forecasters say and when were they ever wrong?

I like hot weather. Guilt-free lazy is what hot weather means.

...iPhoned

Yeah, yeah, we've heard that one before

CLASSICAL MUSIC CHASES AWAY TEENS

London Free Press, CA - They say music is the universal language, a cultural force that unites people and speaks to the spirit.

But the London Public Library is using the universal language to deliver a tougher message: go away....

link: UNDERNEWS: CLASSICAL MUSIC CHASES AWAY TEENS

Still, it would be tempting to believe there are a lot of problems classical music could solve, and not just this one.

Noted

In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.

As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

link: Recovery effort falls vastly short of BP's promises

Ahhh

Finally. It might get hot enough to start thawing out my bones today. They're jabbering about triple digits but that's "feels like" - sort of the opposite of wind chill. I laugh at their "feels like." Ha!

...iPhoned

Bulletin

"The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine"

Michael Lewis's book, "The Big Short," is added to our reading list.

If every unemployed person in America read "The Big Short" today, tomorrow there would be millions in the street plumping the feathers and heating up the tar.

Ingenuity

TOLEDO, Ohio — Just one day after leaders of the House of Representatives announced a ban on earmarks to profit-making companies, Victoria Kurtz, the vice president for marketing of a small Ohio defense contracting firm, hit on a creative way around it.

link: Companies Find Ways to Bypass Ban on Earmarks - NYTimes.com

None

There is no parade today in GFD. There is no parade all weekend - as far as I can tell, all month. Which is not a huge loss, since our 4th of July parade is never much good. The big parade around here is the County Fair parade, and that's a couple of months off yet.

The fireworks show was Friday. Come on. When you have two days to celebrate the 4th - the 4th and the 5th - why would you celebrate it on the 2nd?

But the worst thing is, the ice cream store is closed. Today and tomorrow. Does that make sense? At all?

No.

The local convenience store, Super John's Market, used to have a sign that said

Super

JOHN'S

Market

which was meant to be read in some old-fashioney oval way as "John's Super Market" but which everybody read, of course, Super John's Market, and the guy who owned it, a guy named John, was called Super John, Super for short. But Super sold the store a couple of years ago and the new guy put up a new sign

SUPER JOHNS MARKET

not so much as an apostrophe, so it's not really Super John's any more although everybody still calls it that and it's still open every day.

So at least I could buy some hot dogs for supper.

Want to guess?

Now, after more than six years of work, $104 million spent, and without having connected a single house, American reconstruction officials have decided to leave the system unfinished, though they portray it as a success.

The story: U.S. Rushes to Complete Only Some Iraq Projects - NYTimes.com

Right! The sewage system in Falluja, Iraq.

Good line

A personal concierge who is often on the road, she uses her BlackBerry to text and e-mail clients, friends, and associates from behind the wheel of her sport utility vehicle. She knows she’s just one LOL away from a crash.

link: For restless thumbs, a necessary discipline - The Boston Globe

Now sounds like soup

WILMINGTON, N.C. – The Army has dropped the Vietnam-era name "psychological operations" for its branch in charge of trying to change minds behind enemy lines, acknowledging the term can sound ominous.

The Defense Department picked a more neutral moniker: "Military Information Support Operations," or MISO.

link: Army drops 'psy ops' name for influence operations - Yahoo! News

Mmmmm.

Independence

As it turns out, all 18 corporate applicants seeking permits for new US nuclear power reactors – and lining up for tens of billions in federal loan guarantees – plan to use foreign manufacturers and labor to build major parts of those reactors....

“Nuclear power is US-made power only in the same way that a shirt made in China is ‘American’ because you buy it at a Wal-Mart in this country"....

link: US-backed loans to expand nuclear power: a boon for overseas jobs? - CSMonitor.com

Meanwhile...

Marist Poll - About three-quarters of American residents — 74% — know the U.S. declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776. 26% do not. This 26% includes one-fifth who are unsure and 6% who thought the U.S. separated from another nation. That begs the question, “From where do the latter think the U.S. achieved its independence?” Among the countries mentioned are France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.

link: UNDERNEWS

Unclear on the concept

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele expressed an unusual interpretation of the relationship between Barack Obama and the war in Afghanistan at a Connecticut fundraiser Thursday.

"This was a war of Obama's choosing," Michael Steele said at the event. "This is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."

link: Michael Steele Says Afghanistan Was 'War Of Obama's Choosing,' Not Something The U.S. 'Wanted To Engage In' (VIDEO)

A few Chicago pix

Cleaning up an old iPhoto library.

No matter how many so-called regulations you enact...

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

Story: UNDERNEWS: BANKS FINANCED MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS

No, of course we can't afford extending unemploment insurance

New Mexico-based investors have teamed with Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries to build The Utopia, an opulent $1.1 billion ocean liner that will travel the globe, hopping between the world's major sporting and cultural events. The 105,000-ton and 1,000-foot long ship -- the weight and length of more than three Lady Liberty statues, from the base of the concrete platform to the top of the torch -- is scheduled for completion in 2013.

A gallery of pictures: High life on the high seas - All aboard (1) - CNNMoney.com