Welcome to the jungle

David Plotz went on a mouthwatering "American Barbecue Pilgrimage" in Slate this week. He didn't say anything about Chicago 'cue, but I forgive him because he mentioned the stockyards. That, combined with all this talk about Chicago hot dogs, did two things.

It made me hungry.

And it made me realize that next year is the centenary of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. What kind of celebration there will be? My neighborhood bookstore already always has a wide variety of different editions in stock.

There's an important question for any food-related anniversary: Will there be a cookbook?

Walkin' the dog, walkin' the dog

Steve Gilliard talks about NYC hot dogs. Which are fine, in their place. But he went out of his way to deride the noble Chicago hot dog:

OK, can people explain one thing: why do the people of Chicago hide their hot dogs under a salad?

Driftglass corrects the record.

... Mr. Gilliard – so right about so many things – has ventured into those, sad barren lands occupied by the Vaseline-spined MSM, where false comparison suck up valuable airtime and straw men make war.

Like the debate between Creationism and Evolution, one is honor-bound to point out that there really is no debate here. On the side of all that is Good and Virtuous are Facts, Evolution and the Chicago Dogs. On the side of Perfidy are Superstition, Creationism and All Other Pretenders to the Hot Dog Throne.

Maybe Gilliard has only experienced imitations. Regional delicacies can be tough to duplicate.

Surreal estate

In tomorrow's column, Paul Krugman worries about the housing price bubble. He mentions record numbers for both interest-only mortgages and for the number of houses bought speculatively.

But although the housing boom has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined, the economy would still be in big trouble if it came to an end. ... That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble.

[snip]

Even Alan Greenspan now admits that we have "characteristics of bubbles" in the housing market, but only "in certain areas." And it's true that the craziest scenes are concentrated in a few regions, like coastal Florida and California.

There are a few things he doesn't cite that make it look even worse. Florida and California have traditionally been among the frothiest real estate markets.

They are both showing signs of a slowdown. In California prices are going up more slowly than for the country as a whole. More importantly, major markets in both states are selling fewer houses.

Both Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area had fewer houses sold than a year ago. And metro areas all over Florida, especially in South Florida, reported declines in the number of houses sold.

Southern California	-4.5%
Bay Area	-10.2%
Fort Lauderdale	-19%
Miami	-4%
Orlando	-2%
Pensacola	-17%
Sarasota-Bradenton	-12%
West Palm Beach-Boca Raton	-10%

Declining sales volume is a classic sign of a late bubble. One of the sustaining ideas of any speculative bubble is the "greater fool" theory. A buyer rationalizes, "It doesn't matter that I foolishly overpaid. Soon, an even greater fool will come along and I'll make a profit."

The greater fool theory founders on the fact that, while the supply of fools is very large, it is finite. Eventually, there are no more fools left to sell to. A decline in sales volume can be a sign that you are beginning to run out out of fools speculators. If you're lucky, after that the bubble deflates. If you're unlucky, it pops.

Bubblicious

We already knew that there's a real estate bubble in California. Yesterday's LA Times story confirmed it with an impressive benchmark:

In California, the median sales price for existing homes broke through the $500,000 level for the first time ....

That's for the whole state. In places, it's gotten to a point Doctor Evil would approve of: last year, the median home price in the Santa Barbara area surpassed one MILLION DOLLARS.

California's home prices rose a bubbly 12.5% since April 2004. What's scary, though, is that prices in California went up slower than in the rest of the country. For the nation as a whole, house prices went up 15.1% over the past year.

You needn't worry, though. Alan Greenspan said there are only "local bubbles."

Quickies

Noah's wife was Joan of Arc: Twelve percent of Christians think so. (via Lance Mannion via Avedon Carol )

Church and State: Take the quiz, how do you rate? (via skippy)

Legal Loansharking: Payday lending gets reformed. (via DJWinfo)

Texas Tea Party: "a toxic lemonade stand" on Wall Street.

And in other beverage news,

Beer, Sweet Beer: curing disease for thousands of years. (via robotwisdom)

Added to the blogroll

The Angry Sicilian
Baghdad Burning
Biomes Blog
Bookdwarf
DJWinfo
Future Feeder
Gapers Block - A site about Chicago, IL
Holovaty.com | online journalism & web ..
The Huffington Post
Literary Blogs - Book Reviews, Publish..
MakesMeRalph
News From Underground
Seeing the Forest
shatter
Site Meter Weblog
So Many Books

God's questionnaire

You can guess how I was ready to respond on God's total quality management questionnaire: rate everything unsatisfactory.

