bodhi tree swaying

Gail Collins is often wickedly funny, and she’s in good form commenting on Sarah Palin’s quitting in order to spend more time with her family values:

• "Palin is quitting as governor because she’s not a quitter."
• "She recalled her visit with the troops in Kosovo, whose dedication and determination inspired her to … resign."
• "The timing of Palin’s announcement was extremely peculiar. Not only did she interrupt the plans of TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead, she delivered her big news just as the nation was settling into Fourth of July celebrations. You’d have thought she didn’t want us to notice."
• "It turns out that Palin believes that the only way her administration can ‘continue without interruption’ is for her to end it."
• "There is

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• Apparently God does not like his followers to resign for ethical violations, misuse of taypayers’ money, lying, and dereliction of duty, as Mark Sandford attests.
• "Joe" "The Plumber" calls for the assassination of a senator, or at least comes close. He also reveals a stunning grasp of history. I had no idea that Karl Marx predated the American Revolution.
• 3/4 of people in the US who are pushed into bankruptcy by medical problems have insurance. You can read about some health care horror stories in this NYT article.
• My 2-year-old pointed to NYT columnist Maureen Dowd’s picture on my monitor this morning and identified her by name. Maia, you rock! (She’d asked me Maureen’s name at least two months ago).
• Glenn Greenwald discusses the deaths (possibly by torture) of perhaps

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I read Zits every morning. Today’s was particularly funny, I thought.

• Liked this quote: "You cannot live an authentic life without mastering the art of disappointing people."  Cheryl Richardson
• And this one: "Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence." Eckhart Tolle
• But this is another fake Buddha quote doing the rounds on Twitter, quotations sites, etc: ” ‘If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change’ – Buddha.” The entire tone of that statement is so far from anything I’ve read in any form of Buddhist scripture that I’m astonished anyone familiar with Buddhism would think for a moment this is genuine. And yet I see Buddhists passing this quote on as if it were.
• It’s good to know I live in the land of

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