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 fair and balanced and compassionate," Stone adds. "I don't take sides. I don't take political sides. I'm a dramatist, and this is the movie I've made."

Yes--imagine the movies that Oliver Stone might have produced had he truly been a polemicist!

(As this email to Glenn Reynolds highlights, Hollywood rounding out the Bush years with yet another in an eight year series of attacks on the man--a few of which actively called for his, or a convenient surrogate's assassination--guarantees no honeymoon for Obama if he is elected in November.)

Related: "Democrats and Republicans have become two solitudes, and so, the result of the election will be ugly, no matter which side wins."

Mike Huckabee and blogger Frank Martin each question the timing of the markets' current meltdown.

Oracle's Larry Ellison has the right business mindset for a time like this, and as far as conspiracy theories, for the moment, I agree with one of Frank's commenters, who quotes one of Charles Krauthammer's aphorisms:

Krauthammer's razor (with apologies to Occam): In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.

I agree--but I also reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks at a later date, once everything shakes out, as it inevitably will.

I'll never look at Annette Bening's nude scenes in The Grifters the same way again...

Update: Rand Simberg posits:

"On the other hand, it's probably a lot easier to make Annette Bening look like Helen Thomas than vicey versy.

I'd say that's an staggeringly safe assumption.

When did the Manolo become the photo editor at the Associated Press?

Annie Jacobsen writes that if the Muslim world's vice squads consider Barbie to be "Jewish", wait 'til they find out the origins of their favorite cartoon and movie superheros:

When Iranian toy seller Masoumeh Rahimi thinks of Barbie and Ken dolls, she thinks of heavy artillery -- only worse. "I think every Barbie doll is more harmful than an American missile," Ms. Rahmi told the BBC back in 2002. In April 2008, Iran's top prosecutor and religious cleric, Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi, upped the anti-Barbie campaign by calling for a ban on the sale of all Barbie dolls from the country. "Barbie is an emissary of nudity and promotes moral corruption," wrote the hardliner newspaper Kahyan.

* * *

The anti-Semitic tirade came after the Mutaween learned that Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, was Jewish -- and that the American businesswoman, entrepreneur, and U.S. Business Hall of Famer had named the dolls after her two Jewish children, Barbie and Ken Handler.

But it appears not all religious clerics are doing their homework about which Jew created what incredibly popular icon. Last summer, Hassan Nasrallah -- the leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah -- appeared proudly depicted as Superman in the Palestinian daily newspaper Al Ayyam. In the cartoon, Nasrallah was pictured pulling back his religious robes, a la Clark Kent, to reveal a Superman suit underneath. Superman is Lebanon's most popular superhero. Many teenagers believe him to be Lebanese because of his dark, swarthy looks. But if Barbie is "Jewish," so is Superman; he was created by two Jews named Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, in 1932.

The same goes for just about every other "Jewish" superhero, many of whom are growing increasingly popular throughout the same countries in the Middle East. This summer, audiences from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) flocked to see movies about Batman, Iron Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men -- all as "Jewish" as Barbie and Superman are. Each of these superheroes was created by a Jewish-American comic book writer.

All I can add (at least while still in my secret identity as a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan new media firm) is, "Up, Up, And Oy Vey!"

Viral marketing at its finest!

(Especially since I heard about the site via an email from its author, who says that his next project might be "Measles for McCain"--though that could be a bit of a strain...)

Hey, 57 states, 40 days 'til new president's sworn in, FDR on TV in '29--forget it, they're rolling. (Even if the teleprompter isn't.)

Hey, forget FDR's 1929 fireside video chats in stereophonic Bidenvision! Independent third party presidential candidate Dave Burge--the Maverick's Maverick--explains the basics of the credit bailout to you in this exclusive man-in-the-TGIFriday debate.

It's sort of like the famous Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate of 1959, but combined with a heaping helping of all-you-can-eat nachos and gallons of half-priced happy-hour Margaritas in genuine polystyrene cocktail glasses.

Newsbusters' Brent Baker writes, "Couric Scolds McCain for Palin's 'Great Depression' Scare -- Which Couric Proposed to Palin."

And meanwhile, Joe Biden's Pangea of gaffes this week continues to pay dividends--as blogger "Right Wing Professor" noted, Katie never batted an eye during Joe Biden's wacky Depression-era-flashback on Monday.

Sky News: "Singer Bette Midler Quits Touring To Help Save The Planet."

Glad to see that at least one celebrity has taken my advice after Al Gore's Live Earth concert last year:

I wouldn't have as much of a problem with Live Earth if it really were The Last Rock Concert by those who participated in it. It takes an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe that the planet's ecosphere is soon to be doomed, but the solution is a blowout concert in two different football stadiums.

As Daltry told the The Sun, "I can't believe it. Let's burn even more fuel". Each concert will require massive transportation efforts involving jet planes and tractor-trailers, hundreds of thousands of watts of electricity to power the lighting and sound gear, and the deforestation required to print at least couple of hundred thousand souvenir programs (and many more no doubt, for sale afterwards). And heck, just think of all of the methane emissions coming from the stadiums' rest rooms, where, no matter how much the audience promises, the Sheryl Crow Rule is incredibly difficult to enforce.

But in the minds of its participants, a cause like Live Earth is worth it. But a generic, everyday, run of the mill concert shouldn't be. So go out with a bang, rock stars--and then, don't be hypocritical puritans; take the sort of pledge that even the Goracle won't.

More news regarding energy and an even bigger celebrity, here.

As Kathryn Jean Lopez writes, this election wouldn't be the same without Joe Biden. In addition to the aforementioned Barack-Olian Cluster-Gaffe--which actually snowballed to true classic proportions after Joe's appearance on CBS last night, this was Joe's other moment of greatness from his interview with Katie Couric, transcribed by the Politico's Ben Smith:

Joe Biden's denunciation of his own campaign's ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

Actually, you'd probably be wondering what happened to Felix, but still: If Sarah Palin had said this, CBSNBCABCCNNMSNBC would be running it on a never-ending loop today.

Update: "At any rate, it looks like Biden learned his history from Faber College." Hey--knowledge is good.

More: "What's funnier is that Katie Couric didn't catch it."

I think this might be the first presidential campaign gaffe equivalent of a music mash-up, as multiple unforced errors by both a presidential and vice-presidential nominee get chopped down into a fine, fine puree by the patented Obama campaign's Super Gaffe-O-Matic '76 blending machine. First up, via InstaPundit, here's Joe Biden on the 6:30 PM CBS News, complete with video:

Barack Obama's running mate says a campaign ad that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate was "terrible" and would not have been done had he known about it.

Obama, McCain's Democratic rival, launched the ad earlier this month, part of an aggressive push to slow McCain's rise in the polls after he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. It included unflattering footage of Sen. McCain at a hearing in the early '80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik's Cube.

"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class," the ad says.

Asked about the negative tone of the campaign, and this ad in particular, during an interview broadcast Monday by the "CBS Evening News," Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said he disapproved of it.

"I thought that was terrible, by the way," Biden said.

Asked why it was done, he said: "I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we'd have never done it."

And here's Biden a few hours later:

I was asked about an ad I'd never seen, reacting merely to press reports. As I said right then, I knew there was nothing intentionally personal in the criticism of Senator McCain's views which look backwards not forwards and are out of touch with the new economic challenges we face today. Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Senator McCain's ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize, especially when they continue to distort Barack's votes on an issue as personal as keeping kids safe from sexual predators.

The Obama camp has been thugishly issuing threats on a surprisingly routine basis to metaphorically break the knees of his critics on the right, so presumably, his veep feels equally threatened to stay in line, lest he face a painful Luigi Vercotti-style end to his nomination. (Which "notorious conservative blogger" Glenn Reynolds has been not predicting right from the start!)

Or perhaps the Obama campaign's PR department just threw caution to the wind and got a quick press release out there, safe in the assumption that Biden likely can't remember what the heck comes out of his perpetual motion machine of a mouth from one moment to the next.

Related: Al Qaeda's dreaded Weather Weapon!

Otherwise, the management of Ed Driscoll.com, Newsbusters, Pajamas Media, and its affiliates will not be held responsible for the survival of your computer's monitor when you read the following sentence by Frank Rich:

In our news culture, [Joy] Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow.

Not that last year's Murrow is currently living up to that rep himself, of course.

Tim Blair writes that it's a "Battle of the Openings", as "The best opening paragraph is challenged by the best opening sentence."

Joel Stein in the L.A. Times in January of 2006:

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. . . . But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

Today in the Boston Globe, Steve Almond writes, "I have an ugly confession to make: I don't support the troops - at least not unconditionally":

PERHAPS the most insidious byproduct of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a reflexive sanctification of the military. To put this in bumper stickerese: Support the Troops.

Well, I have an ugly confession to make: I don't support the troops - at least not unconditionally. When somebody tells me they serve in the military, my first impulse isn't to say, "Thank you for your service!" like those insufferable chickenhawks on talk radio.

My first impulse is to say, "I'm sorry to hear that." Because I am. I'm sorry to know that the person I'm talking to might someday be maimed or killed on the job, or might someday kill someone else. Or refuel a plane that drops bombs on buildings.

I can't see how anyone who calls himself or herself Christian - or human, for that matter - wouldn't be sorry.

The fact that we have an army, that we need an army, is inherently tragic. It's an admission that our species is still ruled by fear and aggression.

As Jeanne Kirkpatrick once said:

Reflecting at a 2002 conference on her early career as a socialist, she said it had been "relatively short." As she read the works of various socialists, she said, "I came to the conclusion that almost all of them, including my grandfather, were engaged in an effort to change human nature. The more I thought about it, the more I thought this was not likely to be a successful effort."

"Human nature has no history", but then neither does much of the left. I'd call it a draw, but that might be using language that's too militaristic for some.

Related: The above "Human nature has no history" quote comes from Professor Glenn Loury, whom you can see discussing Obama and feminism in this new Bloggingheads TV interview.

"Who knew that back in the late 1990s, the folks at Free Republic were helping collect material for Obama supporters a decade later..."

Found via Hugh Hewitt, John H. Taylor Spots Salon's Gary Kamiya allowing his Palin Derangement Syndome to lead him into an astonishing bit of hyperbole [After the Jill Greenberg meltdown, why is that astonishing?--Ed Good point]:

If Palin catapults McCain to victory, it will be revealed to be the most powerful and enduring force in American politics. And that fact will raise serious questions about the viability of American democracy itself...

As opposed to a tyro Senator who has yet to complete his first term in office and unlike Palin has zero executive experience? (Oh wait, other than running his campaign. Harold Stassen and Lyndon Larouche, eat your hearts out!)

As Ed Morrissey writes:

Yet another stupid Palin smear arises today, on the front page of the Washington Post, no less. Anne Kornblut writes that Sarah Palin linked 9/11 to Saddam Hussein in telling troops departing to Iraq that they would be fighting the same people who attacked America. Perhaps the Washington Post hasn't yet realized it, but Saddam and his regime have long since been dispatched to history:

Hey, it was in all the papers--even the Post!

Decades ago, Orson Welles once called Citizen Kane and its use of "Rosebud" as a framing mechanism an example of "Dollar Book Freud". Bracing for the onslaught of Hurricane Sarah, Deepak Chopra channels some Dollar Book Jung, and nests a seriously clunky PC parenthetical along the way.

But what would Freud and Jung have made of this incredible admission from Smokey Joe Biden?

You make the call! Nathan Goulding posts photos from both parties' conventions. Near the top of the album is a photo with this caption:

MSNBC's booth right next to Al Jazeera's. Think RNC planners did this intentionally?

That whole media row on the west side of the Xcel Energy City was a wretched hive of old media infamy. While ideologically the networks housed in those booths moved from establishment liberal to very far left, in terms of skybox placement, the lineup ran from right to left as follows:

• CNN, Saddam Hussein's favorite shills.
• CBS, home of Ra^therGate.
• Channel 9 Action News--OK, we'll let them slide.
• And then Al Jazeera and MSNBC.

As I joked to Roger Simon on the day before the convention began and we first saw the lineup in the convention hall (and somewhat presciently in retrospect), if Keith Olbermann gets the boot mid-convention, he can simply walk next door and feel right at home. Hey, good enough for David Frost, good enough for Keith!

While the new McCain ad highlighting yesterday's gaffe from Obama is pretty good, and I commend the speed with which it was crafted and uploaded to YouTube, the late-August video from Team McCain (embedded above) is just devastating. It's crafted with lurid psychedelic colors, filled with ancient 1960s peace symbols, and linking Obama with Boy George, David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, the late drag queen Divine, 1970s Greenwich Village cult singer Klaus Nomi, and other international musicians and celebrities. Really potent raw red meat for conservatives. Though I imagine the left might not be too sanguine with some of th....

...Oh wait, it's not from McCain? It's a pro-Obama message? Who can tell these days?!

While PDS may be running rampant in the US, it takes Saudi Arabia to really push it to its ironic zenith:

Here's an irony to start your Iftar meal tonight: Saudi Arabia, where a woman must have permission from a male relative or her husband before traveling, will nevertheless run a Gloria Steinem column in its main English-language daily about the sufferings of American women (and their impending doom if Sarah Palin makes it to the White House).

But then, feminism has stopped at the American border since 9/11/01--and sometimes not even there.

The International Herald Tribune reports that "For now, the rule is simple: Hug your running mate, kiss your wife":

When Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, came out on stage to congratulate his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, after her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last week, he gave her a hug, not a handshake. Palin got another hug at a rally here outside Kansas City on Monday.

The same McCain-Palin embrace -- businesslike, to the point -- was on display at a rally over the weekend in Colorado Springs, but this time McCain's wife, Cindy, was on stage. Moving quickly after his clasp of his running mate, John McCain took a short side-step and planted a peck on his wife's cheek.

It has been nearly a quarter century since Walter Mondale almost never touched Geraldine Ferraro in public when they shared the Democratic presidential ticket in 1984, and it is safe to say that times have changed. Back then, Mondale had a strict "hands off" policy and did not even put his palm on Ferraro's back when the two stood side-by-side and waved with uplifted arms.

