It seemed the sun would never rise today, and I imagine it will be in a big hurry to get out this evening. I understand there’s a reason for that. It’s also the reason I’m feeling lamer and blanker than usual this morning. It couldn’t possibly be that I had four glasses of wine on a mostly empty stomach last night. As I had the night off and we were home before 11, I followed them with an over-the-counter sleep aid, ’cause I had the rare opportunity for a full night’s sleep and I didn’t want anything short of a wailing smoke alarm to penetrate it.

And sleep I did, but I still feel wrapped in cotton wool. After breakfast and two cups of coffee. Oh, well. If you’re not allowed a third cup four days before the winter solstice, when are you allowed?

And, not making excuses here, but I have work to do on a story. So let’s go to the bloggage early, shall we?

(Third cup, in progress.)

You’ve probably heard of PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times’ website, which strives to bring light to the darkness by fact-checking claims made by politicians. It was the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for Public Service, i.e., the best of the big P’s, and has been widely emulated around the country — there’s a version of it in Michigan now, run by a non-profit think tank, and original-recipe PolitiFact has licensed its name to other papers, as well. Seven states have PolitiFact sites now. (Don’t worry, Indiana. I’m sure you’ll get one…some day.)

This week, PolitiFact named its Lie of the Year. Before you click, see if you can guess. Anyone? Anyone? OK, Iet’s cut to the chase:

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections.

Remember, earlier in the week, when we discussed the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and how they game the system? They have company: The Center for Science in the Public Interest, another group of nutritional busybodies. Yesterday they were a player in this story, which had the conservative blogs and Facebook rockin’ with outrage:

With perfect Grinch timing, a consumer group has sued McDonald’s demanding that it take the toys out of its Happy Meals.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, claims it violates California law for the hamburger chain to make its meals too appealing to kids, thus launching them on a lifelong course to overeating and other health horrors. It’s representing an allegedly typical mother of two from Sacramento named Monet Parham. What’s Parham’s (so to speak) beef? “Because of McDonald’s marketing, [her daughter] Maya has frequently pestered Parham into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased.”

The story goes on to harumph about Parham’s lack of parenting skills, blah blah blah, to the point that you can almost ignore a few key phrases:

You’re probably wondering: How is this grounds for a lawsuit? No one forced Parham to take her daughters to McDonald’s, buy them that particular menu item, and sit by as they ate every last French fry in the bag (if they did).

No, she’s suing because when she said no, her kids became disagreeable and “pouted” – for which she wants class action status. If she gets it, McDonald’s isn’t the only company that should worry. Other kids pout because parents won’t get them 800-piece Lego sets, Madame Alexander dolls and Disney World vacations. Are those companies going to be liable too?

No, New York Daily News, all the conservative bloggers in the world and MMJeff, they aren’t. Filing a suit and seeking class-action status isn’t the same as winning a suit or getting class-action status. I know we have many lawyers in this house, who can maybe speak to the possibility of Ms. Parham’s suit getting anywhere beyond the pages of the New York Daily News, but at this point, it hardly matters. They’re in a New York daily newspaper, their message has been amplified, they’ve put McDonald’s on notice that it has wandered into the crosshairs of the media-savvy Center for Science in the Public Interest and WIN WIN WIN.

The CSPI is the group behind the “health scares” of the ’90s, which really showed how this ridiculous gamesmanship works, the “studies” that showed fettuccine alfredo, Chinese food and movie-theater popcorn is bad for you. Remember the phrase “heart attack on a plate?” That was theirs.

Another Xtranormal winner: Why your waiter hates you.

Did you know Coozledad has a pet chicken? And that he talks to the animals, just like me? He does.

Phone’s ringin’. Gotta go. Have a great weekend, all.

Here’s one reason I don’t listen to media conspiracy theories. Our case in point:

Here’s a locally bylined story in my morning newspaper. Both of them, actually. Headline: Group seeks ban on new Detroit fast-food eateries; City’s high rate of heart disease triggers request

The lead:

If nutritionists have it their way, Detroit fast-food restaurants would do more than hold the pickles and the lettuce.

Most people will read no further. As my fingers peck out these words, someone, somewhere in this place of two million souls is saying, “Jesus Christ, like this shithole doesn’t have enough problems” — we talk salty here — “now they want to ban fast food.”

The mysterious “they” always plays a big role in these conversations. “They” always want to “ban” something. Most people have only a dim idea of how the world works, and their understanding hasn’t advanced much since middle school. And most of us only listen to the news with half our attention. Who has time?

Back to our story:

The Washington, D.C.-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on Tuesday called for Mayor Dave Bing to impose a moratorium on new fast food restaurants. The group said Detroit needs a diet because it has the fourth-highest heart disease rate in the nation, killing 3,400 city residents each year.

