The Temerity To Coup

They'll never cease taking my breath away:

Screw them. The Obama administration has bungled this from the start. What the Honduran's did was well within their legal framework and we should have supported them as they worked through this crisis.

The fact that the United States took the side of two-bit thug and punished a small country for having the temerity to chose the rule of law over tyranny. The fact that we were on the wrong side of this fight from the get go is not a victory but a mark of shame we will carry for a long while.

Good luck to the Honduran people and please know that what Obama did was Not In My Name.

My emphasis.

Do they think the NYPD should depose Mayor Michael Bloomberg because he changed the laws to make it possible for him to serve a 3rd time, something that was not legal when he was elected?

This Robot Can Jump

Why am I not making jumping robots for a living? What did I do wrong?

(via Japan Probe)

Imaginary

David Frum tries to talk down the crazy people in the GOP that fear that Obama's declaration of a "national emergency" is a plot to round up conservatives:

We all have enough to worry about in these hard economic times without fabricating imaginary nightmares.

He should leave that sentence in large letters at the header of his blog all the time.

Shorter Kurt Schlichter

The Worst Song of All Time: ‘Imagine’

Look at me! I'm claiming "Imagine" is the worst song ever! Does that... get your goat? Also, I have a job.*

Bonus verbatim Kurt:

Let me put it another way for emphasis – this guy chose to see Yoko Ono naked.  Many times.  The only response to someone with that kind of judgment is to listen carefully to what he says and then do the exact opposite.

*Correction: "I have a job" is also verbatim.

They're Taking Mah Fries!

Tintin:

[J]ust how the fuck did telling children to finish their vegetables and get off the couch and get some exercise become a bad thing?

They're losing their minds.

Great Books

More non-Nazi comparisons from RedState:

As you may know, RedState has started a Great Books style program. We are rather slowly making our way through a series of books on conservative thought and ideas. We have started with Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.

...

According to Jonah Goldberg, the Nazi Party was “in favor of universal education, guaranteed employment, increased entitlements for the aged, the expropriation of land without compensation, the nationalization of industry, the abolition of market-based lending . . ., the expansion of health services, and the abolition of child labor.” Which party platform does that remind you of.

My emphasis.

Shades of DIVX

Yes! Netflix to stream to the PS3!

Still, this is a legendarily embarrassing corporate fuckup:

The PS3 implementation of Netflix is not the most elegant. PS3 owners will have to order a special, free disc from Netflix and pop it into their gaming console whenever they want to access the Netflix queue and watch a movie. Sony and Netflix seem to suggest this is a short-term solution, until an upgrade next year in the PS3 software.

Fine, though. Write the software and I'll deal with this for now.

Baby Einstein Refunds

Wow:

Last year, lawyers threatened a class-action lawsuit for unfair and deceptive practices unless Disney agreed to refund the full purchase price to all who bought the videos since 2004. “The Walt Disney Company’s entire Baby Einstein marketing regime is based on express and implied claims that their videos are educational and beneficial for early childhood development,” a letter from the lawyers said, calling those claims “false because research shows that television viewing is potentially harmful for very young children.”

The letter cited estimates from The Washington Post and Business Week that Baby Einstein controlled 90 percent of the baby media market, and sold $200 million worth of products annually.

The letter also described studies showing that television exposure at ages 1 through 3 is associated with attention problems at age 7.

In response, the Baby Einstein company will refund $15.99 for up to four “Baby Einstein” DVDs per household, bought between June 5, 2004, and Sept. 5, 2009, and returned to the company.

Shorter Joseph C. Phillips

Big Hollywood » What is Pornographic? What is Hip?

There's no evidence we have to care about sick people. To suggest otherwise is por-no-gra-PHIC!

Touched!

Touched!, originally uploaded by cricketheron.

I don't think I ever posted this - a Flying Spaghetti Monster sighting, right there in my olive oil!

Go With The Smear You Have

The "Anita Dunn likes Mao!" nonsense is being photocopied and passed around all around the web, and I think it just proves that wingnuts have quotas, and if they reach the end of the week and still don't have a coherent thing to criticize Obama with, they still have to run with something.

Motherhood

Great example from John Aravosis:

Whenever you catch the right doing something wrong, they will turn it around on you at the drop of a hat. If you say the sky is blue, they'll turn around and say you insulted motherhood.

Vivid Imagination

Jed Lewison:

Steve King's attack doesn't tell us anything about Kevin Jennings or the Obama Administration, but it tells you everything you never wanted to know about the vivid imagination of King and 52 of his GOP colleagues.

(via Steve Benen)

The Real Question

The question we're all asking, via the meme watchers at Urlesque.

Circling The Wagons

Erick Erickson fabricates a real smear on a reporter because he thinks the reporter might smear him.

Statistics

CNN does some division and creates a magic statistic in a piece called Cost to create one stimulus job: $71,500.

Ooh, let me try!

Let's see, Time Warner's stock is down 19 cents a share right now, to 41.33. Assuming it stays the same for the rest of the day, and there are no other forces at work, the stock will reach zero in about 218 days, or

Time Warner's stock will be zero on Friday, May 21, 2010!!


Done.

Distillation

Saying you would rather have given the Nobel Peace Prize to George Bush is the pure distillation of their rhetorical style.

Look! Over There!

How long until Malkin blames this on Obama?

I bet she'll be on it TODAY.