Anything more, and "people were afraid that it would look like, 'Oh, my God, they're dating,' " Ferraro recalled in a brief telephone interview on Monday, of what now seems like a political Victorian age.

A healthy distance between running mates is usually a good thing. Glad to see that McCain and Palin have learned from the costly mistakes made in 2004.

It's the Jungian thing, sir! Tim Blair has your electoral synchronicity of the day.

Third party candidate Dave Burge is rapidly closing that 50-point gap between himself and the two front-runners in the 2008 presidential election. And he's not at all happy with the election's newest sensation and her hateful rhetoric and subliminal class warfare:

When America's Communities Need Organizing, America's Community Organizers Will Be There to Organize Them

Iowahawk: now more than ever, it's the audacity of tautology!

Watch this short video; your next episode will then write itself in about five minutes.

(Need I even mention how the above clip fits perfectly into these categories?)

Update: "I so wanted the clip to end with Sarahcuda firing on a moose that wandered into their drum circle."

Hey, she only shoots things that needed killin'...

The New York Times, May 3rd, 2007: "Oprah Endorses Obama".

ABC News, today: "Is Oprah Biased? Host Won't Interview Palin".

Related: "While it is true that only Oprah suffers from a bad business decision it is
enlightening that the very crowd pushing for reinstatement of the "fairness
doctrine" fail to see the irony."

Nuance: Andrea Mitchell has no idea what the ideology of anyone working in NBC might be, but can spot a Republican "Katharine Harris type" from miles away. She's afraid that the botched New Yorker Obama parody was actually "too sophisticated to actually be perceived the way it is intended" by the booboisies out there in Middle America. And then there was this attempt at cultural anthropology gone awry:

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell issued an on-air apology Monday following a remark last week in which she referred to an area of southwestern Virginia as "redneck, sort of bordering-on-Appalachia country."

Which is why she's probably filing a request for hazardous duty pay from NBC after this particular field assignment.

Thank God that ABC lets its hosts of The View blog. Back in 2006, there was the sophisticated and nuanced prose stylings of Rosie O'Donnell, and successor Whoopi Goldberg is proudly upholding the same commitment to high-quality journalism that has made Big Media what it is today. In both cases, the 21st century medium of the Blogosphere allows them to share with us insights into their personalities--and dare I say it--views, that simply cannot be boxed into the tubercular blue small screen of television alone.

Such as the fact that Whoopi Goldberg doesn't know the difference between "succeed" and "secede", and sees in Sarah Palin, a conservative tax-cutting pro-life candidate with libertarian leanings, the return of a hard left racially driven socialist agenda governmental leviathan bent on euthanasia and ethnic cleansing.

Or as Tim Graham puts it, "Whoopi Goldberg: Palin Sounds Pro-Nazi, Wants to 'Succeed' From U.S."

(And speaking of secession--I guess this means that the left has finally come to their senses on the Akaka bill, whose author has said could eventually lead to "outright independence" for Hawaii, and is supported by Barack Obama.)

John Hinderaker of Power Line spots, as he puts it, "this pathetic effort" by Barack Obama to defend his lack of executive experience:

Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We've got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years.

Still though, bonus points for not calling her "sweetie."

As John writes:

Apparently Obama hadn't heard about Palin being Governor of the State of Alaska, which has a budget in excess of $11 billion annually and more than 24,000 employees. Also, on Obama's theory, the act of running for President gives you the experience you need to qualify to be President. That's convenient for a guy who has accomplished so little in his career in public life.

Before his death at age 93 in 2001, Harold Stassen must have racked up more executive experience than anyone!

Update: Ben Smith of the Politico writes:

The McCain campaign, happy to talk about Obama's experience, calls his using his campaign as an example "desperate circular logic" and pointing to Palin's tenure as governor.

As Orrin Judd writes, "Yes Barry, they're laughing at you."

During the day, as we watched the final preparations being applied to the PJTV booth before it could go live yesterday evening, Jennifer Rubin, the three Power Liners and I kicked around how the ever-expanding Palin family story was playing on Monday. As I quipped, somebody should write a Mark Steyn-style demographic angle to the story.

And with 113 million Weblogs floating around out there, not surprisingly, at least one blogger did just that. Glenn Reynolds calls this the "Best Spin Yet."

Hey, it's the demography, stupid!

I'd quote from this story by Dave Barry on the big, big story of the Democratic Convention--the fight against bird porn, and a cameo from Daryl Hannah, but I'd wind up excerpting the whole thing in an effort to lay out the conceptional groundwork of this fast breaking story. Which, like Watergate 35 years ago, required the efforts of another journalist to bring the story to its complete fruition. In this case, Blogosphere favorite James Lileks, who makes a key guest appearance in Barry's article, and also has video of the anti-Bird Porn puritans in action, here.

The McCain Camp has issued a memo listing "Suggested Toga Styles" for those visitors tonight on a pilgrimage to the "Barackopolis."

But really, they're just helpfully trying to prevent the sort of wardrobe malfunction that seems to befall performing celebrities in football stadiums all too often these days.

There is no escape even from the aura of the penumbra of the echo of the Decade From Hell:

"Mackenzie Phillips has been busted at LAX for allegedly possessing heroin and cocaine."

Disco Stu's mood ring sure turned black over that news.

Back in the very, very early days of this site's existence, I wrote:

When Malcolm Muggeridge was the editor of the British satirical magazine Punch in the early 1960s, Khrushchev had announced he was going to tour England alongside its prime minister. Muggeridge wrote up a list of the silliest tour stops he could think of, and then put the article to bed, ready for publication. When the actual tour list was drawn up, he had to massively rewrite the article. At least half the tour stops in his satirical piece were actually on Khrushchev and the British PM's agenda!

Which is why Muggeridge's Law is: there is no way that a writer of fiction can compete with real life for its pure absurdity.

And even your humble narrator isn't immune. Yesterday, when I was interviewing Roger L. Simon about PJTV, he started talking about bias, and remarked that everyone's biased, which is true enough; it's human nature. "You have a bias, I have a bias, everyone has a bias" I think Roger said. I immediately quipped, "Keith Olbermann doesn't have a bias--he's straight down the middle!", trying to think the most obviously in-the-tank anchor on TV, who in the past, hasn't been afraid to at least tacitly admit it.

Naturally, I had just unwittingly crashed straight into the brick wall of satire known as Muggeridge's Law:

Regardless, [MSNBC President Phil Griffin] said he has faith in his convention anchors -- including Olbermann, a scourge of the right -- for both the final days in Denver and next week in St. Paul, Minn.

"Look, when Keith anchors, he plays it straight down the line," Griffin said. "This is our team. They've served us well. We love 'em, and we're going to be at the Republican convention, and it's going to be great. And I don't have any hesitation."

Straight down the line, straight down the middle. Objectivity all the way, dude!

(Is it just me, or is Griffin starting to sound like Howell Raines railing against the furies immediately after the Jayson Blair scandal exploded in his face? But hey, if this was the gang you had to play Kindergarten Cop with every day, you'd be feeling pretty tense, too.)

Fox's Shepard Smith seems to have discovered the crisp new Nacho Cheese-colored spray-on tan, which Doritos appears to be test-marketing at the Democratic convention. As James Lileks writes, "the last time I saw someone with that much makeup on he had green eyes and went by the name 'Data.'"

All hail Caesar Obama!

Update: There's always been definite gnostic feel to Obama; to combine memes from Glenn Reynolds and Nigel Tufnel (and really, who doesn't?) I blame...Da Druids. Meanwhile, Orrin Judd asks a reasonable follow-up question.

(Via Michelle Malkin, who has much more on the Temple on the Platte.)

It's Billy Beer for a new millennium as Obama beer hits the shelves!

Ace of Spades earlier today:

If you've talked to Hillary supporters, you know that they're the world's most recent and most enthusiastic converts to the Anti-Media Bias Party. It's almost funny how life-long Democrats are now sputtering angrily about media bias, the way we've been fuming for most of our lives. They know damn well the media propped up Obama while working to take down their girl.

Which is why Ed Rendell sounds much more like Brent Bozell in this Politico article:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was supposed to give "closing remarks" during this afternoon's Shorenstein Center-sponsored panel discussion with all three Sunday show moderators -- NBC's Tom Brokaw, ABC's George Stephanopoulous and CBS's Bob Schieffer -- but instead, he opened up a can of worms about bias in 2008 election coverage

"Ladies and gentleman, the coverage of Barack Obama was embarrassing," said Rendell, in the ballroom at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. "It was embarrassing."

Rendell, an ardent Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter during the primaries, now backs Obama in the general election. Brokaw and Rendell began debating campaign coverage, including the on-air comments by Lee Cowan, and when MSNBC came up, Rendell went after the cable network.

"MSNBC was the official network of the Obama campaign," Rendell said, who called their coverage "absolutely embarrassing."

Chris Matthews, Rendell said, "loses his impartiality when he talks about the Clintons."

Ed must be the last guy on the planet who can use the words "impartiality" and "Chris Matthews" in the same sentence and still keep a straight face.

Glenn Reynolds writes:

Anti-war protests in Denver, featuring Cindy Sheehan. Though at this late date, what war are they protesting, exactly? Iraq's in the wrap-up phase (even Obama says the Surge worked and, well, "mission accomplished"), even the lefties haven't been raising much complaint about Afghanistan, and nobody's talking about invading Iran or anything. If you want a real invasion over oil to protest, you could march against the Russian invasion of Georgia, but that's not happening. What's next -- protests against Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba?

No blood for Mojitos, maaan!

(Mmmm...Mojito....)

"Before a crowd of thousands gathered in front of the Old State Capitol, Mr. Obama said Mr. Biden was 'what many others pretend to be -- a statesman with sound judgment who doesn't have to hide behind bluster to keep America strong.'"

He doesn't?! As Orrin Judd asks, "Has the Unicorn Rider ever even met the man?"

Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt, not surprisingly, has lots of fun at the expense of Obama's veep. I won't give away the television character that Hugh compares Biden, except to say that as nutty as the character was, the actor who played him is a pretty level-headed guy in real life.

Hot Air has the Metaphor Of The Day: "Biden got the call from Obama during a root canal"!

All hail President Biden!

News you can use from Tim Blair:

If, on May 14, 1979*, you'd asked yourself, "How long must I wait until a cartoon cat uses the phrase 'terrified asexual forcemeat?'", the answer is 10,693 days.

* I think all of us were asking this question in 1979. Precise date selected at random.

And while such brilliant phrasing isn't a part of "one of the best opening paragraphs ever written", it'll do until the next one comes along.

Update: More meaty, beaty, big & bouncy fun from the cartoon kingdom:

Jonah Goldberg's recent National Review essay on Barack Obama's transnationalism was titled, "Hear Me, Earthlings!", and, nevermind its fluorescent pastel color scheme, I as look at the photos of the stage set of the Democrats' convention in Denver, I have to wonder...so what time does V'Ger make himself visible?

Or as Ace puts it, "Obama's Stage Stresses Democratic Planks of Unity, Hope, and Avante-Garde Lighting Concepts."

Words you rarely like to hear from a presidential candidate: "Beijing looks like a pretty good option."

In a devastating comparison, Maggie's Farm notes that Obama's gaffes have gotten so bad, he's beginning to make Bob Dylan sound sensible by comparison.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I increasingly find Obama to be like a late night infomercial host - slightly charming, slightly unctuous, factually meaningless. Ready for the Presidency? Don't be silly."

--Roger L. Simon, November 18th, 2007

"Obama Tests Waters With Late-Night Informercial"

--TV News, August 12th, 2008

A Mr. Allan Stewart Konigsberg once quipped:

I have never in my life had difficulty with the cops. I had difficulty with the cops, that's not...no actually I didn't have difficulty with the cops. I was once sitting home in my house, and a lot of cars pulled up around the house. They shined in searchlights, and I heard a voice over the loudspeaker say "We have your house surrounded. This is the New York public library" They wanted their books back, y'know, and the little librarian was lobbing grenades over the house.

--From Woody Allen - Standup Comic: 1964-1968.

Flash-forward forty years: "Wisconsin woman, 20, arrested for two overdue library volumes."

While her mug shot does bear somewhat of a certain vague aesthetic similarity to fellow Wisconsinite Miss A. Hall, the above guilty party is not from Chippewa Falls though, sadly enough.

As a man of the Great Indoors, air conditioning has been my life-long friend, one whose reputation I will fight long and hard to protect. But it's curious the partisan rancor it brings out in others: back in 1999, Jonah Goldberg quipped that it's responsible for Big Government:

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.

In Salon, on the other side of the political spectrum, Edward (no relation) McClelland writes, "I blame A/C for the decline of the labor movement and for decimating the Midwest's population. Mostly, I blame it for the election of George W. Bush."

And speaking of propeller-driven machines, Mayor Bloomberg spins back from the ledge, slowly:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is backing off his suggestion to put windmills on city bridges and rooftops after newspapers mocked the idea with photo illustrations of turbines on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.

"There are aesthetic considerations," Bloomberg said. "No. 2, I have absolutely no idea whether that makes any sense from a scientific, from a practical point of view."

Imagine the howls of derision from the media if a Republican--or at least one who wasn't temporarily one in name only solely for electoral expediency said that.

If "inexperienced" is code for racism, and if Ralph Lauren's Waspy-duds are racist, (which must make this a photo of the 21st century KKK in their bedsheets) then surely the headline of the article that RedState links to is as well.

The writers of Avenue Q didn't know the half of it: by the time November rolls around everything will be code for racism--if it isn't yet already.

Related: "Roasting Obama."

Ed Morrissey has a photo of the pass to Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field with its now infamous upside-down flag motif. I think it's a likely gaffe, not an intentional slur (perhaps a Kinsley-esque gaffe?), but it does immediately recall two other blasts from the Democratic past: the cover of John Kerry's The New Soldier cri de coeur from 1971, as Ed notes, and according to a passage in Steve Hayward's The Age of Reagan, the staffers of the following year's campaign by George McGovern.