“We decided to take on fast food in general because the quality of most menu items is rather poor,” said Susan Levin, the group’s director of nutrition. “The whole country is suffering from these kinds of statistics.”

Oh, OK. Those guys. The noble-sounding Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, aka the Vegan Doctors Group, likes to advocate all sorts of crazy stuff, including ending the use of all animals in medical research, which you don’t have to be a vegan to realize puts them in some pretty fringe-y territory, vis-a-vis the medical community. We had a vegetarian news editor in Fort Wayne who liked to put their “news” in our pages, including one memorable Thanksgiving, when the fattest paper of the year landed on 60,000 front steps with a banner story above the flag detailing just how toxic today’s holiday meal would be.

But the PCRM knows how to play the game in a crowded media marketplace. First, assume a sober, serious-sounding name. Second, focus your press releases narrowly; notice the group isn’t advocating a moratorium on fast-food restaurants everywhere (at least not in this case), but in one city. (Local media outlets are easier to penetrate than the New York Times.) Third, call for a ridiculously empty gesture that has no chance of passing, but can be easily summarized by a pretty reporter doing a stand-up outside a McDonald’s: A doctors’ group is asking the city of Detroit to adopt a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants. I’ll have more at 6.

And then wait for the magic to happen.

You have to wait until the fifth paragraph to get to the point:

Some cities have taken on burger joints, but that doesn’t appear to be on Bing’s menu. Mayoral spokeswoman Karen Dumas said the Health Department is educating residents “so they can make informed decisions.”

In other words, the mayor is not only ignoring the request, he won’t even waste a quote on them. But it doesn’t matter; for a group that counts a total membership of 120,000, fewer than 10 percent of them actual doctors, this story is WIN all around. They’re in both papers. They’re on the local Fox affiliate. In fact, Fox even found a city councilman who agrees; anyone want to guess which one? (If you said, “Charles Pugh, the dumbest man in journalism and city government,” you win.) The system was gamed, the newsroom hacked. As they say around here, their name rang out. And that’s how you do it, folks. Easy-peasey.

Fun facts to know and tell: Guess who the PCRM’s director of public affairs is? One-time FLILF Elizabeth Kucinich. Detroit already has 73 fast-food restaurants, no citation given. That seems shockingly low for a city of 800,000. Grosse Pointe has one (a Wendy’s). The last time I was jonesin’ for a Taco Bell bean burrito, I had to go to Harper Avenue in Detroit, appropriately so, as that’s where the former Mrs. Eminem went to buy her drugs, once upon a time. The drive-through window was a marvel of bulletproof technology; I don’t think people who check weapons in a prison have seen such a contraption.

I don’t eat much fast food. But when I do, I find a crispy-chicken snack wrap at McDonald’s, plus one of their fruit smoothies, fits the bill nicely.

A little bloggage on yet another clear, cold morning? Why not:

In a nightmare blizzard scenario you probably didn’t hear much about outside of Michigan and western Ontario, hundreds of motorists were stranded on a 60-mile stretch of Canadian highway between Sarnia and London, blinded by whiteout conditions caused by 50 mph winds blowing over southern Lake Huron, creating — anyone? — yes, massive lake-effect snow. Maybe because it’s Canada, with their very own accent and Mountie-like diction, but I love police quotes like this:

“We have rescued everyone that was stranded; 237 souls brought to safety,” said Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. David Rektor.

Two hundred thirty-seven souls. We always get our man, down to the last one.

How Gawker, et al was hacked, and how they handled it. (Badly.)

I heard some political gossip a while back that said outgoing Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was looking to leave the state come New Year’s Day. I also heard California. No, probably Washington.

A good day to all.

The big political news today, of course, is the overturning of the individual-mandate portion of the health-care bill, which means today will be another one of those days for me, when up is down and down is sideways and who the hell are these people, anyway?

The “victory for liberty” the GOP is celebrating today is the death of an idea born in Republican Hospital, attended by…well, I think Steve Benen gets to the point well enough:

The record here may be inconvenient for the right, but it’s also unambiguous: the mandate Republicans currently hate was their idea. It was championed by the Heritage Foundation. It was part of Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign platform*. Nixon embraced it in the 1970s, and George H.W. Bush kept it going in the 1980s.

For years, it was touted by the likes of John McCain, Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, Chuck Grassley, Bob Bennett, Tommy Thompson, Lamar Alexander, Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Judd Gregg, and many others all notable GOP officials.

My personal favorite is Grassley, who proclaimed on Fox News last year, during the fight over Obama’s plan, “I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have an individual mandate.” (A year later, Grassley signed onto a legal brief insisting that the mandate is unconstitutional.)

Yes, the “liberty” the opponents of health-care reform are celebrating is what, exactly? The freedom to not have health insurance? Woot! How many of the aforementioned go bareback, for that old-time freedom-y feeling enjoyed by our forefathers? Oh, none of them? But of course. They work for the government, which has traditionally provided excellent bennies.

