Friday Linkfest

The monsoon finally showed up in midtown Tucson last night after a few days of circling around the mountains to the north and Phoenix del Sur, er, I mean Vail and the hodgepodge of cookie-cutter developments to the south. Wind! Lightning! Thunder! And buckets of glorious rain. Unfortunately, the beagle mix didn't see it as glorious quite so much as deadly threat to be barked at all fucking night long, so I'm a bit fuzzy this morning and hoping the third cup of coffee jolts the synapses into some coherent firing pattern.

Until then, some required reading to ponder.

Eugene Robinson on Bush's bizarre happyland mindest:

It's almost as if Bush were trying to apply the principles of cognitive therapy, the system psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck developed in the 1960s. Beck found that getting patients to banish negative thoughts and develop patterns of positive thinking was helpful in pulling them out of depression. However, Beck was trying to get the patients to see themselves and the world realistically, whereas Bush has left realism far behind.

For soccer fans who like pictures of underfed supermodels and their hawt footballer husbands, the Becks-Posh photo spread in W magazine. Beckham: saviour of the MLS, or league-bankrupting boondoggle? I'm not holding my breath. But his tattoos are nice.

Deb Price on recent Supreme Court trends that maybe should be a tad disturbing for us gay folk, now that O'Connor is drawing a pension:

The Roberts court -- whose votes in nongay cases strongly signaled that Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito can be expected to join Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in opposing almost any imaginable gay-rights plea -- is moving frighteningly close to having the five votes it would need to weaken the groundbreaking rulings of 1996 and 2003 acknowledging that gay Americans are protected by the Constitution.

And, finally, I can't decide if I kinda like Rick & Steve, The World's Happiest Gay Couple or kinda hate it. It has moments that go both ways. Maybe I hate it because some of the digs at both dykes and gay guys jump right across that line from spot-on funny to mean-spirited and uncomfortable.

Maybe I like it because it reminds me of the Playmobil sets I always drooled over (with the coolest accessories ever, especially the pirates). South Park pulls the edgy stuff off better, but it's early yet, so maybe Rick & Steve will step it up. Lord knows I don't make a habit of telling people what to think about anything, so look for yourself.