Barack Obama once positioned himself as someone who had moved beyond the failed punitive liberalism that began in the mid-to-late1960s. But from Bittergate to this recent gaffe, his campaign seems mired in his party's reactionary politics, which date back to the days after JFK's death; now the longest running hangover in history.

Related: On the other hand, "Credentials? We don't need no stinkin' credentials"!

Hi, I'm Barack Obama. You may remember me from such public service videos as "Pirates of the South Side: Dead Man's Vote" and "It's Raining Weathermen". But today, I'm here to talk you about...

(*Neither could Ross Perot, for that matter.)

Via Tim Blair, "An important community warning, featuring one of the best opening paragraphs ever written":

A Mount Gambier woman has warned the community against cleaning lawnmowers in bedrooms while smoking.

I know I won't ever do that again!

Remember one of the loonier conspiracy theories that the left floated in October of 2004--that Bush cheated during the debates against John Kerry? Here we go again!

I blame those Katherine Harris-type election officials, myself.

I gave NBC a lot of grief last fall for their global warming stunt of turning a handful of overhead lights off in their studio as some sort of sophomoric global warming cheerleading when covering a Cowboys/Eagles NFL game, which itself burned megawatts of power from the stadium lights, the video electronics, and the satellite hookups. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel spent by those driving to the game, the network equipment trucks, the corporate charter flights, etc.

But NBC made up for it big time with this:

WTHR, the NBC affiliate for Indianapolis, reported from Beijing and described the NBC set used for the network's two highest rated news broadcasts, "NBC Nightly News" and "Today," as air conditioned - even though it is outdoors.

"The set is outside, but air conditioning vents make the weather bearable," Anne Marie Tiernon wrote for WTHR Eyewitness News on August 14.

Thanks, fellas. Everyone has that brief embarrassing fling with the teenage nostalgie de la boue Rousseauvian primitiveness of environmentalism, but it's good to have you back with the rest of us.

As Barack Obama reels in response to John McCain's charges that he's a lightweight more obsessed with image than substance, his campaign has come up with the perfect rejoinder. Gateway Pundit spots Team Obama courting top fashion designers to create his own clothes line.

And why not? For complete stylistic fabulosity, he's already got the logo ready to go!

(Via Founding Bloggers; no word yet on whether the new Obamatogs are Manolo-approved.)

It's Answered Prayers for some budding young Sith Lord! Kyle Smith writes that George Lucas may have stepped into the latest scandal for those aficionados of the industry of the world's most puritanical company town who:

A. Whose blood pressure blows sky-high if anybody looks at them cross-eyed.

B. Have far too much time on their hands, and:

C. Are bummed because they missed the chance to flip out over Tropic Thunder's use of the newest worst most eviltastic word discovered to still be in the English language.

It's....Capote The Hutt!

(Think he's kidding? Two words: Muggeridge's Law.)

But then, this is all just preseason stuff. The Complainy-American (to borrow a Tim Blair-ism) will really be out in full dudgeon this fall over this.

Update: Kyle's take on the film itself? "A Big Pile of Dukoo." Reading his review, I can't help but think of Marcia Lucas' thoughts on her ex-husband's franchise in Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls:

"After Star Wars, he insisted, 'I'm never going to direct another establishment-type movie again.' I used to say, 'For someone who wants to be an experimental filmmaker, why are you spending this fortune on a facility to make Hollywood movies? We edited THX in our attic, we edited American Graffiti over Francis' garage, I just don't get it, George.' The Lucasfilm empire--the computer division, ILM, the licensing and lawyers--seemed to me to be this inverted triangle sitting on a pea, which was the Star Wars trilogy. But he wasn't going to make any more Star Wars, and the pea was going to dry up and crumble, and then he was going to be left with this huge facility with its enormous overhead. And why did he want to do that if he wasn't going to make movies? I still don't get it."

That pea has dried up, and no amount of water in all the vaporators on Tatooine is going to bring it back to life.

Hot Air has video of impeachment-crazed leftwing whackos attempting to shout down Nancy Pelosi.

Her response?

"I have complete comfort with the frustration. I'm from the streets," she said.

But these days, there's just no place for a Street Fightin' Nan.

Which actually isn't saying all that much these days: take a look at Redacted's IMDB page. If you assume $9.00 a ticket, with its absolutely pathetic $65,087 domestic gross, that means Redacted was seen by about 7,232 people during its initial run in theaters. (As John Nolte likes to write, "Anyone care to debate how Hollywood's money driven?")

In contrast, my recent "2004: An MSM Odyssey" video was viewed by 8,507 people according to Brightcove, its Webhost.

...And I can safely guarantee that my budget was just a smidgen lower than Redacted's five million dollars.

Thomas Frank feverishly lets it all hang out:

The most cherished dream of conservative Washington is that liberalism can somehow be defeated, finally and irreversibly, in the way that armies are beaten and pests are exterminated. Electoral victories by Republicans are just part of the story. The larger vision is of a future in which liberalism is physically barred from the control room--of an "end of history" in which taxes and onerous regulation will never be allowed to threaten the fortunes private individuals make for themselves. This is the longing behind the former White House aide Karl Rove's talk of "permanent majority" and, 20 years previously, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's declaration to the Republican convention that it's "the job of all revolutions to make permanent their gains".

When I first moved to contemplate this peculiar utopian vision, I was struck by its apparent futility. What I did not understand was that beating liberal ideas was not the goal. The Washington conservatives aim to make liberalism irrelevant not by debating, but by erasing it. Building a majority coalition has always been a part of the programme, and conservatives have enjoyed remarkable success at it for more than 30 years. But winning elections was not a bid for permanence by itself. It was only a means.

The end was capturing the state, and using it to destroy liberalism as a practical alternative. The pattern was set by Margaret Thatcher, who used state power of the heaviest-handed sort to implant permanently the anti-state ideology.

"Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul," she said, echoing Stalin. In the 34 years before she became prime minister, Britain rode a see-saw of nationalisation, privatisation and renationalisation; Thatcher set out to end the game for good. Her plan for privatising council housing was designed not only to enthrone the market, but to encourage an ownership mentality and "change the soul" of an entire class of voters. When she sold off nationally owned industries, she took steps to ensure that workers received shares at below-market rates, leading hopefully to the same soul transformation. Her brutal suppression of the miners' strike in 1984 showed what now awaited those who resisted the new order. As a Business Week reporter summarised it in 1987: "She sees her mission as nothing less than eradicating Labour Party socialism as a political alternative."

That's the stuff! Every time I think that the right is just bumbling around in the dark and rapidly losing ground to the left, something like this from the other side truly warms my heart. As one of Charles Johnson's rotating metatags says, "please more print and distribute and get blessing!"

If you've ever said to yourself--and really, who amongst us hasn't?--I wonder what happens behind the scenes when they shoot a Triumph the Insult Dog video segment, Daniel Frank, AKA "Captain Spaulding", writes:

Watch sausage being made as camcorders pick up Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at Comicon here and here.

Meanwhile, found via Kathy Shaidle, the Cake Wrecks blog documents, with copious photographic evidence, pretty much just what its title suggests.

Great moments in MSM leads:

While the amount of sodium cyanide found in a Denver hotel room was enough to kill hundreds of people, the FBI says they do not believe there is any link to terrorism.

I feel safer already, don't you? Though Charles Johnson spots one possible link.

One Al Gore clubhouse inside of another, as Ted Kaczynski's cabin is on display now at the News mausoleum in Washington, DC.

As Jaime Sneider of the Weekly Standard writes:

So I guess the question is does the "hands on" experience of the Newseum allow visitors to handle the contents of Kaczynski's cabin? Do recall among his only possessions was an underlined copy of Al Gore's Earth in the Balance.

For our Silicon Graffiti segment on the Newseum, click here.

(Headline explanation here.)

"Nothing would have more impact on the economy and the price of oil than his election as president," former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young (no relation to this Andrew Young) said. "There would be a boost of 1,000 points on the stock market the first week after he's elected. This would be better than a chicken in every pot."

Thus ushering in a decade of blazing 1.5 percent annual growth!

By the way, note this line from Young:

More importantly, Young strongly believes that the economic future for the United States is inextricably connected to the rest of the world.

"It's technically impossible to be self-sufficient," Young said. "In order to maintain our leadership in a global economy we have to work with the rest of the world. With the transfer of technology, we either lead the world or we get trampled by it."

Obama agrees of course--depending upon which day you ask him.

Is the Obama hand signal really the apocalyptic Sign of Wences?

20 years after Saturday Night Live said goodbye to everyone's favorite Atari Democrat, and from the man who brought you this classic moment:

If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.

Comes the breathless question...Just what if Michael Dukakis had won!

Which begs for a follow-up: What if George Bush had won in 1992?

What's in your Water? Rainbows, man! But what's in your video? Apparently several unnecessary apostrophes, and spelling errors prodominatly on display in the titles at the beginning of the video--always a sure sign that crack research scientists are hard at work!

The media demands photos of John Edwards' alleged love child--and the Exurban League delivers!

Its multifaceted meanings are a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma--with a touch of Goatse...

And voila! A meme is born:

In a column for the Politico yesterday, Reason editor Michael Moynihan wrote the left had turned into a "a virtual Bletchley Park of racial cryptographers teasing out the sinister motives and subtexts of McCain's campaign advertising."

It was a funny line, but it to dismiss it as just hyperbole would be a big mistake. Responding to McCain's "The One" ad, a Democratic consulting group put out a frightfully lengthy memo deconstructing it. This excerpt will give you the general thrust of it:

This is the use of religion at its very worst in politics because it is an attempt to subtly and perhaps even subconsciously play on some of the deepest fears of millions of evangelical Americans. From the title of the ad (that immediately reminds anyone familiar with the Left Behind series of the name of the false church set up by the anti-Christ) to the quotes (with no respect to context) and images that the McCain camp chose to use, which basically allude to every symbol of the anti-Christ possibole [sic] short of flashing 666 on the screen, this ad is an attempt to stir up already circulating falsehoods about Obama and add more fuel to the fire.

That's right, after the racist charges didn't stick and then their ridiculous Nazi accusations were ignored, there was only one other place they could go. Obama's defenders are now accusing McCain of using his campaign ads to call Obama the anti-Christ. Marvel for a second at the absurdity of that. I have no idea what charge the liberal Bletchley Park could make to further discredit themselves, but where there's a will, there's a way.

Here's an all-too-rare sign of racial sanity on the left, fortunately.

Update: Here's a new project for the codebreakers to sink their mad deciphering skills into.

"I'll say this much for the Obamas: No one has more interesting political conversations with second-graders than they do...the Obama camp is uniquely well positioned to engage seven-year-olds on foreign policy."

Oh, I hope we're not too messianic, or a trifle too satanic, the sequel:

The McCain campaign is unquestionably targeting the 44 million+ Americans who have read the Left Behind series. The makers of the ad chose all of Obama's quotes very carefully and filled it with image after image equating Senator Obama to the anti-Christ, and especially to Nicolae Carpathia, the anti-Christ in the popular end times novels....

The anti-Christ, in the Left Behind series, Nicolae Carpathia set up a religion called THE ONE World Religion. Carpathia started his career as a young charismatic junior Senator. He made his rise, with Satan's support, by spreading a message of unity, hope, and peace, in an anomic world in the wake of the rapture....

The text and voice over are exact copies of previews for Christian Specific end-times movies.

You know, sometimes the Leaning Tower of Pisa is merely the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

"By the way can you imagine that if Joe Biden is selected as VP he might actually be the less gaffe-prone of the two?"

--Jennifer Rubin, "It's Not a Gaffe, It's a Theme"

Michelle Malkin: "Name Al Gore's hugetastic boat!"

I wish everyone would get their stories straight--are McCain's ads trying to tell me that Obama is Hitler, or that Obama is the Anti-Christ?

Work it out and get back to me, fellas--thanks.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: "I think the Iraqi government is more functional than our domestic airlines right now..."

Oh sure--but just try getting a $5.00 Asian Chicken Wrap or a .5 oz bag of pretzels in downtown Baghdad...

"Say I'm Inside the Large Hadron Collider and It's Revving Up. Should I Be Concerned?"

Via Glenn Reynolds, who fears for the safety of the Piercing-American demographic. Looks scary in the photo though; something that could cause many Shuvs and Zuuls to be roasted in the depths of the Slor, I can tell you!

The dark horse third-party Burge '08 ticket focuses on two key issues of the day, both of which, I think, are succinctly summed up by the above headline.

And while he approaches the second issue only grudgingly (note the divisive "Internet hat pundit" attack aimed at us, though clearly an implied shot at the entire fourth estate--or maybe just the Stetson company--I'll get back to you), we're quite proud of our efforts in getting Mr. Burge on the record regarding the latter issue. You're welcome, gentle reader; you're welcome!

Deceiver.com has a screencap and a link to Reille Hunter's Website, which is a hoot:

Looks like there are two Americas: the America where not-John-Edwards'-babymama Rielle Hunter has erased her web site from existence, and the America where someone else has put it right back up.

Actually, it's not America--the URL is the Egyptian mirror site for the San Francisco-based Internet Archive Wayback machine, but still, click over for the graphics, stay for the sweet, new age chakra!

(Via the crystalline blogging of Australia's Tim Blair.)

Update: Welcome Deceiver readers! Take a look around; hopefully you'll like some of what you see.

Late Update (8/8/08): Edwards begins to come clean--er, so to speak--click here for details.

So can you immanentize the eschaton through the Force?

"I am the father of our Star Wars movie world--the filmed entertainment, the features and now the animated film and television series," (George Lucas) says. "And I'm going to do a live-action television series. Those are all things I am very involved in: I set them up and I train the people and I go through them all. I'm the father; that's my work. Then we have the licensing group, which does the games, toys and books, and all that other stuff. I call that the son--and the son does pretty much what he wants." He laughs. "Once in a while, they ask a question like 'Can we kill off Yoda?', things like that, but it's very loose.

"Then we have the third group, the holy ghost, which is the bloggers and fans. They have created their own world. I worry about the father's world. The son and holy ghost can go their own way."

