We'd get at least another four years of Clint Eastwood-inspired tough guy comparisons--and they were right!

Submitted for your approval--two opening paragraphs. First up, this is Iowahawk:

WASHINGTON - U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu announced his resignation this morning amid new reports that Alameda County workers had unearthed more than a dozen additional dead hobo bodies at his former home in Berkeley, California. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist had been the subject of a week-long controversy after he amended his White House application form to declare "3 or 4" hobo corpses in his crawl space, but after this morning's discovery, Chu said he felt he could no longer serve as an effective spokesman for Administration energy policy.

Next, this is Agence France Presse:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's office moved on Friday to quash claims he attended a mystery concert featuring ABBA lookalikes singing to him from behind a veil at a military-style compound.

Which one is real and which one is satire? You make the call!

(HT: SG)

"Did Saddam Hussein Bug Dan Rather Before the Iraq War?"

Judith Warner, the author of a book titled Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety begins her op-ed in the New York Times, still, despite its anemic stock price, one of the most influential spokes in the legacy media, thusly:

The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president's health or jealous because of the cigarette.

Who dreams of having the President of the United States in their shower while their spouse is yelling at him for smoking? Worse, who admits to this in public? Warner herself provides a clue, here:

"This is the first president I've known who looks, talks and acts like a peer," is how one Washington man explained it to me. "Notwithstanding his somewhat exotic life story, I feel like I understand what he's like and where he's coming from. And despite his incredible achievements, he still seems like a lot of people I know. If you stopped the clock in 2004, in fact, or maybe a couple of years earlier, he'd feel roughly like a peer in terms of accomplishments, too.

Which means that if he had an (R) after his name instead of a (D) that Washington man would be calling him grossly unqualified for the White House, instead of admiring his rapid rise to power and vapid, chameleonic style.

More from the "Washington man" Warner quotes:

"Of course I know nobody with his political gifts, speaking skills and confidence, and he's also a gifted writer and thinker. But I feel like one or two different turns for Obama or me and he could have been someone my friends and I wouldn't think it extraordinary to have in our circle."

Sometimes this sense of close identification turns a bit dark. There's a subcategory of people who feel that they really should have true intimacy with the Obamas.

Included in that category are people whose shame is so diminished, they begin op-eds in a newspaper read by millions with embarrassingly mawkish dreams of showering with the President of the United States while simultaneously reaming him out for having a Marlboro 100 in the house.

Update: "Mind-sexing Obama??? File under Things I Could Happily Lived The Rest of My Life Without Thinking About."

The Cincinnatus Bengalsaurus was the rarest of dinosaurs, roaming the earth 1,000,000 years Ocho Cinco.

"How To Deal When You Want To Have Sex With A Client."

"Have we had a more incompetent vetting process in the White House over such a short period of time? When we criticized Barack Obama's lack of executive experience, even we didn't think it was going to be this bad."

Update: "It's easier to list the Obama-nees who aren't tax cheats than those who are."

More: "Two thoughts: (1) Don't any of these people pay their taxes? And (2) Is this, like, some kind of karmic payback for all the Joe-the-plumber tax business?"

Burning Man Festival gets sued--after man attending festival gets burned.

No, really!

(And at the other extreme of Mother Nature's thermostat, "Buffalo State College hosts the national teach-in on Global Warming Situations today -- a day the local temperature bottomed out at minus 6 degrees.")

At least once a season on TV's WKRP In Cincinnati, semi-competent news journalist Les Nessman would win Ohio's Silver Sow Award for his morning farm reports. Robert Kennedy Jr. sounds like he's definitely in the running for the fictitious award's next presentation ceremony, with this quote:

Today during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Congressman Steve King asked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to confirm a quote he made to the Des Moines Register in 2002: "Large-scale hog producers are a greater threat to the United States and U.S. democracy than Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a New York environmental group."

Kennedy responded: "I don't know if that's accurate, but I believe it, and I support it."

He'd face stiff competition from fellow Democrat Joe Biden, who has his own equally unique priorities for what's more important than the War On Terror:



(Oh to be a fly on the wall, if those two ever decided to compare notes on the topic.)

Liberal blogger describe liberal legacy media as racist--for asking the president a question when he visited the White House press room. ("You can't ask questions in here! This is the press room!" Ann Althouse quipped with Strangelovian satire immediately after the incident.)

Such blue-on-blue reactionary thinking was merely a matter of when, as it's far from the first time that left has formed its own circular firing squad on the issue of race.

As I wrote in November about Bruce Springsteen:

To borrow from the vernacular of The Boss's early '70s glory days (to coin a phrase), has any musician become more Establishment than Springsteen?

Over at Andrew Breitbart's "Big Hollywood" salon, Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine (who, like myself, grew up in New Jersey in the middle of Springsteen mania) makes it official--and asks, "did Janet Jackson's nipple really condemn us to a lifetime of Super Sunday misery?"

To be fair it's the Super Bowl halftime show--whether it's Up With People or a corporate dinosaur rock star, it's supposed to be miserable. But at least Up With People was honest in its own relentless polyester cheer. Springsteen will be singing to 66,000 people who have paid thousands of dollars to be in attendance, and tens of millions watching the game in their warm suburban homes in Dolby Digital Surround Sound on 52-inch rear projection HDTVs about how Dickensian the nihilistic purgatorial Hell the American existence is. Gillespie adds:

I will say this much in anticipation of the composer of "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" performing this weekend: I grew up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, which contains both Springsteen's hometown (Freehold) and his early haunt (Asbury Park), so I can't stand him in the same way that only a New Yorker can really, really hate the Yankees. I think that even his biggest fans will admit that his output over the past 25 years or so would make even Beethoven nostalgic for the first few albums. Springsteen is in that elite group of rock stars who have objectively sucked two, three, or even four times longer than they were ever any good (are you listening Sting, David Bowie, R.E.M., Patti Smith?). That, and in the video for "Glory Days," he had the worst fake baseball throwing arm since Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees. Which is saying something.

Watching Springsteen perform at the Super Bowl--and before him, rock mummies like Tom Petty and Rolling Stones--let's just say I'd rather go straight to the Bodies exhibition, where at least no one is pretending that the corpses on display aren't actually dead.

But then, as Mark Steyn notes, (quoting from another "Big Hollywood" essay), "for half-a-century now rock has very successfully been 'both establishment and anti-establishment'":

In fact, "a rebellious underdog distributed by the status quo" is the very definition of rock: All those fellows calling for revolution while contracted to Capitol, Columbia, EMI., Warner Bros - the exact same companies running the music biz back in the days when Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby were where the big bucks were. A few years ago the Warner Megabehemoth Globocorp launched a rap label called "Maverick", and nobody laughed.

Rockers attending the Obama inauguration are like visiting royalty at a Bourbon or Habsburg wedding. By the way, over the years I've met kings, princesses, dukes and all the rest, and none of 'em were as hung up on precedence as the aristorockracy. A decade or so back, Sting had to issue a formal apology because at one of his big save-the-rainforest banquets at his country pile he committed the ghastly social faux pas of seating Jools Holland (of the band Squeeze) next to some no-name session musician. In Britain, these guys all live in stately homes, and any of their number who makes it to 50 without choking on his own vomit or being found face down in the swimming pool gets knighted - Sir Elton John, Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, etc. Obama's pal Bono has a knighthood. You say you want a revolution? Sorry I'm having tea with the Prince of Wales that day.

Or apologizing to your fan base on the left for--gasp!--selling records in Wal-Mart.

Not that there's anything wrong with that--though of course, as Billy Joel said to John Cougar Mellancamp when the latter man was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, "You're right, John, this is still our country and we'll always be victims of powerful people."

No matter how many tens of millions they stuff into your bank account.

It seems like the last inauguration was just a week ago, but already, change has apparently arrived to change the change that just arrived:

"People Are Talking About 'President Pelosi' Now."

Because people who need Pelosi are the luckiest people in the world!

Mmmmm....steak.

(Meanwhile, Greg Pollowitz explains how PETA played NBC.)

In one of the Associated Press's reports on Blagojevich's impeachment--which astonishingly enough actually names his party--there's this choice tidbit:

After a four-day trial, the Illinois Senate voted 59-0 to convict him of abuse of power, automatically ousting the second-term Democrat. In a second, identical vote, lawmakers further barred Blagojevich from ever holding public office in the state again.

"He failed the test of character. He is beneath the dignity of the state of Illinois. He is no longer worthy to be our governor," said Sen. Matt Murphy, a Republican from suburban Chicago.

And everyone knows that character is such an important component of politicians from Illinois.

From the Land of Lincoln to the Trough for Blago in 150 years--now that's progressive politics in action.

Steve Green writes, "They Don't Like Profits Anyway":

Via Melissa Clouthier comes this tasty little item from Gawker:

...today the NYT runs an op-ed from Yale's hallowed money manager David Swensen, in which he recommends that newspapers turn themselves into non-profits with endowments (we agree, philosophically at least). "As long as newspapers remain for-profit enterprises, they will find no refuge from their financial problems." He's talking to you, NYT!

The NYT is already headed towards zero profits for as far as the eye can see -- so why not make it official?

Even as yet another east coast paper begs for a federal bailout, there's hope yet for another legacy media: "Snuggie Sales Prove TV isn't Dead"!

Well, that's a relief.

Forget the Great Man Theory of History--Blago is every great man in history; he's the Peter Lemon Moodring of politics:

(Via Unterekless Thoughts.)

Sure, it's a large egg. But does it vibrate?

Gay Patriot writes, "Joy Behar Says Obama Too Perfect for Mockery":

On Sunday night, while doing my cardio, I caught what appeared to be rebroadcast of an episode of Larry King LIve. King asked The View's Joy Behar why comedians didn't make fun of the new president. The comedienne replied that this prez was just too perfect.*

Can you imagine how the media would react if a conservative had chastised a comedian for making fun of former President George W. Bush because he was "too perfect"? A few google searches yielded no mainstream criticism of Miss Behar's panegyric to the president (not even on the right-maybe that's because no one else was watching?)

It is truly frightening that a comedian in a free society would think her president too perfect for mockery.

As a former employee of ABC said in 2007 on Joy's show:

I'm saying that in America we are fed propaganda and if you want to know what's happening in the world go outside of the U.S. media because it's owned by four corporations one of them is this one. And you know what, go outside of the country to find out what's going on in our country because it's frightening. It's frightening.

Come back Rosie--all is forgiven!

(H/T: IP)

A few years ago, John Derbyshire reminisced about a vignette involving Arthur Koestler:

When Arthur Koestler was a Communist in Weimar Germany, he used to have secret meetings with comrades in open public places where a police "tail" would be easy to spot. Once he met with a female comrade in a Berlin park. While discussing necessary business, the woman lost her attention and began staring at the surrounding trees. "Why is it," she suddenly blurted out, "that the leaves die wherever we go?"

I wonder if Al asks why it is that a permanent frost seems to follow wherever he goes?

Al Gore is scheduled before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday morning to once again testify on the 'urgent need' to combat global warming.

But Mother Nature seems ready to freeze the proceedings.

A 'Winter Storm Watch' has been posted for the nation's capitol and there is a potential for significant snow... sleet... or ice accumulations.

"I can't imagine the Democrats would want to showcase Mr. Gore and his new findings on global warming as a winter storm rages outside," a Republican lawmaker emailed the DRUDGE REPORT. "And if the ice really piles up, it will not be safe to travel."

A spokesman for Sen. John Kerry, who chairs the committee, was not immediately available to comment on contingency plans.

Global warming advocates have suggested this year's wild winter spells are proof of climate change.

But then, what isn't?

Noel Sheppard writes:

The Obama economic adviser who doesn't want infrastructure "stimulus" spending to only benefit "white male construction workers" is angry at Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin for having the nerve to report his racist remarks the mainstream media compliantly boycotted for several weeks.

In an open letter posted at his blog Saturday, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich accused the trio of "manifestly distorting [his] words and pulling them out of context."

The best response to that would be to say, "I claim no higher truth than my own perceptions. This is how I lived it."

When we last saw Chris Matthews, he was busy explaining to Al Roker which direction the Oba-tingle flowed:

Are you sure Chris? Because the direction of Obaworshiping is beginning to follow a distinct southern migration pattern. The One has gone from being on your shoulder, to in your breast pocket. So is a race to the bottom next?

Yes they can!

(H/T for the Barack-pocket sized chrestobamathy: Charlie Martin.)

As Mark Steyn quips, "How dazzling is President Obama?"

So dazzling that he didn't merely give a dazzling inaugural speech. Any old timeserving hack could do that. Instead, he had the sheer genius to give a flat dull speech full of the usual shopworn boilerplate. Brilliant! At a stroke, he not only gently lowered the expectations of those millions of Americans and billions around the world for whom his triumphant ascendancy is the only thing that gives their drab little lives any meaning, but he also emphasized continuity by placing his own unprecedented incandescent megastar cool squarely within the tradition of squaresville yawneroo white middle-aged plonking mediocrities who came before him.

