Tuesday's links and comments

The always point on, Thomas Sowell has a column today titled "Can We Talk?" discussing the intolerance of the left towards conficting viewpoints.

Next time you're having a day think about this guy.

Pablo Picasso's "dream" painting has turned into a $139 million nightmare for Steve Wynn. Wynn accidentally poked a hole in Picasso's 74-year-old painting, "Le Reve," French for "The Dream." A day earlier, Wynn had finalized a record $139 million deal for the painting of Picasso's mistress.

The accident occurred as a gesturing Wynn, who suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that affects peripheral vision, struck the painting with his right elbow, leaving a hole the size of a silver dollar in the left forearm of Marie-Theresa Walter, Picasso's 21-year-old mistress.

What should have been a positive local event turned ugly. Cincinnati was rededicating the recently renovated Fountain Square. As part of the ceremony a poet was brought in to speak. The goof they picked to write a poem decided to include an attack against one of the candidates for governor.

"I am not a son of a bitch like Kenny Blackwell," Nikki Giovanni said near the end of her poem. "I will not use the color of my skin to cover the hatred in my heart. I am not a political whore jumping from bed to bed to see who will stroke my knee."

Disgusting. Whoever picked her to speak during what should have been a positive public event should be ashamed.

Dick Morris has a column today titled "There goes the GOP base — and probably both houses." I think he is jumping to conclusions by believing polls. National polls are not reliable in predicting local races. However, more than his belief in polls I think he is off base in his assessment that former Rep. Foley's actions will play a major role in this election.

The Foley scandal has wrought extraordinary damage to the Republican Party and appears to have had a particularly negative impact on the base.

Wrong. Some people may be outraged by Foley and angry at the incumbents, but that doesn't mean they are going to vote against their own incumbent. For example, I can name dozens of incumbent congressmen who I don't want to see reelected. That doesn't matter. I only get to vote for or against my incumbent congressman - Rep. John Boehner. Everyone else is in the same boat. People in Rep. Steny Hoyer's district or Rep. Nancy Pelosi's district may want Boehner gone, but they don't get to vote for or against him. Foley may end up affecting a couple races by a few percentage points, but that's all.