Pretty biblical stuff from a guy whose original idea was to portray communist North Vietnam in a favorable light...

Betsy Newmark writes, "Apparently, under Iowa law, dancing naked on a stage is legal because it can be considered an expression of art."

I realize that while all politics is local, when a man becomes a presidential nominee, he must take a national, at times global perspective; and thus has little time to study hometown issues.

But the question must be asked nonetheless: where does Iowa's most famous son, Dave Burge, aka Iowahawk, currently heading up the maverick's maverick presidential ticket, Burge-Goldstein 2008, stand on this critical issue?

Update: Steven Den Beste responds via email: "As close to the stage as possible, of course!"

Heh, indeed.^TM

Remember the bad old days of Kremlinology, when analysts would study who was airbrushed out of Soviet photos to see who was out of power?

Greg Pollowitz notices--for some reason known only to the L.A. Times and don't you dare read anything into it--a curious update of the photos of potential veep candidates by the Times.

John McCain? No--Osama bin Laden!

Osama bin Laden wanted to introduce himself to America with an ABC television interview months before al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa, the interviewer testified on Tuesday.

Former ABC correspondent John Miller, testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, also recalled comparing bin Laden with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt as he made small talk during filming of the May 28, 1998, interview at an Afghanistan mountain hideout.

It was a rare opportunity for an American journalist, and Miller detailed a movie-thriller route to get to bin Laden, complete with multiple plane flights in Pakistan, a nighttime border crossing into Afghanistan, and muzzle flashes from automatic weapons at an al Qaeda checkpoint.

"You are like the Middle East version of Teddy Roosevelt," Miller, who is now the chief FBI spokesman, told bin Laden in a selection of the interview tape screened for the trial of bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan.

Michael Moore and Brian Williams could not be reached for comment.

Fans of Mike Myer's Dieter character and his techno-Brechtian goof Sprockets will get a chuckle out of this, but as Allahpundit notes, I'm not sure how well it will play back in the Sudetenland Peoria:

As a kid, I was never very good at building model airplanes (particularly when it came time to paint and detail them), and thus, a key career path is no longer open to me: minister of Iranian propaganda:

Here's a photo of the pilot. But really, isn't Iran's copying photos from the latest Revell catalog more or less on a par with this?

AP checks in on the two-minute hate in DC:

"I am really astonished at the mood in this room," commented one witness, George Mason University School of Law professor Jeremy Rabkin.

"The tone of these deliberations is slightly demented," Rabkin said. "You should all remind yourselves that the rest of the country is not necessarily in this same bubble in which people think it is reasonable to describe the president as if he were Caligula."

Nahh, they'd be pretty cool with him.

Jason Maoz of Commentary asks, "Whatever Happened to Liberal Humor?"

Fire up the Tardis--with or without Barry behind the wheel: We answered that one two and a half years ago, three years ago--and five years ago!

(H/T: KS)

Related: "Best. Headline. Ever."

It's not just a presumptive victory lap...it's the Love Parade.

Still though--forget it, he's rolling.

"Blew That One."

And on a related note, here's great moments in mastheads.

Quote of the day, part deux:

"I've heard people talk about the 'drive-by media,' but this is ridiculous."

--Glenn Reynolds on Bob Novak's driving skills--or lack thereof.

"We don't see a need to improve upon our credibility by, say, putting the audio on the web."

--Der Spiegel, which according to Patterico, helpfully rewrote Iraqi PM Maliki's remarks for "clarity."

Related: "Photo Ops and 'Fake Interviews': Obama's Excellent Overseas Adventure."

"This is my proposed Quayle Test. Ask yourself: How each time Obama says something stoopid, would the press would have crucified Dan Quayle for it?"

(Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Actual Rocky Mountain News headline: "DNCC's Director of Greening experience questioned."

I hope she's up to the task:

Only three state delegations have agreed to eliminate entirely their carbon footprints by purchasing travel offsets, despite the pleas of convention organizers.

The heavily vegetarian "Lean 'N Green" menu has touched off a slew of gripes, ranging from caterers who can't find enough Colorado-grown organic vegetables to Denver City Council member Charlie Brown calling menu planners "the food police."

The biggest environmental disaster to befall the convention hit two weeks ago, when the Barack Obama campaign announced that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee would make his acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High stadium.

The decision to move to the stadium threw a Chernobyl-sized wrench into the sustainability plan. Switching the venue from the Pepsi Center, which seats fewer than 20,000, to Invesco, which holds 78,000, threatens to saddle the convention with the Shaquille O'Neal of carbon footprints.

Democratic officials have remained tight-lipped on the environmental impact of the move, saying they're still crunching the kilowatt numbers.

As Orrin Judd notes, "The telecast of his speech will be eco-porn!"

Dan Quayle, eat your heart out: "Well, let me--let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's."

Having been rejected for publication by the New York Times, copies of which are no doubt sold throughout our northernmost 51st state, John McCain clearly has a slam-dunk case for the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

According to this AP report from April, Katie Couric's evening news show "averaged 5.34 million viewers last week, breaking a record low for CBS News' flagship show that had been set the week before, according to Nielsen Media Research."

And the rest of you 295 million troglodytes who tuned her out? Sexist bastards, the lot of you:

"Unfortunately I have found out that many viewers are afraid of change. The glory days of TV news are over, and the media landscape has been dramatically changed. News is available now for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and everybody fights for the last pieces of the shrinking pie. The corporate pressure and the ratings terror are intensifying all the time, and the situation is not simple. I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance, and realizing what Hillary Clinton might have realized not long ago: that sexism in the American society is more common than racism, and certainly more acceptable or forgivable. In any case, I think my post and Hillary's race are important steps in the right direction."

All that pioneering bravery, and for only $15 million a year.

Byron York writes:

For months now, John McCain has urged Barack Obama to visit Iraq. "It has been 873 days since Sen. Obama's one and only visit to Iraq," a McCain campaign statement said on May 30. "Before [he] decides to override the recommendations of our commanders in the field and surrender the fight, he should have the judgment to see for himself first-hand the conditions on the ground."

Maybe McCain shouldn't have been so emphatic. What if Obama went to Iraq, decided his position was the correct one, and then, in a major campaign coup, received what appeared to be the endorsement of the Iraqi prime minister? And--extra points--made himself look more statesmanlike in the process?

Obama arrived in Baghdad early this morning, and all that seems to have happened.

As Allahpundit writes, "The discomfort is palpable and apt to get worse as the day wears on. "

Even as liberal comedians continue to knock their product, if not its target, the legacy media celebrates a broad diversity of marketing slogans as it prepares for November:

CBS News creative director Bob Peterson has rolled out this new logo for CBS News coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. CBS continues with the "Campaign '08" theme, while ABC calls theirs "Vote '08" and NBC's is "Decision '08"

Oh to have been a fly on the wall when the real Don Drapers of Madison Avenue submitted their bills for those innovative slogans!

Ever since the media's infamous "DemocRATS" articles first ran in September during the 2000 campaign, usually the subliminal advertising paranoia begins to arrive late in the race, as with the Republican follow-up in October, 2004.

But as a helpful way to deflect attention from the New Yorker's cartoon, ABC has discovered that theoretically it's possible, that if you watch John McCain's new, nearly eight minute long video attacking Obama's Iraq War flipflops while you stand on your head, look cross-eyed, simultaneously chant passages from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and take hits from an Evian-cooled bong full of Acapulco Gold, it's possible to see what looks like it might be the letters Al Qaeda, in one of the video's 14,000 or so frames.

Abraham Zapruder could not be reached for comment.

And no word yet, if you play the anti-Obama ad backwards, if it spells out Paul Is Dead, Here's To My Sweet Saul Alinsky, or Hillary Is The Antichrist.

See if you can spot the disparity between the photo and its caption in this NPR story. Here's the text:

Angelica Hernandez (left) and her mother, Gloria Nunez, struggle to make ends meet on a very limited budget.

Click over for the photo.

The headline of the article is "For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out Of Reach", which of course, probably makes PETA quite happy, in much the same way that rising gasoline prices give a warm fuzzy feeling to Gore and Obama.

The Obama/John Belushi connection, as discovered by Orrin Judd.

Bonus question: Was Hawaii already one of our 57 states when the bomb was dropped on it?

Your must see eco-hypocrisy video of the day, via Americans for Prosperity:

Al was recently quoted in the New York Times (sure, but for the sake of argument, assume they got it right) as saying that:

"The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk," Mr. Gore said in a speech to an energy conference here. "The future of human civilization is at stake."

As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, I'll believe there's a crisis when the people who tell me there's a crisis start acting like there's one themselves.

Eric Idle's proto-Spinal Tap Beatles parody TV movie in 1978:

In the midst of all this public bickering, "Let it Rot" was released as a film, an album, and a lawsuit. In 1970, Dirk sued Stig, Nasty, and Barry; Barry sued Dirk, Nasty, and Stig; Nasty sued Barry, Dirk, and Stig; and Stig sued himself accidentally.

Newsmax, today: "Rangel to File Ethics Complaint--Against Himself."

Back in 2006, I wrote, "Baby We Were Born To Run--From The Wall"--but Reuters has put an entirely new spin on that headline! Betsy Newmark spots everybody's favorite wire service praising Bruce Springsteen's efforts in the twilight of the Cold War, with the headline, "Did the Boss help bring down the Berlin Wall?"

Frankly, this revisionism of the Cold War by the MSM cannot stand. We were told by no less an authoritative source as the BBC that a former actor who envisioned himself going on to bigger and greater things ended the Cold War, without firing a shot in the process. As he once wistfully told a German reporter, "I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Checkpoint Charlie."

And so do we.

Tim Blair looks at the Midas Muffler school of economics:

2001:

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., dramatized his objections [to the Bush tax cut] ...he held up a spare part and said, "If you're a typical working person, you get $227, and that's enough to buy this muffler."

2008:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, complained the government's $600 economic stimulus check was only enough to buy "a pair of earrings" ...

Or nearly three mufflers. Which, for the sake of her husband's campaign, Ms Tiffany Cartier Michelle DeBeers Obama might consider using.

No word yet on President Merkin Muffley's tax-cutting proposals, though.

This sort of thing can sure ruin an otherwise casual trip to the drive-thru.

(Although, to be fair, it's tough to picture the Shawn-era New Yorker that Tom Wolfe satirized in his classic "Tiny Mummies" article doing anything that would actually get them this much negative press, particularly amongst the left.)

Michelle Malkin writes welcome to the big leagues, rook, where the establishment left routinely satirizes politicians of all stripes. What, you thought you'd get a pass?

Denver: coming to the convention? Meet Our Monsters!

But pay no attention to our homeless, please.

Extreme Mortman explains that the media is "Making A Mountain Out Of A Mohel."

Elsewhere, Mark Hemmingway suggests that the Jackson Grab will become the new fist bump.

Me? I think Jesse's been watching too much Stephen Colbert:

"Memoir says Madonna's true love is herself."

"WHAT'S WORSE THAN MAUREEN DOWD? Fake Maureen Dowd!"

But what happens if you cross the streams and Dowdify fake Maureen Dowd? Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light...

Around 1969 and '70, when The Who's Tommy was a pop culture phenomenon, Pete Townshend and his manager, Kit Lambert were culturally aware enough to know that when they booked their self-described rock "opera" into real opera houses, they were veering dangerously close to camp. It was only The Who's sledgehammer live stage show (and Townshend's often great songwriting) that saved them--at least until Ken Russell arrived on the scene to direct the movie version a few years later.

Flash-forward to nearly 40 years on, and we find two prominent cinematic auteurs also seeking to enter the rarefied world of opera. But are they self-aware enough to know that the joke will be on them if their choice of venues actually comes to pass?

I can't be entirely certain, but I'd say there's a reasonable chance of a penumbra of an emanation of a rumor that these people simply are not here to make friends:

(From the friendly neighborhood Manolo himself at his terrific gossip blog, Ayyyy!)

England's Telegraph: "Toddlers who dislike spicy food 'racist'".

And don't even mention those ne'er do well urchins--and bourgeois parents in the proletariat sector--who commit the doubleplus ungood crimethink of food waste!

(Can't the kids just claim that bland food and garbage are covered under their own personal interpretation of sharia law and be issued a hall pass?)

Well, lots and lots and lots of butter on her popcorn when at the movies: Robert Reich, offshore drilling (and the sad lack thereof), Antonioni's Blowup and a young Hillary Clinton's deep abiding love of hot buttered popcorn--all this--and more!--coalesces, thanks to Ann Althouse, in the Rosetta Stone of blog posts.

(H/T: IP)

Chevy Chase began his career 30-odd (very odd) years ago savaging a former GOP vice president; back then, part of the joke was that Chase looked nothing like the then-60-something Ford. But as always, God has the last laugh. It's further proof that Botox, plastic surgery and better medical technology merely cause Orwell's maxim to be pushed back a decade or two: At age 64, Chase has the face he deserves.

As Mary Katharine Ham asks, "How ticked off do you think Chevy Chase is these days when he wakes up, looks in the mirror...And sees a slightly less-handsome version of Dick Cheney before his eyes?"

I'd say very.

Stop Global Warming...before it turns you into Admiral Akbar!

(Who looks a lot like Mary Steenburgen these days! It's certainly only one step removed from being turned into a zombie, which is enough to make one want to mix one of these in response.)

Related, If Exceedingly Tangentially: "Arugula causes global warming"!

John Nolte, on his Dirty Harry's Place film blog, spots Roger Ebert making quite an interesting analogy in his latest review, which revisits Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Triumph of the Will:

Try to imagine another film where hundreds of thousands gathered. Where all focus was on one or a few figures on a distant stage. Where those figures were the object of adulation. The film, of course, is the rock documentary “Woodstock” (1970). But consider how Michael Wadleigh, that film’s director, approached the formal challenge of his work. He begins with the preparations for this massive concert. He shows arrivals coming by car, bus, bicycle, foot. He show the arrangements to feed them. He makes the Port-O-San Man, serving the portable toilets, into a folk hero. …

By contrast, Riefenstahl’s camera is oblivious to one of the most fascinating aspects of the Nuremberg rally, which is how it was organized. Yes, there are overhead shots of vast fields of tents, laid out with mathematical precision. But how did the thousands eat, relieve themselves, prepare their uniforms and weapons and mass up to begin their march through town? We see overhead shots of tens of thousands of Nazis in rigid formation, not a single figure missing, not a single person walking to the sidelines. How long did they have to stand before their moment in the sun? Where did they go and what did they do after marching past Hitler? In a sense, Riefenstahl has told the least interesting part of the story.

