While I wouldn't disagree that we do need a better media, the emphasized sentence is ambiguous. It could be read as you suggest, but it could also be read as "In the minority, Pelosi will be freed from the ceremonial duties of being speaker, and also freed from the duty of crafting a governing agenda." I suspect that's what they were aiming for...

How did you find this stuff, anyway?

And sincere thanks for sharing it with all of us here, and thus ensuring that the League will survive the coming Pleiadean/reptilian/draconian/UNian/Obamian war... and of course be well situated to guide society as it rebuilds from the ashes... :D

I, for one, welcome... well, you know how it goes.

@North,

Perhaps to the quiet relief of the producers. They managed to dance around the more anti-clerical bits of the first one, but I'm not sure they'd have been able to keep it up well enough to avoid noisy protests by the time the third film rolled around.

That link about tobacco is interesting. I was having some pretty nasty issues with depression earlier this summer. In the last month or so, I've put a foot off the wagon and started smoking some again--not much; generally a couple of cigs in the evening. I've also gotten my mood on something closer to an even keel. I'd thought it was just coincidence and doing a better job of staying busy, but who knows. Something to think about.

Watership Down! My fifth grade teacher introduced me to that book; I still read it every few years. And I still get choked up in places. Thank goodness I just trusted her; I don't think I even asked what it was about. It's a hard book to sell, but a damn good one to read.

Cincinnatian here. Be sure to check out the chili, of course--love it or hate it, it's worth tasting. Skyline's my personal choice. Graeter's ice cream is worth having as well; for something a bit less well-known (and, IMO, better), check out Aglamecis in Oakley. They've still got the original tin ceiling, marble soda counter, and Tiffany lamps. Finally, if you're into a good burger, drop by Gordos in Norwood. Their burgers are superb, and they've got an excellent selection of bottled brews.

My favorite bars are both downtown, Arnold's and O'Malley's in the Alley. Both are a bit divey--especially the latter--but that's how I roll when it comes to bars. Arnold's lays claim to being the oldest bar in the city, and it's got that atmosphere that comes only from 150 years of drinking. Fries Cafe in Clifton gets an honorable mention, mostly because they've got a shuffleboard table and a solid beer selection as well.

@JosephFM,

At least until Guinness licenses the "rocket widget" out, or their(?) patent expires.

Side note on Brooklyn Lager: I just cracked open a can, and had the same problem as I've had with the bottles. Can fresh out of the fridge, popped the top, and next thing I know, foam out of the can and dripping all over the kitchen. Brooklyn could easily be my go-to beer if it weren't for this issue, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's just me or if this is something more widespread.

I've never had a problem with beer packaged in brown bottles being skunked. Green and clear bottles, though, ought to be banned, or else required to be packaged in 360 degree light-blocking cardboard. Other than that, glass does seem to resist temperature changes a bit better, giving you more time to enjoy your beer before it gets warm.

Of course, at the moment I've got Old Speckled Hen and Brooklyn Lager in the fridge, both in cans. The former because OSH in clear glass bottles is invariably so skunky as to verge on the undrinkable, never mind the nitrogenation issue, and the latter because I've had a lot of trouble with Brooklyn longnecks foaming over when I crack them open--I wind up losing a quarter of the beer and making a mess all over the kitchen. Someone in Brooklyn needs to work on the quality control...

I have discovered a new excuse for why I can't cook.

I've never really understood all the hate for ROTJ. I've seen people rank it below several of the prequels, which is completely indefensible. Sure it's no Empire, but it's not the Christmas Special, people.

That said, more generally I don't understand why folks seem to think that everything would be better if only it were bleaker, darker, and/or grittier. Don't get me wrong: I'll take the Man with No Name over John Wayne any day of the week, I loved The Wire, most of my iTunes library is probably in minor keys. But can't we have a little whimsy now and then? A little fun? Maybe a happy ending? Does absolutely every alien have to be fearsome?

I've given Lucas a lot of grief over the years for the prequels and for the changes he's made to the original series after the fact, never mind apparently throwing out the original masters after making the "Special" editions. But on this one, he made the right call.

I too wound up as H.P. Lovecraft, based on the first few pages of my law review Comment. (Appropriate; reading law reviews often costs me a few points of sanity.) A couple of my blog posts returned H.G. Wells and Cory Doctorow.

Within the internal logic of the Inception-verse, #2 is answered at least in part by the fact that these are not freely constructed dreamscapes. Rather, they're carefully sculpted labyrinths, designed with a specific (and extremely sinister, when you actually sit back to think about it) goal in mind. Of course, I suppose you could engineer a dreamscape to look like a a Dali painting, but there are a few lines early on, during Ariadne's instruction, explaining that the dream needs to be kept realistic to stop the dreamer from realizing what's going on, either consciously or subconsciously.

FWIW, I don't necessarily find that satisfying--I wanted to see some truly psychedelic worlds created. I also would've liked to have seen the team, or at least Ariadne and Cobb, make use of their ability to shape the world on the fly, even if it was in subtle ways. The film seemed to set this up with the early sequences--the folding city, the mirror hallway--but other than the stair loop, Nolan seems to have been content to let these particular Chekov's guns lie back in the first act. But within the four corners of the film, there are at least reasons offered for our disappointment.

I love him. But you can see the poison starting work on him in that article when he talks about Sarah Palin and the birthers. If he seriously means to run, and to do it with the GOP, it'll just get worse from here.