SEABLOGGER ALAN SULLIVAN is close to death. If you’ve enjoyed his blogging, you might drop by and pay your respects in the comments.

NOTHING SAYS ETERNAL LOVE like a “retail wedding” at T.J. Maxx or Taco Bell.

FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT strikes down Defense Of Marriage Act.

DANIEL FREEDMAN: Why Obama Is Emotionally Detached.

AMITY SHLAES: Is Obama Spurring Growth, or Knocking It Down?

UPDATE: Unexpectedly! Consumer Credit declines sharply in May. “Also the previously reported slight increase in April was revised to a $14.9 billion decrease in credit.”

And here’s the word: “Americans’ use of credit unexpectedly plunged by $9.1 billion in May, a 4.5% annualized rate, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced Thursday. Equally significant, April’s consumer credit statistic was revised to a large $14.86 billion decrease, a substantial change from the previously-released $1.0 billion credit increase. . . . Stagnant incomes in many job segments, the loss of more than 8 million jobs from the workforce, reduced credit lines, and higher interest rates by card issuers have prompted Americans to reduce credit balances over the past two years.” Recovery summer!

PLANNING A RIOT in Oakland. “For weeks a furious argument has raged through Oakland, with some civic leaders, pundits and businessmen accusing radical neighborhood activist groups of intentionally fomenting a riot on the day of the verdict. Furthermore, local African-American activists are in turn accusing outside mostly-white anarchist and communist groups of hijacking for their own agenda what is supposed to be a homegrown riot just for locals. Everybody’s pointing fingers — and everybody’s correct.”

JERRY POURNELLE: “NASA’s budget since Apollo has been big enough that we ought to be halfway to Alpha Centauri by now. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but we certainly had a budget that could have taken us to Mars and the asteroids. We certainly could have a Lunar Colony.”

There were some related thoughts on Trifecta last night.

LATEST UPDATE AND PICTURES from the gulf oil spill.

Plus, hard times on the gulf coast.

Also, BP Stops Paying The Bills. “Generally speaking, when a company fails to make payroll or meet its Accounts Payable on time, it’s a sign of potential collapse. Sometimes, it’s just a simple issue of red tape within large corporations. It’s hard to tell which is which, but with BP transferring $20 billion into a trust fund and spending a few billion more on the cleanup, it’s certainly not unreasonable to wonder about its cash flow and stability.”

FORMER CONGRESSMAN PLEADS GUILTY TO WORKING WITH ISLAMISTS, TERRORISTS:

A former congressman and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations pleaded guilty in federal court today to obstruction of justice and to acting as an unregistered foreign agent related to his work for an Islamic charity with ties to international terrorism, announced Beth Phillips, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Mark Deli Siljander, 59, of Great Falls, Va., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey to one charge contained in an Oct. 21, 2008, federal indictment, and an additional charge filed today, involving his work for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) of Columbia, Mo. Siljander was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan and was a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations General Assembly.

You’d like to think he was the only one like this.

UPDATE: Eric Stahlfeld emails:

You make it sound like Siljander deliberately worked with terrorists, and hope he was the only one who would.

Actually, those of us with long memories have a different perspective. First, Siljander was elected to the seat David Stockman vacated when he became OMB Director, and lost in a bitter primary fight to Fred Upton in 1986. From Wikipedia:

Debbie Schlussel, who interned in Siljander’s office, stated that Siljander was known then as “the most pro-Israel Congressman on Capitol Hill”.[8] In 1985, Siljander proposed legislation which would deny Most Favored Nation status to countries that discriminate on cultural, ethnic or religious grounds.[9][10][11] Siljander was defeated in the 1986 Republican primary by his successor Fred Upton.

That doesn’t sound like he was actively promoting terrorism.

Second, Siljander later changed to try to promote reconciliation between Islam and Christianity. In that role, and as a former Congressman, he was a natural target in 2004 when the Senate put an Islamic charity based in Missouri — and which had received money from US AID, so it presumably wasn’t all bad — on a list of banned charities, and the charity wanted someone to try to reverse that decision.