But then I saw this.

And then I saw this story: "New Species Of Monkey Is Discovered In Tanzania: The First In Africa For More Than 20 Years." Which is pretty cool news on its own, but even better is that it came one day after this headline appeared in The Onion: "New, Delicious Species Discovered."

Chicago crime maps

Deceptive practice / Fraud or confidence game

Chicagocrime.org has nifty views of crime in Chicago. You can browse by date, type of crime, street, type of location (ATM, Abandoned building, Airport/aircraft, Alley, etc.). (via O'Reilly Radar)

It remixes Google Maps with the Chicago Police Department's Citizen ICAM Web site. The Citizen ICAM site is pretty useful on its own. It limits your search in some ways: you can only cover a small area, and you can only search 2 weeks at a time. On the other hand, you can really search and not just browse, which the chicagocrime.org site is limited to (so far). The CPD's site lets you combine date, address/intersection/beat, and type of crime. It also uses different symbols for property and violent crimes, rather than just generic G flags.

The chicagocrime.org site is definitely more fun, though. "Unlawful use of recorded sound" sounds more like a job for the RIAA than the CPD — but I'm too lazy to actually find out. Most crimes map fairly well onto poverty * population density. But not everything. "Unlawful use of a computer" falls overwhelmingly on the North Side. And it sure looks like a pattern of selective enforcement for "Possession: Cannabis less than 30 gms."

In some ways, I am disappointed in my fellow Chicagoans. How can we keep up with New York and Miami when we have nothing under "Ritual Mutilation?" And bribery isn't much better: a paltry three offenses (However, both sites stress that they can show only reported crimes.).

Kiss my asbestos

Josh Marshall looks into another Bush/Cheney reform:

Like many of you, for months I've heard President Bush and Vice President Cheney talk up 'Asbestos Reform' as one of the main planks of their legislative agenda. I didn't know just what they meant by that.... But given who was pushing it, I figured it couldn't be anything good.

Public Citizen describes the sweet, sweet charity:

Under S. 852, asbestos companies with large existing liabilities that are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy – known as Tier 1 companies – would have those liabilities erased, in favor of contributions to the proposed asbestos trust fund. But the value of contributions to the trust fund would be substantially less than the existing liabilities, providing significant windfalls to the companies involved.

Asbestos "reform" is part of the administration's pattern: big business gets a gift, the little guy gets the shaft. But more than that, Bush and Cheney are showing special love for industries they worked in. Halliburton was in deep trouble from asbestos until very recently. The huge liability was acquired when, under Cheney, it bought Dresser Industries. (Another sentimental connection: George H. W. Bush worked for Dresser after WWII.)

Asbestos cost Halliburton over $4 billion ($2.8B cash + 2.5B stock - 1B insurance). HAL just settled its asbestos claims a few months ago. It's too late to help Halliburton, but not the rest of Dick's buddies.

Heartless

To stop Google from ignoring me, all I had to do was tear my heart out.

Last week I noticed that this blog had been cruelly dropped from Google and Yahoo. It seems I drove them away by, in effect, un-optimizing the blog for search engines. I made a few small changes, and now they like me again.

The smallest, easiest change may have made the biggest difference. I changed a post title from "We ♡ copyeditors" to "We (heart) copyeditors." Yahoo re-listed the blog the very next day, and Google took less than a week. Theother changes that happened in that week were were pretty small: I got one additional inbound link, and I stopped Babel-fishing posts into French and back to English. But I didn't do most of the things I planned: I didn't post more frequently and I didn't organize the blogroll. And my writing stayed just as random.

This isn't a controlled experiment or anything, but it seems that all I had to do was drop the "♡" symbol and spell it out.

Darth, your hatred is not logical

The last Star Trek TV series just ended. The final Star Wars movie opens soon. Here's something that looks like the first meeting of the two universes:

"Mr. Spock had just returned from a business trip Beyond, to a planet called New Hope."