Wow, who knew that the famously leftwing Roger Ebert was such a fan of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism?!

But such a comparison is ultimately futile: Freddie Mercury and Queen weren't even bandmates when Woodstock occurred in 1969, and they were history's first fascist rock and roll group--just ask Rolling Stone.

Recreate 1,000,068 B.C.! I had to laugh when a link to this advertisement started showing up this week in my Site Meter's banner ads:

Next month, you'll be able to meet more fossilized dinosaurs in Denver than Michael Crichton could have possibly ever imagined...

Thank God for the American public that the journalists they rely upon to help them make informed decisions are a hard-bitten cynical lot, having seen it all a hundred times, never falling for the latest huckster trying to sell them a bill of goods, instead of those naive, easily fooled bloggers...

Update: Fortunately, not all in Big Media are as dewey-eyed as the Gray Lady's unseasoned young naifs.

Dave Barry rifles through the case files of CSI: Appleton, Wisconson:

A couple telephoned police in the middle of the night after finding a man in their basement covered head to toe in barbecue sauce.

Key Explanation That Clears Everything Right Up: "He told the officers that it was urban camouflage."

It's common sense, really: If they can't see you, they can't get to you!

It's official--everything does indeed cause global warming. But before we ban flat panel TVs and monitors, we might want to ask this fan of conspicuous digital consumption what he thinks about the idea:

Claudia Rossett sifts through the Memory Hole and recovers a classic headline from the prehistoric Walter Duranty era of the New York Times. Of course, it's not like things have changed all that much in the Pinch Sulzberger era...

"Behold, per Blake Dvorak, one of the first documented cases of McCain Derangement Syndrome."

Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy journalism, having a good solid b.s. detector in your hand is often useful:

If only AP was as skeptical of the L.A. Times as it is of the Bush Administration ...it wouldn't have left this uncommented upon:

"The number one reason that people cancel the L.A. Times is, they tell us, they don't have enough time to read the paper that we give them every day," Stanton said. "We're going to be more picky about the stories we choose to write long and a lot more picky about the ones we write shorter."

So the paper's content, like its popularity, isn't shrinking, it's merely becoming more selective.

Charles Johnson has a video clip of, as he says, a typically bizarre piece of Iranian antisemitic propaganda, with the usual lunatic conspiracy theories run amok, and notes:

Good grief. The bizarre antisemitic propaganda being fed to the Iranian people would be funny in a dark way if it didn’t provoke such a sense of foreboding, of history repeating.

Capt. Jack Sparrow, Tom and Jerry, and the cast of Zionist poultry from Chicken Run could not be reached for comment.

Back in December, I mentioned Alycia Lane, a Philadelphia-area TV news anchorbabe who was fired after an altercation with a Manhattan police woman:

As Dan Riehl wrote in October when the story of Dallas-area TV journalist Rebecca Aguilar confronting an innocent elderly man on-camera broke, "Leave it to a real journalist to go over the top."

Here's yet another example of a professional TV journalist acting professionally in the most professional manner possible:

Alycia Lane, the evening news anchor on CBS affiliate KYW-TV in Philadelphia, was arrested on early Sunday morning in Manhattan after an altercation with a female police officer, according to the New York Times. Lane and her boyfriend Chris Booker, and another unidentified couple were reportedly traveling in a taxi through Manhattan and became upset over a slow vehicle blocking their way. Philly.com reports Lane confronted the passengers of the slow vehicle, which happened to be a group of police officers in plainclothes.

When one of the officers asked Lane, who was taking photos with her iPhone, to step back, the news anchor reportedly began verbally assaulting the officer. According to Philadelphia Weekly, Lane screamed at the officer, saying "I don't give a f*ck who you are, I am a reporter you f*cking dyke." Lane then punched the female officer in the face, according to the Associated Press, resulting in several lacerations and swelling. The officer was treated at a local hospital and released.

According to Wikipedia, KYW-TV's slogan is "We Are Moving Ahead"--by punching the daylights out of anyone that gets in our way!

While that story sounds trashy enough as it is, it only gets weirder from there:

CBS3 yesterday released anchorman Larry Mendte from his contract 31/2 weeks after FBI agents seized his home computer amid allegations that he illegally broke into former coanchor Alycia Lane's e-mail.

Sources said an internal investigation at CBS3 disclosed that software that secretly captures keystrokes - including passwords - had been installed on a station computer.

Mendte's firing came nearly six months after CBS3 fired Lane, following her arrest in New York for allegedly hitting a cop.

What began as a series of gossip-page scandals embarrassing Lane has morphed into a federal criminal investigation and a sexual-discrimination lawsuit.

The FBI is looking into whether Mendte illegally accessed Lane's e-mails and leaked information from them to the media, including an angry message from a wife upset that Lane sent bikini photos to her husband.

Six months ago, when Lane was fired, Mendte represented a strong public face for the station. But on Thursday, Lane filed a lawsuit in which she said Mendte worked to discredit her behind the scenes and that CBS3 defamed her as she was fired from her $800,000-a-year job.

Now, Mendte, who had about a year left on his contract, has been fired from his $700,000-a-year job.

Mendte's lawyer, Michael Schwartz, said Mendte was notified of the station's decision before it was made public. Schwartz declined to talk about the investigation or specifics about Mendte's career, except to say: "We continue to work with the federal authorities and expect a prompt resolution of this matter. I fully expect that Larry will resume his broadcasting career."

CBS3 said the claims in Lane's suit had no merit.

As of yesterday, Mendte, 51, had not been charged with any crime.

It is illegal under federal law to read another person's e-mails without permission. However, people charged with such a crime are rarely sentenced to prison, unless the crime includes significant economic or physical harm.

The Mendte case broke publicly late last month, when FBI agents armed with a search warrant arrived at the Chestnut Hill home he shares with his wife, Fox29 anchor Dawn Stensland. Mendte went to work the next day, but left abruptly.

Stensland is not suspected of any wrongdoing, sources said.

In a statement read during the 6 p.m. news yesterday, CBS3 anchor Susan Barnett said that Mendte was "released" effective immediately and that he was under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Patty Hartman, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan, said she could neither confirm nor deny the existence of a Mendte investigation.

Mendte's image and bio were removed yesterday from the station's Web site, which also carried a brief statement about his termination.

The station said the decision to let Mendte go was based on an independent investigation conducted by CBS.

You stay classy, big media!

(Hat tip: My mom, one of the great connoisseurs of Philadelphia television news, who told Nina and I that Mendte was fired "after he was caught going into someone else's Internet!" Hey, everyone's entitled to their own private series of tubes...)

Warner Todd Huston has a terrific roundup of photos documenting "Obama's Propagandistic Iconography: the Making of a Messiah". Regarding the latest example, Mickey Kaus asks if Obama's mocked-up pseudo-presidential seal was his Mission Accomplished moment. Both certainly pleased the base, while alienating the more skeptical.

And speaking of trips down memory lane, "And now, Barack Delano Obama"...

Related: While we're on the subject of messianic propagandistic iconography, did Obama personally tell a campaign volunteer to shut up about her Che Guevara Flag? He must have forgotten about this one, in any case.

Update: A voice of cool, dispassionate reason emerges as a strong counterforce, finally:

I think that we can take a lesson from the Republicans in the sense that we seem to be continually looking for the next Messiah. I think that’s a bad habit.

Oh wait, nevermind--that was Obama himself two years ago. It's not easy, but I guess a man can get used to rampantly overflowing hagiography pretty quickly if he has to.

While England has many of the same problems that inflict the bluer alcoves of America, fortunately, that enlightened bastion of reason and common sense has its priorities firmly in order:

A council has banned the term "brainstorming" and replaced it with "thought showers".

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent was accused of taking political correctness to extremes after instructing staff to make the change.

The move came as council chiefs feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy.

No, this story offends those of us who have a modicum of common sense remaining, which appears to be the world's scarcest resource these days. Meanwhile, as the editor of the 11th edition of the Newspeak dictionary once said, "You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day."

(Story via Dirty Harry's other blog; headline via Claude Rains.)

"Politically correct is never a term one would apply to [Maureen] Dowd’s commentary", the New York Times ombudsperson Clark Hoyt writes. If you say so, though standard-issue East Coast establishment liberal boilerplate are all terms that readily come to mind.

In any case, as Hoyt's predecessor ombudsman wrote, "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is." And now it's time to pay the piper:

Over the course of the campaign, I received complaints that Times coverage of Clinton included too much emphasis on her appearance, too many stereotypical words that appeared to put her down and dismiss a woman’s potential for leadership and too many snide references to her as cold or unlikable. When I pressed for details, the subject often boiled down to Dowd.

Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page, said it was unfair to hold a columnist accountable for perceptions of bias in news coverage. A columnist is supposed to present strong opinions, he said, and “a thorough reading of Maureen’s work shows that she does that without regard to gender, partisanship or ideology.”

Some complaints about Times news coverage seem justified. A “Political Memo” last fall analyzed “the Clinton Cackle” — a laugh, it was suggested, that she used to fend off political attacks or tough media attention. Cackle? That’s what witches do in fairy tales. Times editors express regret about using the word, though they defend the examination of the laugh. The Times never did a similar dissection of the way Rudolph Giuliani burst into odd gales of laughter under tough questioning.

But other complaints seemed to reflect a shoot-the-messenger anger at The Times. A reader from San Francisco railed against a litany of offending words that she said the paper had used, but most of the slights were imagined. (I can assure you that the word “skank” was never printed in an article about Clinton.)

I asked my assistant, Michael McElroy, to run a database search for some key words that might indicate sexism in The Times — “shrill,” “strident,” “pantsuit” and “giggle,” among them.

So please, all you sexist troglodytes, no giggling at the end of that last paragraph!

(Via Hot Air.)

When the levee breaks, Obama, you've got to move--and attempt to pin it on John McCain.

(Via Greg Pollowitz; Spike Lee could not be reached for comment.)

Given its horrid revues from both sides of the aisle, I don't think that Hindu chaplain Rajan Zed will have much difficulty in urging "Hindus around the world to boycott" Mike Myers' new film, The Love Guru:

Movie executives at Paramount Pictures have honoured their promise to preview Mike Myers' new film The Love Guru for concerned Hindu leaders in Los Angeles.

Hindus, led by Rajan Zed, campaigned to see the film before its release on Friday - in a bid to make sure their fears about the movie were overblown.

But the screening has only served to bolster the religious opposition to the film, which Zed and his followers insist is disrespectful to Hindus and their beliefs.

Zed has now urged Hindus around the world to boycott the movie, claiming the picture "lampoons Hinduism and Hindu concepts and uses Hindu terms frivolously".

After attending the screening on Thursday, Zed rages, "The Love Guru is even more denigrating than we earlier perceived from the information gathered from trailers, websites and other sources.

"Mike Myers' guru instigates a bar fight, repeatedly narrates penis jokes, mocks yoga - one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, wears female jewellery, mocks the concept of third eye, makes disciples drink tea passed through his nose, orders alligator soup, induces elephant copulation in front of the crowd, introduces himself as 'His Holiness', lives in a lavish ashram staffed with scantily clad maids, and whose goal in life seems to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show."

And the Hindu leader has suggested other religious groups should give the film, in which Myers plays an oddball guru called Pitka, a miss.

He adds, "Today it is Hinduism, tomorrow Hollywood might attempt to denigrate another religions.

Really? They might? Do you think! Let me check on this one and get back to you. OK--back! Unfortunately though, the producers of Dogma, The Da Vinci Code, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Golden Compass, and Jesus Camp could not be reached for comment.

Nor could this director of a different sort of anti-religion movie, who, curiously enough, isn't around these days to cash his royalty checks.

Related: "Admit none: 16 protested movies."

Or, All The President's Vegetables (Margaret Thatcher could relate to that one); in any case, Lou Dobbs sounds like he's warming up to be an extra on Mystery Condiment Theater 3000.

As John Hinderaker writes, "Dobbs has been a joke for quite a while now, but I think he's finally gone around the bend. Yesterday he urged that President Bush be impeached over salmonella in tomatoes." No, really!, as Dave Barry would say:

(Video found at Eyeblast.TV)

Update: "Let’s ask the really important question: how can we impeach incompetent news anchors?"

More: Hot Air-lanche--welcome readers of Michelle, Allahpundit and Capt. Ed! Given Hot Air's multimedia theme, click here to check out my various recent videos.

Two guesses as to how this video ends:

(Back story here; lots more fun with Winnie and friends, here. And many more videos, here.)

Related: The original Dukakis in the tank ad from 1988 can be found here--judging by the nuanced headline written by the person who uploaded it, I don't think he was a fan of the ad's message.

Back in October of 2003, Howard Dean boldly went where no presidential candidate had gone before:

Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples.

But then he waffled.

"I'm a square," Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. "I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means."

Perhaps it means this:

"In many ways, he really will be the first woman president," Megan Beyer of Virginia, a charter member of Women for Obama, told reporters. An op-ed essay in The New York Post headlined "Bam: Our 1st Woman Prez?" came to a similar conclusion, if a tad more snidely: "Those shots of Barack and Michelle sitting with Oprah on stools had the feel of a smart, all-women talk panel."

No wonder Hillary's narrative never gained traction in the Democratic primaries!

(Incidentally, the author of the piece is feminist icon Susan Faludi. Was she a Hillary backer in the primaries? Because that's quite a poison pill she's dropped into Obama's lap if that "he really will be the first woman president" line she quotes goes viral in the general election.)