As at my last address, I live in a community surrounded by Republicans. They tip more to the moderate/sane wing of the party than in Fort Wayne, but election after election, the vote tallies show it plainly: This is GOP country. Which is why I was chuckling over a story for my hyperlocal that I edited last night, about my own city’s enforcement of a ban on neon signage. The council passed it two years ago with a sunset period, which is coming to an end, which means businesses like this must part with their little piece of Vegas in the front window:

I chuckle because I was always told — continue to be told — that Republicans believe in less government, in personal liberty, and in the near-unquestioned belief that business knows best. And yet, throughout the Pointes, you can be bored into unconsciousness at council meetings while the members wrestle over matters like this, over zoning regulations for fencing and signs and cracks in the driveway. And for good reason — I was stunned to see a local sneering on Facebook that a T-Mobile storefront in a particular shopping district was indisputable evidence of a dangerous comedown. People worry aloud that sidewalk tables at a restaurant might attract the wrong element.

The rallying cry, the unifying force, is property values!, which is even more of a bedrock value than liberty and limited government. You don’t hear that so much outside of city councils, however.

What’s the old joke? Republican boys marry Republican girls, but they want to fool around with a few Democrats first? Republican voters support Republican candidates, but they want a few Democrats on their local zoning boards. Even a few homosexual gentlemen, with their famous good taste.

Six degrees this morning. I just took out the trash. Brr. So how’s about some bloggage?

Do you have the Big Picture blog bookmarked? You should, although I don’t. That way I forget about it until they put up another buttload of pictures that reminds us that even in the age of ubiquitous video and a camera in every cell phone, there’s something about a single, well-composed, professionally taken photograph that’s worth the proverbial thousand words. Behold, 37 Christmas photos that say more about the holiday than 37,000 words.

(Which seems a perfect time to mention that Hank Stuever’s great book about the holiday, Tinsel, is out in a paperback edition, with a much better cover at half the price, available now in the Kickback Lounge.) “Best book about Christmas, ever!” — MMJeff (I made up that quote, by the way. But I know he thinks very highly of it.)

For you military people, an excellent essay on today’s fighting force by a young Marine, on Thomas Ricks’ first-rate military-affairs blog. He gets right to the point:

As an OIF vet and Jarhead, and above all someone trying to find a healthy balance as a civilian once more, I’ve watched the military from within and without and the truest observation I can make is that we fight with a conscripted force in all but name.

The Huffington Post says it will post a profit this year. Of course it won’t pay its contributors, silly — then it wouldn’t be profitable.

And with that, better go some work of my own. Have a good one, all.

Winter, he hath arrived. So of course I had to go to the Apple Store in the blizzard. Kate’s laptop was acting up, and of course it had to be fixed. So out I went, early on, and it wasn’t too bad, as long as you didn’t try to drive at Detroit speeds. Some people didn’t get the message; one spun out right in front of me on the way home, one exit before mine. He had just passed me going at least 60. (I was doing 45, which felt safe.)

I recall thinking: If this jerk hits me I am going to be so pissed.

He didn’t hit me. He was one lucky spinner, crossing three lanes of freeway before coming to rest facing traffic, but in the shoulder. Assuming everything was still inflated and aligned, all he had to do was wait for a break in traffic and do a U-turn.

Boy, was I glad to come home and see this:

Now it can be told: Deep inside, I’m a big ol’ L7 who puts up Christmas lights.

It doesn’t look like much snow. It isn’t much snow. Although it snowed heavily all day, the temperature hovered right around 31 degrees, so we mostly got slush. Then the temperature plunged overnight and the wind picked up, however, and I expect all day we’ll have falling limbs, power outages and ice upon ice. I can feel my character building.

Of course it could have been worse, and it was worse, elsewhere, and how many disappointed Vikings fans must be today, with either a worthless ticket to a football game or a very expensive one, should they be in any mood to book a last-minute flight to Detroit to watch their Vikes play tonight. Spare the jokes. OK, don’t: First prize, tickets to a Vikings-Giants game in a badly designed, unsafe stadium. Second prize, the same game in Detroit. Ha ha. We can laugh because, due to the unexpected turn of events, the game here is absolutely free. Show up, take your seat. If only I didn’t have to work. If only I cared enough about football to go downtown in single-digit temperatures, wrangle a parking place and trudge through near-gales (now blowing 29 knots) to watch a game in a warm stadium with a non-collapsing roof.

Think I’ll make beef stew instead.

And skip to the bloggage, before I go outside and attempt to chip my car out of the ice.

I missed this on Friday: John Lennon vs. Bono, and the death of the celebrity activist. Whatever shred of respect I retained for Bono blew away with his latest Louis Vuitton ad, which shows him arriving in Africa with his wife and about nine million dollars’ worth of luxury luggage, and no, I don’t care who they donated their goddamn fees to. It’s still disgusting.

