Tip of the spear

When Republicans tell us that they're going to bayonet us, we ought to believe them:

I’m not happy about the pain and suffering and lost dreams and betrayed children that could flow from all that folly, of course.  But I do think it is extremely valuable to  see what it looks like when GOP true believers start to exercise real power.  Each time you get a clear statement of intent:  rapists outrank rape victims; vets are less valued than Wall St. executives—it becomes that much easier to shrink the Republican coalition as we go forward.

And, accordingly, we should make them pay the electoral price for their extremism.

Enormous shrieking tsunami of fail

My friend Tom Levenson nails it:

If [Megan] McArdle wants to argue that IOKIYAR to wreck the country, but not for Democrats to try to wrestle into some better path the enormous, shrieking tsunami of fail the GOP has left behind it, then that’s her right. But the point, of course, is that this administration, to the despair of those like me who wanted to take our real majorities out for a spin, attempted for a full year to engage Republicans in a real dialogue on health care. Instead, we found those across the aisle constantly working to bring us to our Waterloo. I think we’ve learned our lesson, (and, tonight, that contrary to the expectations of the GOP Elba-ists, it seems that President Obama more closely resembles the Duke of Wellington than the little Corsican.)

So I'm quote-mining for the great phrases...

Blogrolling - the Inverse Square

Since Pharyngula is a pretty big pond well-filled with capable science sharks, I had hoped - and still hope - to reenter the science conversation via my friend Tom Levenson's science writing blog, the Inverse Square. Little did I know that I would also reenter the poetry conversation, too, but I'm charmed by today's item, among others.

For as long as I've known him, which at this point is a long damn time, Tom has had a gift for quotation and a mindfulness of deft phrasing. Like his son now following after him, he had committed favorite phrases to memory at a time when that was not stylish. These pursuits are handed down in families, which helped us recognize each other as kin when we met. His spelling may be spotty, and his handwriting is so bad that there are probably fewer than a handful of his many friends in the whole world who can actually read it.

Still, all the fine language washing over him - since birth I'm sure - echo in and polish his own vivid essays as they pin down the ephemeral world in lasting images, and that is what good writing is about.

Besides all that, it's some pretty good wit and wisdom, eh, Tom?