Look, I know that everyone is an asshole and thinks they aren't, but I've always thought that car people were the most guilty of this particular self-deception. So please, if you're reading this and you're ever biking through Williamsburg, remember that there are multiple streets with multiple bike lanes going in all kinds of crazy directions... including, I am sure, the direction you are going. So for your own safety, take them.

Also, I AM OLD AND CRANKY. Also.

"Gee, it sure seems, sometimes, like the Congressional opposition to healthcare reforms is offering disingenuous, intellectually invalid boilerplate as justification for defending the market share of the few companies that benefit disproportionately under the current status quo."

Fact:

"In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers... were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies."

Honestly, politics in this country is so infuriating, if it wasn't for my innate sense of moral superiority sometimes I think I'd go insane.

Yes, it's true, the McDonald's at Guantanamo is now looking for a manager—and don't worry, you won't need security clearance, just a U.S. passport. The best part is that apparently guards will occasionally use Big Macs to coerce info from prisoners (not sure if they're used as bribes or threats... ZING!). The second best part? The job is listed at McVirginia.com, which, awesome.

And don't forget, no shirt, no shoes, no sensory deprivation hood, no service.

• Enraged at the enforced prejudices of Mainers, the lobsters attack!

After all, some 30 states have rejected gay marriage, including California. This is a national issue. (Ten years ago, in a vote I remember very well, Maine voters upheld another Question 1, overturning a gay rights measure. Progress.) Blogging at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates thinks out loud:

The obvious parallel is civil rights. It's quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the South could not have been struck down by a majority vote...

That's a pretty fair point: the will of the majority has, historically, lagged behind the needs of the minority. Today, we are all Mutant Inbred Hicks.

Yesterday, the bill was repealed in a referendum (as gay rights measures always were in Maine when I was growing up). Lots of out-of-state money got out the vote from rural conservatives, it would seem. Maine voters did, however, vote to expand the medical marijuana law (libertarianism, except when it's trumped by bigotry!).

Well, fuck you, you mutant inbred hicks. I hope you all drive your snowmobiles while stoned, and crash and die horribly.

After spending $90 of his own money, Bloomberg beat Bill Thompson by just 50,000 votes, in an election with historically low turnout. Essentially, many of the people who voted for him did so because they didn't think there was anything better out there, and many of the people who didn't vote at all didn't vote because they didn't think there was a point.

You'll recall that Queens and Brooklyn Congressman Anthony Weiner was widely tipped for a mayoral run earlier this year, before bowing out rather than lose a nationally covered race to Bloomberg's vast electoral machine; its media operation had also used their muscle to put the fear of god into him, feeding unflattering stories to the Post).

Except that it's fairly clear, this morning, that a high-profile Democrat, with good national connections, running a vigorous campaign, would have beaten Bloomberg (Weiner would have even siphoned off some of the white and Jewish vote). Hell, even if he had run and lost, we still would have gotten to feel like we had a choice, that whoever won the Democratic primary wasn't just Not Bloomberg.

Anthony Weiner, sir, you are a coward, and should be mocked by the fellow members of your stupid hockey team.

A vote for Reverend Billy might be a protest vote, but that's the point here, to protest. A vote for Billy is to protest Bloomberg's arrogance in seeking a third term; a vote for Billy is to protest the pusillanimous state and city Democrats more concerned with hanging onto power than advocating on behalf of their constituents; a vote for Billy is to protest a New York slowly losing the very thing that has always made it a truly great city, its neighborhoods.

Also, if you haven't yet, read Henry Stewart's great profile of the Rev, here.

Call me dangerously naive, but I think a purging of moderates (god, that phrase has such a... I don't know... Cambodian ring to it) from the Republican Party would be good for America, insofar as would isolate all the extremists in one place, THE BETTER TO SEE THEM. Is that crazy?

• A beard is not a chin.

They’ve injected real substance into their races, and they’ve given voters a much more interesting choice than they would have otherwise enjoyed.

It’s a shame that this doesn’t happen more often. Gerrymandered districts, the power of incumbency and our tendency to self-segregate along ideological lines all help make American elections uncompetitive. But so does the absence of third-party entrepreneurship.

Ignoring for a minute Douthat's dubious attempts to spin the NY-23 race as anything other than wingnuts holding the GOP hostage some more, for fun, this is a seemingly reasonable column making a point with which we can all agree, about voter choice, local issues and interests, and political diversity. It's an agreeable, rational, seemingly nonideological argument—which is exactly what makes it so insidious.

