Donald Trump, January 2000: “We must have universal healthcare. I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses.” [Weigel, via Political Wire]

There’s a game being played in the blogosphere that we’ll call When Did Sarah Palin Lose It? The nominees for Moment Lost, working backwards, include the following:

• Her self-pitying response to the Tucson shooting.
• Her self-aggrandizing reality series.
• Her daughter’s self-aggrandizing dance-show appearance.
• The 2010 election, which popped the Teabagger Bubble.

(That last item is also an entry in the When Did Glenn Beck Lose It? game.)

The presumption underlying the game, which we have no interest in contesting, is that Sarah Palin has lost it. The latest evidence — aside from multiple polls showing her trailing the wingnut competition — comes from her weekend appearance in Madison, Wisconsin, which drew an audience of millions hundreds of tens of thousands, hundreds of whom showed up to heckle her, and which you didn’t hear about because nobody is paying attention to her, and did you hear that Trump says Bill Ayers ghostwrote Obama’s book?

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Title: “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible”

Author: A.C. Grayling

Rank: 21

Blurb: “Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and — yes —the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done.”

Review: “Here is a book I am not afraid to let my child read. No stories about daughters banging their drunk dad. No stories about sacrificing unnamed daughters to some god. No cooking food over dung. No genocide. No deaths of all first born sons. No promises of cured illnesses. No appeals to an end of the universe. No masochistic gods having themselves beaten so they can become a zombie. Nope. Just a clean book of good thoughts.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster”, by Bobby Henderson

Footnote: Any atheist who needs a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible is unclear on the concept.

The Good Book [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

[Daily Mail UK, via Comics Alliance]

Our guest columnist is Pennsylvania federal district judge Mary McLaughlin, who writes “boobies” sixty times in the original.

This case involves a middle school’s ban on breast cancer awareness bracelets that bear the slogan “I ♥ Boobies (Keep A Breast)” and similar statements. These bracelets are distributed by the Keep A Breast Foundation, which operates breast cancer education programs and campaigns that are oriented toward young women. On the school’s designated breast cancer awareness day, two female students defied the school’s bracelet prohibition and both were suspended for a day and a half and prohibited from attending an upcoming school dance. The students, by and through their parents, filed this law suit seeking, among other things, a preliminary injunction to enjoin the school district from enforcing the ban…

The “I ♥ Boobies! (Keep A Breast)” bracelets became popular with students at the Easton Area Middle School during the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, which began on August 30, 2010. In mid- to late-September, approximately four or five of the 120 teachers in the Middle School’s 7-8 building spoke to or electronically contacted [assistant principal] Ms. Braxmeier about the “I ♥ Boobies! (Keep A Breast)” bracelets. The teachers sought instruction regarding how the school would choose to handle the bracelets. The three principals, Mr. Viglianti, Ms. Braxmeier, and Ms. DiVietro, conferred and agreed that the bracelets should be banned.

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*Note: Not the real Statue of Liberty. This one’s from Vegas.

Also: Just to get the wingnut rumors started, let’s misleadingly observe that Forever is crossed out, revealing that the Postal Service doesn’t believe in American Exceptionalism.

Who’s That Lady? New Stamp Features Wrong Statue of Liberty [Time, via flippin eck]

Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post business section this morning:

The three Republican congressmen saw it as a rare ray of sunshine in Washington’s stormy budget battle: an invitation from the White House to hear President Obama lay out his ideas for taming the national debt.

They expected a peace offering, a gesture of goodwill aimed at smoothing a path toward compromise. But soon after taking their seats at George Washington University on Wednesday, they found themselves under fire for plotting “a fundamentally different America” from the one most Americans know and love.

“What came to my mind was: Why did he invite us?” Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. “It’s just a wasted opportunity.”

The situation was all the more perplexing because Obama has to work with these guys…

Speaking of perplexing, we hope Ms. Montgomery saved a receipt for the three bottles of hand lotion she used in researching this story.

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