There's more than one? I think for most of the Obaboosters, the "President 2.0" phrase du jour is surprisingly close to the mark. There's Bush, there's Obama. History began on 9/11--which itself is rapidly plunging down the Memory Hole.

But then, Mark is among the few of us contrarians who haven't drunk the Obakool-Aid. Another is Abe Greenwald of Commentary's "Contentions" blog. He mines the fawning legacy media coverage of those who have imbibed deeply for hidden gems, finds them, and then jokes, "Funny, I don't remember Obama running on a platform of refreshing ignorance, but I guess I'm just disoriented from being stuck in the age of Old Politics."

Old Politics? That's so 2008.

Or, great moments in live TV!

Scroll to about 1:55 into this clip (at least while it's still online) to hear a local television sex doctor completely stick her fist in her mouth, as Gawker.com writes:

Dr. Terri Orbuch, the "Love Doctor" on a Detroit news station was talking about how lovey-dovey they are and then completely stuck her fist in her mouth. She was trying to reference last June's infamous terrorist fist jab moment, shared between the then-candidate and his wife when he won the Democratic nomination.

Unfortunately, thanks to the potent mixture of live TV and flop sweat, Orbuch blurted out this:

We also need to be affectionate, and you can see that with Barack and Michelle as well. They do a lot of a lot of touching, kissing, even fisting with one and other.

As Gawker concludes:

See, if we weren't talking quite so much about how awesome it is that they like to touch and kiss each other, we would never have had the Presidential Fisting image seared into our brains. Thanks, Detroit!

Heh.

The Top 10 11 political t-shirts they should've sold at the inauguration.

Victor Davis Hanson notes the dichotomy that is the newly crowned President Obama:

For nearly three months since the election, we have been warned by President Obama, his staff, and the media not to burden him with unreal expectations that no mere mortal could meet.

But why then consciously borrow from Abraham Lincoln's speeches? And why re-create Lincoln's historic train ride to his inauguration--especially by flying back from Washington to Illinois to then return to D.C. by slow-moving railcar? Lincoln took the train because it was the only feasible way to get to Washington in 1861, not to copy the grand arrival of some earlier American savior.

Candidate Obama once adopted a presidential-like seal. He held a mass rally at Berlin's Victory Column (after his request for the more dramatic Brandenburg Gate was refused).

He adopted Greek temple sets at the Democratic convention. And like Zeus on Mt. Olympus, he talked about making the planet cool and the oceans recede.

And now he's capped all that by warning us to lower our expectations!

But if Obama deliberately takes on the trappings of a messiah, why shouldn't we expect messianic solutions?

Would you settle for tales of brave Obamacles?

Update: On the other hand, "Could President Obama really be Bill McKay?"

Kerry Picket writes:

While the media talking heads are still gabbing about the greatness of President Obama's inauguration, few, if any, are mentioning the purple inauguration ticket holders, who were stuffed thru Washington D.C.'s 3rd street tunnel hoping to see the Obama inauguration.

A Facebook group titled "Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom" is for individuals who attempted to attend the inauguration with purple tickets and their January 20th horror stories (h/t American Thinker Larrey Anderson).

Click over for assorted horror stories.

Every time I see that headline though, I can't help but think of this purple tunnel--it looks like Levitra may have missed a sure-fire sponsorship opportunity.

"In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Gov. Rod Blagojevich compared his early morning December arrest by FBI agents to Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor."

I get these two incidents confused all the time myself.

Wow, talk about phoning it in: the music by Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma for President Obama's inauguration was prerecorded, apparently because of the weather conditions:

The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday's ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president's swearing in (which had problems of its own).

"Truly, weather just made it impossible," Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. "No one's trying to fool anybody. This isn't a matter of Milli Vanilli," Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.

Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed beforehand but that the NBC producers handling the television pool were told of its likelihood the day before.

The network said it sent a note to pool members saying that the use of recordings in the musical numbers was possible. Inaugural musical performances are routinely recorded ahead of time for just such an eventuality, Ms. Florman said. The Marine Band and choruses, which performed throughout the ceremony, did not use a recording, she said.

"It's not something we would announce, but it's not something we would try to hide," Ms. Florman said. "Frankly, it would never have occurred to me to announce it."

No, of course not. Tom Blumer dubs it "Faked But Accurate"; Ann Althouse capsulizes the postmodern surrealism of the day:

So we were listening to recorded music when the clock hit noon, the constitutional moment for the President to be sworn in! Then, he was sworn in and that might have been fake and there was a second of that too.

Glenn Reynolds asks, "A Milli Vanilli Start To The Obama Presidency?" But Bob Owens notes that the Milli-ing--and even the Vanilli-ing--started quite some time ago.

A little Oogedy-Boogedy from the left: "Ceremony purges White House of evil spirits."

Someone on Fleet Street is a lad insane, as "Agent Bedhead" writes, if they think David Bowie(!) set in motion our current financial maelstrom.

Personally, I blame these cracked actors.

(Via Colorado's thin white vodka-swilling duke.)

Update: Problem solved--evidently, "Kate Moss Will Fix That Dreadful 'David Bowie Recession'". Let's dance!

In the UK Mail--and I'll bet the editor had lots of fun writing it: "Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle."

(Via Lileks on Twitter, who adds, "Now go away you silly person, or I shall maul you some more!" But just what are the commercial possibilities of canine aviation?)

Not quite the same as the Chewbacca Defense, but worth reading nonetheless, as Robert Stacy McCain lists the sordid details of, as he calls him, "Mayor NAMBLA"--whose party affiliation dare not speak its name in the MSM.

I'm sure somebody on Fark has already said it about this Japanese device which PC World notes, "Aims to Translate Cat Talk ."

Via the Professor, more pet gadgetry here.

in his last week in power, in order to ensure that the nation's capital actually survive the transition process, President Bush had declared DC a disaster area. Between the inclement weather, the lack of indoor plumbing, the minimum of functional outdoor plumbing, and hundreds of thousands of pop music-loving anti-war protesters, last Thursday, I wrote that the inauguration sounded like "a repeat of Woodstock, except with Geritol the drug of choice instead of LSD, and many fewer cool bands."

CNN's John Roberts, the architect of CNN's infamous "Wright-Free Zone" last year, agrees. As Newsbusters puts it, "CNN's John Roberts Dubs Inaugural Crowds 'Barack-stock'":

CNN's CAROL COSTELLO: You know, usually, you have a little bit of a problem getting people to agree to be on television, but not yesterday. People were begging to be on TV. They wanted their thoughts recorded. They were very much aware that history was being made, and they wanted to be a part of it in whatever way they could.

JOHN ROBERTS: It really was 'Barack-stock' -- peace, love, and history.

COSTELLO: It really was.

Well far out, man! The lead act was pretty amazing, but did you catch Country Joe Biden And The Sea Kittens? Crosby, Stills And Rahm? Clinton Clearwater Revival? And how 'bout that oldies act, Thomas Jefferson Airplane!

Seriously though, it did seem like there was plenty of featherweight pop culture and more than a few bad trips yesterday as well. Hopefully the administration will recover from their dalliance with nostalgie de la boue and actually govern like grownups. The legacy media's long strange acid trip of the last election cycle may have been too much for them to overcome, though.

Update: While CNN's Roberts declared yesterday to be "peace, love, and history", Michael Medved notes that "President Obama explicitly and forcefully distanced himself from the far-left 'peace activists' who provided his drive for the presidency with much of its initial energy and urgency."

Just when you thought that media out of Gaza wasn't surreal enough, comes this moment, courtesy of Charles Johnson, who writes:

Al Arabiya reporter Hannan al-Masri is live on the air in Gaza when she is told that Hamas has just fired rockets from inside the Al Arabiya studio building, news which apparently strikes her as quite humorous.

(Turn on closed captions for English subtitles.)

This clip casts a whole new light on the numerous American media scandals of the past decade. For example, give CBS credit--as bad as RatherGate was, they've never launched missiles off the roof of Black Rock at their competitors!

AP's ubiquitous Nedra Pickler writes, "Biden shushes wife after secretary of state slip":

The wife of Vice President-elect Joe Biden let it slip to Oprah Winfrey Monday that her husband had a pick of two jobs in the Obama administration.

Jill Biden said President-elect Barack Obama gave Biden the choice of being secretary of state or vice president. The vice president-elect tried to hush his wife as soon as the words came out of her mouth, with a loud "shhh!" that sent the audience into laughter.

The Bidens made a surprise appearance on Winfrey's show, recorded at the Kennedy Center for broadcast later Monday on the eve of the inauguration.

The vice president-elect said he only accepted Obama's offer to be his running mate after talking it over with "Jilly," his pet name for his wife. Mrs. Biden said she told him vice president would be better for the family.

Fortunately for the sake of the entire planet's survival, Mrs. Biden wisely chose the job where her husband could the least amount of international harm:

Ed Morrissey writes:

Note to Hamas: When the enemy has its army encamped in your territory and you have to make demands for them to leave when the fighting stops, you didn't win. They had a cease-fire in place in December, without Israeli soldiers all over Gaza, and Hamas ended it in a hail of missile and rocket fire. A month later, several of their top people are dead, Gaza has been heavily damaged, and they're isolated politically among other Arab nations, plus the IDF is now holding Gaza in a vise grip, and all Hamas has is another cease-fire. Yeah ... some victory.

All right...we'll call it a draw.

I've met Neo-Neocon in person a few times. Everyone knows she blogs anonymously (and man, is it hard talking to someone at a cocktail party when she holds an apple in front of her face the whole time), but who knew just how secret the life she was leading really was?

For you see, Neo-Neocon is also, simultaneously, Meryl Yourish at the same time. With the Bush administration concluding this week, this could be the final closely held American secret blown wide-open for the next four to eight years by the intrepid New York Times--not to mention its layers and layers of ace fact checkers and editors.

(H/T: Glenn Reynolds, who is also both Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Corbett. And maybe John Glenn, too. Who can say?)

In "A Manual for Left-Wing Living", his new article in the Wall Street Journal, Kyle Smith reads Nation magazine's Guide To The Nation so you don't have to. Here's a sample:

In Monty Python's "Life of Brian," the People's Front of Judea was always prepared to respond to any crisis with an immediate burst of discussion. In "The Nation Guide to the Nation," praise is showered on the Brecht Forum cultural center in New York, which the editors note was recommended in 2000 by the Village Voice as the "Best place to start thinking about the revolution." Keep cogitating, revolutionistas. Someday your putsch will come.

Read the rest--then stop by Kyle's fine blog. (Berets, turtlenecks, sunglasses and bongos optional, of course.)

Newsbusters spots "Celebs Giddy for Obama's 'Magic Moment' After 'Hell' of Bush Years". Here's but one of them:

Actress Gloria Reuben (IMDb page), now in TNT's Raising the Bar and formerly on NBC's ER, will be on hand Tuesday "to watch the magic moment happen" since she yearns for an end to the "hell" of the Bush years. (Screen capture is from Reuben on ABC's This Week in 2006 when she was promoting a play in which she played Condoleezza Rice):

It's a once-in-a-lifetime situation. The last eight years have been such hell. We're all so excited about the hope of things to come. I really think that's part of it. People are so ready to rejoice and celebrate what is hopefully the return of the foundation of the United States.

She looks fantastic. She's spent 13 years on a top-rated TV series making a high six figure if not seven figure annual salary. And "The last eight years have been such hell"? Why, lights on the set too bright? Wolfgang Puck didn't give you the first table at Spago? No, evidently, it's because the man in Washington who in the scope of things will be seen as governing in much the same fashion as his predecessor had an R after his name and not a D.

And yet, somehow, in the photo of Reuben from 2006, she's smiling--good stiff upper lip and all that whilst trapped in Bushitler Hell. That's more than other celebrities can say about their decade in purgatory--Maura Tierney, another traumatized victim of ER is quoted as saying, "I'm calm for the first time in eight years."

On the other hand, Tierney's IMDB profile notes this:

Wrote an article in the spring 2001 issue of Flaunt titled, "'Rudy Giuliani': A Fascist? You Be The Judge."

Ahh--now it all makes sense. Obviously a Buchananite crushed by his third party defeat in 2000 who's never recovered...

Related: Hollywood East.

"Leading climate expert Jim Hansen" (no relation, as far as we can tell, to a deceased but global warmingly remembered Muppet expert) believes "Barack Obama has only four years to save the world."

Of course he does. But we give Mr. Hanson bonus points for eschewing the leisurely and far overdone bourgeois pace of the ten year countdown--four isn't a number that's picked all that often from the proverbial hat for a doomsday countdown. But in any case, file this one way for election time in 2012 if--and we think the odds are somewhat reasonable here--Mr. Hanson is wrong.

In any case, no final countdown is complete without...

"Prepare now for the coming post-stimulus hyperinflation with these million-dollar bills featuring Barack Obama's picture! Why wait until the government gets around to issuing them in 2011, when they'll buy a single measly gallon of gas?"