Gene Weingarten can make running out of gas — no, not running out of gas — funny.

The Australian papers frequently go as far over the top as their British cousins, so caveat emptor, but here you go: Islamic biker gangs! They’re called “bikie” gangs in Oz, which for some reason makes me picture guys riding vehicles made by Fisher-Price.

And Dick Nixon gives us another gift from beyond the grave. If you read all the way to the end, you found this rancid morsel:

Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

Maybe a humanitarian concern. But nothing to get excited about.

OK, time to put on the parka and the long johns. It’s brutal out there.

I had 30 minutes to spare yesterday in between errands and picking up Kate from school. That’s pretty much the perfect slice of time, if you ask me — not enough to squeeze one last chore in, but plenty of time to drink an eggnog latte at Starbucks and play Angry Birds on the iPhone while eavesdropping on a trio of geezers at the next table. I love eavesdropping, and I love geezers. None of them had iPhones, for one thing, which meant their attention was 100 percent on one another. For another, they were difficult to slot politically and didn’t hate the president, although one had recently been acquainted with the concept of the body man and marveled over it at some length:

“He has one guy whose job it is to carry all his stuff. His handkerchief, his cigarettes, whatever.”

“He’s not still smoking, is he?”

“I’m pretty sure he is, yeah. Guy carries his cigarettes and a lighter. He also plays basketball with the president whenever he’s asked. Now that’s a job.”

They also discussed the proliferation of crappy — i.e., benefit-free — jobs in recent years, and suggested it wasn’t good for the region as a whole, all those people not making enough and still having to pay their own medical bills and/or insurance. They discussed Alan Trammell, who had just passed through with his agent. And then they switched to Donald Trump, whom all agreed would be an excellent choice to rebuild New Orleans. I concentrated extra-hard on Angry Birds and reminded myself that eavesdropping is its own reward. I tried to imagine a New Orleans by Donald Trump’s design team. Then I tried to remember if I’ve ever seen a picture of him smiling, as he seems to have trademarked the Trump Scowl, which he wears 24/7 — it’s his brand. MogulFace. I couldn’t remember, but, as always, Professor Google could. Good lord, how many swirls is that combover making these days?

And then the latte was gone, I’d advanced several levels in Angry Birds and it was time to pick up the kid. A big night last night — the holiday instrumental-music concert. As always, my own personal rule of seating prevailed, i.e., whichever seat I choose, my child will be as far away as possible, foiling photo ops. Behold:

I’m so glad her hair is purple — otherwise I could never pick her out.

“Mission: Impossible” came off pretty well, although she said the teacher told her at their final practice that they would “suck.”

“Did he use that word?”

“No. But that was the idea.”

They didn’t suck, but they could have been a tetch tighter. Although, for sure, in seven rehearsals you can’t expect miracles from middle-schoolers. And the bassist wasn’t part of the problem, so, whew.

Ready for bloggage? Sure, and we’ve got some good stuff, too:

Hank Stuever, the Washington Post Style writer too tempestuous to tame! Bigfooted by none other than Oprah! I honestly don’t know what she feared from Hank, who is as upbeat and sunny as SpongeBob SquarePants. Maybe she feared his gay would rub off on her because she totally is not. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

How fair-and-balanced Fox spun the health-care debate, all the while remaining fair and balanced: Just add “government” and serve!

Do you know how to speak Hoosier? I don’t, but I got some valuable tips from this series:

Part two, part three, part four.

Indiana is the only place I’ve ever heard a college-educated person ask if “that guy was one of your guys’s guys.” And now, if you’ll excuse me, that rabbit needs caught and I’m off to drink some pop.

I can’t tell you how many times I was reminded yesterday that it was the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I expect to be reminded at least that many times that today is the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. As someone who has always disliked anniversary journalism — the lazy morning-show producer’s friend, as s/he fills hour after hour with salutes to marshmallow fluff (celebrating its 50th, all this year!) and looks back at the O.J. Simpson case, now 16 years past — well, I disapprove.

I guess I do, anyway. When I’m bored, sometimes I look to Google for amusement. Today’s search: “today is the” + “anniversary of” and the results, while Pearl Harbor- and Lennon-specific today, reveal just how far we will go for a news peg:

March 15, 2010 — Today is the 25th anniversary of the first .com URL.

July 21, 2010 — Today is the anniversary of the Diana Ross downpour concert in Central Park.

November 28, 2010 — Today is the 115th anniversary of the first car race.

September 8, 2010 — Today is the 26th anniversary of Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon.

And so on. Anniversary journalism is cheap, easy and makes everyone feel good, even on bad-news anniversaries. People who weren’t alive when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor can post “I remember” on their Facebook pages and maybe change their profile picture to a flag. So patriotic! So easy!

