Dude, this is friggin' hilarious

The Russian spy who lived in Cambridge under a stolen Canadian identity may be in danger of losing his highly coveted Harvard University degree, now that he’s been unceremoniously booted out of the country.

No kidding. Because...wait for it...

The revelation of a spy who was apparently an active alumni is seen as a black eye for the prestigious school....

Read it and weep: Harvard may yank spy’s degree - BostonHerald.com

The school that has Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Larry Summers, Alan Keyes, Phyllis Schafly, Jeffrey Skilling, Ted Kaczynski - yes, Barack Obama - and Alger Hiss - just for starters - on it's alumni list is embarrassed about a two-bit Russian spy?

I think I will not hold my breath

WASHINGTON – Big changes are in store for the financial world from a government crackdown more than a year in the making.

But...

Not all the changes will occur overnight once Congress gets the legislation to President Barack Obama. Throughout the 2,300-page bill, federal monitors are given one to two years to write the new rules of the road for Wall Street. In some instances, the timing isn't even specified.

Story: New rules, big changes coming for financial world - Yahoo! News

Purple

Photo: Phil Compton

And he read Playboy for the articles, too

“One of the reasons I fell in love with the character of Wonder Woman in the first place, back when I was a kid, had a lot to do with the visual aesthetic of her costume being inspired by the American flag,” says Antony Coukos, Wonder Woman collector...

link: FOXNews.com - New Wonder Woman Loses Patriotic Costume in Favor of 'Globalized' Duds

Right, Antony. Sure I believe you.

Wonder Woman has a new costume and readers of FOXNews.com are not universally pleased. "Another anti-American disgrace," opines a commenter named "randian" - three times (he had a little trouble with the spelling on the first two tries). (Or, of course, she.)

The Obama administration has screwed this up

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks"....

Story: UNDERNEWS: WHY THE OIL SPILL DISASTER DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS BAD

I criticized Obama for being an empty suit during the long, long campaign and now, two years later, I'm thinking I was right. This guy is in way, way over his head. Too bad.

10 for 4?

Planes carrying 10 convicted Russian sleeper agents and 4 men accused by Moscow of spying for the West swooped into the Austrian capital, once a hub of clandestine East-West maneuvering, and the men and women were transferred, the Justice Department said. The planes soon took off again in a coda fitting of an espionage novel.

link: Prisoner Swap in Vienna Ends U.S.-Russia Espionage Case - NYTimes.com

What? First the guy gives everything away to Wall Street and Big Pharma and Big Oil and now he wants to give it up for the Russkies too? Come on. Ten for four is not fair. We could have at least kept the cute one.

Dems mean to Wall Street: Awwww

Despite this year's large spike in corporate profits and strong stock market performance, major political donors on Wall Street are abandoning the Democratic Party in large numbers in reaction to a perceived anti-business bias from Congress and the White House.

link: Tears Of A Bull: Wall Street Complains Over Mistreatment

Dude, who writes this stuff? Seriously

PHOENIX – Retirees and other residents from all over the country were among those who donated nearly $500,000 to help Arizona defend its immigration enforcement law, with most chipping in $100 or less, according to an analysis of documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

link: APNewsBreak: $500K donated to Ariz. to defend law - Yahoo! News

Retirees and other residents? Really? Is that really the stupidest thing you can think to say?

Try harder, AP.

Rand Paul: Don't be all mean to that BP

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul said Thursday that harsh criticism of BP by President Barack Obama's administration could contribute to the oil giant's demise and harm its ability to pay for cleanup of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

link: Paul: Obama jabs at BP could harm spill cleanup - Yahoo! News

Two books

"Cup of Gold," John Steinbeck
"1st to Die," James Patterson

Neither of these books makes it onto the official YAME reading list, but for what it's worth...

"Cup of Gold," Steinbeck's first published novel, is a highly fictionalized biography of the 17th Century pirate, Henry Morgan. Although the Barnes & Nobel web site tries valiantly to sell it, an objective note is provided by the reviewer, Anonymous:

I picked up this book because it was short and I only had 3 days to write a book report on it...

"1st to Die" is the first (imagine that) of Patterson's "Women's Murder Club" series. It's womany indeed. Way too womany for me, but hey, if you like that sort of stuff, knock yourself out. Reading Patterson is like eating potato chips - you can't just read one chapter. Fortunately (or un-, as the case may be) this relatively short book has 126 of them. And an epilogue.

The strain

This Modern World

No no no, Reuters or Yahoo News or whoever you are

Court fight looms, BP dampens hope of early leak fix

link: Court fight looms, BP dampens hope of early leak fix - Yahoo! News

There is no hope of an early leak fix. An early leak fix would have been a month ago. A fix yesterday would have been way, way late.

Let's try to pay attention here, shall we?

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.