It's like American Idol, only not at all.

You can legitimately vote more than once in the great Canadian t-shirt contest. I'm currently in third, hint, hint.

And thanks for the votes, not so BTW.

Ding, dong the witch has pled.

Our long metropolitan nightmare has come to an end: noted embarrassment Monica Conyers pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery.

Detroit city government's slow but steady return to sanity and integrity continues apace.

The chortling you've been hearing is from Ken Cockrel and Kwame Kenyatta.

I am now on Twitter.

That is all.

The title is to gum up the works for the theocracy, as is the time zone.

The Twitter picture is of part of the facade of the stunning Shah Mosque (the work of the Safavid Shah Abbas back in the 17th Century) in Esfahan.

Speaking of which, the heroic work of the Tehran Bureau could use your financial assistance. Let's all put our money where our mouth is. In this fight, information is a weapon, a source of hope and a reminder to those struggling in Iran that they are not alone.

I contributed a bon mot and all I got was this cool t-shirt.

Devoted readers:

You can win me at least one, and possibly three, t-shirts by going over to Blazing Cat Fur to vote in the "Be Mean to Jennifer Lynch" contest. Ms. Lynch is Big Sister, the head of the Canadian Human Rights [sic] Commission, which has been tasked by the solons of the Dominion with salving the imagined and potential hurts of politically approved groups. Here's the problem with Ms. Lynch and the CHRC, in a fisky nutshell from Ezra Levant, her indefatigable foe and one of the great free speech heroes of our time, right up there with Nat Hentoff.

I've been following the battle reasonably closely and thought I'd offer my own contribution, which has the extra advantage of being a double entendre appropriate to the control-freak nature of the entire enterprise:

The CHRC: Only Jennifer Lynch Knows The Safe Words.

To my delight, it made the top 10 finalists. Come on--you can picture Mark Steyn using that one in a column, can't you? It has to be worth something. So, get on over there and win me a t-shirt or three.

Resign, you scumbag.

Governor Mark Sanford admits to travelling to Argentina to knock boots with his mistress.

He also used his office to lie and conceal the affair.

But here's the best part: he's a father of four, and he spent Father's Day getting jiggy.

Unbelievable. Wretched, rotten, foul, putrid--insert your decomposing adjective here.

This married father of four recommends you STFU, leave office and spend the rest of your life in penitential obscurity. The longer you spend in office, the more you make Elliott Spitzer look like a model of puritan rectitude.

Quick hits on Iran.

1. The President's last statement was pretty good. But determining to press on with negotiations no matter what is not. Oh, and the "come on over for halal dogs" tactic is...how can I put it...a great, barking obscenity. Should be an interesting set of conversations. "Hey, man, nice shot. How do those Basiji do that on motorcycles, anyway?"

2. What is "realist"ic about the belief that you can negotiate binding treaties with a regime that blatantly fixes its own elections? A better description is "fantastic"--in the old meaning of the term. Or an exercise in wish-fulfillment.

Realism, properly understood, is the recognition that you sometimes have to settle for the lesser of two evils.

3. By the way, you'll never avoid charges of outside interference with people who see British conspiracies in their falafel.

4. Her name was Neda, which means "voice" in Farsi. It's a pretty name, and her life had just started, with a marriage in the offing.



She deserved better than a horrific death at the hands of tyrants.

5. We need no more submissions: Our Shameless Narcissist of 2009 Award goes to Maureen Fiedler at the National Catholic [sic] Reporter. Here's a hint, Maureen: the fact the Swiss Guard didn't spray you with bullets or take runs at you with motorcycles and clubs just might be a hint from the Clue Lumbermill that your analogy sucks like a black hole. It's not all about you. Really.

Prayers for Patrick O'Hannigan's daughter, Jane.

She was injured in a car accident on the 16th and is still hospitalized.

"Debate."

This is not a "debate," spokesflunky. Nor is this (content warning). [By the way, Esfahan is one of my favorite cities in the world. I'll show you why sometime in the next few days.]

"Realist" foreign policy: making everyone feel grimy and ashamed since 1945.

I can't do a whole lot more, so enjoy the new color scheme.

Two men detained with 134 billion--with a "b"--in U.S. bonds stashed in a suitcase.