But it's not a crossover. The quotation comes from Jack Vance's novel Star King, first published in 1964. It's a classic sf revenge story, the first in the Demon Princes series. Read it you must.

Hunter S. Thompson vs. Deadlines

Hunter S. Thompson's longtime editor analyzes two of the toughest jobs in journalism, holding the gonzo journalist to a deadline — and fact-checking his stories (via Romenesko):

... my intention is to take you through the editing process for gonzo journalism as I knew it — inside the sausage factory. Each piece had its own considerations and contortions, but there were common elements, which in the years since, I have identified and classified.

One element: "The Sacrifice of the Young Male Assistant."

The story includes the best fact-checking advice ever:

“If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you’d better be prepared to produce the pig.” — Hunter S. Thompson

Info goodies

Technical Communication Quarterly has a hefty interview with Edward Tufte (via kottke.org). He talks about a lot of things, including his next book. There's some good news:

TCQ: You have a new book coming out this year: Beautiful Evidence.

But there's also some bad news. Tufte doesn't address the pubdate in his reply, but in a later answer he says:

Tufte : ... Authors are worse than home construction contractors in their stupendous optimism about when something will be done. The book is already long, and I still have quite a bit to say.

On the other hand, he's almost done. He doesn't give a date or an ISBN, but he has posted several draft chapters:

• "Links and Causal Arrows: Ambiguity in Action"
• "Sparklines"
• "Corrupt Techniques in Evidence Presentations"

Info Goddess will love this.

She will also love free graph paper (via Boing Boing). Besides classic squares (inches or metric), there's asymmetric (for knitting), dots, iso-dots, hexagonal, hex dots, and Celtic knot. And it's customizable. There are also links to probability, log, and polar graph paper.

Quick fights

D vs. R

Princeton's Larry Bartels proves what you may have already known. Democratic presidents manage the economy better than Republican ones — overwhelmingly better for everyone. There are two exceptions:

• Republicans beat Democrats in election years;
• Republicans always do slightly better for the wealthiest 5%.

For more than my summary of a summary, read Kevin Drum's post or Bartels' paper.

Fundamentalism vs. Reality

To commemorate the arrest of John Scopes 80 years ago, hooting Kansas theocrats forswear their monkey ancestors. This inspires the Andrew of the Poor Man to travel into the Future and bring back the 2015 SATs:

PART B: Mathematics

2. If dinosaurs first appeared 250 million years ago, and became extinct 185 million years later, how long ago did they become extinct?
A. 65 million years ago
B. There is no paleontological consensus that dinosaurs ever existed
C. 3500 years ago, during the Flood
D. However long ago it was that they turned gay and lost their moral values

Publishers, you're missing out by not reissuing these books:

• a classic account of the Scopes trial,
• memoirs of the most famous substitute teacher in history.

Jesus vs. Jesus

"My Jesus forgives your Jesus" — John Scalzi.

The winnahs!

• Democrats win in a knockout!
• Reality wins in a split decision! (A rematch has been announced.)
• Jesus wins on a disqualification after Jesus turns the other cheek!

It's raining money

DarkSyde has a great idea with a misleading name: Operation Golden Shower.

The Plan: Since Baghdad is the key to Iraq, all we have to really worry about is getting the Iraqis in Baghdad to 'like us'. So every day we take about twenty planes and circle all over Baghdad with sacks of money and throw it out the window uniformly. We can use mostly one dollar bills, because that's enough for an Iraqi to live on for a few days, but mix in a few tens or twenties or even hundreds, just to add some excitement and fun. We can make it more fun by using the Cracker Jack marketing method of including some prizes with the money. Something like "This coupon entitles the bearer to a new US manufactured SUV or a four year degree at a major US University courtesy of the American Taxpayer." (via Eschaton, from a guest-post by Avedon)

You can do this big-time and still save bundles of money. More than 160 countries have GDPs over $50 billion. If you assume that half of your budget sticks to Halliburton and its ilk, there are still over 130 countries we can invade for less than half what we're spending in Iraq. But sticking to just the big cities will be a lot cheaper, and would make almost all countries vulnerable to this inspired littering.

Why would a country let us come in and inflate the hell out of its economy? Imagine what people would do to a government that tried to prevent it.

And the SUV coupon is a brilliant touch. It may be the only thing that saves GM.

