Diary
Here is another good account of the drama behind the debt showdown by the Washington Post. In mid-January, newly installed as the GOP House majority leader, Virginia’s Eric Cantor rose to the podium inside a spacious hotel ballroom to deliver a message to his troops, including the 87 newcomers who had given the party control of the House. A vote to increase the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit was coming soon, he told the caucus members who had gathered at the Marriott in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor for a closed-door retreat less than 10 days after taking power. Think of it as a “hidden” opportunity, he implored them, a chance to achieve their goal of reining in the federal government and its spending habits.Origins of the debt showdown
Diary
Poem by Jack Prelutsky Be glad your nose is on your face, Imagine if your precious nose Your nose would be a source of dread Within your ear, your nose would be Your nose, instead, through tick and thin, From Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face: And Other Poems published by Harper Collins, 2008.Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you’d be forced to smell your feet.
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place—
be glad your nose is on your face!
Diary, Curious News
All eyes are on Washington. I have a hard time believing that in the end the debt ceiling will not be raised but to be honest, I cannot rule it out completely. And if it does not happen, we are in a new world altogether… Congress closing in on a deal to avert US default By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate plunged on Sunday into what many lawmakers and the White House—and millions of Americans coast to coast—hoped would be an all-but-decisive last-minute effort to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and defuse a crisis that still could lead to an unprecedented government default.The Cliffhanger: Will the US default and usher in a new era?
Update August 2: Click on more to read background analysis of public analysis that prevented Obama from negotiating a better deal
As senators began debate in a rare Sunday session—just hours after Saturday night’s concluded—Democratic leader Harry Reid said he was “cautiously optimistic” agreement could be reached.
Diary
It was the Guardian and not the British Police that kept on investigating who knew about or had authorized the bugging of phones. The scandal already has claimed for prominent players. And now the press is turning on Rupert Murdoch has being too old to run his empire. Will he be able to survive. JEANNE WHALEN, DAVID ENRICH and NATALIA RACHLIN filed in The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper Murdoch owns, this fascinating summary of yesterday’s state o play. Scandal’s Latest Twists Seem Tabloid-Made LONDON—If news imitates art, the long-simmering News Corp. scandal over dubious reporting tactics suddenly seems scripted by a master of the spy genre—replete with social drama, cloak-and-dagger mystery and farce. On Tuesday, in the rarified halls of Westminster, a protester attempted to land a pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face—only to be thwarted and slapped by the media mogul’s wife. The perpetrator, covered in his own foam, was hauled off.The Press is Cleaning Itself
Diary
I have been struck by how badly I am able to predict who among my family and friends would stay married and who would get divorced. The couple who had the best marriage ended up having the most acrimonious divorce. Here is an article in the NY Magazine that does a great job laying out how the idea of marriage in the U.S. needs some rediscovery of what people knew over a hundred years ago. I suspect that Schwarzenegger’s wife is filing for divorce not because of the infidelity (after all she tolerated his groping for many years) but because her trust in him is irrevocably shattered after he had lied straight to her face for years. The article is a bit long but instead of me excerpting the key parts, I thought my readers would benefit from reading it all. By MARK OPPENHEIMER Married, With Infidelities
Last month, when the New York congressman Anthony Weiner finally admitted that he had lied, that his Twitter account had not been hacked, that he in fact had sent a picture of his thinly clad undercarriage to a stranger in Seattle, I asked my wife of six years, mother of our three children, what she thought. More specifically, I asked which would upset her more: to learn that I was sending racy self-portraits to random women, Weiner-style, or to discover I was having an actual affair. She paused, scrunched up her mouth as if she had just bitten a particularly sour lemon and said: “An affair is at least a normal human thing. But tweeting a picture of your crotch is just weird.”
© 2026 Peter Murmann. Powered by ExpressionEngine.