I must say, hopefully our real million dollar notes will look as sharp as these Weimar Republic bills--which, with their Bauhaus designed at least looked cool, even if they were essentially worthless due to hyper-inflation.

Warner Todd Huston writes, "Biden Leaves The Senate With A WHOPPER On His Lips"--but then, Joe really is the Master of Disaster, of course:

More thoughts on Joe The Veep from...Joe The Veep.

Headline on Contact Music.com: "Benicio Del Toro--'Che Guevara Was A Warrior, Like Batman.'"

Which fits nicely alongside the riff Oliver Stone went off on immediately after 9/11 that terrorists are like Einstein. Both quotes speak volumes of the moral inversion that is modern (and by modern, I mean insanely regressive) Hollywood.

(Found via "Big Hollywood", appropriately enough.)

Jules Crittenden writes, "Anxious not to be stuck with the blame for another Katrina, Bush puts the federal disaster response into motion ahead of time, mobilizing FEMA bucks."

Jules has photographic evidence of the multiple survival mechanisms being put into place for those enduring the disaster region. He also links to an article which states that incoming volunteers are well aware of the grim conditions they'll be facing:

Beginning this weekend, millions of people are expected to swarm into the Nation's Capital - many with the highest expectations of seeing history unfold around them.Most seem aware of the challenges they face, transportation difficulties at best, millions of charged up people in the same place, enduring the elements for long hours, and all with no access to indoor plumbing.

Not to mention all of the anti-war protesters. In other words, a repeat of Woodstock, except with Geritol the drug of choice instead of LSD, and many fewer cool bands.

Related: Not that the Washington establishment isn't itself quite a hallucinatory experience.

If you've named your kid Hitler (and one of his siblings "JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell"), you've already come out in favor of a leviathan all-encompassing state. So why act surprised when it works against you?

And it looks like his unicorn is ready to do the full Roman Polanski switchblade maneuver on the bear market's right nostril.

If this makes no sense to you, you're not on the same wavelength--and/or medication--as this artist.

Reason.tv catalogs "Obama and the Winds of Change"--or the lack thereof:

(Or at least me--it was guaranteed to happen like clockwork, particularly before Christmas break.)

"Study: Lack of Sleep Increases Risk Of Obtaining Cold"

OK, everybody say it with me: I need a study to tell me this?

Let he who is without sin cast the first anti-aircraft cannon.

"This is a federal building and he doesn't pay federal taxes so he can't come in."

If only that worked for prospective treasury secretaries being vetted, in addition to cats.

"Like Uncle, Like Niece--Caroline Kennedy's candidacy mirrors Ted's 47 years ago."

Just click for, as Hot Air calls it, your Freudian slip of the day:

Details at Politico, link found via The American Spectator.

Well played, Gov. Blago, well played.

"Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea."

Of course, a handful of really greedy buggers triple that impact with each search--and don't even mention the even bigger carbon criminals who dare to perform Google searches on their private Boeing 767s.

On the other hand, enough Google searches and private planes could prevent the new ice age--so have at it, boys and girls!

(H/T: Lileks on Twitter)

If this isn't "The Best Story, Ever" as its (re)-publisher advertises, it's certainly one of the best headlines ever.

Update: Well, it's still a great headline--it's just not true.

(HT: H/A)

Fortunately, The One was careful to under-promise during the campaign in the event of just such a contingency.

Shocking news! "Owners of cloned dogs complain that the clone version doesn't behave exactly like the original."

John Hinderaker writes, "The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that Governor Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris' to the Senate does not require the Secretary of State's signature to be valid":

he unanimous ruling came as no surprise, but it stripped Senate Democrats of their principal excuse for barring Burris from taking the seat to which he has been appointed. It now appears that Mr. Burris will soon be Senator Burris after all.

Meanwhile, "Dems Melt in the Heat of Burris Fiasco", Jonah Goldberg observes:

Now, I certainly understand why Reid & Co. caved. For starters, Reid's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box.

But why all the fuss in the first place? Isn't this how it always works? The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, an impressive African-American writer, is amazed that "Reid has been outmaneuvered by the sort of overt, hamfisted identity politics deployed in the '70s."

The '70s? So this sort of thing stopped more than three decades ago? I had no idea. What planet do my newscasts come from?

I thought this was simply what liberals and Democrats do. When Newt Gingrich introduced the Contract with America, black Democrats denounced it as racist. Charlie Rangel proclaimed, "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things." When impeachment threatened Bill Clinton, he draped himself in black ministers and staffers. The NAACP ran an ad narrated by the daughter of James Byrd, a black man brutally murdered in a hate crime, insinuating that then-presidential candidate George W. Bush's refusal to support hate-crime legislation in Texas was like murdering her father again. In the recent campaign, nearly the entire liberal punditocracy insisted that opposition to Barack Obama could only be explained by racism, a story line egged on by Obama himself when convenient.

And don't tell me Blago's corruption changes the equation. Has anyone read about the baleful history of minority set-aside programs in cities like Chicago? Cronies and grifters are routinely given sweetheart contracts under the guise of fighting discrimination when in reality it's all a riot of kickbacks, "pay-to-play" and cronyism. People don't call Jesse Jackson a shakedown artist for nothing.

There are two reasons why this spectacle shocks some liberals. The first is that Blago, Burris, and Rush used this tactic on fellow Democrats. And since Democrats can't be motivated by racism, any ploy like this must be cynical. When the same gambit is used on Republicans, it's called "speaking truth to power." Second, some honestly believed that Obama represented a real change of the racial landscape. So far, alas, these folks just look naive.

Finally, in the face of impeachment, Gov. Blagojevich stands tall: "A Blagojevich spokesman said the governor will not resign."

Allahpundit asks, why would he?

He just got done rolling Harry Reid, and Fitzgerald's indictment is still months away. I'm not even sure what the charges against him in the impeachment trial will be at this point. Supposedly he can no longer perform the duties of governor effectively. Really? He was effective enough to make the entire U.S. Senate choke on the Burris appointment.

And if all this sounds surreal so far, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Update: "Following a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court, Jesse White, the Illinois secretary of state, has certified Roland Burris' appointment to the Senate, removing a major roadblock blocking Burris' ascension to the body." Does this make the headline above official? It seems likely that Harry Reid's not going to offer very much additional pushback. But hey, between DC and Illinois, anything's possible.

If you enjoyed my "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" video this week featuring our incoming vice president's top ten gaffes (no small chore culling them down to such a small number), you'll likely get a kick out of the new Joe The Veep blog. And who knows--maybe even vice versa.

Heh, indeed.™ As Kathy Shaidle writes, "Listen for weird smashing sounds coming from inside the White House on Inauguration night."

No sign of Jay Sherman or Bart Simpson (though I think we know where Homer stands), but Debbie Schlussel spots one of the world's biggest cartoon heroes in the tank for the world's biggest celebrity. No word yet on whether they'll be teaming up for a sequel to this Very Special Issue of Spider-Man.

Back in 2004, Power Line's John Hinderaker wrote that comic books were "a medium in which the liberals will have a hard time competing", but the left's Long March Through The Institutions beginning in the 1960s and '70s also included a stop there, alas.

John Hawkins has a bipartisan round-up of "The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes For 2008"; meanwhile, Iowahawk, over at his swank UK gig, starts his 2009 Christmas vacation early, and looks back at the year to come.

Of course, as always, the reality will be far stranger than the predictions.

"Joe Biden Declares War"--like that worked out so great for Eric Burdon.

More declarations from the veep who puts the d'oh into Delaware, here.

Roger Kimball on "Capgras Syndrome":

Notwithstanding Inauguration Fever, there are signs of unhappiness in Obamaland. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is just about to begin her tenure as the first-ever female head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is deeply distressed by Obama's pick of Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, to head the FBI [Oops: wrong acronym: as a reader points out it was Obama picked to head the CIA: "FBI, CIA, ONI. We're all in the same alphabet soup." --The Professor in North by NorthWest]. "I wasn't even consulted," sniffed Feinstein, dabbing her eyes (I paraphrase). And Obama's choice of the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inaugural sent poor Frank Rich into orbit. Reaching for his most opprobrious epithet, Mr. Rich warned that he discerned "a faint tinge of Bush" creeping into the otherwise immaculate reverie that was his image of Barack Obama. Any moment now, I expect an outbreak of Capgras Syndrome to cascade through the ranks of the faithful.

Capgras Syndrome? That's the delusion, named for the French shrink Jean Marie Joseph Capgras, that "a close relative or friend has been replaced by an impostor, an exact double, despite recognition of familiarity in appearance and behavior."

And once the Beatles records are played backwards, who will be revealed as the new Billy Shears, or Billy Campbell, or whoever it was who was supposed to have taken Paul McCartney's place?

As Obama is having lunch today, he might look across the table and ponder this presidential cautionary tale:

Once there was a president who campaigned on hope and change after a period of disillusionment, division, and economic downturn. He was a virtual unknown when the campaign began, a long-shot dark-horse with a brief record in public office, criticized by party-elders for having the self-assurance to believe that he should be president instead of waiting his turn. But people across the political spectrum responded to the candidate's calm candor and thoughtful intelligence--they saw in him a different kind of politician who could heal old divides and make them believe in our democracy again. Armed with a disciplined campaign, he pulled off what Time called "something of a political miracle." Before inauguration day, over 60 percent of Americans believed he would make a good or great president. By March, proposing a far-sighted energy bill and an economic stimulus plan that balanced job-creation with targeted tax-cuts, his approval ratings reached 72 percent. Things fell apart from there. [...]

As former Carter speechwriter James Fallows wrote in 1979, "The central idea of the Carter Administration is Jimmy Carter himself... Hubert Humphrey might have carried out Lyndon Johnson's domestic policies. Gerald Ford, the foreign policies of Richard Nixon. But no one could carry out the Carter Program because Carter has resisted providing the overall guidelines that might explain what his program is."

Behold, the will.i.am of the 1970s:

Jennifer Rubin writes that "now, with the election safely behind us and Sarah Palin tucked away back in Alaska, the truth can be told. Identity politics is not, in itself, objectionable -- it just depends on the identity":

Not okay: small town, funny accent, overt religiosity, non-tony education. Okay: Manhattan address, Ivy League, discreet attire, impeccable lineage. (In other words, just like Dowd's inner circle.)

And how do we know Caroline is "serious"? After all, she couldn't muster any particularly unique policy views in her jaw-dropping media debut and her "scholarship" is either a compilation of others' works, family tributes or both (as in a compilation of Jackie's favorite poetry). Now Dowd concedes that "It isn't what your name is. It's what you do with it." So what precisely has Caroline done?

Of course [Maureen] Dowd can't resist invoking "profiles in courage" because that's Caroline's true claim to fame: her father. We have no reason to believe, however, that Caroline would be courageous. Her life is devoid of acts of political boldness, personal sacrifice or original thinking.

But brilliant poetry editing, as Mark Steyn recently observed:

"Friends Say Kennedy Has Long Wanted Public Role," Anne Kornblut assured readers in an in-depth Washington Post tongue-bath. She hasn't "long wanted" it to the extent of, you know, running for dog catcher in Lackawanna and getting - what's the word? - "elected," but, if you have a spare Senate seat, she's graciously indicated that she'd be prepared to consider accepting it. As lady-in-waiting Anne Kornblut pointed out, Caroline is highly qualified, being "the author of several books." It's true! She's an experienced poetry editor. She edited "The Best-Loved Poems Of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis." Jackie Kennedy wrote poems? Of course! She wrote so many poems that some are better loved than others.

Let's see Harry Reid try that.

Related: "Does Maureen Dowd moonlight at MSNBC as Andrea Mitchell's writer?"

More: "Insert Chappaquiddick Joke Here"; internecine dynastic struggle observed there.

Blair's Law (named after the Bard Down Under, of course) refers to "the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force."

See also this: "CBS Buys First Front-Page Ad On New York Times":

An advertisement for CBS has become the first display ad ever to appear on the front page of the New York Times. In its own article about the appearance of the ad, the newspaper called it the "latest concession to the worst revenue slide since the Depression." It conceded that the move is "regarded by traditionalists as a commercial incursion into the most important news space in the paper." Oddly the newspaper indicated that it could not learn how much CBS had paid for the ad.

Presumably it was more than this earlier sweetheart deal demonstrating yet another example of Blair's Law in action. But yes, it's amazing how quickly aphasia affects the media when reporting on itself.

(With apologies to Monty Python for the above headline)

21st century England's eventual demise due to postmodern moral uncertainty summed up in a single word:

The archsceptic professor Richard Dawkins today launched Britain's first atheist campaign posting the message: "There's probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life" on the side of 800 British buses.

What would Nietzsche and H.L. Mencken say about wimping out like this? Even the atheists are unsure of themselves in England.

Newark, NJ is desperate to somehow change its image as a city rife with crime and to do so, they're banning...barbed wire?

Some business owners in this crime-plagued city say recent enforcement of a decades-old ordinance prohibiting some types of barbed wire and razor wire is making Newark more attractive - to thieves.

