¶ Matins: You have to wonder, how much did it hurt Carly Fiorina to choke out these words:

“This is a well-qualified candidate for vice president and well-qualified to be a heartbeat away from the president,” said Carly Fiorina, a top McCain campaign adviser and former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard.

Without wishing Ms Fiorina any ill, I hope that it hurt a lot.

¶ Tierce: The lead editorial in this morning’s Times highlights the growing weirdness of Republicans: they’re running against themselves. They can do this because, for many of the Party faithful, Democrats and “liberals” are not so much an opposing political faction as a collective bogeyman right out of the Stalinist toybox. What could Mitt Romney meant by “liberal Washington,” if not some spectral equivalent of “international bourgeois financiers”?

¶ Sext: Patricia Storms collects two tales of library crime, at Booklust.

¶ Vespers: Looking for an intriguing, end-of-summer pop movie quiz? Try this one, from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.Oremus…

§ Matins. A cloud of knowing is gathering  in my mind around the idea that Americans of the Republican persuasion are folks who think really well of loyalty — other people’s loyalty.

§ Tierce. More and more, the Republics reminds me of the re-throned Bourbons: they learn nothing and they forget nothing. And it works — until it spectacularly doesn’t. Utter imperviousness is considered by (all too) many to be an admirable trait.

While I’m here, let me rap the Times editors on the knuckles for failing to insert, somewhere in Jonathan P Hicks’s story about long-term Congressman, Edolphus Towns, a clarifying statement about the background of his opponent in the Democratic Party primary, Kevin Powell. Young ‘uns may have forgotten this, but “Powell” is a legendary name in city politics. (I gather that Kevin Powell is “no relation.”)

§ Sext. I can’t read the story about Bruce David Cameron, the Canadian library embezzler, without hoping that a movie will be made. Yes, he stole a million dollars. But it took him fourteen years to do it! (And he claims that he took only half that amount, and that he has repaid it.) Plus, the man is sixty-five years old. Whatever brought him to Carson City, Nevada? Don’t tell me there’s not a story there.

§ Vespers. Just don’t let me know that your answer to Question Nº 19 is Duck Soup, and not The Awful Truth.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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