Update: Heh. Gateway Pundit beats her to it, inventing out of whole cloth a detail that the managers of the apartment building are "liberals."

More here:

The story garnered national attention because of the ban on American flags, although the policy did not specifically single out the U.S. flag and allow the flags of other nations.

The result for [management company employee Barb] Holcomb: Numerous phone calls from the media.

"If they want to speak to me, they speak to me," she said of the calls. "If they want to yell at me, they yell at me."

Petulance and the Prize

Incredible op-ed from Garrison Keilor:

The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you hear among Republicans is 68 percent envy and 32 percent sour grapes. Here is an idealistic, articulate young president who is enormously popular everywhere in the world except in the states of the Confederacy, and here sit the 28 percent of the American people who still thought Mr. Bush was doing a heckuva job at the end, gnashing their teeth, hoping and praying for something horrible to happen such as an infestation of locusts or the disappearance of the sun, something to make the president look bad, which is not a good place for a political party to be, hoping for the country to slide into chaos. When you bet against America, you are choosing long odds.

I'm stealing the quote selection from Gruber, because it's just great.

Pure Gold

This is why Brad is one of our Internet Leaders:

It occurs to me that if he’s going to remake the Republican Party in a hip-hop image, [Michael] Steele needs a hip-hop name. My nomination: Filibusta Rhymes.

Unfunny

The Great Minds at Big Hollywood are getting scarily paranoid:

There has been a rumor floating around that Fred Armisen is intentionally, perhaps at the behest of the NBC powers-that-be, making his Obama impersonation as inaccurate and unfunny as possible.

Shorter Tim Mak

$1.4 Million Goes a Small Way

• If Obama really loved charities, he would cut taxes.

He Also Uses The Term Light Year

I find it really cool to see my president looking through a telescope.



Watch the whole video.

What a great role model.

Blame Him

Rep. Alan Grayson keeps the hits coming:

American understands that there is one party in this country that is favor of health care reform and one party that is against it, and they know why.

They understand that if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world the Republicans would blame him for overpopulation.

They understand that if Barack Obama could somehow bring about world peace they would blame him for destroying the defense industry.

In fact, they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwhich tommorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon.

But that's not what America wants, America wants solutions to it's problems and that begins with health care, and that's what I'm speaking for tonight.

Great Day

With all the silly talk about the Nobel prize this morning, here's a nice clean chaser from John Gruber:

A great day for the United States.

More Good News for McCain

Bill Kristol:

We could note that, if the Swedes Norwegians wanted to give the Nobel Peace Prize to an American, it would have been been better to give it to Sen. John McCain for having the guts to push through the surge in Iraq, which has brought relative peace to that country

Can we give it to Palin?

Dumbass

From Ed at ginandtacos, an open letter to GOP Senator Tom Coburn on his efforts to exclude political science from federal funding:

I applaud your courage, as it is not easy to be William Jennings Bryan in a modern Scopes Trial.

Good News For McCain

Mark Halperin is out of the gate first, telling us 5 reasons why winning the goddamn Nobel Peace Prize is actually going to hurt Obama. This is completely insane.

4. Further divides a polarized America.

Guilty Pleasure

He's a clown now:

Hate to admit it, but now that Rove has been quarantined on the WSJ editorial page -- where he can't do any real harm -- he's a guilty pleasure.

I'm a bit more skeptical on the non-damage Rove can do, but I like the sentiment.

Fools

This people are staggeringly stupid:

Ayers was in Washington, he told her, for a conference on education.

“That's what I do, education,” he said. “You shouldn't believe everything you hear about me... You know nothing about me.”

To which she responded, “I said, I know plenty--I'm from Chicago, a conservative blogger, and I'll post this.”

I bet his heart skipped a beat on that one.

But he didn’t scowl, and didn’t run off as he has been known to do. Instead, unprompted, he blurted out: “I wrote ‘Dreams From My Father… Michelle asked me to.” Then he added “And if you can prove it we can split the royalties.”

Anne responded, “Stop pulling my leg!”

But he repeated insistently, “I wrote it, the wording was similar [to Ayers’ other writing.]”
Anne responded, “I believe you probably heavily edited it.”

Ayers stated firmly, “I wrote it.”

Anne ended the conversation by saying “why would I believe you? You're a liar.”

Good for her. But we are left to wonder. Despite her parting shot, Anne was convinced Ayers was in earnest. He was making a public statement. He wanted this news out there.

Was he, as she had asked, pulling our collective legs? Other sources report rumors that Ayers is very upset both about not getting any credit for helping Obama on ‘Dreams,’ and may also be put off by being summarily thrown under the bus along with Rev. Wright and everyone else who becomes an inconvenience to this President.

How To Raise Kids

Not only is this Amazon promo ad funny because it suggests that you get your kids into reading by getting them to read Sports Illustrated Kids, it's also amusing that the thumbnail is of something called the "Video Games Issue."

Plain Old Step

digby:

If you thought debunking the lies about what the health care bill would potentially accomplish was fun, wait until you get to the part where conservatives nitpick and distort every misstep or half-step or just plain old step in the process, and spin it as proof that Obama meant to take over health care, the planet and your children after all. Consequent their stint as defenders of Medicare, Republicans will become defenders of Medicaid, and go on and on about long lines and expanding rolls. And they'll ask what Americans got for all those billions they spent on health care.