I’ll grant you John Lennon, today. Anniversaries that end with a zero or 5 get dispensation. But cool it for 31, please.

I can’t believe I once followed Ted Turner around CNN on the day of its birth and watched as he was asked, over and over, “But how will you fill 24 hours with all-news programming?” The answer: With people yelling at one another. And with anniversary pieces.

A late update today. I apologize. I’ve been reading a bit about Elizabeth Edwards, and hoping I die forgotten and obscure, so as to not scare up the squadrons of drive-by biographers Edwards did. She’s a saint, she’s a bitch, she’s a devoted mother, she’s a selfish mother, she’s this, that and the other thing. Of course she is — was — all these things, which the better obits captured. My favorite was the Washington Post’s, which contains this gem:

(Screeching right-wing harpy Ann) Coulter verbally attacked her husband and said she wished “he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” Ms. Edwards, spotting Coulter on the MSNBC talk show “Hardball,” called in and on the air insisted politely but firmly that she refrain from personal attacks. Coulter refused to apologize and attacked the Edwards campaign for raising money by using her words. But the confrontation appeared to be a tipping point, costing Coulter advertisers and clients for her opinion column.

That right there is worth a free pass to heaven in my book, or at least a millennium of time off in purgatory. I know Ann has fallen on leaner times of late, but I didn’t know the dustup with Edwards was the instigator.

And then there’s Christine O’Donnell’s take. Why is this woman still in my newspaper? Don’t losers know enough to go away anymore?

She’s going to report him to President Obama? Is Helen Thomas old, confused or just a little spluttery, as we all get from time to time?

And now to do some real work for a change.

An unexpected night off last night, or a partial one. I was two hours into a seven-hour shift, typical Sunday night, the world of business slowly coming back from the weekend as Monday’s sun moved around the globe. There was a flurry in Australia, not much out of India, Europe ditto and then the equivalent of a five-bell bulletin for the pharmaceuticals industry — the CEO of Pfizer was throwing in the towel, unexpectedly. He said he was tired (which put Madeline Kahn in my head for the rest of the night, singing “…tired of playing the game…”). I got the first few of what surely would be an avalanche of stories into the queue and then my internet went out.

Restarted the laptop. Nothing. Restarted laptop and router. Nothing. Restarted laptop, router and cable modem, ditto. Repeated everything. Nothing. Tried to call Comcast, and the service line was busy. Hmm, a clue. Went on Twitter via my phone, searched “comcast” and got page after page of tweets from “one minute ago” from people using words like SUX and FAIL. Obviously, this wasn’t just our house. So I called the main office in Ann Arbor and got the payroll person/office manager, or rather she would be the office manager if we had an office. She said she thought the überboss was awake, but he was in California. Lucky I have his cell number. Called him, and he covered while I went off to Caribou Coffee and got on their network.

This all took about half an hour.

But Caribou was closing at 10, so the office manager roused the guy who would replace me at 1 a.m., and he agreed to come on three hours early. Meanwhile, we had the Pfizer story dripping into our client’s breaking-news queue right on schedule. My relief IM’d me at 9:55 and took the helm, and I left as Caribou was getting ready to lock up.

Went home, internet still out. But the cable worked, so I watched “Boardwalk Empire” and treated myself to a pre-midnight bedtime. This morning, on Facebook, I saw the guy who replaced me last night, tagged in a photo. It was the first time I’d ever seen his face. (He lives in Texas.)

And I’m telling you all this why? Because it occurred to me during all this what a very modern workplace this is, how very much of the modern world it is. One of our editors is famous for taking a multi-week tour of Europe a few years back, and never missing a shift. He did his research carefully, and made sure he was always near a good wifi hotspot, did his job, and let his bank account reliably refill every payday. He lives across town, in Detroit. Never met him, either, although my friend Michael has, at a party.

“I met your colleague Zack,” he e-mailed.

“Really?” I replied. “What does he look like?”

I know some of you are baffled by all this. (And I know I lost some of you back when I used the phrase “five-bell bulletin.”) I have a part-time job. Title: Editor. I call myself a news farmer. We track news of interest to our corporate clients. We’re entirely virtual, we’re all contractors, and we’re scattered from sea to shining sea. Advantage: Work at home, on your couch, in your jammies and slippers. Disadvantage: Work at home, see no one, communicate with colleagues entirely via IM and e-mail. And so when someone invites you to a party, with actual living flesh-and-blood guests, you’re pathetically grateful, which is how I found myself at a gorgeous Palmer Woods mansion — the Van Dusen, if you’re interested — on Saturday night.

