Oh yes she did! She said "all of them" again!
Her understanding of American history would make the most gullible fourth grader in Mrs. Cleaver's class start shooting heroin out of cynicism.
As with the clip I saw yesterday of the O'Reilly "interview," intentional or not, both BillO and Beck effectively just kept handing her rope. (From now on, they are part of The Gotcha Liberal Media.)
Hard to believe someone could strike out twice in a row in slow-pitch softball, but this actually happened.
Or, more precisely, the problem of Christianists in the US armed forces. A good read, especially if you have not been made aware of this worrisome trend.
This bit of comedy from Steve Benen is worth a look. Apparently. it's not just teabaggers vs. the GOP establishment (cf.); it's also teabagger vs. teabagger!
The latest kerfuffle concerns the alleged lack of "authenticity" concerning a big teabagger event featuring none other than St. Sarah of Wasilla. Who will be getting $100,000 to show up. Which means tickets for the event now cost more than $500.
I'm reminded of Taitzers vs. Bergians. (?)
[Added] Also, unsurprisingly, the LIEBRUL media is not invited to attend, most particularly when Palin speaks.
[Added2] TPM's Zachary Roth tells Rachel Maddow about some of the backstory. A worthwhile six-minute vid. (If you're a political junkie, I mean.)
(x-posted)
The really amazing part of the story is that not only is the outgoing Democratic governor going to sign the bill, the incoming Republican governor "reiterated his support"* for the idea.
Bong-a-thon at Bob's house, next week!
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* They've since updated the story and this phrase no longer appears, although it still sounds like he was only against some of the details of the particular bill.
Led by a guy who just REJOINED a whites-only country club he "resigned" from last time he was trying to grab control of the RNC???
It would be irresponsible NOT to speculate™ link to Jim Newell.
Hendrik Hertzberg on left-wing opposition to health insurance and health care reform.
... but other than that, I'd say Jim Newell gets Tucker Carlson’s new Daily Caller web site about right when he characterizes it as the “Reason magazine of Huffington Posts.”
(Previously. Also, too.)
Good thing I added the parenthetical qualifier to yesterday's post title, huh? From Media Decoder:
Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has signed on as a contributor to the Fox News Channel.
The post breaking this goes onto say a formal announcement could come "as early as this afternoon."
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[Added] Heh. The top result from Google News about this, at this moment, is a story about the formal announcement, in the NY Daily News. Along with the story is a poll asking the question, "Are you more likely to watch Fox News now that Palin will be contributing? So far, the answer, "Yes, she's great" is running at a mere 100%. (I guess my vote was not counted.)
[Added2] Nice bit of honesty and context provided in the last line of the NYDN's piece:
Palin joins an on-air team that also includes former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who hosts a weekend show, and Fox News analysts Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove.
Further comment would be superfluous.
(x-posted)
There are probably more important things to worry about, but I can't help but be put off by the news that Heineken is going to buy the beer branch of the Mexican company that makes Dos Equis.
Support your local microbrewery!
I realize that this is probably at best a faint hope, but I am going to recommend Thomas Geoghegan's op-ed arguing against the filibuster and urge you all to pass it along. Almost certainly, we're not going to see any action on this any time soon, but we're going to have to deal with this eventually. The stakes are high. As Geoghegan reminds us:
Forty-one senators from our 21 smallest states — just over 10 percent of our population — can block bills dealing not just with health care but with global warming and hazards that threaten the whole planet.
We had to know this was coming after the "news" broke yesterday:
They'll do anything, anything to hinder progress, won't they?
And I don't need to link to the eleventy-kabillion times that some Republican said something about Obama's Negritude, and we were all instructed that LIBRULS SHOULD NOT PLAY THE RACE CARD!!!1!, amirite?
H. Allen Orr reviews Bob Wright's book, The Evolution of God, and captures perfectly the problem I have with Bob's beliefs concerning the apparent directionality of human moral behavior (emph. added):
Although Wright offers these ideas tentatively, it's hard to see how they're supposed to work. He has offered a materialist account of moral progress. If that account succeeds (and he thinks it does), it provides evidence neither for nor against anything transcendent. Indeed Wright's use of the word "transcendent" seems gratuitous. Consider an analogy that has little or nothing to do with morality. Economists argue that the non-zero-sum game of trade—i.e., exchange in which both sides benefit—gives rise to a direction in history: the expansion of trade and the growth of wealth. But no one is tempted to conclude that this directionality suggests a higher purpose. The invisible hand is a metaphor, not a transcendent appendage.
The whole review is well worth reading. Excerpts of Bob's book, also worth reading, are available here.
(h/t: Francoamerican)
Before launching into Chapter 1 of The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences, Herbert Gintis attributes the following to "Anonymous." Having read the Preface, I'll bet a dollar he said it himself.
People are not logical. They are psychological.
Hat tip to claymisher, who has also directed me to watch a video of Gintis delivering the lecture "Five Principles for the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences."
... for those of us who look forward all week to Alterman's principal correspondent on Slacker Fridays: Charlie Pierce has a new blog!
Sample line from a critique of a thumbsucker on "Baseball Exceptionalism" by Diana Schlub or whatever her name is ("Bats Right, Throws Right, Thinks Badly, Writes Worse"):
Ask a conservative for directions to the mall, and you will get one of two answers: a) the Negro family is imperiled, or b) tax cuts! So it is here.