Burglaries are up 17 percent from 2007 through November in Newark, which has a young, charismatic mayor who has vowed to help the city rebound from decades of official inaction, incompetence and outright criminality.

The city is aggressively courting new investment and development, but people who have been ordered to downgrade their fences say officials are worried more about aesthetics than security.

Gee, ya think?

Also blogging on this: The Brothers Judd and Ace of Spades.

All right! All right! this is your captain speaking! Do not rush for the lifeboats... women, children, Red Indians, spacemen, doctors, nurses, and a sort of idealized version of complete Renaissance Men first!

Related: Israel Matzav notes that IDF has taken over Hamas television:

The IDF took over Hamas' al-Aqsa television Sunday morning, and broadcast what you're about to see (this broadcast was actually on Israel's Cable Channel 10, which explained to Israelis what had happened).

It shows pictures of the Hamas leadership with bullets in their heads and the Arabic writing on the screen says "time is running out."

Let's go to the videotape.

Click over for the video clip--though as they wryly note, no sign of Farfour yet. Or his successor in the anthromorphized animal terrorist world, Nahoul the Killer Bee.

In 2007, it was giant sun shades orbiting the earth to block imaginary global warming. Today, as Tim Blair notes, it's giant mirrors in outer space to block carbon dioxide, as environmentally correct engineers dust off an old chestnut from Arthur C. Clarke.

Meanwhile, here's a massive terraforming project that looks like much more fun.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that this is the Hillary we've always known.

The Washington Post reports that Bill Richardson is out as potential commerce secretary for the incoming Obama administration:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has withdrawn his name from consideration as commerce secretary for President-elect Barack Obama, citing an ongoing investigation about business dealings in his state.

Richardson, 61, who competed unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, was secretary of energy and U.N. ambassador during Bill Clinton's presidency, and also the first high-profile Latino named to Obama's Cabinet.

But a grand jury in New Mexico is currently looking into charges of "pay-to-play" in the awarding of a state contract to a company that contributed to Richardson.

The importance of the inquiry was apparently dismissed when Richardson was first nominated. But it may have taken on more weight in light of the "pay-to-play" allegations involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

As with Blagojevich, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, etc., Team Obama claims that's not the Bill Richardson we thought we knew.

He's not even in office yet, but every day, it becomes increasingly easier to think of Joe Biden as Dan Quayle, but with far worse hair, and far more gaffes.

(H/T: Don Surber, via the Professor.)

North Carolina's News & Observer observes that Mike Easley, the state's outgoing governor "said newspapers should be nice to him":

In an interview with the Greensboro News & Record, Easley complained about how newspapers, particularly The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, have treated him. Both papers are owned by Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy Co.

"My job is to be nice to other people, and their job is to be nice to me. Just because they're not doing theirs doesn't mean I shouldn't do mine," Easley said in audio of the interview posted on The News & Record's Web site on Christmas Day.

And the News & Observer is happy to oblige in one sense: there's no mention of Easley's party in the above linked article.

It's the pact that President Elect Obama and the legacy media have--why shouldn't other Democratic politicians request the same agreement, particularly since their relationship with their media mouthpieces is likely to become even cozier in the coming months and years.

(H/T: Betsy Newmark)

In the modest, puckish spirit of Glenn Greenwald, Jules Crittenden provides a brief and mild polish of his blog's "About" page.

The illiterate brute brandishing his cardboard "Death To All Juice" placard is unwittingly uniting previously divided factions, much to his chagrin:

In what cynics dismissed as a ploy to inject life into his flagging career, Kool-Aid man had announced his homosexuality in 1996. Getting him in the same room as the famously anti-gay Bryant would prove challenging. But Tropic-Ana was able to break the impasse.

"Anita and Kool-Aid Man understood it was time to put aside differences and fight a common enemy," she said. "And it didn't hurt that he left his partner Snagglepuss in New York."

Drink in the whole thing.

Is it better to give or to receive? Tim Blair spots Bank of America investing tens of billions of dollars in the summer "to make their operation sustainable [and] reduce greenhouse gas emissions"--before receiving $115 billion only a few months later from the ultimate source of gaseous emissions--Congress.

Related: Definition of insanity defined, here.

Maybe this spelling-challenged gentleman really, really hates roast beef...

...That David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy wore his baseball cap with the brim facing backwards:

Who would have thought that twenty years after I, as a teenager, thought it looked cool to put my baseball cap on backwards (was it a Beastie Boys thing? Who remembers...), that youths, and even some adults (saw a guy in his 30s yesterday), would still be doing it (though there seemed to be a break for a time in the late '80s and mid '90s). Folks, the bill is on the front for reason, to shade your face from the sun. And it's soooo unclassy. Can you imagine Cary Grant wearing a backwards baseball cap? Please ladies, boycott the gents who wear the cap backwards, or at least tell them how silly it looks, and end this travesty for good. Perhaps a simple, "you know, David Bernstein had that look twenty years ago," will do.

Too bad this unwitting celebrity fashion victim and his army of media handlers such as this Reuters journalist never got the memo:

The president-elect, looking uber-cool with his White Sox baseball cap on backwards, flipped the shaka to a crowd of about 30 people as he left a gym on a Marine Corps base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he is vacationing.

As Jonah Goldberg noted last week, American society--let alone the rest of the world--is far too balkanized for such a blanket statement. And in such a diverse environment, news agencies such as Reuters need to mindful of such a wide range of readers. In other words, we all know that one man's uber-cool fashion plate is another man's uber-dork. To be frank, it adds little to the national dialogue to call the attack on the basketball courts by the president elect an uber-cool aesthetic experience.

John Hinderaker of Power Line asks:

If you seriously believe that the Earth is threatened with destruction by global warming, then the current global economic slowdown is providential. Reduced economic activity equals less energy consumption equals less carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Environmentalists have been telling us we need to reduce our energy consumption, and live more modestly, for years. Now we're doing it. So where's the celebration of the world's sharp turn Greenward?

For that, we turn to the renowned economist, Jamie Lee Curtis...

If you're looking to give Plaxico Burress a Christmas gift tomorrow, a pair of trousers wouldn't be amiss: "Weapons, ammo, pants seized at Burress' NJ home."

Fair is fair: Thanks to this "alternative Christmas message" and Channel's Four's choice of host to deliver it*, England, the birthplace of Muggeridge's Law, has now run smack dab into it like an out-of-control Prius on an unsalted Seattle street.

Read More »

I'm very happy to see that the Salt Nazis ("No salt for you--ever!") haven't banned sodium chloride from South Jersey's roads yet, unlike Seattle.

Hey, glad to see that I wasn't the only one releasing previously unseen and all-too-brief material involving senatorial financial relations two days before Christmas...

Allahpundit has a holiday epiphany: "Christmas miracle: Traffic soars on 'shirtless Obama' Internet searches":

Got an e-mail from Ed 20 minutes ago telling me to check SiteMeter. On one of the most gruesomely awful traffic days of the year, with blog readers tuning out in droves to prepare for the holiday, we're ... way above our daily average. Have a look at the referrals to see why. It's not just us, either. It's Internet-wide, per the AP and The One's current standing at Google Trends.

Hours of searching to find interesting Headlines, hours of toil to compose thoughtful posts -- and all America wants is a Barack Obama beefcake pec-tacular. All right then, I won't stand in the way of love. Drink it in. A man-boobs alert has been issued by the boss and Althouse, but I say let he who is without love handles cast the first stone. And don't underestimate his strength: If German media reports are accurate, he's capable of curling 70 lbs. Judging by that photo, I'd have guessed that was half his body weight.

Clearly, our incoming president is the leader of "the American League of Justice Dispensed Shirtlessly", to borrow a Lileksian riff.

In an update to Allah's post, Ed Morrissey adds:

I'm glad AP decided to post this instead of me. I'm above posting phrases like Obama six-pack, Obama shirtless, and especially Obama topless in a vain effort to get Google traffic. You'll never see that from me. No sir-ee.

Seriously, though ... wouldn't you think that people have better things to do two days before Christmas? Thankfully, no.

Ed was kind enough to link to us on Tuesday morning, shortly before I hopped on a cross-country flight from the relatively mild climate of San Jose into bitter wintry, hail-strewn Philadelphia, the latter city yet another victim of global warming at its worst.

This is fiendishly brilliant:

As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county's Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.

Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera "Pimping" game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim, according to the parent.

"This game is very disturbing," the parent said. "Especially since unsuspecting parents will also be victimized through receipt of unwarranted photo speed tickets.

The parent said that "our civil rights are exploited," and the entire premise behind the Speed Camera Program is called into question as a result of the growing this fad among students.

As Mark Hemingway writes, "Yes, it would be just awful if the speed camera program was called into question as a result of this."

Time magazine's "Person of the Year 2008" cover story, dated December 17th: President Elect Obama's "arrival on the scene feels like a step into the next century -- his genome is global, his mind is innovative, his world is networked, and his spirit is democratic."

Time magazine, December 18th: "Obama has proven himself repeatedly to be a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot."

Really, "what can one man do to save the world?" (Click over if only for the terrific Photoshop.)

(Via the Binkmeister.)

Michael Graham has "The Shoe 'Nuff Truth":

Now that you've heard the Partisan Press cackle and misreport the Shoe-Flingin' Iraqi "Journalist" story for 48 hours (did the press tell you, for example, he worked at a Pro-SADDAM newspaper in Egypt?), get the Natural Truth from military analyst and historian Ralph Peters:

If an Arab journalist had thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein or one of his guests, the tosser would've been beaten, then tortured, then killed. Today's Iraqi government is considering whether the man should be charged under the state's democratically validated Constitution.

Bush won. Even if shoe-thrower Muntadar al-Zaidi (who works for an Egypt-based media outfit) walks out in his stocking feet and becomes a hero to dead-enders, he unwittingly showed what a great thing has been accomplished in Iraq.

Charles Krauthammer made a similar point on Fox News yesterday, noting that while the Arab and American media are gleefully reporting this one man's actions as reflective of Iraq, the elected Iraqi parliament--which has to go home and answer to citizens--overwhelmingly passed the Bush-backed security plan that the president went to Iraq to sign.

Let the bad guys throw shoes, and let the US military win wars and help create democracies. I'll take that deal any day.

Glenn Reynolds places the attack into context with another event that occurred near the start of President Bush's administration.

(Via Kathy Shaidle, exploring the Zapruder film and going back and to the left wingtip.)

Just found in my stats counter was this Google search (the abrupt cutoff is also in the original):

hitler and national socialism are really nothing more than contemporary shibboleths in america. whether invoked by thoughtless neocons i.e. goldberg's obnoxious screed titled ''liberal fascism'' or

Lionel Chetwynd, call your office!

We mentioned AP's "Byline Strike" on Tuesday, but Dan Riehl does a great job of reading between the bylines:

The real kicker is that while the journalists are busy writing about the collapse of the Global economy, or the newspaper industry looking like it's going away, all in times so bad we need a new, New Deal - they went to the table asking for a 10% raise.

As Dan writes, it's obvious that even AP doesn't believe the endlessly catastrophic news they've been reading via AP.

Well, can't fault them there.

"They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up!"

(H/T: AP)

Even as newspapers are shedding staff and hemorrhaging money, Roger L. Simon spots "The Great Byline Strike Of '08" amongst journalists at the Associated Press:

I read with amusement that reporters and photographers for the Associated Press are staging (via the Newspaper Guild) a 'byline strike.' Say what? To stage a such a strike people have to have heard of you, but practically no one is more anonymous than a writer for a news service. It almost comes with the job description. You are the "Associated Press," not yourself. The AP is not exactly where you find the next Norman Mailer. News service reporters are not even as well known as bloggers. I mean whose names are more famous to the general public at his point -- Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin and (yikes) Markos Moulitsas or [insert any Associated Press writer here]?

Not that I don't have some sympathy for my AP colleagues. These are trying times for all in the media. But they made a choice by joining a news service and that choice was for a form of literary facelessness. Also, they opted for a form of homogenization, since the AP and other news services are by mission supposed to be uniform in style and content.

And therein lies the rub. Of recent years the uniformity of the Associated Press in publishing a kind of bland, accepted liberalism of the most uninspired (and sometimes distorted) sort may be the root of their business woes - not the presence (or not) of bylines or even the current economic situation, although the latter certainly plays a part. I would suggest to the writers and owners of the AP that they consider opening up their company to people of different biases and opinions. They are supposed to be a news service, after all, not a ideological distribution center. People on the more extreme right love to compare them to Tass. That's not fair. The AP is nowhere near as bad as that. But they are pretty bad. And they are failing economically. And when you're failing economically, you're supposed to do something. [Maybe they're waiting for a TARP bailout.--ed. I'd rather drive a Buick.]

As that sage philosopher of Springfield, H. J. Simpson once told his daughter, "Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day, and do it really half-assed. That's the American way."

And from that perspective, the staff at AP have been doing an exceptional job of alerting readers of poor working conditions there for years.