So the charity dangled $75,000 in front of him, which was probably a lot of money to him. He took it, but did not register as an agent for the charity. And then on two occasions he told the FBI that he was not hired to lobby for the charity.

Both acts are crimes, and he pled guilty, and will be punished. You know darn well that there are a lot of people who are guilty of these sorts of things. You can’t hope that he’s the only one who does or had done these things

The impression you leave is quite different, and I doubt it’s fair or accurate.

Is it? Well, I’m reproducing this for the sake of fairness, but I’m not sure how much a difference this makes.

AGE 95 and still pumping iron.

3 MONTHS ALOFT without a pilot or fuel.

OVERCOMING DIVERSITY: “I wish I hadn’t been forced to watch this painful YouTube video showing Liza Minnelli hawking her wares on the HSN, but I did, mainly because a friend emailed me the link and beseeched me to get through it to hear a great line from a caller.”

THIEVES SNAG tractor-trailers full of pharmaceuticals. “The largest such robbery, which happened last March, featured a matinee-worthy heist plan involving a team of thieves rappelling into an Eli Lilly warehouse. They made off with $75 million worth of Prozac, Stattera, Cymbalta, Zyprexa, Gemzar, Alimta and Efient.”

LOVE OR HATE? Car Lust on the Audi TT.

IS MASS TRANSIT bankrupting cities?

THE ADVANTAGE OF AN ONBOARD GENERATOR: Chevy Volt completes 1776-mile Freedom Drive in just 3 days; EVs can’t match that.

A 200 MPG aerocycle.

BOYCOTT HAWAII! And I guess the California boycott is still on. Plus you’ve got to boycott Arizona — even if you’re California or Hawaii, I guess — so it seems like more and more of the US is going to be off limits. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Bill Woods writes: “Don’t forget Rhode Island!”

HUMONGOUS BUBBLES blown from small black hole.

A KITCHEN COUNTERTOP with a brain.

REMEMBER, THESE ARE THE SAME INTERNATIONAL ELITES WHO LECTURE YOU ABOUT YOUR “CARBON FOOTPRINT.” Private jet swarm strands semi-final fans.

Hundreds of fans bound for Durban for the Germany-Spain World Cup semi final missed the game because their flights were unable to land, after air traffic authorities closed the city’s airport because of congestion on the runway caused by private aircraft.

The situation was described as “absolute chaos” by the pilot of one British Airways flight which took off from Cape Town in mid-afternoon but was diverted to Johannesburg. . . . Wire services reported that among the VIPs heading for the semi-final by jet were Spain’s King Juan Carlos, South African President Jacob Zuma, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and socialite Paris Hilton. The BA pilot, who held his plane for around 45 minutes above Durban in the vain hope of getting a landing slot, told passengers he had no choice but to take the plane to Johannesburg because the plane’s fuel was starting to run low. He announced that the problem was caused by the airport allowing too many private jets to land at Durban, leaving the runways clogged up and unable to accept scheduled flights.

Remember this when you get the next DiCaprio lecture on global warming. As was said before: “How desperate could the planet’s plight be if the people who present themselves as most concerned about it consider flying first-class commercial an unacceptable sacrifice?”

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? Financial regulation bill dictates ethnic, gender quotas. “It effectively puts affirmative action into every financial transaction and gives the government a huge opening for interfering with economic growth on the basis of bureaucratic whims. Anyone who has dealt with an EEOC issue will understand the arbitrary interventions this will create — and the damage it will do when every contract and trade can get suspended based on a complaint or even suspicion of violation.”

MOSQUE ARSONIST CAUGHT: I’m guessing he’s not a Tea Partier. Because if he were, they’d surely say so . . .

FIELD-TESTING polarized sunglasses.

STEVE CHAPMAN: The FBI Closes a Window to the Truth: Why federal investigators should use recording devices.