A gentile goes into a clothing store and says, "This is a very fine jacket. How much is it?"
The salesman says, "It's $500."
The gentile says, "OK, I'll take it."

Two gentiles meet on the street. The first one says, "You own your own business, don't you? How's it going?"
The other gentile says, "Just great! Thanks for asking!"

Two gentile mothers meet on the street and start talking about children.
Gentile mother 1 (said with pride): "My son is a construction worker!"
Gentile mother 2 (said with more pride): "My son is a truck driver!"

A man calls his mother and says, "Mother, I know you're expecting me for dinner this evening, but something important has come up and I can't make it."
His mother says, "OK."

A gentile couple goes to a nice restaurant. The man says: "I'll have the steak and a baked potato, and my wife will have the julienne salad with house dressing. We'll both have coffee."
The waiter asks, "How would you like your steak and salad prepared?"
The man says," I'd like the steak medium......the salad is fine as is."
The waiter says, "Thank you."

A gentile man calls his elderly mother. He asks, "Mom, how are you feeling? Do you need anything?"
She says, "I'm feeling fine, and I don't need anything. Thanks for calling."

Now you know why there are no gentile jokes.

In this month's Washington Monthly:

About the only failure more pronounced than the president's has been the graft-filled plunder of GOP lawmakers—at least according to opinion polls, which in May gave the GOP-controlled Congress favorability ratings in the low 20s, about 10 points lower than the president's. This does not necessarily translate into electoral Armageddon; redistricting and other incumbency-protection devices help protect against that. But even if many commentators think that Republicans may retain control over Congress, very few think they should.

...

If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government—indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government—is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

The Daily WTF: http://thedailywtf.com/

Ma Bell, risen from near death like the hydra, now says they own your phone records and will disclose them however they see fit:

The new policy says that AT&T—not customers—owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."

The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service—something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing.

Moreover, AT&T (formerly known as SBC) is requiring customers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition for service—a new move that legal experts say will reduce customers' recourse for any future data sharing with government authorities or others.

I will now begin the process of switching our home-phone service...

I love the Straight Dope:

Q: I have asked flight attendants on airplanes all over the world. No one knows. No one even hazards a wild guess. ... Why doesn't the plastic bag inflate? Since it doesn't, what is it for?

First an inside secret: the bag does inflate, but only when you exhale.

Here's the deal. Passenger oxygen masks give you a continuous flow of oxygen (as opposed to oxygen on demand, which only flows when you inhale). The oxygen obviously can't flow into your lungs while you're exhaling, so if there weren't some way to store it temporarily it would have to be vented wastefully. The bag makes this unnecessary. When you start exhaling, your breath plus the incoming O2 flow into the bag.

Cecil Adams rocks.

Scientists find more evidence that the planet is, on average, its warmest in 400 years:

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

Overall, the panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last 1,000 years, though relatively warm conditions persisted around the year 1000, followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.

The President still doesn't believe there's a connection between human activities and global warming in much the same way that South African president Thabo Mbecki doesn't see the connection between HIV and AIDS.

942 days, 20 hours left.

New Scientist is reporting this hour that a man died in Beijing of H5N1 bird flu fully two years before China admitted any human cases:

The case suggests that, as has long been suspected, many more people have caught H5N1 flu in China than have been reported, and for a longer time. The more human cases there are, the more chances the virus has to evolve into a human pandemic strain of flu.

"It's a very important issue that needs to be clarified urgently," Roy Wadia, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said on Thursday in Beijing. "It raises questions as to how many other cases may not have been found at the time or may have been found retrospectively in testing."

Remember what I wrote about an hour ago that governments suppressing the press is bad for democracy? Well, I forgot to mention that it's bad for our health as well.

More on this later, but just keep in mind that oppressive regimes always attack the press before attacking the people. Keeping a free and open press is an absolute requirement of democracy.

On that theme, three stories:

• The Chicago Tribune's Don Wycliff (reg.req.) says: "If intellectual dishonesty could be said to have a face, I saw it Tuesday evening as I watched Bill O'Reilly's program on Fox News."
• Craig Neumark (of Craigslist) admirably sums up on NPR today why net neutrality is a good thing; contrast with Telecoms shill Scott Cleland yesterday. (I may refute Cleland's lies and distortions later today.)
• Finally, the Kentucky Office of Technology blocked state employees from reading certain left-leaning political blogs yesterday, in some cases within minutes of the blogs' commenting on these actions. Other, more conservative blogs remain available to state employees.

