Humility

My daily dose of feeling ignorant - being told by the Official Gmail Blog of their new support for "Indian language":

We currently support five Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam[.]

I'll confess to having never seen those last three words in my life (although I might be able to make up what the final one refers to).

Here's A New One

Patrick Ruffini argues that the reason no one likes Republicans anymore is that by the Bush Era, Republicans had completed everything they set out to do, leaving them with nothing else to excite people over.

One of the biggest reasons for the Right's decline in the Bush era is that we had long since completed most of the items on our to-do list. Low marginal tax rates? Check. The Soviet Union gone? Check. Welfare reform? Check.

But don't worry, Patrick is confident that Obama's first 70 days has given everyone a brand new shot at hate!

The Welfare State mentality of the '60s that created the conditions for 1980 and 1994 systemically excused bad behavior at an individual level, creating millions of individual tragedies. Obamanomics systematically excuses bad behavior at the wholesale macroeconomic level, creating a vicious circle of irresponsibility with major consequences for every American.

If nothing else, the first 70 days of Obama -- with an assist from the last 4 months of Bush -- has left government economic policy so off-kilter that it may take a decade or more to fix. Remember that exhausted to-do list? Not a problem any more.

The Right's newer new rallying cry: "Sorry you lost interest in us after we won!"

Dobby

I can understand CNN wanting to keep circus acts on their channel if the ratings are good, but eventually that type of selection process will leave them with nothing left but a crazy quilt.

Competnce

Tea Bag Event Photo Of The Year.



Photo by Tia Ann Chapman, Hartford Courant.

Outrage Via Intentional Ignorance

It certainly seems like the only strategy for rightwing freakout over the White House asking GM CEO Rick Wagoner to step down is for them to ignore the details of this being a company that has received a massive bailout.

The story has more meat for their outrage if they just pretend that the socialist Obama administration is now telling private industry how to run itself.

Heritage Foundation - Our Economic Freedom Has Been Sacrificed:

Such is the sorry state of free enterprise in our country: the president can summon the heads of private companies to the White House and demand fealty to his public policy agenda.

Matt Margolis:

If You Didn’t Already Think Government Was Intruding Enough…the government, led by comrade Obama, is telling private business how it should be run.

Gateway Pundit:

And, you thought they only did this in Venezuela!

More On "Rap Is Crap"

Looks like Ben Shapiro didn't realize that his venom was a bit out of date!

Co-writer Tim Slagle from Big Hollywood is unimpressed.

To his credit, I think that Tim's response is a perfectly reasonable piece.

I just finished reading Ben Shapiro’s Rap Is Crap and I can’t let it go.

I am not a huge fan of rap music. It is not the top rack choice on my iPod, and yet, I can appreciate its contribution to music and pop culture. Very few of the top 40 songs today don’t have at least a small rap section in bridge of the song. It has now been over thirty years since rap made the leap from the inner city streets to the top of the pop charts, so it’s not going away anytime soon.

All of Ben’s complaints were once said about rock and roll: lack of melody and harmony, overemphasis on rhythm, vulgar, overly sexual lyrics… Rock and roll was also called a corrupter of youth and predictions of it’s quick demise abounded. There were record burnings and organized protests against this Satan music, and today, footage of these protests are viewed comedically. Do we really want this stigma attached to Republicans any longer? Are we tired of being the punchline yet?

And more.

Instead of becoming this generation’s up tight pantywaists, we should be looking for common ground between the rap culture and ourselves. Isn’t that kind of what Big Hollywood originally set out to do: find common ground between conservatives and pop culture? Because, I think there is a lot of common ground. After all, we both have a fascination with guns and a distrust of government.

And we both get a big kick out of making politically incorrect jokes. For the most part, rap lyrics are intended to be funny. And when you become incensed, you’re letting on that you didn’t get the joke.

Don’t do that. It makes us ALL look bad.

This topic seems to have split the standard talking points - the comments are all over the map, which I view as a good thing for conservatives. My hat is off, in this case, to Tim for standing up for a coherent and sensible perspective when the fools like Shapiro were re-writing the same old tripe.

There are shitty commenters everywhere, so I don't blame Tim for them, but check this one from commenter olddog55:

When Juliard, Berkley School of Music, Boston College of Music, etc, start offering advanced degrees in "rap", I might consider it to be music. Until then, to me, it's nothing more then jungle drums.

