Inspired by a couple of commenters in a previous post:

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I always thought that the teleprompter thing was a little silly – politics is often performance, and prompts are always part of performance. But, like so much else from the right, I ignored it. Now? Seriously, I don’t ever want to hear another joke about Obama needing a teleprompter.

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Unholy Rouleur Jim’s feeling darkly – go check it out, and try not to feel guilty about enjoying the fruits.  And in case you need some prompting, here’s some of what he’s digging up:

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Dupont, 2pm.

Because if things like this are any indication, the answer appears to be yes:

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Rahsaan Bahati, who parted ways with Rock Racing last year, has started his own development team with a mission.  Check it out:

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TNC goes from the systemic challenges an individual trying to drop weight faces to the society-wide choices of institutional racism:

I don’t write this out so that I can establish blame/guilt. To the contrary, the point is that the system was so far-reaching, that it took a conscious, deliberate and often personally dangerous effort to defy it. Against all odds, against a media that reinforced the assumptions of the system, against segregated social institutions that prescribed the assumptions, against whole familes which had bought into the assumption, one would have to rebel and say, “No.”

Read it.

Josh Marshall calls out Sen. Richard Shelby for what he is:

Worse than a squeegee man and not much better than a bank robber, Shelby is shutting down the president’s ability to appoint anyone to anything until he gets his way.

Will this be the impetus for the Senate finally admitting it’s been rendered almost completely ineffective by its own rules and outdated traditions?  I’m not optimistic, but I’m still hoping . . .

Somewhere south of Cannon Falls, Minnesota.