Details are thin, but deeply worrisome. The Fourth Estate hits the snooze bar again.

The implications of the securities being legitimate would be bigger than investors may realize. At a minimum, it would suggest that the U.S. risks losing control over its monetary supply on a massive scale.

The trillions of dollars of debt the U.S. will issue in the next couple of years needs buyers. Attracting them will require making sure that existing ones aren’t losing faith in the U.S.’s ability to control the dollar.

The dollar is, for better or worse, the core of our world economy and it’s best to keep it stable. News that’s more fitting for international spy novels than the financial pages won’t help that effort. It is incumbent upon the U.S. Treasury to get to the bottom of this tale and keep markets informed.

Think about it: These two guys were carrying the gross domestic product of New Zealand or enough for three Beijing Olympics. If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia. Yes, they could have built vacation homes amidst Genghis Khan’s Gobi Desert or the famed Temples of Angkor. Bernard Madoff who?

These men carrying bonds concealed in the bottom of their luggage also would be the fourth-largest U.S. creditors. It makes you wonder if some of the time Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spends keeping the Chinese and Japanese invested in dollars should be devoted to well-financed men crossing the Italian-Swiss border.

No, really--go ahead and play through.

Plane lands on 5th hole of Michigan golf course.

Probably a beta test for Extreme Polo!, coming soon to The Ocho.

A Detroit future?

[Graphic created by the Free Press. Click to enlarge.]

I find the urban village idea really intriguing.

The committee suggests that Detroit could recreate itself as a 21st-Century version of the English countryside.

"Isn't that basically what's happening? Even without any plans or strategies?" Mallach asked.

But he added, "It's happening in a sloppy, destructive fashion where you get areas that are essentially abandoned, but they're not useable open space, they're not environmentally sound, so they're basically wasteland."

Instead, the team suggests planning for that future by relocating residents out of distressed areas and concentrating new development in more vital nodes such as Midtown or Mexicantown.

Mallach and his team visited Detroit as part of a program known as SDAT, for Sustainable Design Assessment Team. The SDAT program sends teams of volunteer architects, planners and other experts to a community to help map steps toward a more sustainable future, both economically and environmentally.

The Detroit SDAT team visited the city in late 2008 and has yet to issue its final report. But its draft report has been circulating widely among local community groups and is already stirring debate about its core recommendations.

What do to with Detroit's vacant land has sparked considerable discussion lately. In one prominent idea, businessman John Hantz recently proposed using hundreds or thousands of acres of vacant land for commercial farming.

Meanwhile, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and other nonprofit groups have been working to create more greenways through Detroit's open spaces to link neighborhoods.

Forty (of 139) square miles of Detroit are currently empty. Thinking radically not only is not impractical, it is necessary.

There's a good discussion about the project, pro and con, at a Detroit online forum here.

[As an aside, this is essentially what happened to Constantinople during its last century as a Byzantine city: the once metropolis of 500,000 contracted to 50,000 people living in villages connected by roads and surrounded by ruins.]

Roll over Methuselah and tell Mahalalel the news.

Happy birthday to two of my friends today, commenter and expired blogger Bryan and commenter and largely hibernating blogger Zach.

Welcome to old. The view's ok--one of the happy side effects of weakening vision.

O brave new world.

That has fewer girls in't.

Where the "reduce the need, not the number" approach to abortion smashes into bloody reality.

And stands mute, where not actually enabling or approving.

Anybody else every see Joe Theisman's injury on Monday Night Football?

For some reason that keeps coming to mind.

Dude's got more finales than Cher or Return of the King.

Enough already.

Finally, some good news on the job front.

Commenter Ed the Roman has a new job--delighted for you, Ed!

As does my neighbor Brian, who was called back to work unexpectedly by his former employer. Which, given the unemployment rate in Michigan right now, could be used in support of a beatification cause.

Thanks for the condolences on the Wings. First, congrats to the Penguins and their fans.

Yeah, it stung/stings. Saturday, I went to my kids' recital and Sunday I helped bear a canopy in the Corpus Christi procession. Oh, and I also did some productive lawn work, gardening and grilling. Rachel and I later hunted unsuccessfully for a pink platypus Webkins. We found one, but no tag to activate it online. The quest will continue today.

In other words, life went on, as I expected it eventually would.