Ben Shows Us His Courage

I love it when wingnuts get all worked up over rap music. Suddenly, they're all "Cosby's Right!" - and it's especially entertaining when, as they do in every such "essay," they give a definition of what music is.



Here's young'n Ben Shapiro, in his piece Rap Is Crap:

First, rap isn’t music.  Music has three elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm.  Rap is all rhythm, very little melody, and virtually no harmony.  Cultural relativists who say that Eminem is like Mozart make Barbara Boxer look like Einstein. 

(don't miss the link to Eminem at Wikipedia, which was in the original)

I look forward to his next piece, "Trance Is Crap," followed by "Here, Let Me Tell You Why You're Wrong - Towards A More Appropriate Black Culture."

My Deity Could Paint That

Silly Hillary - didn't you realize that "God painted the image?"

And On the 7th Day He Breathed Fire

Sunday morning fire-breathing robot from Sculptor Kenji Yanobe, via Pink Tentacle.

All The Time

They are physically unable to not be dicks all the time about everything.

Here's Michelle Malkin rallying the troops to leave the lights on tonight for something she calls "Human Achievement Hour."

Fine. Patriotic. Loyal opposition. You're very brave.

Courage In the Face of Oppression

Nobody tells Erick Erickson to turn off all HIS lights for an hour!

Shame Forever

Seriously, John Cole has the best version of a Republican budget plan.



This party should be shamed forever.

Target of the "War"

Sharpness from Daniel Larison:

If the government declares a “war” on drugs, or poverty, or terrorism, skepticism about or outright opposition to the actual policies employed by the government in the “prosecution” of said “war” is treated as implicit support for the target of the “war.” This is the one part of all of these “wars” that can be deemed successful, namely its propaganda, which frames criticism of “war” policies, no matter how counterproductive, failed, illegal or even immoral, as something akin to collaboration with “the enemy” in the “war.”

Using "Your" Children

I can't remember what liberal blogger realized this, but the modern conservative movement believes in only one thing, and that is annoying liberals.

So it's not too surprising to find this article by one Selwyn Duke called How to Use Your Children to Annoy a Liberal:

One under-appreciated vehicle through which to do this is your children. You can use your kids to annoy liberals, but I don't mean in the way liberals annoy other people with theirs. Liberals, by not civilizing their children, breed brats who bounce balls in supermarkets, play hide-and-go-seek in restaurants, keep the makers of psychotropic medication in business and sometimes chant 'Yes, we can!' No, the techniques in question here are far different.

One of the best ways to use your children in this regard is to have a lot of them. Liberals, being generally misinformed and detached from reality, don't know that the Western world faces a population implosion, and the exercise of fecundity isn't a choice they appreciate. You know, if they see a gaggle of boys and girls following someone mother-goose style, they think carbon footprints, Malthusian nightmares and about how the 'wrong' people are breeding.

And think about the fun you could have. For example, a nice touch would be to sport a bumper sticker saying, 'My seven kids can beat up your one Ritalin-addled C-student.' Also, when the size of your family is raised in conversation, you can casually mention how the Bible instructs us to be fruitful and multiply. Judeo-Christian references move a liberal like nothing else.

How you raise your children matters, too. Make sure they not only play with toy guns but that they do it publicly. And it helps if they audibly say things such as 'Bang, bang, you're dead!' Liberals view this the way a normal person would view the exposure of a child to pornography. This is especially effective with the subspecies of liberals known as the suburban soccer mom.

Sandwichocracy

T Rex learns the point of the universe - potentially.

Cycle of Life

During the day the stock market goes up or down.

And during the night and next day we talk about what Obama should be doing to make it go up every day.

How It Works

As usual, Cole's got it:

Sucking up to George W. Bush—and maybe even getting your own nickname—elevated a reporter’s status in 2003. Trying to knock Obama off his game now elevates a reporter’s status. It really is that simple.

Blind Spots

I'm always stunned at the Right's capacity to stare right at a stack of evidence and deny it--government spending to kick-start faltering economies, the Laffer curve, global warming and evolution come to mind--but I find it hard to call the Left reality-based sometimes.

This WaPo article about the debate about shutting down the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine notes that most of its results have been negative or inconclusive, and that studies on alternative therapies like acupuncture, yoga or freaking reiki could be done through existing NIH agencies. It seems like that would save money, too. But this bit stood out:

"One of the purposes when we drafted that legislation in 1992 . . . was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say it's fallen short," [Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin] told the committee.

