Governor Walker accepts a phone call from a prankster pretending to be David Koch.

Walker's office admits that it's him:

The Governor takes many calls everyday. Throughout this call the Governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. He continued to say that the budget repair bill is about the budget. The phone call shows that the Governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.

Walker opponents would love to make something of this phone call, but all they have are a few over-the-line things the Koch impersonator said like "You gotta crush that union." Walker just ignores that stuff and goes on with his standard points, which is probably the standard strategy that most politicians use when people interact with them.

You could say that it's bad that the prankster got through, but that shows that he's willing to talk to a lot of people and also that David Koch isn't a frequent caller who gets special treatment and is recognized by his caller ID and his voice and manner of speaking.

Doesn't this prank call prove that Scott Walker is not close to Koch? He doesn't recognize his voice! He doesn't drift into a more personal style of speech. He treats him like a generic political supporter.

(Here's Monday's NYT article floating the theory that Walker is too close to the Koch brothers. In my frequent forays to the protest at the Capitol, I've seen many signs depicting Walker as a creation or puppet of the Koch brothers.)

Ted Williams, the homeless man with a radio voice.

He stood by the side of Interstate 71 in Columbus, Ohio with a homemade sign about his "God-given gift of a great radio voice." A reporter made a video...



He's been through "alcohol and drugs and a few other things" and now he's facing viral video fame.

"Stalin vouches for renewable energy."

A headline.

Yikes...

... or cute... I'm not sure.

If I thought that was a bird's face, I'd be sure it's cute. But it's an insect face, so... I'm not sure!

Click through to the contest winner, which is also an arthropod face... and quite gorgeous, but only because it doesn't feel alive at all.

It wasn't a missile.

Says the Defense Department. But what was it? An illusion?

The giraffe in the woods.

Chip Ahoy plays with a photo of mine.

Early voting *depresses* voter turnout.

Say University of Wisconsin-Madison polisci profs Kenneth R. Mayer and Barry C. Burden in an op-ed in today's NYT. They worked on a rather sophisticated study of the numbers, controlling for various factors. Click through if you want to look for flaws in the methodology. Here's the speculation about why there's about a 3% lower voter turnout in states that permit early voting:

Early voting ... dilutes the intensity of Election Day. When a large share of votes is cast well in advance of the first Tuesday in November, campaigns begin to scale back their late efforts. The parties run fewer ads and shift workers to more competitive states. Get-out-the-vote efforts in particular become much less efficient when so many people have already voted.

When Election Day is merely the end of a long voting period, it lacks the sort of civic stimulation that used to be provided by local news media coverage and discussion around the water cooler. Fewer co-workers will be sporting “I voted” stickers on their lapels on Election Day. Studies have shown that these informal interactions have a strong effect on turnout, as they generate social pressure. With significant early voting, Election Day can become a kind of afterthought, simply the last day of a drawn-out slog.

Personally, I like the intensity and theater of voting at a polling place. If I had to stop by some office to fill out a form, I might put it off until it's too late or start rationalizing about how it doesn't really matter. (My one vote isn't going to tip the election.) But if a ballot were mailed to me and I could just mail it back, I'm sure I'd do that. (Though in some of these local elections, I'd probably just stare at names I didn't know much about until I finally admitted to myself that I didn't care, even as it would annoy me that straight party voters, who also didn't know much, would be determining the outcome.)

Mayer and Burden go on to connect the problem of early voting with same-day registration:

Fortunately, there is a way to improve turnout and keep the convenience of early voting. Our research shows that when early voting is combined with same-day registration — that is, you can register to vote and cast an early ballot on the same day — the depressive effect of early voting disappears. 

Unfortunately, they say nothing about the possibility that same-day registration pumps up the numbers with fraud.

***

Accompanying this op-ed is a pen-and-ink illustration by James McShane that's quite nice but that — I'm sure it was unintentional — tricked my eye. It's the panel that shows a letter being mailed. This is also the panel used for the front-page teaser to the op-ed. You look at it first. I'll tell you what I saw later.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger says she's going to end her radio show and everyone seems to believe her.

But I don't! I accused Dr. Laura of doing a media stunt — saying the n-word over and over on the radio — to get attention, and — lo and behold! — she gets right onto the Larry King show. So far, so good, with this stunt.

Having made it to center stage, she makes a dramatic announcement:

“I want to regain my First Amendment rights,” she said. “I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I’m sort of done with that.”

But she stressed that she was not retiring, only ending her show, and would continue to write books and appear at speaking engagements.

“I’m not quitting,” she told Larry King. “I feel energized actually — stronger and freer to say the things that I believe need to be said for people in this country.”...

Shortly after Dr. Schlessinger made her announcement, one of the groups that had called for advertisers to back away from her show, Media Matters for America, issued a statement applauding the outcome.

She's not quitting right away. That's a key clue. She's just "made a decision not to renew her contract when it expires at the end of the year." She's fighting back, lighting a fire under her supporters, betting — I think — that her audience will increase as a result of the new attention.

