Gerry Canavan

* Breaking news: Houston, Texas, has elected an openly gay woman as mayor. That’s… unexpected.

* Is Ben Nelson a lost cause on health care? Related: Tom Harkin may introduce bill to eliminate the filibuster. Yes, please.

* We are living through the Californiafication of America—a country in which the combination of a determined minority and a procedural supermajority legislative requirement makes it impossible to rationally address public policy challenges. And thus the Democratic president and his allies in Congress are evaluated on the basis of extreme compromise measures—supplicating to dispassionate Wise Men like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, buying Olympia Snowe a vacation home, working bills through 76 committees and countless “procedural” votes–rather than the substantive, policy achievements of bills that would merely require a simple majority to pass. (via Benen)

* Nice OpenLeft diary on malicious bullshitting as the key to climate change denialism.

* Jersey shore nickname generator. From now on please address me only as “The Condition.”

* Will Prince Charles never become King?

* Will 2010 be like 1994?

* And from the Atlantic, the evolution of reading.