Daniel Gross, writing in SLATE, uses an economic metaphor to talk about the Republicans. Like an overheated stock, the party may have peaked and begun a decline.

Given their triumph in last November's elections (and their behavior since), the Republicans have nowhere to go but down. Indeed, polls and nimble online right-wing media types (Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan) are already starting to call a top in the Republicans' stock. The House and the Senate can't agree on the basics of a budget, the dwindling but vital core of northeast Republicans can't abide their southern and western compadres, and Tom DeLay is morphing into Jim Wright.

today's Washington Post discusses the effects of the Schiavo case on the party

Aggravating GOP frustrations are disturbing new polls, including a CBS survey that found that 82 percent of Americans -- including a whopping 68 percent of people who identify themselves as evangelical Christians -- think Congress's intervention was wrong.

Of course we haven't even gotten to Social Security (Bush's First Defeat per Jacob Weisberg) and, oh yeah, Iraq.

I am done hearing about feeding tubes, persistent vegetative states, all this fun stuff.
I'm big on death with dignity but not at all thrilled with the prospects of someone, vegetative or not, starving/dehydrating to death. Of course there is no medically assisted suicide since she can't commit suicide since she is a vegetable. Sigh. This is a mess.

I have a co-worker who is loud, rude, generally unpleasant. Oh and nerdy, not in the appealing "I'm super passionate about an esoteric subject" way but in the too much science fiction way. And not so good at using his indoor voice.

Apparently a conversation at his desk got a little heated because he just said "not 'Trekkies'! Trekkers! Trekkers!"

so now you know

On Wednesday night I went to hear Jeff Chang read from his book "Can't Stop Won't Stop" in an itty-bitty gallery space in the West Loop. I got there about 20 minutes before it started and took a folding chair a respectable distance from the handful of other people there. I was complimenting myself on having such great taste and being so cool as to be one of the few people there...this lasted about ten minutes and then 75 or so people came in, jammed into the doorway, sitting on the floor and otherwise making the gallery staff nervous with the way they would brush up against some of the art.

The book is subtitled "A History of the Hip Hop Generation" and it is a big, nerdy wet dream. Scholarly without being a Greil Marcus wankfest, Chang begins the narrative not with DJ Kool Herc DJ-ing in a Bronx rec room but with post-colonial politics and music in 1960's Jamaica.

One thing that I thought was especially interesting was what he had to say about the non-comprehensiveness of the book. Some might ask-what about all the activity in Atlanta/Philadelphia/Miami/Brooklyn/Insert Geographic Locale Here...how could you leave THAT out of this history??? The answer is that he set out to write a history from the street level that looks up, rather than a view from the top down. And to do that, you have to limit the geographic focus.

From the corrections section of The New York Times, via the website Regret The Error:

An Editorial Observer column in The Times yesterday incorrectly cited lyrics from a Michael Jackson song. The phrase "mamase mamasa mamakosa" ends the song "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," not "Working Day and Night."