Media Matters may want to intimidate advertisers, and without advertisers her new contract negotiations would not have gone well. It's better to quit than to go down defeated.  But the controversy is also great leverage. If her ratings go up — and I bet they do — the advertisers will be there.

Think about it: Rush Limbaugh is still on the air, with plenty of advertisers. If the Media Matters strategy for destroying radio careers worked, he'd have been gone long ago. Yeah, the strategy sort of worked against Imus, but only temporarily, and it made him seem important and relevant (even as the "nappy-headed hos" incident was probably painful for him). 

So the time for end-of-the-year contract negotiations will come up for Dr. Laura, and we'll see what happens. I predict she'll be offered good money, and she'll announce a change of plans, along with heaps of self-praise for her bravery standing up for her First Amendment rights. Remember, she "feels energized," and she wants"to say what’s on [her] mind and in [her] heart," and she won't tolerate "some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent."

Stay tuned.

On rare occasions, I drew a comic strip...

... back in the 90s, when I was obsessed with drawing in sketchbooks. This one had some basis in reality:


(Enlarge.)


(Enlarge.)


(Enlarge.)

Apple on the supposed problems with the new iPhone: "Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place."

So it's not a flaw in the new iPhone, it's something that was phony in all the phones all along. Hmmm. How convenient! Just when I was trying to decide if I should buy the new iPhone or stick with the old one while the bugs are getting ironed out of the new one.

Apple... said it will fix its signal strength formula to conform to other AT&T phones through a free software update for iPhone models 3G, 3Gs and 4 within a few weeks.

''We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see,'' Apple said.

Massaging our perceptions. Who knows if the reception is really bad or not? People are fixated on the way their bars look. So make the bars bigger.

"Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions." That's what Obama said.

But it's the text of the law that matters, and:

The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.

If they screwed up something that important, what else did they screw up? Or do you think they deliberately gave the insurance companies that loophole, in which case, the question is what other surprises are tucked away in the 1000s of pages of fine print?

ADDED: This suggests an answer to mystery — discussed yesterday — of why the insurance companies didn't barrage us with "Harry and Louise"-type ads this time. They lobbied behind the scenes and got the language they wanted in the bill. Who put that language in? Who wrote the statute? We know the members of Congress who voted for it probably didn't even read much of it. They went on assurances and assertions about what was in it. And there was that outrageous idea — said with a straight-face by Nancy Pelosi — that they had to pass the bill to find out what's in it.

Now, maybe the idea was to set up the insurance companies. They'd read the text and see they could do something and shock the people by saying no to the extremely sympathetic people who have sick children and who were so trusting and happy when they saw the bill pass.

Whether that was planned or not, it is the spin now. From the first link, above:

Congressional Democrats were furious when they learned that some insurers disagreed with their interpretation of the law.

“The concept that insurance companies would even seek to deny children coverage exemplifies why we fought for this reform,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate commerce committee, said: “The ink has not yet dried on the health care reform bill, and already some deplorable health insurance companies are trying to duck away from covering children with pre-existing conditions. This is outrageous.”

Oh! Bad corporations! Evil, greedy, selfish corporations! We'll hear that old refrain once again, with melodramatic new feeling. What a great opportunity to soften everyone up for the next big reform, when the government takes over everything. Down with the child-killing insurance companies! 

"I must blend in to survive, I cannot be different."

Camouflage.

Michael Kors does not wear the same thing every day.

"No! There's fat black jackets, medium black jackets, skinny black jackets. Black T shirts that are brand new that look really black, black T shirts that you sleep in that are kind of gray, and midtone black T shirts."

And let Michael tell you about the biggest fashion mistake:

I think most people's clothes don't fit. I'm always bewildered. I'm like, "Do people ever look at themselves in the three-way mirror? Like, did you see what your ass looks like?" Americans get hung up on the actual size tag.

"'It was one of those things where they put you up against the wall and hold you down by your elbows.'"

"I assume she’s talking about being manhandled by the cops, but no — chiropractic."

Do you notice anything about the picture of Obama that's on Drudge right now?

I know the impression it made on me. I showed it to my tablemate and, without any prompting, he said exactly what I had thought.

IN THE COMMENTS: Roger von Oech said: "Louis Farrakhan — all the way. The teleprompter makes it look like a bow tie."

"Susan Boyle: What's the big deal?"

"Not to be a grump, but am I the only one who finds this a little over-the-top and, frankly, a little condescending? Plenty of big-voiced PYTs sing their hearts out every week on American Idol (not to mention onstage in Broadway shows) without getting this kind of reaction. But Susan, because of her looks, because of the fact that people were snickering at her before she opened her mouth, becomes a sensation simply by being able to carry a tune. She has a decent voice, sure. But let's not get carried away. She's no LuPone, and her talent is only really shocking if you've already counted her out as a squawker on account of her granny hairdo and pre-fame Julia Roberts eyebrows. Once the element of surprise is gone, we're all going to be stuck with the fact that she's a capable, but by no means extraordinary singer. And is that really worth all the fuss?"

Thank you, Adam Markovitz. You are not the only one.