"I think quite frankly that in this center, and previously in the office before it, most of its focus has been on disproving things, rather than seeking out and proving things."

He wanted it to prove things without, you know, testing whether they really worked?

Critics say this shows Harkin's lack of understanding of scientific inquiry, which tests hypotheses (with negative results as informative as positive ones) but doesn't intentionally attempt to "validate approaches." NCCAM's current director, Josephine P. Briggs, agrees that hypothesis-testing is the proper function of the center.

"We are not advocates for these modalities," she said last week. "We are trying to bring rigor to their study and make sure the science is objective."

I should hope so. Just what is it about health issues that brings out the Left's inner woo? From the anti-vaccination fanatics to homeopathy and healing touch, health nuts often just don't care to look for actual evidence. Hell is for hippies.

The Horror

What's with these people?

Gateway Pundit: House Passes Hitler Youth Bill:

Obama promised during the campaign to create a Socialist National Civilian Security Force similar to what they have in other Marxist regimes. Yesterday, the US House took the first step in creating Dear Leader's youth service corp.

Can you imagine if you were a child being raised by this Gateway Pundit?

Better?

Krugman:

It’s a bit disappointing to see the Obama administration engaging in this sort of market-worship — hailing markets as a Good Thing in themselves, rather than as an often but not always useful means to an end. But I have reason to think that unlike the Bushies, they don’t really believe it; it’s just politics. Which is actually better than having genuine market fanatics running things, I guess.

Bin As In Bin Laden, Get It?

"Obama Bin Lyin'" - cleverness from some ignorant fucks.

"A Wizard Did It!"

I enjoyed how the finale ranged all about, but I completely agree with this from Torie Atkinson:

Can I just say, what the FRAK? The build-up after four years is that Technology Is Evil. All of those philosophical dilemmas about whether a cylon is human, about the fact that evil is a moral choice on behalf of an individual and cannot be attributed to a race or group, and whether the future of everyone will depend on our reconciliation and reunion, gets thrown by the wayside in favor of the most obnoxious ending imaginable: a moral tale about the evils of technological advancement. Are you kidding me?

And Raja Khanna, also from the same Tor.com roundtable.

I kinda want to add my own scene to the finale where after Lee turns and Starbuck’s not there we then cut to a lion running off across the savannah with Starbuck in its mouth. That would work much better for me.

And, finally, from Theresa DeLucci:

And everything is God’s plan? Yes, that was my big worry. We’d get answers, but they would be lame. A wizard did it! That’s all we get from Moore.

Coming

It must be a strange thing to be Mark Noonan, and have lived the last 8 years and still write this:

A human catastrophe is coming our way, unless we can stop this madness by Obama and his Democrats.

Terrorists in the Cockpit

Coming from Chief Tweedle-Dee Eric Dondero, I feel this phrase deserves an alternate meaning:

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration also went against a Ron Paul-backed measure to allow Pilots to carry guns, to protect against Terrorists in the Cockpit.

Finally

Tremendously wonderful and dead simple new feature at gmail.com: the system waits 5 seconds before sending, to allow you an opportunity to "undo."

This should be added to all mail clients.

Shit Start

Here's the opening collection of movies available to purchase in HD via iTunes, starting today. Could this be any more a depressing list?

Shorter Madoff Lawyers

Court Takes Up Madoff Bail Appeal

• White collar criminals before me have gotten preferential treatment. Why not me?

Horses

I don't care if it's really Christopher Walken or not, this writer's brilliant.

if it *is* him, my hat is off even further.

Sock Puppet

I've been enjoying the Onion's First 100 Days of Obama's administration:

DAY 34: During a difficult moment of a televised address, President Obama debuts the evil-looking sock puppet that will speak on all unpopular matters from now on.

Examined Life

Someone named Paleo Pat is not that keen on Megan McCain's recent public criticism of some aspects of the "Far Right" of the Republican party.

Pick a fucking side Bitch.

Megan McCain, you’re either with us or you’re against us. You are either on the side of freedom loving Americans like me, who feel that ANY sort of big Government is wrong, or you are on the side of the idiot communist liberal left. Point.fucking.blank.

Either get your god damned fat ass on the side of real true patriotic Americans or get on the side of the socialist left.

…and as I said in my title of this blog entry. You do NOT speak for me, you rich assed, fat, Fake assed Conservative Bitch!