The Australian reports:

AN Italian man has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping his ex-girlfriend and forcing her to iron his clothes and wash his dishes.

The 43-year-old man allegedly dragged the woman out of a pub in the port city of Genoa, shoved her into a car and took her to his home where he made her iron and wash dishes after threatening her, police said.

Police were called by a friend of the woman who was with her at the pub.

The man, who was apparently furious at his ex-girlfriend for leaving him, was arrested on charges of kidnapping, police said.

Surveillance tapes recovered here.

As Tom Maguire notes, "Barack Obama channels his inner Sean Connery as he describes his approach to the upcoming campaign":

Barack Obama is warning supporters that the general election fight between him and John McCain may get ugly, but the Illinois senator is vowing not to back down.

"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," Obama said at a fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, according to pool reports.

Maybe he could borrow this one.

(By the way, Obama does know that all of the gunfire in The Untouchables is just pretend, right?)

Iranian TV explores Hidden Zionist Themes in...

wait for it...

Chicken Run.

No really! (I wonder if anybody told Mel Gibson?) It's a bit like watching the Soviets in the mid-1960s complaining how decadent the West had become because they listened to the Beatles and Herman's Hermits. And incidentally, can you say projection, boys and girls?

(Via a post at Free Mark Steyn which looks at the insanity of conspiracy theories through the ages; as you may have already seen, we recently made a quick romp through their last fifty years in video form, here.)

In the old days of Hollywood, if a film bombed spectacularly, legend had it that its frames would be cut up to make thousands upon thousands of guitar picks. (Or ukulele picks, in Roger Ebert's vernacular.)

Which would be have been infinitely more humane to all concerned than this attempted method of salvaging a recent celluloid megabomb.

(Via the Vast Manolo Empire.)

Just as the San Francisco Chronicle op-ed writer who dubbed him a "Lightworker" also previous admitted (and he's not the only media figure to do so), Obama is also for higher gas prices. He just wishes they arrived more slowly than the Pelosi Premium did.

As John Steele Gordon noted in Commentary a few days ago, "This would seem to be an opening the size of the Grand Canyon for McCain, and Republican candidates for Congress, to exploit this year."

The latter group already has. McCain? Don't bet on it, sadly.

Update: More more at Ace of Spades.

More: Mike Bloomberg, Manhattan's favorite nanny who has been named as a potential veep to both candidates, is also cool with higher gas prices. Note this bit of Orwellian doubletalk from the mayor and his aide:

"Reducing taxes on energy consumption is the wrong way to go. We should be raising taxes on energy consumption dramatically because it's the only way you're going to force people to use less."

An aide said Bloomberg's comments shouldn't be taken as "a call to action to increase gas taxes," which would be politically explosive.

On the other hand, WWCD?

Naturally this had to make James Taranto's Best of the Web Today column: "Scientists find monkeys who know how to fish".

As James writes, "Mike Kinsley, Call Your Office".

"Seattle may ban beach bonfires", because, as IowaHawk predicted a few years ago (on target as usual) "Top Scientists Warn: Fire Make Sea Gods Angry!"

Just to add to my recent video on which side of the aisle is more obsessed with conspiracy theories, reading this, it sounds like Dan Rather's take on how he was discovered trying to sell phony documents to his audience isn't all that far removed from Tim Blair's satiric look at Ra^therGate's birth.

Kids, you can trust Betsy Newmark on this one--she's a teacher: "If you're going to plagiarize a graduation speech, don't take one from The Onion."

"Video: The ten worst running mates Obama could choose".

As Allah writes, "pithily effective as a reminder of just how many seedy characters number among the Messiah’s apostles."

No, that's not a Frank Zappa song title, though if he were alive, hopefully he'd be satirizing this:

Beware of the Brown Note.

That's the word among some political activists as the Democratic National Convention nears.

As legend has it, the Brown Note is an infrasonic frequency believed to resonate through human body parts and cause a loss of bowel control. Some protesters are convinced that Denver police will amplify such low frequencies to subdue them in August.

"They'll bring out all the technologies they can get their hands on," says activist Ben Yager. "I wouldn't put anything past police in terms of crowd control."

Sounds paranoid?

Uh, yeah. But like the mythical brown note itself, paranoia strikes deep...

(HT: MM)

Clearly, I've been going about this whole DIY video thing entirely the wrong way...

IowaHawk headline, April 29: "Dear Barry--Relationship Advice From Illinois Senator Barack Obama".

Glamour Magazine, today: "Obama's Dinner Date Doctrine".

(Incidentally, IowaHawk's latest post is well worth your time as well, involving classic radio programs from America's 58th state.)

Hey, maybe I've been too harsh on the Obama campaign--they have to have quite a well-developed sense of humor to actually send their communications director out to and say this with a straight face:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: In Philadelphia, just in April, Senator Obama said of Reverend Wright "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." Now he's cut all ties to Reverend Wright, and left his church. What is it a mistake to wait this long?

ROBERT GIBBS: No, George. I think obviously what Barack Obama made in the past few days is a deeply personal, not a political decision.

Uh-huh. If it is, it would be the first non-political decision Obama has made in his adult life.

Besides, I thought the personal was political.

Obama throws his whole church under the bus.

Reverends Otis Moss, James Meeks, Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright could not be reached for comment...

Yet.

Update: Found Via Maggie's Farm, "Faith Flashback: Obama Says Christian Right Drives People Apart".

Except for those clinging bitter unemployed gun-toting people it brings together, of course.

Meanwhile, Sweetness And Light links to the Chicago Tribune:

CNN is reporting this afternoon that Sen. Barack Obama is leaving Trinity United Church of Christ, his longtime religious home on Chicago’s South Side and a place that has triggered repeated controversies during his presidential bid.

Obama press aides could not immediately be reached to confirm the report.

The latest controversy erupted this past week when an Internet video emerged from an appearance at the church last weekend by the Rev. Michael Pfleger.

Pfleger, who has had numerous run-ins with Chicago’s Roman Catholic archdiocese involving his political activism, mocked Sen. Hillary Clinton from the pulpit during a guest appearance at the church. The priest also suggested the former first lady is a white elitist who felt entitled to the Democratic nomination.

Indeed he did.

More: Byron York notes:

CNN is reporting, based on CNN contributor Roland Martin, that Barack and Michelle Obama have resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ.

You can watch Martin and Soledad O'Brien give two big thumbs up to Wright's NAACP appearance back in late April here.

O' Brien was still gushing the next day. A week later though, CNN's John Roberts would helpfully declare the network "a Reverend Wright-free zone", before Obama declared himself completely Trinity-free today.

Can't wait to find out how all this will be written up in the next issue of The Trumpet!

Meanwhile, John Podhoretz has a few questions:

The breaking news is that tonight (Saturday night), Barack Obama will announce he has resigned his membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago — the former pulpit of Jeremiah Wright from which the Catholic priest Michael Pfleger made his incendiary remarks about Hillary Clinton. This is of course the same church that Obama said contained within it every aspect of the black community (which raises the question of whether he is, by the same logic, resigning from the black community). There’s something about this decision that raises more questions than it answers. Is Obama doing this now because he is on the verge of securing the nomination and no longer needs to worry so much about disappointing his base? Or is he worried there is more to come on YouTube from the Trinity United stage and he wants to have dissociated himself from it all beforehand? Is he going to have to give another major speech on race to revise and amend his previous speech on race?

The answer to that last question depends on how tough a grilling he'll receive from the press. When cynical steely old media finally turns up the heat on its favorite candidate, will it be room temperature, or merely tepid?

Chris Noth, "Mr. Big" in Sex And The City, "Thinks New York Is Too ‘Commercialized’":

The actor, who began residing in New York City in the 1970s, told Interview magazine that its appeal has greatly lowered over the years. “New York is pretty much commercialized to the point of no return,” he complained. Noth also misses the city’s creative scene, stating, “It’s very suburban. The art scene really left, except in patches. It’s all about sort of a corporate sensibility, and it’s squeezed out room for any other kind of sensibility.”

Ironically, for a guy who makes his living playing a cop on TV, it sounds like Chris longs for the nadir of Big Apple's law enforcement, proving once again the inviolability of Bill Whittle's Lou Grant Effect.

Dan Rather* in 2001:

Bill O'Reilly: I want to ask you flat out, do you think President Clinton's an honest man?

Dan Rather: Yes, I think he's an honest man.

O'Reilly: Do you, really?

Rather: I do.

O'Reilly: Even though he lied to Jim Lehrer's face about the Lewinsky case? :

Rather: Who among us has not lied about . something?

O'Reilly: Well, I didn't lie to anybody's face on national television. I don't think you have, have you?

Rather: I don't think I ever have. I hope I never have. But, look, it's one thing

O'Reilly: How can you say he's an honest guy then?

Rather: Well, because I think he is. I think at core he's an honest person. I know that you have a different view. I know that you consider it sort of astonishing anybody would say so, but I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.

-Fox News's "The O'Reilly Factor," May 15, 2001

But that was then, this is now, and the President no longer has a D after his name: "CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to McClellan: Is President Bush ‘A Serial Liar?’"

Read More »

Ramesh Ponnuru writes that some are finding the phrase "War On Terror" offensive. A headline writer at the BBC, found by way of Tim Blair, safely ensconced in his plush new virtual digs, inadvertently creates one possible replacement euphemism.

Well give 'em credit: at least they're threatening to recreate 2000 instead of '68. But like much of "progressivism's" rhetoric, this nostalgic cliche is starting to feel almost as old and clapped out as your local folkie playing "Imagine" and "Give Peace A Chance" on his out of tune acoustic guitar. Or, given her early role in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, another chorus of "Let's Do The Time Warp, Again!"

“I’ve got a lot of flak from feminists who feel that I should be supporting Hillary Clinton, but I thought the whole point of feminism is that you’re not supposed to be defined by gender,” she says…

Always busy, [Susan] Sarandon is about to start work on the romantic period drama The Colossus, but with the presidential election campaign being heatedly contested, she also has bigger things to consider.

“If McCain gets in, it’s going to be very, very dangerous,” she says.

“It’s a critical time, but I have faith in the American people. If they prove me wrong, I’ll be checking out a move to Italy. Maybe Canada, I don’t know. We’re at an abyss.”

Yes, it's always a choice of polar opposites, isn't it? The Heaven-on-Earth of the messiah-like rookie liberal Democrat senator, or the abyss of the war hero moderate Republican senator.

And speaking of which, Allah notes:

She’s been a trooper up ’til now — 36 years of her life lived under Republican presidents and still, somehow, she hasn’t left yet. How does she stand it?

Meanwhile, Brian Faughnan has the logical response that most will have after the third consecutive go-around of this rhetoric: prove it to me, sister:

It's a valiant try by Ms. Sarandon, but the voters are unlikely to be fooled. We'll never know how many cast votes for George Bush in 2004, anticipating that Alec Baldwin, Robert Redford, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore, and many others would pack up and move to Canada. Alas, they failed to hold up their end of the deal.

Tell me Ms. Sarandon: how do I know that if I vote for John McCain, you'll keep your promise?

Canada--it's just a jump to the left!

Was Obama's uncle part of the Russian brigade that liberated Auschwitz...or, far more likely, has Hillary just been out-Tuzla'ed by Obama (or his speech writers)?

And will Hillary, looking for a way to put her own recent gaffe behind her, take advantage of the opportunity she's just been handed?

Update: Jim Geraghty writes:

If the MSM would either A) be more forgiving of Republican officials who they don't like or B) be a little tougher on Democratic officials they do like, the world would be a better place. In this case, I don't think Barack Obama is deliberately lying, or trying to pull a fast one. It sounds like a family "legend" in which the specific horrors of war witnessed by his uncle are mistaken as the years go by. It happens, and Obama only deserves the lightest of metaphorical slaps on the wrist for it. But it would help if his fans in the press actually paid attention to what he says.

Exactly. More at Hot Air.

More: Charles Johnson writes:

Jim Geraghty thinks Obama wasn’t really lying here; it was just another gaffe.

But what kind of “mistake” is it to make up an (apparently) nonexistent uncle, and attribute heroic actions to this nonexistent person that they could not possibly have performed? And what kind of person would give a speech to veterans on Memorial Day—and make up a phony war story?

Definitely not just a gaffe; rather, a deliberate attempt to invoke the name of Auschwitz for political gain.

Charles adds that "This digression into fantasy was apparently not in Obama’s prepared speech".

"Somewhere, Dan Quayle scratches his head in bewilderment", Jammie Wearing Fool notes--and probably accurately, as Barack Obama hits Florida:

At four different points during the speech, Obama referred to the town as “Sunshine,” as opposed to “Sunrise.” Amazingly, the crowd of 16,000 played along and no one corrected him. Sunrise is a city in Broward County, possibly best known for its role in 2000 presidential election.

JWF writes:

Good grief.

Let's face it, the media doesn't want to poke fun at him because they dread being called racist. [Sexist? They can apparently live with that.--Ed]

It is what it is, and what it is is a fawning press gives this guy a free pass.

Somewhere, Dan Quayle scratches his head in bewilderment.

And possibly John Kerry as well, who had his share of similar geographic gaffes in 2004.

Much like his lyrics, Dave Matthews puts a typically goofy ironic spin on what numerous conservatives--and even some musicians--said last year: "The whole joke of Live Earth was how wasteful it was":

The May 29 edition of Rolling Stone looks ahead to the summer concert season, and the rock-music mag is praising the Dave Matthews Band for their use of biodiesel for buses and "biodegradable goods for catering." But this exchange was interesting, about Al Gore's "Live Earth" concerts.

ROLLING STONE: Some people argue that the live experience is sort of inherently "un-green."

DAVE MATTHEWS: There’s no doubt that it is. The whole joke of Live Earth was how wasteful it was. But the idea that touring will end is sad. I’d like to think that the traveling minstrel is not a thing of the past, but the methods of travel have to be improved.

As I wrote last year, right around this time:

I wouldn't have as much of a problem with Live Earth if it really were The Last Rock Concert by those who participated in it. It takes an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe that the planet's ecosphere is soon to be doomed, but the solution is a blowout concert in two different football stadiums.