This was part of the Palmer Woods holiday home tour, Palmer Woods being the grandest of Detroit’s grand old neighborhoods, every house a showplace, with a truly diverse population of well-to-do buppies and yuppies and flamboyantly creative and artistic gentlemen. Two of the latter were the official hosts of the afterglow, with their spectacular flower arrangements everywhere and samovars of Pama martinis. And I looked up, and who was leaning against the piano but James McDaniel, whom most of you remember as Lt. Fancy on “NYPD Blue,” but is known around here as Sgt. Longford on “Detroit 1-8-7.”

No, I didn’t talk to him. I think the absolute worst thing about being an actor would be having people flock around you like toadies, telling you how much they like your work. Although Michael did, and said he was a really nice guy.

All in all, not a bad weekend. How was yours?

I’ll tell you what, parties and “Boardwalk Empire” sure beat the news this weekend, which takes us to the bloggage:

Krugman on Bush tax cuts: Just say no:

So Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now. If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Why is this so hard?

Alex says that if I make this column the lead in today’s entry, the headline should be Blow: Me. Whaddaya think? I think the column is stupid, personally.

No, I will not be changing my Facebook profile picture to a cartoon today. As LGM puts it:

It’s an under-publicized historical fact that A. Lincoln was persuaded to issue the Emancipation Proclamation after millions of union supporters changed their Facechapbook avatars to dageuerreotypes of famous abolitionists.

Monday, Monday. Gotta get to it.

We’ve had a missing-child — children — case going here for about a week now, although everyone is now pretty much resigned to the fact it will not end well. As far as I can tell, as much as I can stand to read about it, the case involves an estranged couple and three little boys, 5, 7 and 9. Last weekend there was an Amber Alert issued with extreme prejudice, with a warning that the kids were in “extreme danger” in the company of a woman who had taken them at their father’s request. The father intended to commit suicide, and didn’t want them to see it. So he said.

A couple days later, the alert was canceled, and the police said there was never any woman. They also said they didn’t expect the search to end well. The father, who had been on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, was released and immediately arrested. Having beaten bushes all around the rural landscape near where the family lived, now searchers are combing the St. Joseph River. And every day, the faces of the three kids appear on the front page of the newspaper. Presumably dad killed them, but he appears to have been flattened by depression, and isn’t saying anything.

I wish I had a wider point to make here, but I don’t except to note, once again, that there’s no squalor like rural squalor, and there’s no soul more lost than the uninvolved parent in a case like this. I recall a similar one in Fort Wayne, a father killing his children and then himself, leaving his ex-wife to find the carnage — and that is the only word for it — when she arrived to pick them up after custody weekend. She issued a statement about the third day afterward, telling everyone they were wrong about her ex, that he was a “wonderful father.” Of course people responded the only way they knew how — by showering her with money. She paid for the funerals, and spent the change on a tattoo. It was on her back, and depicted her two little boys as angels. I know this because my neighbor was the tattoo artist; he worked from their school pictures.

I had far more interesting neighbors in Indiana — I’ll say that. Now I live surrounded by management consultants. And I wonder why our block parties are so boring.

I’ll say this, too: We certainly are well-acquainted with violence in this country. Two details from the story of the Ronni Chasen murder case in Hollywood, which took a turn yesterday when a “person of interest” wanted for questioning committed suicide. First detail:

(A neighbor) said she heard a pop about 6 p.m. that she mistook for a car backfiring.

Second detail:

When she went downstairs at 8 p.m., she said she got a brief glimpse of the lobby before the police hurried her out the door. “There was blood all over the floor, and it looked like brain matter,” she said.

When was the last time you heard a car backfire? I think I’ve heard that sound once in my life, and it was more than 30 years ago. In a city where real gunfire rings out daily, where every other movie and TV show features hails of bullets, someone actually hears some, and thinks: Car backfire. The car backfire is to shootings what freight trains are to tornados, and in this case something for witnesses to tell the police and excuse why they didn’t call 911. And yet, the same woman, in the very next paragraph, speaks authoritatively on what was in the gore spilled on the floor of the lobby of her apartment building.

Let me tell you something: I have heard gunfire many times in my life. (It didn’t sound anything like how I remember a car backfire sounding.) But everything I know about brain matter I learned from watching Quentin Tarantino movies.

Want some fun? Google the phrase “sounded like a car backfire.” Seven hundred thirty results. Seven hundred thirty-one, now.

Well, we are certainly circling the drain this morning, ain’a? Let’s do some bloggage:

And the lawyers took their third: Google pays couple $1 for putting their house on Street View. Looking at the picture, I’d say that’s the most glory that humble little abode every got, or will get.

eHow answers your question: How to stop a car from backfiring. First lulu: It’s a “common problem.” Second: Check your carburetor, then your distributor cap. I haven’t seen either one of those since I peeked under the hood of a 1975 Camaro.

I want to see “Black Swan,” but it looks like it has too many dirty parts for my teenager to accompany me. Someone who gets to these things on opening weekend, please report.