Soul-searching on the Right - cute!

Incidentally, Pat clarifies his point a bit later, starting...

I just wanted to add that while I agree that Laura was dumb for attacking Megan, especially with the weight thing...

Right, Pat thinks mocking someone's weight is off-limits. Unless it's on his About Me page's list of Hates:

Hates:

Rap

Pop Music

Short Haired Women

Fat Women

Far Lefty Liberals AKA Communists (Same Difference)

...

He Showed Up

Forgive my quoting John's post in its entirety, but I can get behind this take on Jim Cramer:

Re-watching the Daily Show beatdown, I just get the sense that Cramer is genuinely sorry. Additionally, Cramer is sort of collateral damage in all of this- remember, the spineless crap-weasal Rick Santelli was the original target, and for all his bluster, he refuses to show up. Cramer just got involved because he has a big mouth and doesn’t realize when to keep it shut. Say what you want about Cramer- he showed up. Where was Santelli?

But watching that, I really felt like Cramer is a conflicted guy. He knows the advice he is giving is bad, he knows he has been caught gaming the system, and he knows it shouldn’t be that way. But he just can’t help himself."

(my emphasis)

Untrust

Nate Silver's got stats about America's dropping faith in everything:

We are not a very trusting bunch, it would seem.

Gasmasks

Fine image from the most excellent vintagephoto.

Relationship With A Bot

Modern psychology:

In any case, the fact that I was able to have such a valuable experience with someone who was actually a [computer] program makes me very happy.

Megan McCain Says Hannity Should "Know Better"

From Crooks & Liars:

"My attitude is that if we capture an enemy combatant in the battlefield -- or we can use Osama bin Laden -- who may have information about a pending attack. You know what, I don't have any problem taking his head sticking it underwater and scaring the living daylights out of him and making him think we're drowning him and I'm a Christian," declared Hannity.

[Megan] McCain disagreed. "I think it's what separates us from the terrorists . My father could never lift me up as a child because he can't move his arm. He can't ride a bike because he can't bend his knee because he was tortured. I think he knows better," she said.

Politically, I guess, it would be better for "my side" if Republicans stayed crazy - and hence, for the sake of the improvements that I believe will only come about while Democrats are in power - but for the actual minds of 46% of the country, I appreciate the bits of sanity that Megan McCain seems to be pushing for among Republicans. I'll keep an eye on her influence and see if she's as much of an opportunist as her father.

Daily Conservative Chuckling Beavis & Butthead

Today's Daily Conservative Chuckling Beavis & Butthead moment is from John Hinderaker:

While we're paying tribute to The Corner, here's one more: Europe is proposing to tax cow flatulence. Seriously. Only Mark Steyn could make that story funnier.

The Daily Conservative Chuckling Beavis & Butthead award will be presented, whenever I choose, to conservatives who think something they don't understand sounds funny, so they mock it.

Krugman was the first to invoke the great B & B in this manner, in reference to Jindal's mocking of trains and "volcano monitoring," and Digby mentioned a bit more this morning, in reference to an earmark to study to sex life of catfish.

Could Be Anything

Sometime this sarcasm will get tiring, but I still think this can be our general response to the Right for a few more months.

John Cole:

I eagerly await learning how this is Obama’s fault.

Anglian Fail

Andrew McCarthy's a fool.

Scare quotes, heh.

All It Took

Regarding Chas Freeman's withdrawn nomination to chair the National Intelligence Council, Daniel Larison writes:

For all of the pleasant ideas about a changing political landscape and the rise of alternative voices in the debate over U.S. policy in the Near East, all it took to sink a non-confirmable intelligence appointment who had the full confidence of the Director of National Intelligence was a couple of weeks of public whining by a band of petulant, ill-informed hacks.

Moebius

Phil Plait on Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) :

Her viewpoints are so bizarre and skewed that her biography would have to be written on a Moebius strip.

It's A Tie

Gavin M:

Conservatives are always an embattled minority, and at the same time a majority that is always about to rise up. If we fail to understand how this can be so, it is because we lack ‘common sense,’ which is a thing that conservatives have natively, while we are forced to apprehend the world by thinking.

Common sense allows you to argue with the world and make it conform to reality. The world may say one thing, but that’s its opinion, and what if you say something else? It’s a tie, that’s what. And if you have common sense, you can argue with it and tell it how things actually are, which they will then be.