Or as Glenn Reynolds said at the time, "I'll start acting as if it's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start acting as if it's a crisis."

With apologies to Jack Benny for the above headline; while I'm not in the market for a new car at the moment, the timing of Honda's new sales pitch makes it an awfully appealing proposition...

Certainly better than this gaffe (at least I hope it's a gaffe--never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity) by Dunkin' Donuts' latest spokesperson. In any case, mister, they could use a pitchman like Michael Vale again!

The Washington Post reports on the most spectacular merger news since the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central combined forces (which certainly worked out just swell for all concerned):

Top fundraisers for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have begun private talks aimed at merging the two candidates' teams, not waiting for the Democratic nominating process to end before they start preparations for a hard-fought fall campaign.

Wow, just like that, huh? I thought all of Hillary's voters were bigots. And all of Obama's, sexists. And that while Hillary has "a lifetime of experience", all Senator Obama has for political experience is a single speech he gave in 2002. But in contrast to the second coming of the Messiah, Hillary was the personification of Michael Corleone, Glen Close in Fatal Attraction and Richard Nixon all rolled into one.

Nowhere is talk more cheap than politics, but doesn't the left get whiplash riding out all those 180 degree pivots?

"I hope that he will understand, if he is the nominee, the degree of disillusionment that will happen if he doesn’t become a greater man than he will ever be".

--Sean Penn on the "phenomenally inhuman" Obama. Did Joyce Kilmer teach poetry at Ridgemont High?

This just in from Salon--"Reagan didn't completely suck":

In "The Age of Reagan," liberal historian Sean Wilentz reckons with the enormous, ongoing influence of the teflon president.

The Age of Reagan? Say, now there's a title that rings a bell!

Last year, there were 409 tornadoes:

"So far some 730 tornadoes have touched down this year, more than double the number for all of last year."

—ABC's Bill Weir on yesterday's Good Morning America, who--of course--blames the "more than double" increase on global warming.

I doubt Cindy Crawford would argue with those calculations.

(Nor would this fellow, but for different reasons.)

Father Coughlin could not be reached for comment:

"All we're doing is going into the basket and saying, 'Damn, what did they do in '32, what did they do in '34, what did they do in '36,' and we're pulling them out, dusting them off, giving them a paint job, correcting the fenders a bit, and we're using them," Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) said. "To get us through the horrendous problems we may have over the next several years, we've got to make these old programs work, and we've got to be as inventive as hell."

Nice to know that with the Dow Jones about 12,700 points higher than it was in 1932, the left still sees nothing but Hoovervilles into eternity.

This could make for one of those cheesy guilty pleasure National Enquirer-type surveys:

Choice of Hillary Metaphor

Reveals Your Inner Personality!

Is Hillary:

• Norma Desmond?
• Your psycho ex-girlfriend?
• Richard Nixon?
• Don Corleone?
• Big Brother?
• Or is she simply everything you hate about yourself?

You make the call!

Update: This one arrived too late to make the initial cut: Is Hillary Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?

More: This was inevitable, and in highly questionable taste, to be honest

Mark Hemmingway asks, "How bad are things in the newspaper industry? See prayingforpapers.com."

I know there are no atheists in fox holes and unemployment lines, but I wonder what these people would say about that site?

They call it witchcraft...Or the reality party, depending upon who you talk to.

Perry de Havilland:

The prime motivation of government is...to be in government. Making the country a 'better place' comes a distant second.

Or as a Mr. E. Blair wrote 60 years ago:

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'

By the way, for a real "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia" experience, check out the backwards-reverse-somersault Olympic-level fip-flops that Obama-worshiping journalists such as CNN's Soledad O'Brien (no relation, presumably to the fellow quoted above) performed between Sunday night and Tuesday, when new orders came in from the Ministry of Yes We Can.

Related: May Day 2008: A Day Of Remembrance Of The Victims Of Communism.

(H/T: IP)

Jonathan Pierce of England's Samizdata reads Andrew Sullivan, so you don't have to, spotting this classic Sullivan moment:

It's extremely depressing that the first major national black politician who takes on the victimology of Sharpton and Jackson is greeted by the right with the kind of cynicism you see at Malkin or the Corner or Reynolds. It reveals, I think, the deeper truth: the Republican right only wants a black Republican to do this.

As Jonathan writes, "Republicans want to vote for Republicans: who knew?"

Go figure!

I guess their chief concern is finding "the right man — and the conservative choice — for a difficult and perilous time."

Mark Steyn:

Jonah, mortarboarding at Gitmo is when detainees are made to put on a cap and gown and listen to back-to-back commencement addresses by alternating Clinton cabinet secretaries and PBS hosts. Most of them crack during Janet Reno.

I'd say that by far, this is the definitive example of mortarboarding--with this a close second. But the competition is fierce, with numerous new potential contestants participating each spring.

Charles Johnson spots "Lefties Seething Over Obama on Fox":

The irony here is completely off the scale. These are people who advocate speaking with our real mortal enemies, enemies who chant “Death to America” and kill American soldiers and civilians, but they’re unyielding when it comes to ... Fox News?

Freud called it displacement.

The wheels of progress grind exceedingly slowly at Newsweek, but eventually, the magazine grudgingly catches up with conservative thought: First this week, Eleanor Clift nods in tacit agreement with everything Republicans said about the Clintons in the 1990s.

Shortly thereafter, Michael Hirsh runs an article there titled, "How the South Won (This) Civil War". That was a theme that Michael Graham, a southerner currently transplanted to New England, described six(!) years ago, in a book with much less bitter tone (actually, it's quite a funny read) called Redneck Nation. Its subhead also notes..."How the South Really Won the War".

Let's do the time warp again!

Update: Speaking of time warps, Glenn Reynolds flashes back to November of 2004 and notes, "Jeez, they used to at least wait until after they lost the election to start this talk."

During the 1990s, conservatives believed that the Clintons were something out of The Godfather, with endless dark deals and bodies buried (Vince Foster, and even Ron Brown, depending upon how deep down the conspiratorial rabbit hole of the VRWC one went) to stay in power.

That was all tut-tutted by the left during the 1990s, but as I recently said, that was then and this is now. In the very liberal Newsweek, the even more liberal Eleanor Clift essentially says that they were right:

I'm beginning to think Hillary Clinton might pull this off and wrestle the nomination away from Barack Obama. If she does, a lot of folks—including a huge chunk of the media—will join Bill Richardson (a.k.a. Judas) in the Deep Freeze. If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in "The Godfather," where the watchword is, "It's business, not personal."

Not that anyone will be sleeping with the fishes with Hillary in the White House, but with the Clintons it's business and it's personal. Just think of all the scores to settle, the grievances to indulge.

So if Obama runs, he'll be the second coming of Leonard Bernstein's salon, with radical chic terrorists and racist thugs such as William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and Reverend Wright. If Hillary wins, it will be the second coming of Don Corleone, according to Eleanor.

Sounds like an exceptional reason to ride the Straight Talk Express, to me.

Couldn't he have have simply let it keep growing naturally to demonstrate the importance of sustained old growth forestry?

Soon to be ex-GOP Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle from Indiana speaks with neo-Nazis in Chicago:

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it. “This is just a great opportunity for me to witness,” he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

As the director of the play within the movie The Producers said after reading its script, "Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it's just drenched with historical goodies like that!"

From Whoopi Goldberg, toiling away in the department of stopped clocks: "Well, what’s the matter is the Democrats are an elitist group. That’s the truth."

Whoopi's last foray into politics was so elitist, it lost her a lucrative advertising gig.

Update: Tim Blair uncovers more elitism involving the Keystone State, as "Chelsea Clinton hits the gay bars in Philadelphia":

"I think Chelsea looks better in person and she's got the body and ass of life," said Christoper Murray after wrapping his arms around her and giving her a big hug.

No word yet on what "the ass of life" means. Maybe CNN can help.

Jim Geraghty writes the next MasterCard ad:

Planned campaign expenditures for television ads with message, "McCain is as bad as George W. Bush": $100 million.

Planned campaign expenditures for radio ads with message, "McCain is as bad as George W. Bush": $20 million.

Planned expenditures for independent 527 groups reinforcing "McCain is as bad as George W. Bush" message: $200 million.

Wrecking that entire message effort with one offhand comment:

"All three of us would be better than George Bush," Obama said.

Priceless.

Heh.

If there was an Internet sixty years ago, typing the words "media", "rope", "gay" and "New York" into Google would have sent you here, reading about one of Alfred Hitchcock's most underrated movies. Typing those same words into Google these days brings you to this story:

CNN personality Richard Quest was busted in Central Park early yesterday with some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot, law-enforcement sources said.

His boot? Well that's one word to use, though I thought he was arrested in New York, not London...

Much more seriously, CNN has never met a repressive dictator that it hasn't admired, from Fidel Castro to Saddam Hussein, to Kim Jong-il to this latest incident involving communist China. And yet in America, Quest's Central Park quest ends with laughter all around. In most of the nations that CNN admires, it would lead to brutal prison sentences, death--or both.

This is rich:

It might seem a bit self-flagellating for the editorial board of the New York Times to bemoan the collapse of Americans’ trust in the press over the last 30 years. But it seems that the media’s fall from grace is undermining democracy.

Because undermining democracy is a job best left to the professionals at the Times:

In his wonderful book, How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace), Harry Stein lays out the disturbing facts about "Pinch" Sulzberger. (Sulzberger's father was nicknamed "Punch," and the none too flattering nickname for Junior is "Pinch.")

Pinch was a political activist in the Sixties, and was twice arrested in anti-Vietnam protests. One day, the elder Sulzberger asked his son what Pinch calls, "the dumbest question I've ever heard in my life." If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, which would you like to see get shot? Young Arthur answered, "I would want to see the American get shot. It's the other guy's country." Some Sixties activists have since thought better of their early enthusiasms. Pinch hasn't.

And he really hasn't.

But hey, first you shock them, then they put you in a museum. And a new one awaits a very Gray Lady to retire to in her dotage.

(H/T: JWF)

Related: Can't argue with this:

"The workings of American newsrooms are some of the least transparent enterprises in the country, and it is easy to believe that the press has one set of standards for government, business, and other institutions, and entirely another for themselves," the Arizona senator said.

"If you don't mind a little constructive criticism from someone who respects you, I think that is an impression the press should work on correcting," he said.

Indeed.

Immediately after the election in 2004, Rush Limbaugh was fond of quoting this exchange between David Westin, the president of ABC News, and Tina Brown, from her now long-since-canceled CNBC show (subscription required, but this gives you the gist of things):

RUSH: So, anyway, she's got David Westin on the program, and she says, "David, would you have a reporter/producer live in any of these communities?" She's talking about the red states of America here, folks. "Would you have a reporter/producer live in any of these communities and saturate themselves in these cultures so that they get more stories from those communities?"

WESTIN: I think we don't do that enough, and I'm not just talking religious communities. I'm talking all sorts of communities across the country. I think that... You understand this, Tina, living in New York or in Los Angeles, we have busy jobs. We go into the office every day. We tend to socialize with the same people, or the same types of people, and I think it's terribly important for journalists to get out whether it's overseas or domestically and try to understand.

RUSH: We need more foreign correspondents in Alabama! We need more foreign correspondents north of Palm Beach County in Florida! We need embeds to go to church, find out what's going on with these holy rollers! Ah, folks, you can't know how much I love this.

While we're waiting for those foreign correspondents to don their Willis & Geiger safari jackets and grab their Shure SM-58s and minicams, Robert Ferrigno, found via Mark Steyn, has an excellent suggestion for an ambassador to lead them into the vast unknown that is the American Heartland.

As Allahpundit notes, one hilarious result of last night's debate, is that the left has suddenly decided that George Stephanopoulos "is unacceptably partisan":

If nothing else good comes from all this, at least it’ll have opened a few eyes to left-wing media bias by putting Hillary’s supporters temporarily, and bizarrely, in the position of Republicans. Why yes, Jeralyn, Keith Olbermann is “the most shameless ridiculous hack on TV.” If Hillary wins the nomination and he jumps back face-first into the tank for her, will that still be true?

The all-is-forgiven tone that's inevitably coming between now and late August will be as amusing to watch as these examples of blatant hypocrisy have been.

Related: "Little Tyrants Upset Over Debate", but then all of these cries of "pull the bastards' license!" is leftover rhetoric from the 1920s and '30s, when terrestrial broadcast frequencies were thought to be scarce, and the government stepped in, creating the FCC to allocate them. Today, with 500 DirecTV channels, a couple of hundred satellite radio channels, 100 million blogs, and a babillion videos on YouTube and the like, we know that bandwidth is certainly not in short supply.

More: Here's an excerpt from Tim Robbins' beclowning speech at the NAB convention a couple of days ago:

"Just when we were close to a national news media providing a general consensus on what the truth is,” he added, “along comes the Internets [sic] that allows its users a choice on the kind of news it [sic] watches and the YouTube [sic]. My God, we’ve got to stop them.”

Close? Dude, in the early 1970s, your side controlled four television networks (the big three and PBS) and most big city newspapers, which by then were virtual information monopolies in their respective regions.

As I wrote earlier this week when Politico referred to the 2004 election being hijacked by "the right-wing freak show"--i.e. bloggers and the Swift Vets:

To be fair, there was certainly a neatness to the liberal conformity of the 1960s and 1970s, when three television networks and a handful of newspapers controlled the news. Breaking up those information monopolies would seam like a freak show to a particularly nostalgic mind, just as many senior citizens pine for the simplicity of an era built around Bell Telephone, three TV networks and three primary car manufacturers.

Why does it seem like all self-styled progressives want to turn back the clock on progress?

Besides, at least they can relive those monolithic mass media glory days in their own museum!

NSFW Update: If you enjoy your schadenfreude with enormous slabs of cheesecake on the side, Doc Weasel's post on this topic may be worth it for the--thoroughly NSFW--photos alone.