Now must run. Have a great weekend. I intend to try.

Barely two years later, I’m still amazed by a few things about the financial crisis of 2008. It doesn’t help that it was a complicated mess, and we have propagandists using it for their own ends, and yeesh that midterm election, but they boil down to this:

1) Most Americans have no idea how close to the cliff we came, and
2) How much of the bailout money has been paid back, and
3) What life would be like in this country without it.

Every so often when I’m on Facebook, I drop in on my former Indiana congressman, who has discovered the joys of social networking. I don’t dare friend him — it’s not him, it’s his commenters — but he’s capable of insight here and there, and it was fascinating, earlier this week, to see him trying to school his talk radio-listenin’ former constituents on just how essential TARP was. This being a Facebook thread, it’s pretty incoherent taken a piece at a time, but it would seem Mark Souder, bless his wicked little heart, gets it:

One of his friends says: Who touted the $700 billion? Obama and his “the sky is falling” GOP whimp friends. Members of Congress have no idea of what things cost when they pass bills like this. Don’t revise history.

Souder replies: I’m sorry to be aggressive on this but we absolutely do know. For example, National City Bank (number one at the time in our area) was toast and would have taken down much of our area’s businesses. We were getting a call a day of businesses having their loans foreclosed. Instead of a bank run, the govt floated cash and forced a merger. …It was incredibly scary. I got phone calls and e-mails at all hours of the day. It was Its A Wonderful Life on all fronts. …Stop acting like everyone in Congress is stupid. Too many liberals but most knew exactly what we were doing. The Republican members kicked all staff, including leadership staff, out of the room and argued for four and one-half hours. Business majors were furious at all the lawyers – bluntly said – who were clueless. But, unfortunately, many who knew better just told you what you wanted to hear. EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of Congress knew that 700 billion was a credit card limit, not the actual spent. It was useful for political purposes to smear the Democrats by acting like 700 billion was spent – unless you wanted to have to defend yourself, like I did, to the Tea Party groups.

“It was useful for political purposes to smear the Democrats” — heh heh. Yes, it was, and it would have been nice to have heard a few more honest Republicans speak to this, but ah well.

If you’re not inclined to go spelunking on Facebook, try this NYT piece based on Fed documents, which gives you more information:

As financial markets shuddered and then nearly imploded in 2008, the Federal Reserve opened its vault to the world on a scope much wider and deeper than previously disclosed.

Citigroup, struggling to stay afloat, sought help from the Fed at least 174 times during one remarkable 13-month period. Barclays, the British bank, at one point owed nearly $48 billion to the Fed. Even better-off banks like Goldman Sachs took advantage of Fed loans offered at rock-bottom rates.

The Fed’s efforts to stave off a financial crisis reached far beyond Wall Street, touching manufacturers like General Electric, the Detroit automakers and Harley-Davidson, central banks from Britain to Japan and insurers and pension funds in Sweden and South Korea.

I remember listening to a “This American Life” piece from the time that spoke of what happened when, one scary fall day in 2008, the U.S. banking system “broke the buck,” i.e., had NO money to lend. I recommend it to anyone who thinks enormous multinational corporations should run their finances the way your grandma does — i.e., McDonald’s shouldn’t roll out cappuccino machines in all its stores until it has saved the money in that coffee can in the cupboard. Everybody likes the car metaphor when it comes to economies these days. When I think of economics at this level, I think of early cars, how you had to be a mechanic yourself to keep one running, how a purring engine was a matter of manually adjusting fuel and air and spark juuuust right, then readjusting, then readjusting again, and being prepared to start from scratch when need be.

Economics is complicated. There’s a reason people get doctorates in it, and why so much of its study involves theory, theories that frequently don’t pan out. I only wish we had someone willing to break this stuff down in ways average people can understand, and then explain it on prime time. Kind of like the way Glenn Beck wraps his racism up in nostalgia for the good ol’ days.

As it shakes out, the TARP program will end up costing closer to $25 billion, not $700 billion. As for these nitwits who think the economy would be better off “in the long run” if it had been allowed to go off the cliff, I have this to say: Fuck you. Even Mark Souder agrees with me on that:

Bankruptcy (of the automotive companies) was discussed in depth, many times. Chrysler is much more marginal than GM. But for car companies, it was not understood by most Members initially about the Pension Guarantee Fund that people pay into. If a company goes bankrupt, those on pensions only get half their pension amount (we have far more people on pensions in our area than employed at the big companies) and the govt pays the whole thing. It would have cost far, far, far more for the govt to cover the pensions. And that is just one small part (unemployment, medcaid, GM is the largest employer of people with disabilities in america – most who would have then become taxpayer dependent, and on and on).

OK, it’s getting late. A little bloggage?