(h/t: graz, via PM)
I've never seen this one before: sempiternal.
It means "seemingly everlasting," and if Wiktionary's etymology is to be believed, it's …
… from Latin sempiternus, a contraction of semperæternus, from semper (“always”) + æternus (“eternal”).
Always eternal? As opposed to, say, eternal for a fleeting moment? No wonder the Roman Empire collapsed.
Anyway, you'll be unsurprised to hear I saw it referring to Sen. Robert Byrd.
Please, NYT blurb writer, assure me you're being tongue in cheek here …
… and not just doing that annoying SCLM "raising questions" thing on behalf of your corporate masters.
I did not dare to click the link myself. Because I remember when I used to like watching football.
Rudy 9iu11ani goes full metal Perino (emph. added):
What [Obama] should be doing is following the right things Bush did. One of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama.
(Perino?)
Uh ... six "words:" Bill Kristol. Liz Cheney. 24. Obama.
No, wait. Three more: Made. For. YouTube.
Why is what wingnuts think will be "hip" always just ... so wrong?
... for her non-Villager mentality:
Two Democratic senators quitting is seen as a terrible portent for 2010. (“Democrats’ Black Tuesday,” said a headline on MSNBC.) That seems a tad overblown given the fact that six Republican senators already have announced their retirements.
From "Oh, Byron, We Hardly Knew Ye."
Depressed
I was so depressed last night I called the 1-800 Suicide Lifeline number ...
Got a freakin' call center in Pakistan
I told them I was suicidal...
They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.
(h/t: TC, via email)
Christopher Hayes's medium-length article, "The Great Leap," is well worth a look, if you haven't seen it already. (It was published 22 December 2009.) It's a consideration of China's ability to sustain its economic growth, the government's ability to stay in power by keeping the people happy, and the chances for social progress for the bulk of the population.
As Chris makes clear, he had trouble talking to anyone but Party officials for the article, something worth keeping in mind as you're reading. But, as he notes, the elites do have an enormous amount of power in China, and it's not useless to learn a bit about how they see things. Running through, subtly, are some hints of comparison to the path down which the US is traveling.
(h/t: Ross and Reihan, whose Bloggingheads diavlog posted today was considerably less horrible than you might imagine.)
Following up on the earlier post related to airport "security" …
I passed along the delightful "Take Off Your Shoes, and Is the Parrot Loaded?" article to my Bh.tv forum friend and African Grey owner Wonderment, teasingly asking if he had a gig at the NYT. His reply is too good not to repost (you should read the article first):
Ha! That article gives a whole new meaning to "Spread 'em."
But no, I'm not Joe Sharkey. My baby is a DNA-tested male, doesn't know the "eagle" trick (or any other trick), and would likely have bit the inspector's fingers off or delayed the flight for 48 hours while basking in police-state attention and gazing nevermore-esquely at his fellow flyers.
I do think Joe should teach Rosie to scream "Allah hu akhbar" at airports in order to prove to one and all that Islam is a religion of peace.
My only worry is that some guy at Kabuki Central TSA is going to take this seriously:
Mads Oyen, a policy specialist at Unicef in New York, suggested removing from a plane any specific seat that had been used by a would-be terrorist. “If he used, say, 36E, remove that seat. Then this cannot be tried again,” Mr. Oyen wrote.
(From "Take Off Your Shoes, and Is the Parrot Loaded?")
I will be saying "36E! 36E!" annoyingly frequently in the coming days. Because, well, you probably already heard this one …
[Afterthought] Maybe I'd better not. Some people might get the wrong idea …
Sean Carroll tweets:
NPR has a new science/culture blog, "13.7." That's one-billionth the number of years since the Big Bang!
Cal Tech is lousy with numerologists, evidently.
No, seriously. Go see 13.7.
Sometimes It Pays To Read To The End Department …
Here's the first line of a CNN post on the We're Having A Really Big Tizzy Thingy Because We Hate Our Marxist Kenyan Overlord Who's Just Like Hitler, Also, Too, event that teabaggers claim to be staging:
Some Tea Party activists from across the country are planning a 'national strike' on January 20, the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's inauguration.
And here's the last:
CNN reached out to a number of national Tea Party organizations. While some were aware of the planned strike and some not informed, none said they were going to actively take part in the event.
Update
2022-08-25 Video no longer available. Sorry.
(h/t: Dave Weigel)
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P.S. Came across this interesting (to cartoon nerds, at least) bit of history while trying to remember Muttley's name.
HuffPo has a short slideshow that they swiped from V magazine of "Nude And Clothed Plus-Size Models." They're pretty hawt, which among other things means they're still considerably more svelte than most non-coastal non-elite Americans, but at least they look like they've had something to eat in the past week besides three M&M's and ipecac syrup, so, hurrah.
Mildly NSFW.
Since "disgraced" did not seem to catch on (probably because the media is too liberal), let us all adopt the Juli Weiner formulation:
Rejected minor Sorkin character Newt Gingrich …
Bonus for clicking Juli's link: picture of a polar bear cub! Would have been better if at the bottom, we saw it full-grown, messily devouring the other creature in the picture, but, well, can't have everything.