Advice For Galttards

I think all the little Galttards out there need to visit WFMU's post about the classic record from yesteryear "Phil Celia and the Silver Tones - Keep on Smiling! Pay Your Taxes!"

No One Does It Like Dondero

I've often heard the argument that "these people are beyond parody" when referencing silly nonsense like "Going Galt" or a million other details of the last 6 months of wingnuttery.

But Eric Dondero puts them all to shame. Here he is discussing the idea of Texas seceding from the US and electing Chuck Norris as its president.

Go, Eric! Please write a book!

Babies

This "Going Galt" is one of the more embarrassing episodes in the collapse of modern conservatism.

John Cole DougJ:

Quitting work because of a slight tax increase isn’t akin to anything from any sort of philosophy, not even one as crude and simplistic as Ayn Rand’s; it’s more akin to a child’s decision to take his ball and go home. It’s probably worse, though, since when a typical ten year-old gets home, stops crying, and wipes his nose, he doesn’t then fantasize about how the world will now suffer from the loss of his inestimable brilliance.

Jon Swift: Let's Make Poverty Less Enticing

Jon Swift:

If we stopped making it so enjoyable to be poor, maybe we would have fewer lazy, greedy people who are just dying to live in poverty and leech off of the rest of us. Indeed, the reason for our economic decline may be that so many people want the benefits of being poor that they are dragging the economy down with them. We need to stop this ru[s]h to be poor before it is too late. So the First Lady should stop visiting soup kitchens and serving them gourmet food, which just encourages them. Only by making poverty less enticing can we hope to to save our economy.

Commies!

This is what passes for "conservative" humor for BigHollywoodite Julia Gorin:

Now, you’d think that if anyone would have enough communists around to get the right Russian word, it would be the Obama administration.

Reveals

I enjoyed this Battlestar Galactica Round Table, but make sure you've seen last Friday's episode first. Also, I totally agree with this:

Instead of getting revelations, we’re getting thrown a hundred more inconsistencies, all of which are a bit too contrived for my tastes. Anders can instantly interface with the Galactica? What does that make him? Ellen comes back as Queen Cylon, then fades to the background in this episode? Really?

Too many questions, too many loose ends. The show is entirely too dependent on reveals, and I’m becoming certain that none of those reveals are going to be very satisfying. Let’s hope they prove me wrong.

Dorks

Ha!

You want to stop Obama’s deadly plans to destroy the very capitalist Earth itself?  Stop playing Objectivist He-Man, stop worshipping a fuckwit radio host and get to work building a political movement that can’t get its ass beaten by an Indonesian-born black radical communist.

Beyond Despicable

These people are truly beyond despicable.

All Hail Cartman

I don't think that Big Hollywood's Yervand Kochar realizes that Cartman is often presented as a satire himself:

Unless an honest communication is reestablished, the most precise definition of the contemporary independent film will remain the one coined by “South Park’s” Cartman when he warned his friends not to watch independent movies since they’re always about gay cowboys eating pudding. 

These words were prophetic, for they were uttered years before “Brokeback Mountain” emerged as an alternative Western.

Incidentally, what do Westerns - either John Wayne ones, Clint Eastwood ones, or Ang Lee's one - have to do with "independent film?"

They're People

Excellent words from NY Daily News writer Errol Louis:

More than 2 million Americans are facing foreclosure for all the reasons above, and probably a thousand more. They aren't losers, they're people. The intelligent question is how best to help our neighbors get back on their feet.
But Santelli and his self-righteous followers are like people who, seeing a neighbor's house on fire, cross their arms and urge the fire department to do nothing, pointing out that the flaming building was poorly constructed and owned by an irresponsible S.O.B. who smoked in bed.
All of that might be true. But it's probably best addressed after we make sure the whole block doesn't burn down.

(via Instaputz)

And Cue

Noonan!

Given how bad Obama’s decisions have been and the ever clearer disaster he’s leading us to, when can we start calling for him to resign?

Good Market

Jay Ackroyd at Eschaton:

It's been funny. Rush makes more money when Republicans are out of power. Seems like he's working to make that a permanent state of affairs.

I Hate John McCain

McCain's an asshole, Part 2.

Part 1 here.

Invaded By Aliens

Digby:

In my view, the overreaction of the Bush administration is made infinitely worse by two things. The first is the purely cynical nature of their "war," which we know they had been hoping for a chance to wage in order to fully advance their dreams of American Empire. That's sick in itself. But then they took what was a grievous violent political crime and behaved as if we just been invaded by aliens from outer space.