As I describe these things, I can't help but to compare what the Republican officials are doing in this country to what another party's officials have done throughout the last century in places like China and the U.S.S.R. I can't understand why this doesn't bother them more. After all, our party has the reputation for collectivism; they've always argued for "small government." Paraphrasing Ralph Kiner: "If Eisenhower were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave."

I refer here to President Roosevelt's approval rating after the Battle of the Bulge. Josh Marshall's people found a beautiful document prepared in the 1940s; Marshall himself explains why this is not simply a poke-in-the-eye for Fox News—er, Press Secretary Tony Snow:

There's a serious underlying point here about the administration's basic frivolousness in its conduct of the war.

No one thinks you can fight a war or conduct any project of great consequence by following minor oscillations in polls. But long term and imbedded trends in public opinion mean something. In this case, the public can see President Bush doesn't know what he's doing.

Having his flacks go out and compare him to great wartime leaders of the past and insult the American people in the process doesn't change that.

One of my readers just sent this in:

A small town had three shuls: Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. All three had a serious problem with squirrels in their buildings. Each congregation, in its own fashion, had a meeting to deal with the problem.

The Orthodox decided that it was predestined that squirrels be in the Shul and that they would just have to live with them.

The Conservatives decided they should deal with the squirrels in the movement's style of Community Responsibility & Social Action. They humanely trapped them and released them in a park at the edge of town. Within three days, they were all back in the synagogue.

The Reform Synagogue had several lengthy meetings, including those in which all members voiced opinions. Finally they decided to vote the squirrels in as members of the Temple. Now they only see them on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

According to Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) 61.56:

(c) ...[N]o person may act as pilot in command of an aircraft unless, since the beginning of the 24th calendar month before the month in which that pilot acts as pilot in command, that person has (1) Accomplished a flight review given in an aircraft for which that pilot is rated by an authorized instructor; and (2) A logbook endorsed from an authorized instructor who gave the review certifying that the person has satisfactorily completed the review.

My last flight review took place in June 2004. This means that if I don't have a flight review by July 1st, I will not act as pilot in command of my next flight—which will be my BFR. So my logbook will show a flight in which I'm not PIC, for the first time since I got my certificate. It's no big deal, but it is a point of personal pride.

Thunderstorms are moving through the area so I won't have my BFR today. The next available time is in a week. That leaves three days. Fooey.

This is part of the fun of flying: rescheduling because of weather.

Summer has just begun in the Northern Hemisphere. It started at 12:26 UTC (8:26 EDT, 5:26 PDT), and goes until September 23rd at 04:03 UTC (11:03 pm Sept. 22nd, CDT).

Jack Abramoff's right-hand man, David Safavian, was convicted today of lying and obstructing justice:

Safavian was charged with lying about his relationship with Abramoff and his knowledge of the lobbyist's interest in acquiring properties from [General Services Administration], the property managing agency for the federal government. He was also charged with obstructing investigators looking into a golf trip he took with Abramoff in 2002.

TPM Muckraker has a thorough dossier on this clown.

My dad has more tea tins for sale. A second lot. This time, 91 tins, weighing more than 10 kilos (22 pounds), which is amazing since they contain nothing but air at this point. And I can claim photo credit—along with counting credit. Ninety-one tea tins, how can you resist?

Yes, in a short time, ten years of tea tins my father has carted with him up and down the Pacific coast will depart the family forever. Heirlooms lost. It's almost sad.

Not that it's going to drive a lot of bids, but I need to point out that at least one of the tins in this batch, I brought back for him from London. Bought it on Regent Street, I did.

In February 2001.

So, OK, maybe it's time.

Wait until he sees what Anne and I sent him last week...

Krugman (sub.req.) hits it on the nose today:

[I]f the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.

Thus in 2004, President Bush basically ran as America's defender against gay married terrorists. He waited until after the election to reveal that what he really wanted to do was privatize Social Security.

Salon's "Ask the Pilot" last week argued that the U.S. should not look at El Al as the best example (for us) of how to run airline security:

Why can't we, or why don't we, have a system like theirs?

Unfortunately, that's a bit like asking why America's streets can't be as clean as Singapore's. Mostly it's a case of scale. The United States has dozens of mega-terminals, and hundreds more of varying sizes; the nation's top 25 airports each process more than 20 million people a year. Tel Aviv is Israel's sole major airport, handling 9 million passengers annually—about the same as Raleigh-Durham, N.C. The ability to focus on this single, consolidated portal makes the job comparatively simple. There are aspects worth borrowing, for sure, but it's naive to think Israeli protocols can, in whole, be fitted to a nation that is 50 times more populous, and immeasurably more diverse and decentralized.

