A friend reminds me that "life is what happens while you're making plans."

It will be an unusual weekend, a passing to mourn, a confirmation to celebrate. Who knows what else?

TEOTWAWKI

Experts like Soros and Volcker have proven themselves full of gobshittery before, not to mention being part of the establishment which got us into the current economic mess. So it is just  for what it may be worth that I cite their most recent rendition of, "Holy Libido, Romulus. This  really is the Decline and Fall."

Their gloom probably accounts for some part of today's panicky pre-market business reporting which includes:

"S&P futures fell below 1,060, the level hit at the bottom of the still-unexplained market "flash crash" on May 6."


What? Me worry? I bought an extra five tins of chicken breasts at the Fareway yesterday, and there's still 20 pounds of  rice stashed away in a cool, dry place.

Montana needs an English-only law.

A newspaper there reports:

"Members of the Missoula County Search and Rescue Team had their hands full Sunday as a half-dozen hikers reported route-finding issues in the Mormon Peak area."

Having route-finding issues is more respectable than being lost?

(H/T to Friend John in the GMA)

Rand Paul

1. Cut your hair, brush it down, and go easier on the Brylcreem.

2. Find and fire the certified idiots in your circle of advisers. I speak particularly of the guy who told you it would be okay to have your victory bash in a members-only country club.

3. Shut up until...

4. ... you have a better grasp of the power of the symbolic. You don't look into the red light lens and start staggering around on a simple -- if "gotcha" -- question about how you might have voted on a the public accommodations section of the 60s civil rights laws.

I and some fellow libertarian types understood your agonizingly strained guns-in-bars analogy, but a million Kentucky voters wondered what the holy Hell you were talking about.

Here is a principled answer to questions about how you might have voted on racial rights during the LBJ/MLK reign:

"I don't think anyone can honestly say how he might have voted on anything 45 years ago. He would have been a different person then, affected by a different upbringing, a different culture, a different understanding of how a society should organize itself,

"But I will say that ending racial discrimination in voting rights was a decision we should still cherish and which was something like a century overdue when it was signed.

"The public accommodations laws of the same era raised different questions about how far government may intrude into strictly private affairs of business men and women. But for nearly a half-century they have been settled law of our Union, and if anyone thinks I am going to go to Washington and try to re-segregate the lunch counters, that person doesn't know Rand Paul."

The general idea, Dr. Paul, is to get elected. You don't need to shed your principles. You do need to brush the stray wookie hairs from your collar.