Excellence Supplies Critical!

That must be how Bear Stearns fell. It surely wasn't a lack of their pursuit of excellence! Maybe the excellence pumps suddenly ran dry or something.

Bear Stearns: One-on-One with President/co-COO Spector -- Incremental Excellence Bear Stearns remains the "steady Eddy" of the big U.S. brokers, pursuing a deliberate, incremental growth strategy buffeted by a strong risk culture and...

And so on. If there's an upside to the Great Recession, maybe it will be the death of some useless business buzzwords. "Excellence" isn't a physical object, and it's not a clearly defined state of affairs for a company. You will never know if you reach it.

Morality Fable

David Neiwert:

After all, conservative thought (as it were) has always reflected the way a 13-year-old would view the world: like a highly dualistic, light-and-darkness morality fable, filled with heroic patriots and defenders of freedom contending against the slithering forces of puling liberal evil. Just ask Jonah Goldberg.

Verbatim John Hinderaker

A Problem We Didn't Need:

Like many others, I thought Steele could be a good RNC chief precisely because he would be a good face of the party on television.

You liked him because of his "face," huh?

Strange, Terrifying Little Dead Things

The mind of John Nolte:

How great was it to watch Iron Man fly into a sovereign nation and unilaterally dispatch evil?  Iron Man could’ve rationalized that killing terrorists only creates terrorists, wrung his hands over the reaction of the “Arab Street,” waited for a United Nations resolution,  argued for more diplomacy, or blamed Israel . Yep, he had all kinds of all-too familiar reasons to let innocent people die in the furtherance of “peace.”  Thank heaven someone with the power to get a film made understands that real heroes don’t practice depraved indifference.

I seem to collect these quotes like finding horseshoe crab shells on the beach. Strange, terrifying little dead things.

Paranoia

Oh ferchrissakes!

As commenters note, Obama's creepy branding is similar to Soviet iconography.

Fail Vs. Fail

The "But Liberals Wanted the War To Fail" is one of the fastest-growing false equivalencies in this country, so it's great to read Daniel Larison tearing that apart:

Opponents of the war did not wish for Bush to fail in matters related to national security, but rather wished for him not to make colossal blunders that would undermine national security, weaken and strain our military and needlessly compromise constitutional protections and the nation’s reputation. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that Bush’s critics on the war wished that he not embark on a course of action that was bound to fail on the administration’s own terms. When Mr. Bush ended his second term as a failed President, it was his supporters who continued to back him in every bad decision he made who had ensured that he failed. In other words, in resisting the policies the President wanted and implemented his critics were actually serving the President’s best interests, and he would have been wise to heed their warnings. Perhaps then he would not have left office as one of the most-loathed and discredited Presidents in history. Obviously, Limbaugh has never argued anything remotely like this, and even if he does mean something other than what he said his statement will not be received that way.

That Will Remain In My Mind

Brilliantly disturbing image by twolf1 via this Firedoglake post.

Shorter Malkin

Meet new HHS nominee Kathleen Sebelius — or rather, Kathleen Taxelius

• See what I did? I took her name and put the word "tax" right inside it, to emphasize that she will raise your taxes

You Confuse Me, John

These people are amazing. More John Hinderaker:

What most distinguishes Rush, I think, is the sense of joy you get from him: joy at being an American, at being a free man who was able to succeed, entirely through his own efforts, almost beyond imagining, joy at being able to connect with millions of listeners and play a part in history. Nor is Rush a mere entertainer, although he can be hilariously funny. Mostly, I think, he is a teacher.

People

Michael Lopp:

In Twitter, you follow people, not content.

Amen. I'll admit to occasionally enjoying or add links in tweets, but I generally prefer them to be self-contained. Fulfill me, don't point to the "real" thing.

Stupid People

John Hinderaker still thinks there's something ironic and humiliating about Protesting Global Warming in the Snow.

Grown-Ups

Newsday.com:

We can argue about the larger role for government that Obama envisions for the nation. And we can argue about whether high earners should pay higher taxes. But by putting his ideas into budgetary black-and-white, Obama has challenged taxpayers to make realistic choices about what they want from government - and then to pay for it.

It's what grown-ups do.

Et Tu, Hef?

Eric Dondero's clownish heart is broken when Playboy magazine turns on his stupid movement.