It looks like Chicago may miss 32°C (90°F) ever so slightly. It's 31.7°C (89°F) officially right now. It's supposed to cool down on Sunday. I hope so, because I'm melting already.

Update, 4:05p (21:05 UTC): We hit 32°C. But it's not the hottest day of 2006: that was May 28th, when Chicago hit 33.3°C (92°F).

The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation reminds everyone that today is the last day of Bike to Work Week. It's also going to hit 33°C (92°F), so don't bike too quickly.

In the spirit of Harper's Index:

• Number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq as of yesterday: 2,500
• Maximum remaining time in Bush presidency: 950 days, 3 hours
• Number of U.S. House seats Democrats need to win in November: 27
• Number of U.S. Senate seats Democrats need to win: 6
• Polls open in the East: 144 days, 20 hours

I meant to write yesterday about the Illinois Democratic Meetup I attended Tuesday evening.

American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois Communications Director Ed Yohnka spoke, as did a staffer from the Rod Blagojevich re-election campaign and a spokesperson for one of the city's aldermanic campaigns.

A group of Chicago democrats meets every Wednesday for Drinking Liberally. Beer plus politics? I am so there.

I'm a private pilot. Every two years, I'm required to go through a flight review with a flight instructor that, except for the absence of an FAA check airman, mirrors almost exactly what I had to do to get my certificate. So I've been studying the plane's manual and the regulations, and this morning I got a formal weather briefing and started planning the flight. It's a big deal: my last BFR was in June 2004, so at the end of this month, I'm not allowed to fly as pilot in command of any aircraft until I take another BFR. (Imagine if we had to take a full driving test every two years, how much safer the roads would be.)

Right now at Pal-Waukee Municipal Airport, winds are calm, visibility is unlimited, there are a few little clouds at 1,700 m (5,500 ft), and it's 20°C (66°F). The weather is, in short, absolutely perfect for flying[1].

Only, the plane is broken—apparently someone had a good landing, rather than an excellent one—so they're replacing the tires and inspecting the airframe.

I could cry.

Oh well. It's always better to be down here, wishing you were up there, than the reverse.

Here's the aviation meterological report (METAR), which you can plug into the new METAR decoder at http://beta.wx-now.com/Weather/MetarDecode.aspx: 2006-06-14 13:53 KPWK 141353Z 00000KT 10SM FEW055 20/11 A3013 RMK AO2 SLP200 T02000106

Today's Chicago Tribune story on sodium in our diets begins with just about the stupidest lede I have read in a long time:

Sodium, one of the planet's oldest substances, may be the American diet's newest enemy.

I imagined it continuing:

Only sodium, of all 90 naturally-occuring chemical elements, has expressed any hostility toward the American diet. In separate news conferences, spokespeople for hydrogen and helium, the planet's two oldest substances, stressed that they are essentially inert and take no position on the American diet, while statements put out by oxygen, carbon, and iron reaffirmed those substances' long friendships with the American diet. Arsenic and mercury declined to comment.

As most of the Periodic Table rushed to distance themselves from sodium's manifesto, two—argon and sulfur—voiced objections to sodium's seniority claim, suggesting that sodium arrived on the planet through the post-solidification accretion of solar material and was therefore not part of the original complement of substances that first formed Earth.

At press time, sodium had neither responded to these criticisms nor retracted its declaration of war.

The American diet could not be reached for comment.

But, alas, the article merely went on to remind readers that sodium in large quantities is bad for us, and that sodium is the principal ingredient by mass in table salt.

Anne will hate that I know this now:

Coffee may counteract alcohol's poisonous effects on the liver and help prevent cirrhosis, researchers say.

In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 percent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 percent. The coffee effect held true for women and men of various ethnic backgrounds.

Not that I was ever a candidate for cirrhosis, of course. But it's nice to know that both vices work together to keep one happy and healthy.

From the "Jeez, People, They're Not People!" category in yesterday's L.A. Times (by way of the Chicago Tribune (reg.req.):

Fido Party of Four, Your Table Is Ready

By P.J. Huffstutter
L.A. Times Staff Writer
Published June 12, 2006

CHICAGO—Chef Didier Durand has spent months testing his restaurant's new menu on his most finicky customer: Princess, his 2-year-old French poodle.