Found via Newsbusters, this Chicago Sun-Times article begins thusly:

Bye bye, black Senate seat! The political blackbirds are singing a swan song for the hopes of keeping a U.S. Senate seat in African-American hands. The Rod Blagojevich implosion may have dealt that cause a fatal blow.

Last week's stunning pay-to-play charges led to calls around the nation for a special election to choose President-elect Barack Obama's successor.

That possibility has provoked outrage among black community leaders and politicians. Not so fast, they are saying.

So much for post-racial America.

Ed Morrissey posts an amusing clip of Joe Scarborough riffing on the instinctive legacy media.

Shocking foot-age (their pun, not mine--sorry, though) of who is behind the Iraq shoe attack. And on a more serious footnote (OK, I'll cop to that one), Roger L. Simon spots what this tells us about how far the nation has come--the idiot who perpetuated it isn't going to end up feet-first in the woodchipper, unlike if he had tried something similar to the man who was captured by the US five years ago this weekend.

Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed toupee.

(Via VodkaPundit.)

The inadvertent Desperate Housewives edition of a German scientific publication.

(Via Maggie's Farm.)

Jennifer Rubin writes that the Cook County tactics that put Illinois' Gov. Blagojevich on the national radar in the first place may well be remedied by...more Cook County tactics:

You can't beat those pols from Illinois. Faced with the most vivid display of lawlessness and base corruption in recent memory, they seek a solution that shows no regard for legality. The state's Attorney General (who may or may not have been one of the enumerated Senate Candidates in the criminal complaint) is heading to court to declare Blago "unfit" and get him removed immediately, without impeachment proceedings. Because impeachment takes so long - and will, by the way, increase calls in the interim for a special election (rather than appointment by Blago's eventual Democratic successor) to fill the empty Senate seat. So an end-around to get rid of the lawbreaker -- the "perfect" Illinois solution.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Via Instapundit, related thoughts from Ann Althouse.

Great moments in awareness raising through pneumonia inducement:

About 60 people took a frigid dip into Walden Pond on Dec. 6, 2008 as part of the Polar Bear Plunge. The event was planned to raise awareness on global warming.

As Tim Blair writes, "Let's hope someone pays attention. The handful of previous awareness-raising efforts have barely been noticed."

"Italian guitarist stabbed, allegedly for 'sounding evil'."

The traditional conventional wisdom (and by "traditional conventional wisdom", I mean about as far back as 2002), Bloggers are one-man bands, guys in their pajamas (to coin a phrase) producing material without the traditional infrastructure and interpersonal cooperation found in mass media.

The new conventional wisdom from mass media? Where do we sign up:

Under a new agreement reached this week with its labor unions, WUSA, Channel 9, will become the first station in Washington to replace its crews with one-person "multimedia journalists" who will shoot and edit news stories single-handedly.

The change will blur the distinctions between the station's reporters and its camera and production people. Reporters will soon be shooting and editing their own stories, and camera people will be doing the work of reporters, occasionally appearing on the air or on in video clips on Channel 9's Web site.

For decades, TV journalists have worked in teams, with the lines of responsibility regulated by union rules or simple tradition. Stories were covered by a crew consisting of a camera operator and a correspondent (and further back, by a sound or lighting technician); their work was overseen by a producer and their footage assembled into a finished story by an editor.

But technology -- handheld or tripod-mounted cameras, laptop editing programs and the Internet -- have made it possible for one person to handle all those assignments, station managers say.

Gosh--there's a shocking new development.

Welcome to the 21st century, guys--we'll be glad to show you around.

An editor at the The Hill claims that "death threats" are keeping Rahm Emanuel from attending press conferences to discuss the Blagojevich meltdown. As Mark Finkelstein writes:

Which would be the safer place to be for a political figure who's received death threats?:

a. A school concert in a public venue.
b. A press conference in the company of the President-elect of the United States of America.

If you answered 'b,' you're thinking like me and presumably most people. If you answered 'a,' you're A.B. Stoddard. The associate editor of "The Hill" offered up the strange excuse that death threats are preventing Rahm Emanuel from attending press conferences in the course of an MSNBC appearance this afternoon during which she also claimed that "President-elect Obama is taking steps to be as forthcoming and as open and as transparent as he promised he would be."

Presumably "The Office of the President Elect" has amongst it perks a phalanx of Secret Service agents at every press conference, in addition to dozens of journalists eager to take a bullet for either man.

Meanwhile, a possible reason (or maybe not) why Rahm's been remiss.

As Jim Geraghty notes, President Elect Obama is currently floating a "Nuclear Umbrella for Israel" proposal.

As Jim writes, the left will have kittens when they find out who first proposed it.

(H/T: FM)

Having aided in his defeat for the White House, the media are now allowing John McCain to safely inherit the role of inoffensive elder GOP statesman-as-lovable-loser role last worn comfortably in the late 1990s by Bob Dole.

Meanwhile even with McCain's campaign concluded, the incompetence wears on.

In contrast, "The Other McCain" offers a roadmap for GOP recovery, here.

Or, "Journalism--The Unknown Ideal", to paraphrase a lesser known, but equally appropriate title.

Leggo my Bla-lego-vich!

BREAKING!--and entirely Photoshopped!--"news" at Iowhawk.com: Feds Seize Blagojevich eBay Account.

"Engraved in beautiful Helvetica!" Really, doesn't everyone on your list deserve one of these?





(H/T: John McCormack)

Before concluding with the perfect epitaph for the 42nd president, Don Surber writes that for Dee Dee Myers, Bill Clinton's first press secretary, "Groping a cardboard cutout is worse than cheating on your wife for 30+ years."

While Rod Blagojevich's pay to play scandal involving Obama's soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat in Illinois has just broken, Ross Douthat does a nifty demolition job on the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus' case for Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary's New York Senate Seat:

I don't know about Jesse Ventura, but I find Schwarzenegger and Sonny Bono's pre-political careers as self-made showbiz entrepreneurs - to say nothing of Jon Corzine's career in finance - much more impressive than anything Caroline Kennedy has ever done. Her life has been dedicated to worthy pursuits, by and large, but most of her accomplishments (fundraising for New York public schools, editing essay collections in honor of her father, etc.) are classic "born on third base" endeavors - laudable enough without being terribly impressive. And all of the names on Marcus's list actually submitted themselves to the democratic process on their way to the Senate, the House, and the California's Governor's Mansion; for an appointment to fill a vacant seat (especially a safe vacant seat), the bar ought to be set a bit higher than "she's more qualified than Sonny Bono."

But Caroline's case is easily made with the just four simple words: She's not Fran Dresher.

Wow, I really wish I had seen this 2007 clip from McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt, before I shot my "Red Queen's Race" video over the weekend.

As P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters notes, Pruitt does a terrific Baghdad Bob impersonation--but only before invoking his heartfelt commitment to "philosophers and rock 'n' roll songs. Sometimes it's one and the same as with Lenny Kravitz's song from a few years ago, 'Dig In.'"

Just in time for Christmas, giant stuffed microbes--it's fun, educational, contagious and plush!

(Besides, any wet smack from Miskatonic University can give a Cthulu plush for Christmas--why not be original this year, huh?)

"Hasselbeck said dryly, 'I'm not a natural blond.'"

Back in the earlier, funnier days of the show, a recurring sketch was "What If"--one of the more memorable occurred when Kirk Douglas hosted the show, and the writers asked, "What if Spartacus Had a Piper Cub."

This may be taking the concept to extremes, though.

Partying with Obama's 27-year-old speech writer.

December 7th? Hiroshima? Forget it, he's rolling.

The Rosetta Stone of humor is here--and the punchlines are endless.

Update: Found via STACLU, here's a bottomless well of bad (and needless to say reverential) Obama art. What would the response be if the ideologies were reversed, and it was a Website full of worshipful Reagan or Dubya art?

And you thought Olbermann and Matthews bit people's heads off at MSNBC:

"How Can We Make The Iraq War More Handicap Accessible?"

"Berkeley Grandma Sues Over Canceled Iraq Embed"

Which headline is real and which is satire? You make the call!

(H/T: NB)

Dan Rather on the dangers of Big Media:

Investigative reporting, finding out what people in power don't want the public at large to know and disseminating it, is one of the most important roles of journalism in its role as the so-called Fourth Estate. And investigative reporting has gone badly out of fashion. The trend line is against it.

There are reasons. The reasons: It takes longer, it's more expensive than other kinds of coverage, and it causes trouble because the big, huge international conglomerate that now owns so many of the news outlets, they have special needs in Washington. They are asking for favors, these people, needing favors -- regulatory, legislative needs -- of the very people that good investigative reporters would be digging into and exposing, if you will. And this comes in conflict.

But when an army of independent journalists investigated one of Dan's stories, Rather accused them of being on Karl Rove's payroll. (Dan doesn't know the half of it!) And his producer questioned their authenticity, merely because she had never heard of them as late of September of 2004, near the end of the election year.

But all of a sudden, Dan's not a fan of corporate journalism--wonder why?

One of Ace's co-bloggers writes that "The NHL Is No Longer Ace of Spades Lifestyle Compliant", because Dallas Stars player Sean Avery was suspended for--gasp!--using the phrase "sloppy seconds" to describe his former girlfriends?

(And you thought that the NFL was the No Fun League!)

But given that the NHL is the national sport of Canada, and that Canada is a nation where the "Human Rights" Commission will take up the case of an aging stripper suing her boss for being fired, is it all that surprising that the NHL would want to stick the boot that's on the cover of The Tyranny of Nice deeply into Avery's backside?

The self-lobotomizing effects of political correctness on the media continues, as Patterico explores "An Ongoing Mystery to Our Journalistic Betters:"

Over at The Jury Talks Back, aunursa says that CNN can't figure out why the terrorists attacked a Jewish center.

It's not terribly surprising that they're surprised. I'll never forget how, after a Muslim terrorist shot up a Jewish Center in Seattle, the L.A. Times ran a box on the front page saying that the gunman's motive was a "mystery":

[Click over for page scan--Ed]

The story contained clues, such as the fact that the gunman targeted the Jewish Center after conducting a "cursory Internet search for Jewish organizations." Or the witness who said the man had screamed "I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel!" before opening fire.

I swear I am not making up those facts, or the fact that the L.A. Times declared the gunman's motives a "mystery" in the face of that evidence.

I guess these media types just keep getting mystified.

Of course, it's not just the media who are slow on the uptake these days--with dark satire to spare, Iowahawk writes that Bombay is all just a case of Too Late The Terrorist: "Apologetic Mumbai Killers: 'We Didn't Get the Memo About Obama.'"

In Mel Brook's History of the World Part I, there's a scene in which Mel, playing the King of France, has this memorable exchange:

Count de Monet: It is said that the people are revolting.
King Louis XVI: You said it! They stink on ice!

France lost its Ancien Regime in 1789, but Harry Reid (D-NV) sounds like he's been drinking in a little too much from the House of Bourbon for his own good:

Reid
by burghnews

As AllahPundit writes, "Comedy gold from the unerring political instinct that brought us a Congressional approval rating lower than Bush's. Behold, the ultimate Kinsleyan gaffe:"

"My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway," said Reid in his remarks. "In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true."

But it's no longer going to be true, noted Reid, thanks to the air conditioned, indoor space.

Allah asks, "What did the Senate chamber smell like before A/C?" I have no idea, but it is a reminder that Big Government needs Big Air Conditioning to prosper, as Jonah Goldberg wrote a few years ago:

In the 18th and 19th centuries a congressman wouldn't be caught dead in Washington during July. Well, actually, they might be caught dead, because they wore all those clothes and were so fat that they might have died while trying to get out. The British Embassy, for example, moved the entire kit and caboodle to Maine every summer.

The idea is: Ban air conditioning in Washington and you would cut the "productivity" of the government by more than a third (say from late May to late September) and return the United States to the limited government the Founders intended. D.C. is still full of members of this school of thought.

For such a powerful guy, Harry's an awfully delicate soul. Before he was getting the vapors from having to smell the peasants, he was having other health issues:



Come 2010 when he's up for reelection, the voters of Nevada might want to consider replacing Reid with another senator--if only to give Harry's delicate sinuses a chance to heal up.

Update: Welcome Corner readers!

Back in December of 1979, 11 people died when attempting to rush into Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium to see the rock group The Who. The following week, Time magazine surprised many by running a cover story that absolved the group of virtually all blame in the incident. The cover dubbed the band "Rock's Outer Limits", and the accompanying story focused on their success as musical artists, rather than the tragedy in Ohio. (And I'd be the last person to argue that in 1979, near the height of their power as musicians, they weren't an awesome group, especially live.)

But unlike a rock group beloved in the eyes of most boomers, the discount chain Wal-Mart doesn't garner the same sort of good will amongst journalists. Responding to the incident on Black Friday when one of their employees died when the doors were opened to allow the first mob of shoppers into the Long Island store at 5:00 AM, a New York Times went out with the following absurd headline: "A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment."