As Jonah Goldberg has noted in several places in Liberal Fascism, and reiterated to Salon magazine:

What appealed to the Progressives about militarism was what William James calls this moral equivalent of war. It was that war brought out the best in society, as James put it, that it was the best tool then known for mobilization ... That is what is fascistic about militarism, its utility as a mechanism for galvanizing society to join together, to drop their partisan differences, to move beyond ideology and get with the program. And liberalism today is, strictly speaking, pretty pacifistic. They're not the ones who want to go to war all that much. But they're still deeply enamored with this concept of the moral equivalent of war, that we should unite around common purposes. Listen to the rhetoric of Barack Obama, it's all about unity, unity, unity, that we have to move beyond our particular differences and unite around common things, all of that kind of stuff. That remains at the heart of American liberalism, and that's what I'm getting at.

See also, the cover of the latest edition of Time magazine, which takes Jimmy Carter's 1977 speech that explicitly equaled the reduction of foreign energy reliance with, as Carter said in his speech, "the moral equivalent of war", and puts the now-expected green spin on it. Sadly, it's probably not a belated April Fools' Edition.

(Note that Time probably doesn't call for this particular scheme, which would no doubt save quite a bit of power and resources.)

Update: "Imagine the designs that were rejected"!

"The Democrat Math On Republican Filibusters: February 29, 2008= 72 Vs April 15, 2008= 65."

Is the the proverbial New Math in action? Incidentally, I thought it was typically the minority party did these sort of photo-op stunts, not the party in power.

Mike S. Adams:

"There’s really nothing like a dose of condemnation from a moral relativist."

But are you sure she really fits the bill?

Jonathan Leake, the science editor of the Times of London writes that the Internet "could soon be made obsolete":

The internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

I'd be happy--well, temporarily at least--with this speed Internet, which I wrote extensively about in 2000 through 2002 for various publications, let alone what the Times is describing.

But they can't fool me. When Glasgow University's Prof. Britton says, "future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine", it's all just hegemonic code for digital-era sweatshops without end, as the other Times across the pond notes.

(Geez, hyperbole much, boys? Incidentally, the superfast Internet article was found via the pieceworkers slaving away inside the digital-era sweatshop housed on Maggie's Farm.)

Update: Ed Morrissey shouts from the hilltops, "Finally — I belong to a victim class!"

Preach it, Brother Ed, preach it! Bloggers of the world unite--you have nothing to lose but your Sitemeter stats!

Geez, haven't any of these people ever been in a Hooters before?

(Via Breitbart.com)

But what's a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?

Only a true satiric master can beat the nigh-impossible odds that Muggeridge's Law imposes, especially when one of the participants is the nutty grandparent in cable television's attic. (Alongside Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Helen Thomas, Phil Donahue, and...hmmm: Whom The Gods Destroy, they first build lionizing PBS specials around.)

Add nutty Ted's latest mutterings to this one from a quarter of century ago, and it's yet another example of the Not So Final Countdown.

(Which is still probably better than this Final Countdown!)

One of these two people is 96 years old. Or maybe both...

Further proof of Pajamas' global influence: Madonna wants to remake Casablanca, but set in Iraq. I told Roger no good could come of this, but would he listen? Nooooooo.....

Besides, another trashy wanna-be femme fatale (who's about as fatale as an after-dinner mint, as Michael York said in Cabaret) already beat her to the punch, though sadly not in the literal caged Celebrity Deathmatch sense that the phrase conjures up.

But of course, the definitive modern remake of Casablanca has already been done--and done right. How can Esther improve upon David Soul as Rick and Scatman Crothers as Sam?

Or at least I don't think it is, given Muggeridge's Law and everything, and the fact that Time did a similar story almost concurrently: "Anti-Emo Riots Break Out Across Mexico."

I bet this news makes Emo Girl even extra super sad. But then, what doesn't?

More seriously, there's an interesting Death of the Grown-Ups slant on this story: compare how soberly Time magazine covers a story like this with how its fellow newsweekly kept a safe healthy distance when reporting on another youth phenomenon over 40 years ago. That's something I touched upon regarding their coverage of another faddish story, here.

Let's see: original Depression: Dow Jones Industrial Average bottoms out at 40 as huge unemployed swatches of the country live in Dickensian hardship. Men in breadlines wear suits and ties, largely because they have no other clothes.

The 21st century New American Depression that England's Independent has stumbled across? The Dow closed today at 12,654.36, unemployment is at 4.8 percent, and Nike's stock is doing quite nicely as the firm makes a comfortable profit selling $150 basketball shoes to parents and their kids across the country who have the disposable income to afford them.

But why is a British newspaper trying to muscle in on territory that's traditionally exclusive terrain for American journalists during an election year? Shouldn't they be investigating a protracted economic malaise that's far closer to home?

Andy Bowers of Slate believes he has found "America's Stupidest Bike Lane"; my much more curmudgeonly immediate impression is that it's a multiple-choice question with thousand upon thousands of correct answers.

OK, so President Bush is an evil genius who deliberately plunged three planes into giant office buildings (oh wait, the Pentagon crash never actually happened, right?), but he brilliantly covers his tracks by appearing to be stupid enough to get conned into photo ops that wouldn't pass muster in a Poli-Sci 101 class?

Just checking.

(So what are you saying?--Ed That he's human, neither a blithering moron, nor an Ian Fleming-ish super-genius. All national politicians are photographed so much during their careers that occasional bad photos are simply part of the gig.)

Readin', Writin' and 'splodin'--what are they teaching the kids these days at Yasser Arafat Junior High?

"Karl Rove had the audacity to hope Democrats would nominate a hard-left Cook County hack...and they did!"

As I wrote at the start of the month after noting Gloria Steinem's Olympic-quality backflip regarding the successive former Navy men to run for the White House in 2004 and 2008:

56 years ago, Lillian Hellman rather disingenuously told HCUAA, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." But as we're seeing, those who played the "Chickenhawk" and Starship Trooper-esque "Absolute Moral Authority" cards earlier in the decade have absolutely no problem hitting the CNTRL-ALT-DEL buttons on their consciences when the need suits them.

Much more recently, Howard Dean claimed, "I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy."

Physician, heal thyself:

"The real issue is this," Dean said in March 2004, when endorsing formal rival Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?"

McCain, by the way, has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

(Via Hot Air, who dubs hypocritical Howard the quote of the day, and with good reason.)

"Sen. Ted Kennedy: 'And when the Reagan administration was selling arms to Iran, WHERE WAS GEORGE?' Answer: Dry, sober, and at home with his wife."

--One of many quotes from the great P.J. O'Rourke, found here.

As Tim Blair writes, "The Mercedes-Benz of peace has been up on blocks for a while, but now it’s back on the road".

In other news from the intersection of "progressivism" and horsepower, Massachusetts' Coupe Deval is continuing to hit pothole after pothole badly enough to actually be noticed by his supporters at the New York Times.

It was only a matter of time:

But he was the LIFE of the party! As NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann writes, One-time Democratic candidate Mike Gravel is leaving the Democratic Party, accusing it of "work[ing] in tandem with the corporate interests that control what we read and hear in the media." Greener pastures await, he says, with his joining today of the Libertarian Party, where he hopes to continue his presidential bid.

Because, let's face it: somebody who makes videos this utterly, completely, existentially cutting-edge cool doesn't belong with those L-7 reactionary Democrat squares.

But is there a case of the blues ahead in his Libertarian Party future?

Jonah Goldberg on the missing conversation:

Thank God for Barack Obama. Until his “More Perfect Union” speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race.

“Maybe this’ll be the beginning of a conversation,” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan proclaimed on Meet the Press. The Chicago Tribune reported that “many voters, black and white, say they were moved by Obama’s speech ... which they see as a long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm national dialogue about race.” Newspaper editorial boards agree. In the words of the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Prodding Americans to confront their racial differences is, by itself, an accomplishment of historical proportions.”

Because so many agree on this brilliant new strategy to heal our national wounds, I can only assume that I’m the one missing something. But when one luminary after another smacks his forehead like someone who forgot to have a V8 in epiphanic awe over the genius of Obama’s call for a national conversation on race, all I can do is wonder: “What on Earth are you people talking about?”

“Universities were moving to incorporate the issues Mr. Obama raised into classroom discussions and course work,” the New York Times reported within 48 hours of the speech.

Oh, thank goodness Obama fired the starter’s pistol in the race to discuss race. Here I’d been under the impression that every major university in the country already had boatloads of courses dedicated to race in America. I’d even read somewhere that professors had incorporated racial themes into classes on everything from Shakespeare to the mating habits of snail darters. I also had some vague memory that these universities recruited black students and other racial minorities, on the grounds that interracial conversations on campus are as important as talking about math, science, and literature. A ghost of an image in my mind’s eye seemed to reveal African-American studies centers, banners for Black History Month, and copies of books like Race Matters and The Future of the Race lining shelves at college bookstores.

Were all the corporate diversity consultants and racial sensitivity seminars mere apparitions in a dream? Also disappearing down the memory hole, apparently, were the debates that followed Hurricane Katrina, Trent Lott’s remarks about Strom Thurmond, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, the publication of The Bell Curve, and O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Not to mention the ongoing national chatter about affirmative action, racial disparities in prison sentences and racial profiling by law enforcement.

And the thousands of hours of newscasts, television dramas, and movies — remember films such as 2004’s Oscar-winning Crash? — dedicated to racial issues? It’s as if they never existed.

"Because sometimes it’s easier to hold on to your own stereotypes and misconceptions"...

As James Taranto writes, "Let's Hope No One Calls Her at 3 A.M.":

"I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke."--Hillary Clinton, quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 25

Because it's always 3:00 a.m. somewhere...

"The 8 Stages Of Liberal/Progressive Discussion When They Are Busted":

1. Ignore the story - pretend it is not happening, or deflect like crazy.

2. Find some sort of moral equivalence or a story from 30 years ago saying a Conservative did something sort of similar.

3. Come up with some conspiracy theories. This is usually the most amusing part, reading and hearing all the strange stuff they come up with in their reality based chat rooms.

For some thoughts on the Mother Of All Leftwing Conspiracies, click here.

Update: And speaking of leftwing conspiracy theories!

Indeed we could, but this latest round of "pushers" aren't exactly the best material to write the backstory for Superfly: The Next Generation. Up on the Drudge Report is this headline:

School candy ban spurs underground 'sugar pushers'...

Who, other than the nanny staters, didn't see this one coming from a mile away?

As Tom Maguire notes with brilliant understatement, blogger with reported case of multiple personality disorder syndrome has problems identifying group blog.

We hate it when this happens to us.

"Obama adviser likens Bill Clinton's comments to McCarthy's", the Boston Globe reports.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper notes that "Carville Equates Richardson With Judas":

In the New York Times today, Clintonista James Carville calls Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama "an act of betrayal."

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Carville said.

So in Mr. Carville's view on this Easter weeend, Richardson is Judas Iscariot, Obama is Caiaphas, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, is .....?

Heh. Now that brings an entirely new meaning to the phrase, "The King James Bible".

Andrew Ferguson waxes philosophic on "The Wit & Wisdom of Barack Obama":

There's still room for whimsy at the New Yorker magazine, I don't care what you've heard. Just the other day two of the New Yorker's bloggers (now there's a phrase to send Harold Ross spinning) were chewing over the widely noted eloquence of Barack Obama. They were struck by "Obama's wonderful line," as one of them described it, to the effect that "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Obama uses it as one of his signature refrains. Some of his followers even turned it into a music video.

So one thing led to another, as it does on blogs, and before long the bloggers began wondering, as they do at the New Yorker, what the phrase would sound like in French.

"You couldn't say it in French," blogged one of the bloggers.

"Are you sure about the French?" the other blogger blogged back. "Mine isn't good enough to know if 'C'est nous qui nous avons attendu' or 'Ceux qui nous attendons, c'est nous' would sound French to a French ear, or if it just would sound stupid." Oui, blogged the first blogger. It would sound très stupid. "My ear/memory tells me that it would be too weird to say, since I think there's a we/us thing that doesn't work."

Eventually a French journalist was consulted. He ruled summarily that, translated into French, "the Barack Obama sentence [le sentence de la Barack Obama] sounds weird to me."

So there you have it: You can't really say "We are the ones we've
been waiting for" in French. The matter was closed. The bloggers moved on. Good times indeed.

But wait. There was something tantalizingly incomplete about this brief discussion of whether the sentence sounds weird in French: What was missing was an acknowledgement of how weird the sentence sounds in English. What, after all, does "We are the ones we've been waiting for" mean, precisely? My hunch is that the sentence is one of those things that no one will admit to being confused by, like the movies of Godard or the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you're a loser or a moron. Certainly Obama fans won't admit how obscure the sentence is--though several have claimed that it's lifted from a prophecy of the Tribal Elders of the Hopi Indians. Hopi prophecies are famously obscure.

Hopi prophecies? Would that make Obama the Koyaanisqatsi candidate? Both have in common a dazzling surface, great soundtrack, and little more than nihilism and warmed-over leftwing sixties rhetoric at their core.

(Via Orrin Judd, who concludes his post with a punning, "The Audacity of Hopi".)

In addition to killing print newspapers, you're killing their ink-stained wretches' favorite watering holes, too!

Of course, it's also likely that the political correctness of the modern newspaper person isn't doing much for saloon keepers: today's journalist on a bender is much more likely to blow through a cube of Diet Pepsi than a fifth of Chivas.

As I noted three years ago:

Joanne Jacobs writes that all too frequently these days, pushers supplying contraband are roaming the halls of American schools--who have only themselves to blame.

The contraband in question back then? Candy, which is increasingly verboten on school property. And a bag of illicit Skittles has derailed (temporarily one hopes) an eighth-grade honors student in Connecticut.

Fascinating that boomers did all sorts of really illicit substances in the 1960s, and endlessly shouted "question authority." But now, as they approach their dotage and are the authority, they get the vapors from trivialities as silly as a bag of candy in school.

(Via Jules Crittenden.)

Update: "School clears kids in contraband candy caper", AP reports. And the student learns a valuable lesson regarding how juvenile the alleged leftwing grown-ups running his school are.