Friday, October 30, 2009

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?

Thursday, October 29, 2009

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

kschlichter.jpg

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.
  • Wednesday, October 28, 2009

    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.

    Monday, October 26, 2009

    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.

    Saturday, October 24, 2009

    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.

    Monday, October 19, 2009

    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!
  • Friday, October 16, 2009

    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)

    Thursday, October 15, 2009

    The Real Question

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

    balloon-boy-11.jpg

    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.

    Wednesday, October 14, 2009

    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.

    Tuesday, October 13, 2009

    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.