Pish, posh, said Hieronymus Bosch

A while ago Cory at Boing Boing reported on Hieronymus Bosch action figures. They are finally available in the US.

(This post's title is stolen borrowed from the wonderful book for kids by Nancy Willard and Leo & Diane Dillon.)

Microsoft does the right thing

Microsoft gave in to pressure, and now it's back where it started (and where it should be). The company recently announced that it was reversing its earlier decision to not support a Washington gay-rights bill it had previously endorsed.

Microsoft had supported earlier versions of the bill for several years. After an anti-gay pastor lobbied them against the bill, Microsoft did not endorse the bill this year (that's right, it took just one wingnut!). Liberal bloggers (led by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog) raised a ruckus, and Microsoft eventually reversed itself and announced that it would support the bill in the future.

I'm glad Microsoft is doing the right thing and supporting this bill. But they really blew it here. Now both sides know that Microsoft can be pressured. And both sides are unhappier with the company than if it had just stayed with its original support.

So by caving in the first place, and then un-caving (or is it re-caving?), Microsoft has earned itself a future of more hassle and more ill-will — from both sides.

Microsoft to Support Gay-Rights Bill, C.E.O. Says

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: May 6, 2005

Filed at 5:17 p.m. ET

SEATTLE (AP) -- After being criticized for quietly dropping support for a state gay rights bill, Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer told employees Friday that management would publicly back such legislation in the future.

Ballmer's commitment came two weeks after activists accused the company of caving to pressure from an evangelical pastor who had threatened to launch a nationwide boycott of the software company.

[snip]

Liberal bloggers called the company a corporate coward and posted rallying cries for their own boycott of Microsoft products. Gay rights groups said they'd keep pressuring Microsoft until the company once again came out in support of the bill.

Sen. Val Stevens, a Republican from Arlington, Wash., said Friday she was disappointed Microsoft had changed its stance. ''This is not a good place for a company the size and magnitude of Microsoft to be (in) now,'' she said in a prepared statement. ''I know it must be difficult for the employees who do not agree with their policy.'' ...

Google hates me

I recently ego-googled this blog, and the results were sad. For a while, Google indexed this site, but then it stopped. Now the big G lists only the main page — no archive pages, no individual posts, no keyword search results at all. Google doesn't love me anymore.

I've done lots of things I shouldn't. Staying out drinking, ignoring her birthday, even spending time with other girls — Google doesn't care about little things like that. But I've done other things, bad things that Google does care about. Without even trying, I've managed to hurt G's feelings in many ways. Partly, I was slow in getting started. But many of my sins are things that are done by spammers, SEO-incompetents, link farms, and worse (see Vaughn's "Google Ranking Factors").

So it turns out I've been conducting an inadvertent clinic on driving away search engines. Learn from my tale of woe.

How to make Google hate you without really trying

Don't update. Have a static page that just sits there. I started with a couple of posts, then nothing for months.

Update infrequently. The next best thing. My improved rate of every five days was pretty lame, too.

Make it boring. My readers — both of them, he exaggerated — will agree.

Don't have many incoming links. Follow the first three rules and other sites will find it easier to ignore you. And you will be less authoritative in Google's eyes.

Have lots and lots of outgoing links. (Google actually warns against this). Too many links can make you look like a link farm, especially if the links are uncategorized. An extremely low ratio of inward/outward links can slam your page rank.

Write about spammy or sleazy subjects. Posts about cellphones, payday lenders, and penguin lust are culprits here. What probably didn't help: this was the first site to use the phrase "Jar Jar slash Dobby." I may deserve to suffer for the bad dreams that causes.

Write about unrelated spammy subjects. This looks like old-school link farming, which tried to include every popular keyword (today's link farmers are more focused). Definitely a bad idea: consecutive posts on phones, loans, and penguin moans.

Write stuff that looks weird and spammy. It may have been unwise to intersperse a Supreme Court prediction with Motown lyrics, no matter how relevant. And Babel-fishing produces text that looks even more like carelessly-written, mechanically-translated spam.

Do something that looks actively hostile. Unicode characters in a title could indicate an IDN exploit. So a sweet little post called "We ♡ copyeditors" might resemble a wicked hack attack.

What can I do to be worthy of Google's love?

Change that title to "We (heart) copyeditors."

Write more.

Categorize the blogroll, Real Soon Now.

