I don't like it

I'm going to give it another week or so, but I've already halfway made up my mind to shave my hair and beard. I don't think it looks good, although maybe it's just that change is scary. It also just seems as though it's going to be high maintenance. Too many border areas that require attention. Or something. I feel funny. Stop looking at me!

Update: Well, shit, cute barista at Bulldog likes the beard. Then again, she says she likes hairy guys and hairy girls, and "I have the unshaved legs to prove it."

Weak president?

For those who think Obama hasn't done a good job of wrangling Congress, here's an interesting story: a Congressional Quarterly study that dates back to 1953 finds that Obama "set a new record last year for getting Congress to vote his way, clinching 96.7 percent of the votes on which he had clearly staked a position," which was almost four points higher than the previous record set by the legendary Congress-wrangler, LBJ, in 1965. The story doesn't have a lot of details and doesn't explain much about the methodology of the study, but the attempt to quantify the issue is at least worth noting.

Snippet:

[Obama's] wins in his first year in office included votes for creating a massive economic stimulus package, bailing out the auto industry, allowing the Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco and confirming Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

But they also included key moves toward overhauling the health care system, regulating financial services and reducing greenhouse gases which have not yet passed both chambers of Congress.

That unfinished work will be taken up in the second session, which begins Tuesday. Obama’s ultimate success will depend on how well his second year in office goes.

Via Booman, who also had a fascinating post over the weekend on Scattershot Ideas on the Political Landscape about how the Democrats have become the party of pretty much every element of the establishment in the face of the Republican collapse.

Image of the Night

Law of Desire (La ley del deseo, 1987)

“What interests me most is passion for its own sake,” Almodóvar told Nuria Vidal in 1988. “It is a force you cannot control, which is stronger than you and which is as much a source of pain as of pleasure. In any case, it is so strong that it makes you do things which are truly monstrous or absolutely extraordinary”. --Pedro Almodóvar 101