Via MMJeff, a heartbreaker about a survivor of a terrible crash between a distracted tractor-trailer driver (cell phone) and several vehicles, including a van carrying a group of Amish people. The survivor is Amish; she forgave, didn’t sue and tried to recover. Alas, the rest of the world doesn’t work that way:

“English people told us not to worry about it, they would be paid,” Eicher said, using the term the Amish bestow on outsiders. “We assumed they were paid.”

Then, this fall, the same bills started up again. One letter seemed particularly menacing, printed on bright fuchsia paper.

Pay up, the letters said.

She owes $23,273 to the hospital and $2,360 to a radiology group. She can’t see her chiropractor anymore because the insurance company just rejected $6,624 billed since the crash.

Shudder.

New Yorkers, spill: Is Andrea Peyser really as crazy as Gawker regularly makes her out to be?

No one is saying what’s wrong with Aretha Franklin, but everybody’s praying for her.

If you ask me, blind items and the internet were a match made in heaven.

At Wayne. Gotta go. Have a swell one, all.

One of the things I really regret about not having a second child was missing the whole second-kid experience, from the neglected baby book right on through the casual attitude toward the necessity of properly supportive infant footwear and software that will develop a child’s “mouse skills” on the computer. (Both representing products someone tried to sell me during Kate’s infancy.) Even though I caught on early to this racket, I still feel like I flushed many dollars down the drain for no good reason, and I have the Infant Sleep Wedge to show for it. When you’re a parent, someone is always trying to sell you something. I looked forward to smiling and saying, “No sale.”

In this case, a little more is called for than just a flap of the hand. “Psycho” violins, maybe:

As a fitness coach in Grand Rapids, Mich., Doreen Bolhuis has a passion for developing exercises for children. The younger, it seems, the better. “With the babies in our family,” she said, “I start working them out in the hospital.”

What an amazing country we live in. I’d chase this woman away from my house with a gun, but she has identified a market niche, and is making a killing. Not only that, she’s killing childhood. And she’s being rewarded with flattering publicity. Sure, there are sports doctors and child-development experts in there disapproving, but she won’t read them, and even if she did, they won’t matter. Her business was just launched like a rocket. Her next brand extension will be fetal workouts, some simple manipulations done by mom, coupled with the soundtrack of NFL films piped in through belly speakers.

Today, half my Facebook friends have informed me, is Pay it Forward Day. Well, I’m doing my best.

I was reminded of the lasting power of the country’s rapidly dwindling major-newspaper presence last week, when I wrote a piece for my other website on John Durant, urban caveman. He was featured in a Sunday Styles section last January, another ridiculous trend story, joining the ranks of the Man Date and the Great Unwashed. Being featured in a story like that is like being hit by a freight train full of money, and he got extraordinarily lucky, landing on Stephen Colbert’s show as well. Now he has a book deal, with an advance “big enough to live on” (in Manhattan), and a burgeoning career as a lifestyle guru, with a lifestyle that essentially boils down to low-carb eating, interval training and barefoot running, with, admittedly, some thoughtful consideration of how our bodies evolved and what they’re adapted for. Still. I think it’s pretty obvious that stepping into that diorama at the Museum of Natural History for a dumb picture was the smartest thing he ever did. And he graduated from Harvard. So there.

Mama’s feeling a little testy this morning. Need more coffee.

People who are making me testy, coffee or no:

John Conyers. The conventional wisdom around here is that the venerable (81) congressman took a wife (Monica, currently imprisoned) late in life to quash persistent rumors about his sexuality, and that he is otherwise a saint, but I’m sorry, just because your kids came as add-ons to the deal doesn’t absolve you of any responsibility for them. And what the–? His personal, taxpayer-paid vehicle is a Cadillac Escalade? I believe in supporting the home team, but show a little restraint, man. You can tell how widespread the conventional wisdom is by all the snark in comments about the fruit not falling far from the tree.

Glenn Beck. He opposes the new food-safety law because he senses, yes, another government plot, “to raise the price of meat and convert more consumers to vegetarianism.” If he stuck to clowning it would be one thing, but…

Maybe a shift to the pleasing? OK:

One of these days, we’ll say the best journalism about the Great Recession was done by second-tier cable reality shows. Thanks, Hank, for this review of “Storage Wars,” which I think I’m going to have to watch.

This is very cool: Deconstructing “Gimme Shelter.” Of course, it doesn’t explain how, exactly, they unwound the individual audio tracks on the Stones classic, but it’s fun to listen to, especially Keith Richards’ part. Fun fact to know and tell: As I was 12 when this record was released, I believe I heard the Merry Clayton cover that came out a year later, first. For some reason it was played on Top 40 radio, briefly, and the Stones’ version only went on the prog-rock station. A great, respectful cover, but like the song says, the original is still the greatest.

Off to Wayne State. Feeling less testy after two cups of coffee. Better have a third.