The ostrich country pate? To drool for. The bone marrow gateau? Delightfully crunchy. The grilled steak hache? Gone in a gulp.

Durand and other chefs across the city are preparing to serve a canine clientele as the Chicago City Council considers an ordinance this month that would let dogs eat next to people in outdoor cafes.

Forgetting the story's content for a moment, does it seem odd to anyone else that the Chicago Tribune is running a story originally run in the Los Angeles Times about a Chicago ordinance? No?

Talking Points Memo has a list of the Senators supporting, opposed to, and dithering over S.2917, the "Net Neutrality" legislation currently winding its way through the Senate.

Illinois Senator Obama is a co-sponsor; I've just sent our Senator Durbin an email asking him to do the same.

The City of Chicago has floated a plan to designate more than 800 km (500 mi) of bike lanes and paths by 2015 (reg.req.):

[W]ith a strong track record of delivering for cyclists, the city is thinking big: a bike route within a half-mile of every resident; a 50-mile circuit of bike trails, with some off-road paths to be announced later this year; 185 miles of new bikeways altogether.

By 2015, planners hope, 5 percent of all trips shorter than 5 miles long will be made by bike.

Now, if only Mayor Daley hated small airplanes less than he likes bicycles...

Welcome to the 2006 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Our first guest: Tropical Storm Alberto, now churning in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Hurricane Center is monitoring Tropical Depression 1, currently in the Carribean but expected to move up the Florida coast this week:

AT THIS TIME...THE MAIN THREAT FROM THE DEPRESSION IS HEAVY
RAINFALL.  THE DEPRESSION IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAINFALL
ACCUMULATIONS OF 10 TO 20 INCHES OVER THE WESTERN HALF OF
CUBA...WITH ISOLATED TOTALS OF 30 INCHES OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN. 
THIS COULD CAUSE DEVASTATING FLASH FLOODS AND MUD SLIDES.  GRAND
CAYMAN ISLAND HAS REPORTED 22.72 INCHES OF RAIN DURING THE PAST 24
HOURS... AND ADDITIONAL RAINFALL OF 5 TO 10 INCHES IS POSSIBLE OVER
THE CAYMAN ISLANDS.  RAINFALL TOTALS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE
OVER THE NORTHEASTERN PORTION OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA.  THERE IS
ALSO THE POTENTIAL FOR HEAVY RAINFALL OF 4 TO 8 INCHES POSSIBLE
OVER THE FLORIDA KEYS AND WESTERN FLORIDA FROM SUNDAY INTO MONDAY.

I read every word in her column today, and I still have no idea what Maureen Dowd thinks of bloggers (sub.req.):

If I had to be relegated to the Dustbin of History, I'm glad it was in Vegas.

I, Old Media, came here to attend a New Media convention of progressive political bloggers aiming for a technological revolution that would dispatch mainstream media to the tumbrels. It was the journalistic equivalent of mingling with your own pod replicant in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

Bemused, perhaps? I truy can't tell.

My father has posted his very first eBay listing: 50 decorative tea tins, mint condition. I'm so proud of him.

By the way, if you need any tea tins—perhaps for a school project, or an art installation—you have until next Thursday to bid on them.

Over at Talking Points Memo Cafe, Gene Sperling lays out the problems with the proposals to repeal the estate tax:

The nation is at war and troops have been having trouble getting the safest equipment. Child poverty has been on the rise for four straight years. Deficits are projected to total $4 trillion in the next ten years, our entitlement challenge is unresolved, working wages have been stagnating or declining, and fixing the estate tax for the top 3 of every 1000 estates in 2011 is what we should rush to the floor of the Senate in the summer of 2006?

Anne reports a disturbing trend in modern communications:

Apparently "add up" is the new "touch base:" "Let's add up this afternoon to see where you are on the research."

I've heard it 5 times this morning, from 2 different people.

At least with "touch base" one can kind of see the meaning, even if the phrase doesn't exactly hit one out of the park. But "add up?" I have no idea.

One of my daily digests contained a link to "How to choose the best database for your business." By Oracle.

Golly. Which database do you suppose they recommend? Think it's MySql?

In her column today (sub.req.):

There's no way to teach someone not to shoot an unarmed woman or child. If somebody doesn't already know why they shouldn't murder a baby, it's not clear that a refresher course will help.

If you're not from Chicago, you should visit in early June or mid-September. It's 22°C (72°F) and crystal clear. Tomorrow I'll be in fog central; today I'm enjoying the best of the Midwest.