Apparently It's Summer

(Today is the day of the Summer Solstice, the first day of Summer.  Except in Oregon.  We're always just 48 hours away from a rain shower.  The other day it got up to almost 80 degrees so the boy and I went down and bought a pool for the back yard.  He played in it one day.  The next day it rained.  Phooey.  I'm depressed.  But I digress ...)

• Samuel Werzelbacher, the bald-headed douchebag also known as "Joe the Plumber," is running for congress in Ohio.  Sam's big on gun ownership, and loves to shoot fruit and vegetables while declaring his love for America.  He also claims, as a "student of history," that the Holocaust was caused by gun control.  “In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated,” says Sam.  Sam made a video the other day, and his campaign spokesman, Phil Christofanelli, maintains it's not at all offensive.  You be the judge.
• I like this statement: If you have to lie to make your case, maybe your case isn't so strong. Mitt Romney just doesn't grasp that concept apparently.  In a stump speech Monday the Mittster said this:  "a doctor told him that he had to fill out a 33-page change-of-address form, several times, to get the post office to send his mail—including reimbursement checks—to his new location. That is what happens with government-run organizations where you have 'no competition.'"  Is he really that clueless?  Have you ever changed your address?  A post card.  Two minutes on-line.  Good grief.
• Strange things are floating ashore over here on the West Coast.  Here in Oregon an enormous floating dock from Japan's tsunami washed right up on the beach.  Further north of us other objects including a car have washed ashore.  But in California they're worried about "radioactive buckyballs."  Seems that Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors at its Fukushima complex have blasted out soccerball-sized objects that are said to have been formed when water hit the super-heated, primarily uranium-oxide, fuel in the damaged reactors.  Kind of takes the fun out of beachcombing, don't it?
• So what happened over there at Facebook?  It went public and everyone was thinking ohmygawd I've got to sell everything I have and buy shares and we're all going to be rich rich rich!  And then ... nothing happened.  Mark Morford reports "Facebook In Sweet Decline."