Evidently, New York Times economics reporter Peter Goodman (or perhaps his editor, depending upon who wrote the headline) fancies himself as the next Picasso. So who are the Nazis in his mind? The management at Wal-Mart who, somewhat like Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium 30 years ago failed to have adequate security and preparations for the onslaught of a crowd, or the shoppers who crushed the unfortunate sales clerk? The article, found via Newsbusters doesn't say.

I'd excuse a high school or sophomoric college newspaper journalist making such an overwrought analogy. But if the New York Times and its writers and editors can't see the difference between an unfortunate shopping incident and the Spanish Civil War, one wonders what what value the newspaper has as an information source to be trusted by their readers.

Update 12/2/08: Wow--who knew this little post would receive so much traffic? Welcome Instapundit and Five Feet Of Fury readers, and even those die-hard defenders of the establishment at Sadly No.

One Cincinnati-based reader emailed in:

The New York Times has become the WKRP of journalism. The hyperbole you noted in your blog is symmetrical to Les Nessman's comparison of the eternally hilarious turkey drop to the Hindenburg disaster. Except WKRP was supposed to be funny.

Eric McErlain of the Off Wing Opinion sports blog noted that I may have mixed my Queen City stadium names:

Just a short note -- the Who concert was held at Riverfront Coliseum, not Riverfront Stadium. It's a big difference, as the former is an indoor arena with a much smaller capacity, while the latter was an open air baseball stadium.

Fair enough.

More: Another reader emails in:

The article's author does not use the word Guernica in the article. It was apparently the brainchild of one of their brilliant editors who does not know the difference between Guernica and Pamplona, which is what he was obviously trying to refer to.

So perhaps the Gray Lady was trying to run with the bulls, rather than attempting a Homage To Catalonia.

I don't know about you, but can't everyone relate to this headline? "A Giant Rubber Space Pillow Is Eating My French Villa."

Count de Monet could not be reached for comment.

For over a decade, the good Dr. Dalrymple has written about England's out-of-control binge drinking problem; Mark Steyn explores a pair of size 12D unintended consequences: "Britain has clearly decided it has a golden future as one vast theme-park for The Onion. From The Daily Mail, a woman's right to shoes":

Drunk women who stagger about in high heels are to be protected--at public expense--from twisting their ankles.

They will be handed flip-flops to wear by police outside nightclubs as they wend their way home.

The scheme is part of a £30,000 drive by police and councillors to prevent 'alcohol-related harm'.

It has been prompted by fears that women wearing stilettos or similar footwear could tumble over.

The rubber shoes, which carry printed messages about safe drinking, will also be available free from the council's 'Safe Bus' on the harbourside...

Inspector Adrian Leisk, from Safer Communities Torbay, said: 'Sometimes people get drunk and you see them carrying footwear which is inappropriate.

'The emphasis is on providing replacement footwear for people to get home in, should they find their footwear uncomfortable, inappropriate or soiled.'

Mark adds that it's "It's worth a click just for the picture of Police Superintendent Chris Singer posing with two pairs of 'safe footwear'".

But how safe are they, really?

Clearly, this is a story benchmade like a pair of John Lobb wingtips for one man to comment on.

Headline via the Derb; it perfectly fits this example of what hopefully is a one-off leftwinger's meltdown, and not a trend, transforming Thanksgiving into yet another holiday that Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Related: Heard through the Grapevine, Greg Gutfeld rounds up his Thanksiving Turkey list.

The perfect place to watch the videos we linked to in the previous post: James Lileks gives thanks to the hotel that defined the 1970s--and sadly, vice versa: the Gobbler.

For decades, America's leading cultural anthropologists pondered the question: were we as a nation doomed to believe that nothing could be as dreadful, as craptacular in that Sid and Marty Krofft 1970s polystyrene primary colors video look as the Star Wars Holiday Special?

No. There is another. And its name is The Donny And Marie Star Wars Special.

If that doesn't sound frightening enough, because it truly is from the 1970s, there's the inevitable appearance by...but of course!...Paul Lynde!

When Harrison Ford shouted that he'd see you in Hell in The Empire Strikes Back, this is truly what he was referring to.

The celebratory party surrounding the annual anemically rated Oscar awards must go on, even in these trying economic times:

Vanity Fair will hold its annual Oscar Night party at the Sunset Tower Hotel on February 22, 2009, it was announced today by editor Graydon Carter.

"The party will be a much more intimate affair than in years past; we're going to scale back the guest list considerably," Carter says. "We'll celebrate Hollywood's big night the way we did when we first threw the party 15 years ago--it will be a cozier, more understated event. And one with familiar decor--given the current economy, and our dedication to the green movement, we will be recycling many of the elements of years past.

Wardrobe recycling certainly appears to be in vogue with these two ultra-glamorous Hollywood superstars; meanwhile, a veteran television actress is forced to wear what appears to be a Hefty recycling bin liner at her recent photo-op.

Update: I shouldn't be too hard on Judith Light--she attended the same prep school I did, though a few years before me--and the Swedish Chef.

In the latest Weekly Standard, P.J. O'Rourke says, show me the money:

The government is bailing out Wall Street for being evil and the car companies for being stupid. But print journalism brings you Paul Krugman and Anna Quindlen. Also, in 1898 Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal started the Spanish-American War. All of the Lehman Brothers put together couldn't cause as much evil stupidity as that.

Moreover, rescuing print journalism is a "two-fer." Not only will America's principal source of Sudoku puzzles and Doonesbury be preserved but so will an endangered species--the hard-bitten, cynical, heavy-drinking news hound with a press card in his hatband, a cigarette stub dangling from his lip, and free ringside prize fight tickets tucked into his vest pocket. These guys don't reproduce in captivity. And there are hardly any of them left in the wild. I checked the bar. Just Mike Barnicle, as usual. How's tricks, Mike? Where'd everybody go? Sun's over the yardarm. Time to pour lunch.

And right on cue, "Connecticut Legislators Want State To Subsidize Newspapers."

As the Great One (Reagan, not Jackie Gleason) said in 1986, "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

Well, now we know what happened to Mike Nesmith's wool hat from The Monkees.

Related: Another cheerful furry friend from a bygone era makes his own wistfully nostalgic federal bailout-related appearance here.

Iowahawk, November 24th: "Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post":

Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.

"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet."

Clinton said he was "excited and honored" by the appointment, and would work "day and night" to defeat all the key policy objectives proposed by Mr. Obama during the campaign.

"I am gratified that the President-Elect has entrusted me with this important responsibility," said Clinton. "I'm looking forward to getting back behind, and under, the Oval Office desk again. As I have told the President-Elect, I pledge to do whatever I can to serve his historic administration by making sure that none of that bulls*** he talked about during the campaign will ever see the light of day. Americans can rest assured that he will be safely confined to the East Wing, as far away as possible from any potentially dangerous office equipment or nuclear buttons."

The long anticipated naming of Clinton to head Obama's Oval Office team comes after a week that saw Obama appoint dozens of Clinton associates to his transition team including John Podesta, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hundreds of other Clinton Administration holdovers are rumored to be in line for remaining appointments, including Bill Richardson, Janet Reno, Webb Hubbell, Chelsea Clinton, zombie Vince Foster, and zombie Socks the cat.

"Let's face it, it's obvious I'm in way over my head here," explained Obama. "Anyone paying attention knows I am a disaster waiting to happen, and who can blame them? I mean, just look at the stock market. That's why I think it's in the best interest of the country that I hand over the reins to people who, whatever their ethical shortcomings, at least have a faint clue about what they're doing. Come on, man. I've got a 401-k, too."

While the naming of Clinton appears to have momentarily calmed jittery financial markets, it sparked ripples of disapproval at liberal websites like Huffington Post and DailyKos. The progressive blogosphere was an early key source of support for Mr. Obama's candidacy, but a steady stream of Clinton-era appointees since the election has left some charging that he had betrayed his campaign promises to bring them to Washington as part of a sweeping culture of change -- a charge that Mr. Obama vehemently accepted.

The Washington Post today: "Send Bill Clinton to the Senate":

Amid the blizzard of resumes blanketing Washington as the Obama era dawns, there is a superbly qualified candidate for full employment whose name has been overlooked. We refer, of course, to William Jefferson Clinton, America's 42nd chief executive and commander in chief. Yet now, by a wonderful combination of circumstances, comes an opportunity to harness his unquestioned political talents to benefit his country, the Democratic Party, New York state and his spouse. If, as is expected, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes secretary of state, New York Gov. David Paterson could send her husband to the U.S. Senate.

Doing so would spare the governor the agonizing dilemma of choosing from the 20 or so Democrats already named as contenders for the junior senator's seat. Those mentioned include six sitting members of the House of Representatives (three of each sex), Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Caroline Kennedy and her cousin Robert Kennedy Jr., Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown (an African American), and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. (who is Hispanic). In this no-win competition, Paterson has to balance claims of gender, race, ethnicity and geography. He could wind up gaining one grateful ally while alienating not only all the losers but also millions of members of the disparate constituencies that each represents.

Hence the appeal of Bill Clinton. Who in his party could question so historic and dazzling a choice? In a stroke, the appointment would provide Sen. Clinton's indefatigable husband with a fitting day job, serve the interests of a state beset by a meltdown in its most vital economic sector and offer a refreshing reverse twist on a tradition whereby deceased male senators, representatives or governors are succeeded by their widows.

Shortly before the election, Jack Murtha (D-PA) said, "A carpetbagger from Virginia is going to represent a heavily Democratic district? No way. No Goddamn way."

Sadly, the voters agreed with him; so I guess amongst the left, it's Virginia carpetbaggers in Pennsylvania No!, Arkansas carpetbaggers in NY, Si!

if Teddy Kennedy can look back fondly to the halcyon days of the Goldwater Administration in the mid-1960s, surely we can't fault the Philadelphia Inquirer for reminiscing about AU-H20's legendary successor, President RFK.

Scroll down to the bottom of IowaHawk's recent "Lemon" post for an unlikely six degrees of environmental separation, as two great Blogospheric satirists exchange notes over one of the first electric cars.

"Today We Learned Something Horrible About Liberals."

Jim Geraghty asks, "Just What Has Obama Gotten Hillary Into?":

Every Secretary of State enters office as "a breath of fresh air" and with great vigor and enthusiasm, and year by year, we see that energy and enthusiasm beaten back by geopolitical realities and a massive bureaucracy. Maybe Hillary will break the trend.

Good luck, Hillary...

This time, it's sure to work!

According to the New York Times, (needless to say, take the news with a Pinch of salt), Hillary has accepted the Secretary of State position.

In a way, it's the least she can do. Because let's face it: when you've got a lifetime of experience, and all the boss has a speech that he gave in 2002, he'll need all the help you can deliver!

(Suha Arafat could not be reached for comment.)

While those toffee noses at the Daily Mail are busy bitching about when their futuristic cars will arrive, Iowahawk delivers.

But does the Congressional Motors Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition come in Ackerman blue?

Matt Drudge links to this New York Times article and notes, "REPORT: TIME INC. in 'contractual promise' with Angelina Jolie for 'positive coverage'...". The Times piece begins:

When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt negotiated with People and other celebrity magazines this summer for photos of their newborn twins and an interview, the stars were seeking more than the estimated $14 million they received from the deal. They also wanted a hefty slice of journalistic input -- a promise that the winning magazine's coverage would be positive, not merely in that instance but into the future.

According to the deal offered by Ms. Jolie, the winning magazine was obliged to offer coverage that would not reflect negatively on her or her family, according to two people with knowledge of the bidding who were granted anonymity because the talks were confidential. The deal also asked for an "editorial plan" providing a road map of the layout, these people say.

Hey, as Victor Davis Hanson recently noted, "Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place." Can't fault Brangelina for asking for the print version of what Chris Matthews has promised Barack.

As highlighted by the latest Time and Newsweek covers, the incoming Obama administration and its media cheerleaders are attempting to dial back expectations a tad. Obama's no longer God (of course, as Mort Sahl once said, if you're going to identify, identify), he's merely the second coming of Abe Lincoln and FDR. Jonah Goldberg writes, "It's a step down from divine redeemer, but you have to start somewhere":

Lincoln was Lincoln because he fought and won the Civil War and freed the slaves. News flash: That ain't what America is like today -- and thank God for it.

I think Lincoln was just about the greatest president in American history, but I sure don't want to need another Lincoln. Six hundred thousand Americans died at the hands of other Americans during Lincoln's presidency. Lincoln unified the country at gunpoint and curtailed civil liberties in a way that makes President Bush look like an ACLU zealot. The partisan success of the GOP in the aftermath of the war Obama thinks so highly of was forged in blood.

Likewise with FDR. Listening to liberals gush over a "new New Deal" and Obama's call for us to emulate the "Greatest Generation," you'd think they want another Great Depression and World War.

Indeed, liberals have long idolized the 1930s as a decade of great unity. It wasn't. The 1930s was a miserable decade of poverty, domestic unrest, labor strife, violations of civil liberties and widespread fear. If liberals really loved peace, prosperity and national cohesion, they'd remember the 1920s or 1950s more fondly. And yet they don't. Why? Because liberals didn't get to impose their schemes and dreams on the country in those decades. Behind all the talk of unity and bipartisanship and shared sacrifice lies an uglier ambition: power. The audacity of hope behind all this Lincoln-FDR-Obama blather is the dream of riding roughshod over the opposition, of having their way, of total victory.

