Black Eagle, yesterday:

I know Washington’s all in a tizzy, and everybody’s pointing fingers at each other and saying, ‘It’s their fault, the Democrats’ fault, the Republicans’ fault.’ Listen, I’ll take responsibility. I’m the president.

We didn’t draft these contracts…. [but] it is appropriate when you’re in charge to make sure that stuff doesn’t happen like this.

[bold] Barry. [/bold]

Remember yesterday, when AIG CEO Edward Libby said that AIG’s other insurance businesses were just fine thank you?  Not so fast:

Thomas Gober, a former Mississippi state insurance examiner who has tracked fraud in the industry for 23 years and served previously as a consultant to the FBI and the Department of Justice, says he believes AIG’s supposedly solvent insurance business may be at least as troubled as its reckless financial-products unit. Far from being “healthy,” as state insurance regulators, ratings agencies and other experts have repeatedly described the insurance side, Gober calls it “a house of cards.” Citing numerous documents he has obtained from state insurance regulators and obscure data buried in AIG’s own 300-page annual reports, Gober argues that AIG’s 71 interlocking domestic U.S. insurance subsidiaries are in hock to each other to an astonishing degree.

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We’ve always been amused by the biblical authority of dictionaries in our culture, almost as much as we’re amused by the biblical authority of the Bible. Dictionaries, last we checked, are compiled by harmless drudges, and we consider our judgment as good as theirs. For that matter, most dictionary editors are observers of linguistic usage, not dictators of meaning. Their job is to follow the crowd, not lead it.

That, and provide 300-point solutions to Scrabble problems.

So we’re not surprised that the dictionary meaning of “marriage” has been evolving in recent years, much like the dictionary meaning of everything else. Webster notices that many folks use it to describe any couple in a committed relationship. And the OED sniffs that they’ve always called it “husband and wife”, not “man and woman”.

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Natasha Richardson – 1963-2009

Still classy:

Bush joked that he’d need more such engagements to pay for the house his wife, Laura, bought without him seeing it. “I actually paid for a house last fall,” he told the crowd. “I think I’m the only American to have bought a house in the fall of 2008.”

We are well rid of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhuGCVIf3g

GOP ‘trackers’ stalk Dems in hunt for ‘macaca’ moment [McClatchy]

I have noticed that this joint is well-populated with music nerds.  And thus I believe, in my addled brain, that there may be grounds for formal discussions on this subject.  Therefore: Music Nerding, to which other regulars can contribute at will. Suggestions most welcome.

First, for your consideration: the incomparable Kristin Hersh, from 2007.

Not widely known or recognized, she’s been at this for over twenty years — first as a punk kid, with her punk half-sister Tanya Donnelly in Throwing Muses, then solo, and then with a thrashing side-project known as 50 Foot Wave (which released its first album about two weeks after the tsunami hit Indonesia and Thailand — forcing her onto CNN to hastily explain the audiological basis for the name, which is about as much time in the limelight she has seen in her entire career).  Oh, and she’s an all-American badass — battled mental illness and won, has four kids.  Solid.

Follow along for more, won’t you please?

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