Get more links by asking for them — I'll start with you, behind the keyboard.

Wait a bit before writing the definitive "enlarging your mortgage" essay.

O Google, will you ever love me again?

Rosetta stoned

Oscar Madison's Googlation is a splendid toy.

All you have to do is take some English text, have Google translate it into another language, and then have Google re-translate it back into English.

Mostly, the results are silly. Occassionally, serendipitous poetry will emerge from from recombinant translations. Mostly, it's silly, though.

But it reminded me of something, too — something about the world's worst phrasebook. There's the Monty Python sketch, "Dirty Hungarian phrasebook,"

Clerk: I quote an example. The Hungarian phrase meaning 'Can you direct me to the station?' is translated by the English phrase, 'Please fondle my bum.'

But the Python wasn't quite it — the mistranslation is too intentional. One of Oscar's readers remarked of a favorite Googlation, "I like the Portuguese, myself." And that reminded me of the unintentional classic English as She Is Spoke. Here's what BookSense has to say about it:

English as She Is Spoke: Being a Comprehensive Phrasebook of the English Language, Written by Men to Whom English Was Entirely Unknown

In 1855, when Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino wrote an English phrasebook for Portuguese students, they faced just one problem: they didn't know any English. Even worse, they didn't own an English-to-Portuguese dictionary. What they did have, though, was a Portuguese-to-French dictionary, and a French-to-English dictionary. The linguistic train wreck that ensued is a classic of unintentional humor, now revived in the first newly selected edition in a century. Armed with Fonseca and Carolino's guide, a Portuguese traveler can insult a barber ("What news tell me? All hairs dresser are newsmonger"), complain about the orchestra ("It is a noise which to cleve the head"), go hunting ("let aim it! let make fire him"), and consult a handy selection of truly mystifying "Idiotisms and Proverbs."

I ran the book description through the book's own set of translation filters: English > French > Portuguese > French > English (Google lacks F>P, so I used Babel Fish.).

The English because it is SPOKE: While being complete Phrasebook of the English, written by Men with aulequel the English entirely ignored era.

In 1855, when with IP Fonseca and Pedro Carolino Jose wrote an English phrasebook for the Portuguese students they, faced right a problem: they did not know the English. Worse still, they did not have a dictionary English-with-Portuguese _ which they will have will have, although, will have to be a dictionary Portuguese-with-French, and a dictionary French-with-English. The boat makes linguistic shipwreck of train which was followed is traditional of involuntary mood, now restored in the first edition recently selected in century. Armed with the guide with Fonseca and Carolino, a Portuguese traveller can insult a hairdresser ("which observations indicate to me?" All the mechanical planing machine of hair is newsmonger"), have sorrow of concerning the orchestra ("it is a noise which cleve with the head"), go hunting ("leave the objective it! they let make to put fire to him"), and consult a handy choice of really mystifying Idiotisms and proverbs."

This result isn't as odd as some. Running some text through all of Google's filters aptly gave me "joy with the relations in clay language." But "shipwreck of train" is pretty good. Wasn't that collision in a Michael Bay movie?

Scratched again in a language

Tom Bozzo reports on a fun game:

It's the latest craze to hit the Internets! (Or at least it should be!) Take a phrase, use Google language tools to automatically translate it into another language, and then automatically translate the result back into the source language. (Via Oscar at The Columnist Manifesto.)

His analysis points out:

3. The French aversion to English-derived jargon implies that Googlations of French source texts will have above-average comic value.

He goes on to wonder:

There being 10 million blogs and all, I do wonder where else this might have arisen as an internet(s) meme.

Alta Vista's online implementation of Doug Adams' Babel Fish has been around since 1997. I suspect the game started up soon after.

Machine mis-translation can't beat the human variety. I offer Mark Twain's The Jumping Frog: In English. Then in French. Then Clawed Back into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil as the exemplar nonpareil.

In this age of miracles and wonders, the Holy Grail of machine translation has been achieved: 100% accuracy. It says, "This internet service will translate any English word, phrase or passage into English, or vice versa." And it's right. It works perfectly every time.

Here's this blog post, in an English-French-English googlation:

Reports/ratios of Tom Bozzo on a play of recreation:

It is the last mania to strike the Internets! (or at least it should be!) Take an expression, tools of language of Google of use automatically to translate it into another language, and then automatically translate the result again in the source language. (by the intermediary of Oscar to proclamation of chronicler.)