The Chinese curse and cliche "may you live in interesting times" is on point. Liberals (and a few conservatives as well, alas) seem desperate to live in interesting times. Not me.

"You know what I hope? I hope Obama is another Coolidge or Eisenhower", Jonah concludes. "But I'm not holding my breath."

"Why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web"--Well, it probably does boot quickly on a 56k modem, given its Web 0.0 aesthetic.

Or maybe it's a Windows 1.0 aesthetic:

While Matt's pioneering Internet status is a given, it's definitely for his content, not his visual style.

Or--Full Metaphor Jacket:

During Tuesday evening's "No Bias, No Bull" program, Washington Post national political correspondent and CNN contributor Dana Milbank implied, perhaps inadvertently, that the incoming Obama adminstration was like the North Vietnamese advancing on Saigon in 1975. Host Campbell Brown asked Milbank about the "backlog of at least 2,000 pardon applications" to the Bush administration before the president leaves office early next year, and he replied, "Yeah -- it sort of has the feeling of the last helicopter off the embassy roof in Saigon."

To be fair, it's an awfully benign metaphor, since nothing bad happened after we left Vietnam--just ask Tom Harkin.

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Traditional journalism as we knew it --the big dailies, the weekly news magazines, the networks, public radio and TV--no longer exists. Death by suicide. RIP--around March, 2008.

As rigor mortis sets in, I doubt the media are concerning themselves much about how ill-informed the average voter is, but if so, they might want to take a look at their story selection this year. Here are two recent but stellar examples of the media living up to the legacy set for it by Edward R. Murrow, et al:

CNN analyzes Obama and Palin's doodles.

Meanwhile, in a story that I'm sure its myriad of readers were undoubtedly pining for, Salon analyzes the incoming first lady's posterior.

Arthur Frampton could not be reached for comment.

As Mark Steyn noted in his "Happy Warrior" column on the back page of the recent edition of National Review, when choosing between an actual combat veteran and a fellow celebrity to play James Bond, for actor Daniel Craig, the choice is an easy one:

Before we close the book on this election season, let me quote one of the most dispiriting asides on the subject. Daniel Craig, the star of the new James Bond movie The Audacity Of Solace - no, wait, A Quantum Of Hope - was being interviewed by Kevin Sessums for Parade (that supplement thingie that's free in all the local newspapers), and as a final question was asked which of the two candidates would make the better 007:

Craig doesn't hesitate. 'Obama would be the better Bond because--if he's true to his word--he'd be willing to quite literally look the enemy in the eye and go toe-to-toe with them. McCain, because of his long service and experience, would probably be a better M,' he adds, mentioning Bond's boss, played by Dame Judi Dench. 'There is, come to think of it, a kind of Judi Dench quality to McCain.'

Oh, great. John McCain has survived plane crashes, just like Roger Moore in Octopussy. He has escaped death in shipboard infernos, just like Sean Connery in Thunderball. He has endured torture day after day, month after month, without end, just like Pierce Brosnan in the title sequence of Die Another Day. He has done everything 007 has done except get lowered into a shark tank and (as far as we know) bed Britt Ekland and Jill St John.

And yet Daniel Craig gives him the desk job.

On the other hand, Tim Blair notes that that the media's standard for heroism these days is one heck of a lot lower than it used to be.

A frighting schism threatens to fracture the once unified mass media: Time says that Obama is the next FDR, Newsweek says he's the next Lincoln. Kyle Smith calls on our old media overloads to settle their differences, for the good of the nation.

(Of course in reality, The One seems do be aiming his standards just a tad lower, and doing his damnedest to be the next Bill Clinton.)

These days, apparently the White House phone only rings at 3:00 AM when there's a international geopolitical crisis brewing. Similarly, for those domestic struggles involving America's Culture War, the frontline has finally been triangulated: the local Wendy's.

Glenn Beck discovers firsthand that things sure are a lot less Chili and Frosty at the local branch of the nationwide hamburger chain than they were during the visit four years ago by John Kerry and John Edwards as brilliantly documented back then for England's Telegraph by Mark Steyn.

James Lileks spots the least-likeliest Washington Times ad ever.

Will President Elect Obama be calling Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton? The Guardian says yes--but as always with a British paper (particularly the Grauniad), verify before trusting.

Basil Exposition: The Cold War's over.
Austin Powers: Ah, finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh, comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin, we won.

"Fashion Magazines Bear Brunt Of Economic Meltdown."

As the Ayatollah Khomeini once said:

"Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious."

And dancing? That's right out as well, as Reuters (who else?) notes: "Iran vice-president under fire over Koran dance."

The state of Western Civilization at the dawn of a new millennium summed up in a single photograph and caption.

(Paging Dr. Dalrymple--your next "Oh To Be In England" column awaits.)

"Violence erupts between Bush aide, reporter"--and a Reuters reporter at that. But hey, one man's vicious attack dog is another man's freedom fighter.

Or vice versa.

NBC's Chuck Todd may has been up too late watching war movies on competitor channel TCM before uttering this statement on the Today show:

President Clinton chose a childhood friend to be his chief-of-staff, Mack McLarty. What did that mean? That chief-of-staff never knew how to tell the President no. Never was a sort of behind-the-scenes guy. In Rahm Emanuel Obama knows he's getting Douglas MacArthur, or General Patton. A guy who's a field general, who will keep all of the, keep everything running on time, the trains running on time and will go after Congress.

He'll make the trains run on time? So he's Mussolini, too? Hey, if you say so, Chuck.

But Patton was relieved of command by Ike at the end of WWII when he wanted to push into Russia; MacArthur was unceremoniously dismissed by Truman during the Korean War. Obama has publicly admitted on several occasions as being a rather dovish fellow. And Tim Graham of Newsbusters notes, "Like Obama, Emanuel has no military service on his resume, starting his career in Illinois 'public interest group' politics."

As Tom Wolfe illustrated in Ambush At Fort Bragg this is but the latest example of a journalist using military lingo in his speech, even as his network has routinely been astonishingly negative regarding their chief missions over the last five years.

Update: And if the left have found their MacArthur/Patton/Mussolini, the right "haven't yet found our Omar Bradley."

Slate has a little fun with CNN's latest technological gimcrack:

Exit question: Did David Bowie's "TVC-15" single from the mid-1970s predict this latest video development?

Update: Welcome InstaReaders! Meanwhile, Hot Air's Allahpundit enharshens CNN's mellow: "Heart-ache: CNN holograms not really holograms."

Before reading this AP story, I had no idea how dedicated Keir Dullea fans truly are!

No! [James Earl Jones voice on] This is CNN [/Vader]:

But instead of the split screen or window TV viewers might typically see during live remote interviews, the Obama spokesperson will be projected as a three-dimensional hologram, making it appear as if he or she is in the Manhattan studio with Blitzer. The network plans to conduct similar holographic interviews with representatives from the McCain campaign in Phoenix.

Mark Hemingway adds, "I can only hope one of the spokesman takes to opportunity to mock this ridiculous gimmick by uttering the phrase, 'Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope!'"

I'll stick with my virtual sets--at least until Adobe CS27 builds holographic technology into After Effects.

Layers and layers of fact checkers can't be wrong! Greg Packer: the man, the myth, the legend is back--and in the New York Times no less.

Radical chic rocks the vote! In Chicago, noted academic Bill Ayers and renowned UFO-ologist Louis Farrakhan are both seen waiting to vote at Shoesmith Elementary School.

And gosh, I'm sure every Philadelphia resident feels infinitely safer when he sees a "Black Panther poll watcher guarding the door to the polling station with a nightstick."

(Wonder who they're voting for?)

Meanwhile, just to remind you that it is indeed Philadelphia:

GOP Election Board members have been tossed out of polling stations in at least half a dozen polling stations in Philadelphia because of their party status. A Pennsylvania judge previously ruled that court-appointed poll watchers could be NOT removed from their boards by an on-site election judge, but that is exactly what is happening, according to sources on the ground.

I'm not sure if W.C. Fields would still rather be in today's Philadelphia, but they've certainly manged to transform voting into a comedic farce.

Mark Hemingway goes from the inner mind of Joe Biden to...beyond the infinite:

Only Joe Biden could make a gaffe in the act of addressing his gaffes. It's just a matter of time before he gets stuck in a recursive infinite gaffe loop, where every subsequent gaffe is an attempt to undo the previous one. This should put the conventional pundits at a total loss, and eventually CNN will be forced to offer a TV contract to an M.I.T. mathematics and logic professor who has done pioneering work expounding upon Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem as it relates to Eubulides' liar paradox, since he's the only one who comes close to offering a cogent explanation for why Biden is still talking.

You know know what this means, right? If Joe wins tomorrow, it's only a matter of time before some mad Photoshop wiz creates--shudder--The Biden Recursion!

Found via Maggie's Farm, watching this Onion parody video on how Top Research Scientists clone and harvest Disney's annual crop of new teenage stars, I'm pretty convinced that this how Pajamas Laboratories™ will be creating the next generation of bloggers:

(And you thought Uncle Walt going into cryogenic suspension was something...)

Just to follow-up on the Springsteen post below, nowadays, the only time I read about Bruce touring is every four years during a presidential campaign, when he hits the road as a well-paid (at least from the gate receipts) adjunct of the DNC. To borrow from the vernacular of The Boss's early '70s glory days (to coin a phrase), has any musician become more Establishment than Springsteen?

Well, there are a few who come close--and what they say about themselves illustrates the duality of corporate rock perfectly. As Diana West wrote in The Death of the Grown-Up last year:

When U2's Bono promises Grammy night fans "to keep f----ing up the mainstream," as critic Mark Steyn has noted, Bono fails to see--or admit--that he is the mainstream, a bonanza to corporate stockholders and well fit to perform at the official, ribbon-cutting opening of a presidential library in Little Rock.

I recently came across a similar moment in Wikipedia's profile of Billy Joel. (No, I don't know how I ended up there, either, but pop culture ephemera is what Wikipedia does best):

On March 10, 2008, Joel inducted his friend John Mellencamp into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony that took place at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. During his induction speech for Mellencamp, Joel said:

"Don't let this club membership change you, John. Stay ornery, stay mean. We need you to be pissed off, and restless, because no matter what they tell us - we know, this country is going to hell in a handcart. This country's been hijacked. You know it and I know it. People are worried. People are scared, and people are angry. People need to hear a voice like yours that's out there to echo the discontent that's out there in the heartland. They need to hear stories about it. [Audience applauds] They need to hear stories about frustration, alienation and desperation. They need to know that somewhere out there somebody feels the way that they do, in the small towns and in the big cities. They need to hear it. And it doesn't matter if they hear it on a jukebox, in the local gin mill, or in a goddamn truck commercial, because they ain't gonna hear it on the radio anymore. They don't care how they hear it, as long as they hear it good and loud and clear the way you've always been saying it all along. You're right, John, this is still our country and we'll always be victims of powerful people."

But of course: no matter how many TV commercials, supermarket Muzak systems or football stadium loudspeakers play your music, no matter how many millions of albums you've sold or millions you've earned, "You're right, John, this is still our country and we'll always be victims of powerful people."

That's right! Stick it to the man--even if he's yourself!

Power Line goes "Inside the mind of an 'Obamacon'"--who all but says, "As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow's Jib."

Related: I'm not at all sure if I want to take her up on her invitation, but Noemie Emery asks us to "Meet the Fastidiocons"--whose model of the perfect conservative Republican, as Emery notes, is apparently Merkin Muffley himself, Adlai Stevenson.

A Daily Kossite takes Obama's trip to Berlin very much the wrong way.

As Tom Blumer writes in Newsbusters, put down all beverages before reading this quote from Al Neuharth, extracted from his column in today's edition of USA Today:

In the olden days, some newspapers actually were backed or funded by political parties. Not only did most endorse candidates, but news coverage often was slanted or opinionated.

Now most newspapers try to be fair and objective in news columns.

OK, to be fair, if you define "the olden days" to mean the era before the national radio networks, that's reasonable--and the era that followed, which was centered around a unified mass media, served the American public reasonably well until about 1968. But Victor Davis Hanson writes today, as I noted in an earlier post today, that era was shattered by the rise of the World Wide Web and replaced with a hyperpartisan advocacy media--which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long consumers know that that's what their getting, and not a continued feint towards objectivity.

An increasing number of journalists understand that. But to borrow from an earlier post, there are those stragglers, such as Neuharth, whom every year sound more and more like the mythological Japanese soldier discovered on a desert island years after World War II ended, who doesn't realize the war's over, and how it concluded.

Marvel Comics and Mark Steyn's America Alone thesis on demographic decline team up for all of the two-fisted, one-handed imaginary action you can handle!

A Japanese man has enlisted hundreds of people in a campaign to allow marriages between humans and cartoon characters, saying he feels more at ease in the "two-dimensional world".

