at four-thirty

When I got up at four-thirty, I was upset that it had not rained. The temperature was a nicely moderate 53. And I came this close to letting the cats out as they pressed their feline noses against the glass sliding-door.

When I got back to my room and took a peep through the blinds, I was stunned to see that it had rained. Not heavily, but a real wetting rain. And I thanked god that I did not let them go. I would have been kicking myself so badly to get them back in, which probably would have been hopeless, and I simply would have cheated myself out of a couple of hours of precious sleep.

Krugman on "Coming Apart"

Paul Krugman throws in a column on the Charles Murray book, and although he only employs sharper terms than Kristof, I still think it's worth keeping.

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Lately inequality has re-entered the national conversation. Occupy Wall Street gave the issue visibility, while the Congressional Budget Office supplied hard data on the widening income gap. And the myth of a classless society has been exposed: Among rich countries, America stands out as the place where economic and social status is most likely to be inherited.

So you knew what was going to happen next. Suddenly, conservatives are telling us that it’s not really about money; it’s about morals. Never mind wage stagnation and all that, the real problem is the collapse of working-class family values, which is somehow the fault of liberals.

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The Bear and the Wolf

And I thought cats were a handful.