Its precise analysis:

3. The French aversion with the jargon English-derivative implies that Googlations of the French source texts will have the comic value with-top-average.

It continues to wonder:

There being 10 million blogs and all, I wonder where from other this could have emerged like same from Internet.

The execution in line of Alta Vista of fish of Babel de Doug Adams was around since 1997. I suspect play started to the top little of then.

The érronée translation of machine cannot beat the human variety. I offer jumping frog of Twain of mark: In English. Then in French. Then scratched again in a language civilized once more by Patient, hard work of Unremunerated like nonpareil exemplar.

In this age of the miracles and wonders, holy Grail of machine translation was carried out: exactitude 100%. It indicates, "this service of Internet will translate any word, English expression or passage in English, or vice versa." And it is exact. That functions each time perfectly.

Here this post of blog, in a googlation English-French-English:

Update: I can't stop playing with this. I ran the original post through all of Google's languages. The results are surprisingly poetic. It begins:

Bozzo must of phosphorus and all to show with the joy with the relations in clay language of returning it from time:

"Clay language" indeed! The whole thing is in comments.

Progris report

TBogg excerpts the sekrit diaries from an intelligence amplification experiment at NRO in "Flowers for Goldberg."

NRO post day four

Today Kathrin asked me to rite about the war in Irak. I told her I didnt know anything about Irak so she told me to do some reserch. I didnt know waht reserch is so when she left I asked Rich and he told me about a thing called a bleg which is when you ask the readers to do reserch for you and then you rite your artical. I said taht didnt seem rite but he said taht if he had to do reserch he would never have time to go on Fox. I want to go on Fox somday so I can meet the Simpsons and Sean Hannity. Theyre funny.

I also met mr May. I dont think I like him. He has one of those dumb beards like that Wolf guy on CNN.

TBogg melds two voices perfectly: the earnest, mentally disabled man and Charlie Gordon.

Georgie Bush and the Supremes

I need to find, find someone to call mine.
President Bush has a problem. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist is likely to retire this year. Other Justices are aging and likely to die or retire soon. This sounds like an opportunity for our Dear Leader to remake the court. But it will be tough for him to get a justice as conservative as he would prefer.

But all you do is treat me bad,
break my heart and leave me sad.
Congressional Democrats by now are wise to the fact that Bush's agenda isn't one of "limited government" and "originalism." They have realized that his principles come from the radical right. And Senate Democrats have finally rediscovered unity and backbone. Dear Leader is having trouble with lesser federal judgeships, and they would be just a warm-up for the Supreme Court.

It's a game of give and take.
Any radical right-winger will face intense scrutiny, and will therefore face either of two problems. If there's a substantial record (of judicial opinions, laws passed, political writing), the nominee will be opposed on the basis of the record. If there's no record to scrutinize — a "stealth candidate," like Clarence Thomas — the nominee will be opposed on grounds of inexperience.

Why you do me like you do
after I've been true to you?
Besides, a lifetime appointment gives freedom that makes any nominee a risk (look at David Souter). Bush's favorite Supremes — Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas — all served in the executive branch: Thomas as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Rehnquist and Scalia in the Office of Legal Counsel. So if a reliably extreme right-wing record is impossible, deference to the executive branch could be the next best thing.

Suddenly, I hear a symphony.
Bush's Chief Justice nominee should be both a thinker and a doer, someone with experience both as a law school professor and a prosecutor. It wouldn't hurt to be close to the Bush family. Bush needs somebody Democrats can't resist. A great candidate would make Dems swoon so hard they give Bush all his other appointments — the currently-stalled federal judges and any future associate justices on the Supreme Court. The ideal nomination would even weaken the Democratic Party and throw it into disarray.

Baby, think it over
think it over, baby.
There's no such person, right? How 'bout Bill Clinton? Clinton is a friend of the Bush family. He was a law school professor and later Arkansas Attorney General. And I think he's had a little experience in the executive branch. Putting Bill Clinton on the Court would complicate Democratic politics while removing the Dems' most effective campaigner since RFK. How much would Senate Democrats give up in exchange for his nomination?

[crossposted at Daily Kos]