Tambourines and Elephants

I am guessing that most Taco Bell fans have already tried a Doritos Taco.  Since I tried one a month ago, I get one every time I go there.

Here are the Doritos Taco and the normal crunchy taco side by side.

Many have noted how excruciatingly long it took…

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…for the U.S. Solicitor General, Donald Verrelli, to get started on his oral argument on Tues., March 27, 2012. The transcript eliminates the false starts, the repeated throat-clearings, the pause to take a drink. Really, it came close to Harpo’s impersonating the Famous Aviator in front of open radio mics (Night at the Opera, 1935).

Even though I disagree with almost every argument General Verrilli made, I can’t help feeling bad for the guy. But what might seem like just a case of nerves was probably more. I think he knew how bad his case was. I think he revealed his reluctance in his colloquy with Breyer (page 15-16):

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Breyer was helping Ginsberg make Verrilli’s case stronger. It was the point where, to be helpful (!), Breyer started to list a bunch of new things that he thought Congress could rightfully require people to buy under the Commerce Clause, like cell phones and burial service insurance. Verrilli did not seem too comfortable with these ‘helpful’ suggestions–in fact he tries at least twice to interrupt the Justice, who chimes on and on in his erudite tones. After Breyer’s long disquisition, the transcript next reads:

Justice Breyer: …Doesn’t it depend on the situation?

General Verrilli: It does,Justice Breyer, and if Congress were to enact laws like that, we–

Justice Breyer: Would be up here defending it

General Verrilli: It would be my responsibility to then defend them, and I would defend them on a rationale like that, but I do think that we are advancing a narrower rationale. [His last word there is stomped on by, I think, Scalia and Kennedy, both desperate to point out to the Court the dubious implications of this line of thought.]

Breyer does not appreciate as does Verrilli what jeopardy this line of argument faces. Verrilli seems embarrassed by the elder liberal leading him blithely over a cliff, and pulls back, perhaps not in time. I suggest that His last statement above implies that he is just doing his duty even here, defending the slightly less indefensible law that Congress indeed has enacted.

What Verrilli was struggling against at the start was not so much nerves as reluctance. Not all of the Obamoids have drunk the Kool-Aid, it seems.

The John Bachelor Show had a good segment on the speed of neutrinos. Go to LINK and scroll down to Saturday, October 1, 10 PM. You can listen on-line or download the podcast. (iTunes has it as well.)

Riding my bike yesterday, I saw this hawk carrying a squirrel. I was so excited I crashed my bike and took flip into the grass. Then I ran over and got these photos with my phone.

I did a brief photo safari in the McNamara neighborhood this morning. The results are at:

my Post-Irene Flickr set.

The news feeds keep warning that the back of the hurricane has still to arrive, but all indications are that for Jackson Heights, Irene was a dud. Here is an ‘after’ picture of the back yard:

You can see that there are green oak leaves scattered here and there. But even the white sheet of tin over the fence from the left is exactly where our neighbor left it.

In the night there was sporadic hard winds and rain, but to my mind not unlike a midwestern thunderstorm without the lighting and thunder.

Ruth and I got stranded in Jackson Heights, Queens, for the duration of hurricane Irene’s passage. Our flight was cancelled today.

This is the backyard here in Jackson Heights after we finished preparing for the high winds and rain to come when Irene arrives, late tonight.

The President’s current attempt to identify with the public’s dissatisfaction with Washington is reminiscent of Basil Fawlty in the “Waldorf Salad” episode of Fawlty Towers (fast forward to the two minute mark):

When the customer (in my analogy, the American electorate) tries to complain, Basil (Obama) joins in the complaining, saying he can’t get Manuel (or Congress), his waiter imported from Barcelona, to do anything right. “You only have to eat here; we have to live with it!” President Obama seems to think the old Basil trick will work for the next 16 months. I cannot imagine that it will.

That colorful language appears in the comments by Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO) and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus on the Framework Agreement on the debt ceiling announced tonight.

After the Senate rejected the Boehner proposal (59-41), Mitch McConnell asks for the Reid proposal to be put on the floor. Reid would not allow it.

Unbelievable. (Unless you have been really paying attention….)

[ht powerlineblog.com]