You know those idiots who don't know anything about politics but think it sounds smart to say "I am a social liberal and an economic conservative?" Bloomberg is the candidate for them, if they love a liberal nanny state and a conservative religious fervor for the eternal goodness of private enterprise.

Unlike Pareene, though, we think you should definitely vote for Reverend Billy.

Our Republic stands upon a precipice. Within a very short time we will either restore Constitutional Order or our nation—at least as we know it—will cease to exist.

One could almost believe that the agonies the nation now suffers are the outcomes of deliberate plans crafted by those who wish to destroy our Republic and founding Principles.

The truth, however is that these problems cannot be fixed through the representative electoral process.

If revolution comes to our shores, it will be unique in history. In stead of fighting to create a new constitution, for the first time a people will fight to restore one.

"This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes. Of some incidental interest, perhaps, is the nature of the book they banned. It consists of op-eds written for The New York Times syndicate and distributed by them. The subversive rot must run very deep.''

Zing! The most popular books from the Gitmo Library? Harry Potter.

(The Miami Herald has a swell guide to what can and can't be in the library, here.)]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

anus (n.)
the opening at the end of the alimentary canal through which solid waste matter leaves the body.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin, originally ‘a ring.’

Governor Paterson (hey, he's still governor?) has signed a bill that brings the laws governing aggravated sexual abuse into line with those governing criminal sexual abuse. The former used the word "rectum" when discussing penetration with "foreign objects," while the latter had changed it to "anus." Both now read "anus."

"In order to prove the commission of the crime of aggravated sexual abuse, victims, including child victims, have had to give detailed testimony in court as to the depth of penetration; the rectum being more internal. This was not the intent of the law," the bill reads. "Cases have been dismissed and defendants have been found innocent because prosecutors have not been able to prove that a foreign object or finger was inserted, for other than a valid medical purpose, into the rectum because the anus is the place of insertion. By adding the word 'anus' to the statute, the statute will operate as it was intended."

This is obviously a very serious issue—and shouldn't be made the butt of any jokes.

According to vile, manipulative propagandist Republican pollster Frank Luntz, “No one knows how to win better than Roger."

So, is America ready for its own, sexless version of Silvio Berlusconi? Umm, YEAH.

Going Rogue is already an online bestseller, but there is a silver lining: Tina Fey gave us hope in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar that she might be back at SNL in her Emmy-winning role now that Palin is back in the spotlight. (No word yet on when we can expect Fey’s book on the shelves.)

Contrary to the Bloomberg campaign's attempts to paint Thompson as an ineffectual bureaucrat, however, we learn that Thompson, occupying an office without much power, was able to provide political cover for more ambitious chancellors to enact education reforms—he comes off as an adept political horse-trader, running enough interference, and gauging the political climate effectively enough, that people were able to make things incrementally better, if you don't mind inefficiency, cronyism, and a fair amount of dependency on special interests.

So, the good news is that Thompson was an effective administrator in the NYC Democratic machine mode. The bad news, of course, is that Thompson was an effective administrator in the NYC Democratic machine mode. (Whereas with Bloomberg, as pre-New Times holdout Wayne Barrett's current Voice cover story so comprehensively informs us, the good news is that he's a benevolent dictator, and the bad news is that he's a benevolent dictator.)

• "Come to the Darkside"

So look, if you want to, you know, say, convert to Catholicism—how close could a queer or a woman be to God, anyway?—it's a lot easier now. Like, some of your married priests can still stay married. (Without the vagaries of the old "case-by-case" basis structure.) And you can even keep singing your favorite Anglican hymns.

It's touching that Shelley Duvall used to call Altman "Pirate", and weedy, boozy testimonials from coconspirators Tim Robbins and Michael Murphy are fun but hardly surprising (neither are their unpleasant, ugly flipsides); and Altman's alluded-to affair with Faye Dunaway has apparently been a matter of public record since at least 1989—though if this comes as news to you, as it did to me, you're going to want to take a minute to really fully consider the implications here, because seriously, what?—so in looking for something new to post here we turn to Dana Stevens, at Slate, who has already taken the trouble of typing up the section of the book in which Robert Altman tattoos Harry Truman's dog.