Comic books are immensely popular in Japan, with some fictional characters becoming celebrities or even sex symbols.

Marriage is meanwhile on the decline as many young Japanese find it difficult to find life partners.

Taichi Takashita launched an online petition aiming for one million signatures to present to the government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters.

Within a week he has gathered more than 1000 signatures through.

"I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world," he wrote.

"However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?"

Sounds like somebody's due for a nice long rest in Arkham Asylum.

Besides--there's a larger marital issue which clearly Mr. Takashita hasn't considered. Since it's reasonable to assume that the most popular female cartoon characters would have thousands--nay, millions of male suitors, why, that's bigamy!

As a connoisseur of fine conservative satire, I must say, I do rather like the cut of this "Iowahawk" fellow's jib:

When my late father T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI founded the iconoclastic conservative journal National Topsider in 1948, he famously declared that "Now is the time for all good conservative helmsmen to hoist the mizzen, pour the cocktails, and steer this damned schooner hard starboard." In the 60 years since he first uttered it after one-too-many Cosmopolitans at one of Pamela Harriman's notorious foreign policy black tie balls, father's pithy bon mot has served as a rallying cry for conservatives from Greenwich to Chevy Chase. Today, I say it's time for we conservatives to once again grab the rigging and set sail with the flotilla of the true conservative in this race: Barack Obama.

Trust me, I haven't taken this tack lightly. No Van Voorhees has supported an avowed socialist since great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpapa Cragmont Van Voorhees lent Peter Minuet $24 and a sack of wampum to swing a subprime mortgage on Manhattan Island. Old dad himself often recounted how, as a lad, he would command the family chauffeur Carleton to drive the Duesenberg down to the Times Square Trans-Lux so he could hiss Roosevelt. But I've taken a good measure of this Obama fellow, and I must say I like the cut of the man's jib.

How can I say this, you ask? One look at this Obama chap is all the answer you need. Suave, tanned, unflappable, Harvard connections; it's obvious that here is a man to the conservative manor born. One imagines him at the helm of the Ship of State, basked in the sunlight diffusing through the seaspray over the bow, like some beautiful rugged Othello from a rapturous Ralph Lauren catalog, calmly issuing instructions to the deck crew in that magnificent mellifluous baritone of his. It's that easy-going, almost effortless grace that has all the A-list conservatives like David Frum and Kathleen Parker whispering Reaganesque in hushed tones. Even Peggy Noonan -- the Grand Dame of Gipperism -- has succumbed to Obama's undeniable conservative charms. Just last month I listened to her wax poetic about the Adonis of Chicago between chukkers at the Newport Club polo tournament final. "Why Peggy, you old dowager," I quipped, "I believe you just had an orgasm."

Do I even need to add the "read the whole thing" encomium here?

Biggest celebrity in the world already known for his faux-presidential seal and other self-reverential campaign graphics produces infomercial on mock-White House set. Chris Matthews' take? "It was romance. It was realism."

More human than human is our motto. But like another product of the Tyrell Corporation, does Obama see unicorns when he dreams?

Check out this howler in a piece in CQ Politics titled, "What McCain Defectors See in Obama":

The defectors are a mixed lot, but all represent some brand of recognizably conservative thought. Some like Doug Kmiec, Andrew Sullivan, and Ken Adelman are probably conservatives by anyone's definition, while others are cut partly from an older mold. They bear some resemblance to the moderate Republicanism of the Rockefeller era, but the issues of their time are not the same.

Sullivan is as conservative these days as much as John Kerry was "the right man -- and the conservative choice -- for a difficult and perilous time."

(H/T: Orrin Judd, whose link to Powers' essay is titled, "Inherit The Windbags.")

"Joe Biden's RAVE Act of 2002 was a terrible blow against dance-generated alternative energy."

Mary Mapes, the woman who brought you RatherGate, wrote yesterday at the Huffington Post:

Americans aren't responding to the old plays -- the fake fears, the faux outrage, the conservatives who yell "Communist" at the news cameras, the pompous right-wing bloggers who once held such sway. I know all too well how scary and effective these old tactics were in 2004. Today, they are toothless. Ha, ha. Nothing makes me happier than seeing once swaggering players like Powerline, Free Republic and Little Green Footballs forced onto the sidelines, left to limply watch this campaign pass by like a parade in which they play no meaningful part. They just don't matter anymore.

Mapes' post is titled, "The Monster is Dying"--so "conservatives who yell 'Communist' at the news cameras" are declasse, but attacking conservatives as a monolithic "monster" on a Weblog is reasoned nuance journalism. Charles Krauthammer, call your office!

But behind each of those "monsters" was at least one person who in one form another said, "I don't know how many people will actually listen, but why shouldn't my voice be heard as well?" (Just as the founder of the Huffington Post presumably said as well at some point.) Much like a certain Ohio tradesman with entrepreneurial dreams who is now called "the now infamous Joe the plumber," on over 500 Webpages. Or as another journalist with the same initials as Mary Mapes wrote today:

So much for the Standing Up for the Little Man, so much for Speaking Truth to Power, so much for Comforting the Afflicting and Afflicting the Comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

And calling one half of the Blogosphere "toothless" because their presidential candidate isn't an effective purveyor of the same message as they are seems awfully disingenuous to the other side--I don't think the bloggers at, say, the Daily Kos would take kindly at being called, by extension, toothless in 2004 because John Kerry was such a feckless candidate. It also fails to take into consideration that pundits supporting the out-of-party are able to go on the rhetorical offense, something that the right-hand of the Blogosphere will likely have ample opportunity to do so over the next four years.

But if indeed "The Monster is Dying", what a run! In September of 2005, a year after RatherGate broke, Mapes admitted that she had never heard of any of the blogs that she quotes above, even as she was a working TV producer at a corporation which billed itself at the time as "America's Most Watched Network", and hence, presumably, had her pulse on the nation's political scene:

Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Web sites I had never heard of before: Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Power Line. They were hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservative sites loaded with vitriol about Dan Rather and CBS. Our work was being compared to that of Jayson Blair, the discredited New York Times reporter who had fabricated and plagiarized stories.

And accurately so, of course.

But hey, from cat food eating pajama-wearing navel gazers to a journalistic "monster" in the space of seven years after 9/11 is a pretty amazing growth cycle--and something tells me that the starboard side of the Blogosphere isn't going away anytime soon, no matter how much Mary wishes it were so, and no matter what the outcome on November 4th.

Forget the Black Panthers, hobnobbing with High Society on Park Avenue, happily dining on "asparagus tips in mayonnaise dabs, and meatballs petites au Coq Hardi". Bill Ayers is the workingman's unrepentant former domestic terrorist, and as such has earned longest of long shot third party presidential candidate Dave Burge's coveted support.

(Sirhan Sirhan could not be reached for comment.)

Echoing the slogan of the 1930s National Recovery Administration, Mickey Kaus writes that even "Baskin-Robbins is doing its part" to get their man elected.

The NRA (no relation to this NRA) gave corporations that "did their part" a blue eagle logo to display--and woe betide those who didn't cooperate. Presumably, Baskin-Robbins is hoping to be rewarded with the official "Patriot Employer" symbol for their more recent efforts.

As Nicole Gelinas noted back in April, when New York's Governor David Paterson was inaugurated, he heard from a number of his old friends, now living out of state:

Paterson cited a number of personal friends, all former New Yorkers, who have contacted him from out of state since his ascent to the governorship. "A friend from primary school, Randy San Antonio, told me he moved to Dallas 20 years ago," Paterson began. "Another friend, Randy Watts, had moved to Reno. A friend from Syracuse, Marvin Lee Simons, said he's working in Lower Manhattan. I said we should get together . . . and he said, 'Well, I don't live in New York. I live in western Pennsylvania.' Jeff and Stacey Stackhouse wanted to start a business on Long Island. They moved two years ago--they're trying to start their business in Charlotte, North Carolina. They couldn't pay the taxes here."

Gov. Paterson's chief of staff has his own idiosyncratic, remarkably psychosomatic solution to the issue--a severe case of "non-filer syndrome."

(John Derbyshire writes about it here, just before being overcome with a terrible case of "non-blogger syndrome.")

Betsy Newmark stumbles onto Robert Conquest's Third Law of Politics.

(Not to be confused with Malcolm Muggeridge's Law, which is always in operation where Joe is concerned.)

Update: Welcome readers of Charlie Martin's Explorations blog.

It will be curious to see how this stunt goes over with, as Ed Morrissey has dubbed them, the Tanning Bed Media:

The best-funded political campaign in American history says news organizations will have to pay--in some cases almost $2,000 each--if they want to cover Barack Obama's election-night celebration in Chicago.

As Ed writes, "Don't expect too much sympathy from us for the Tanning Bed Media. The only reason why Obama's in a position to demand tithes from the worshiping media is because journalists and editors didn't do their jobs in the first place."

Somebody has been watching too much NBC.

Well, hopefully not this Joe.

As Jennifer Rubin writes, "On the very same day he told us that Colin Powell should have ended all questions about Barack Obama's national security bona fides, Joe Biden comes along to tell us precisely why we should be scared of Obama as commander-in-chief:"

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Jennifer adds:

Well, golly, if Obama is so untested that we will have a series of international crises -- at the very time we are in a financial meltdown -- which will make the Cuban Missille Crisis look like a walk in the park, shouldn't we vote for the other guy who will keep all the miscreants in their place?

Hey, it's 3:00 am...

Update: I'm not this Ed, either. Although I didn't think he did too bad a job when he was a mayor of a surprisingly bitter and clinging small town in Pennsylvania.

Kevin D. Williamson spots "An Unbelievable Headline from Slate":

"Believing in vote fraud may be dangerous to a democracy's health."

Still though, I'm glad to see Winston Smith is finally off IngSoc's vast government payroll and happily writing in the private sector.

Incidentally, back in 2002, Glenn Reynolds suggested one simple method of reducing voter fraud:

The fact is, if you could come up with a new technology as simple and resistant to fraud as the paper ballot, people would be pretty impressed. So why do we use machines?

Perhaps in part for the same reason that some people used to prefer canned vegetables to fresh ones: "it's more modern!"

But since then, as any trip to the supermarket will demonstrate, the left have moved headlong into organic vegetables and away from the more modern canned variety.

Couldn't paper ballots be sold to the left along similar lines? Vote the organic way--vote paper!

Read More »

This just in to the Tinseltown trade paper: "Republicans in biz feel stifled, bullied."

Who knew?

"George this is of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from..."

Back in April, Obama discussed Reverend Wright with Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: Did you talk to reverend Wright recently about his decision to make a series of public appearances at this particular point?

OBAMA: You know, I didn't talk to him about that. I had talked to him after all this had happened, partly because I regretted -- I always regret people who are civilians, essentially, being dragged into these political fights.

And I expressed to him -- I said, "Look, we have very strong differences. I do not agree with the comments that you made. On the other hand, I regret that you have drawn so much attention."

Obama talking about his wife, back in July:

And I've said this before: I would never have my campaign engage in a concerted effort to make Cindy McCain an issue, and I would not expect the Democratic National Committee or people who were allied with me to do it. Because essentially, spouses are civilians. They didn't sign up for this. They're supporting their spouse.

I guess once you move beyond the inner circle, the definition of "civilian" becomes slightly hazier.

So is this what 'Til Tuesday were singing about back in the halcyon days of MTV?

Til Tuesday - Love In A Vacuum
by jpdc11

(Via Allah, who gives the news its appropriate sobriquet.)

You know that proverbial tank that the media are supposed to be in? Snapped Shot has your snapshot of exactly what it looks like.

Our dedicated team of fact checkers is hard at work verifying the accuracy of the following statement from one of the two major candidates running for the White House this year:

"I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls," Obama told me. "If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me, right? Because the way I'm portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?

Fact check: Lie. Obama does not own a Volvo.

Read More »

Everything old is new again! When I was poking through the Truveo video search engine to find B-Roll material for my "Two-Minute Warning" October Surprise edition of Silicon Graffiti a couple of weeks ago, I came across Mary Katharine Ham's first HamNation video from the fall of 2006, in which she outlines the Mark Foley scandal:

Just overdub Mahoney for Foley, change the R to a D, and presto, brand-new video--or same old scandal. In any case, recycling is always a good thing, right?

Update: Shocker! "TV Newsers Who Fawned Over Foley Sex Scandal Ignore Mahoney."

A few years ago, when Jonah Goldberg pointed out "the generalized ignorance or silence of mainstream liberals about their own intellectual history", he wasn't kidding!

Breaking financial news just in from The New York Daily News: "Prostitution has not suffered drop-off despite economic meltdown."

But is the world's oldest profession considered a leading or lagging economic indicator?

Oliver Stone, borrowing a few tabs of Jim Morrison's acid:

"I think in this present political state, the real George W. Bush might not approve of this movie," says Stone with a wry grin. "But this movie tries to understand George W. Bush -- the good, the bad and the ugly.

"I tried to be