The Muppets, doing “Bohemian Rhapsody.“
(For my money, the mashup of Bert and Ernie doing a scene from “Casino” is even funnier, but it’s also got more F-words in it than, um, something with a whole bunch of other F-words in it. So you’ll have to seek [...]
The Nation’s Katha Pollitt is sick and tired of commentary about Sarah Palin, and she can’t stop writing it, either. The result is a very funny riff on the maddening frustration of trying to analyze Alaska’s giant bundle of internal contradictions.
' [...]Today’s column about developments in climate science, or lack thereof, says none of us really knows the truth for certain, one way or the other.
[...]Plymouth was an early economic object lesson:
In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not [...]
The Roanoke Times agrees that the eminent-domain case involving Carilion, Virginia Tech, and the city teaming up to seize a couple’s land by force is riddled with problems:
The facts as presented in Broadhurst’s ruling call into question the legitimacy of the process that led to this [...]
Bonus point: The car dealership owner who put up the billboard evidently hasn’t learned the First Rule of Holes. His choice of words in an interview with FOX 31 News was, shall we say, dismally awful.
[...]The NYT was extremely interested in a purported relationship between John McCain and a female lobbyist, and spent an awful lot of shoe-leather and time putting together a front-page story that eventually earned it a defamation lawsuit.
Its interest in the e-mails hacked from the Hadley CRU in [...]
If false modesty is half the sin of pride, then James Delingpole is without sin:
James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books . . .
Today’s column suggests the election results might not be so gloomy for the GLBT community as they could appear at first blush.
[...]Searching for an apparently elusive Christmas item, I began googling keywords in curious combinations. One search turned up Makezine.com, a site for do-it-yourselfers. Inside: An etch-a-sketch interface using an Altoids tin, a lunch-box laser show, a binary, marble-based calculator, a homemade bottle rocket . . .
[...]I was under the impression that U.S. manufacturing was on the tail end of a long downhill slope. GMU’s Donald Boudreaux suggests otherwise:
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Bob Herbert insists that manufacturing in the U.S. is a mere shadow of its past [...]
Remember when climate porn was just a metaphor? Not anymore!
[...]Folks who reprogram their scientific calculators to do all kinds of cool stuff.
' [...]Today’s column provides the denoument to the story of Jay and Stephanie Burkholder, whose property Roanoke has been trying to seize so it can give it to the valley bigfoot, Carilion.
[...]A common assumption among advocates of nationalizing health care seems to be that reform is necessary because insurance companies, being evil, deny coverage to people who need it. Of course they deny coverage. But it’s fallacious to think that a public option, single payer, or any other system won’t. [...]
The email rumor mill once again is circulating claims that Michele Obama has more personal attendants than Buckingham Palace, and lots more than nice First Ladies like Laura Bush. This supposedly proves something about her, which supposedly proves something about him.
A new report provides data showing that the structure of Virginia’s tax system hasn’t changed much: the poor still pay more as a percentage of income.
[...]Glenn Greenwald points out, quite reasonably, that when the Bush administration releases someone from Guantanamo for lack of evidence that he’s a terrorist, calling him a terrorist because he was held at Guantanamo is, well, kinda stupid.
[...]There’s new evidence that it exists after all! Check out all these phantom congressional districts in which jobs were “created” by the stimulus. . . .
[...]Anyone who still doubts that campaign-finance regulations stifle free speech should watch this video about Colorado resident Karen Sampson and her neighbors—who were sued for putting up yard signs.
[...]Anyone who still doubts that campaign-finance regulations stifle free speech should watch this video about Colorado resident Karen Sampson and her neighbors—who were sued for putting up yard signs.
[...]A simple, but snazzy (and jazzy!) time-waster.
[...]Some on the right seem bent out of shape that Pres. Obama bent at the waist before the Japanese emperor. C’mon. The next thing you know, they’ll be griping that he takes off his hat when he steps inside a church. No American president should [...]
From the Ayn Rand Institute:
More government controls, we are told, are necessary to solve problems such as skyrocketing health-insurance prices, lack of competition among insurance companies, the inability of workers to keep their insurance policy when switching jobs, etc.
Really?
Then why do giants of the computer industry [...]
Today’s column says abortion-rights activists should consider health-care reform through the lens of their professed principles.
[...]Danville Tea Party leaders are wisely reconsidering plans to burn Va. Rep. Tom Perriello and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in effigy.
Good call. The effigy-burning would not exactly shower the group in glory. Why join in the moonbattery?
The idea is so gawdawful, it’s almost tempting to [...]
Do you recall the AP assigning almost a dozen reporters to fact-check Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father? Me neither. . .
[...]When a patient —- let’s call him Trab —- goes to the doctor and shells out fifty bucks for a copayment,** because that’s what his insurance agreement requires, just like it says on the little card he hands over every time he sees the doc, maybe —- just maybe —- [...]
VDOT has spent more than $60,000 to avoid paying a property owner $30,000. Today’s column has the details.
[...]Mason Rayner, son of my esteemed colleague Bob Rayner, asks a good question: Why, exactly, are young people so supportive of Barack Obama when his policies—an insurance mandate aimed at dragooning the young into supporting the old, massive deficits the young will be paying off [...]
It’s “drubbing,“ not drumming:
Historically, the president’s political party takes a drumming in mid-term elections. . . .
Remember, spell-check programs are written by computer programmers, not English majors.
P.S.—Memo to Self: This post will invoke the Glass Houses Rule, a/k/a the Iron Law of Public Corrections—which states that any writer [...]
It’s astonishing how hard people are working to pretend the hippo in the living room is really a coffee table. This morning on NPR, Daniel Zwerdling reported that Nidal Hasan’s colleagues were alarmed about him—not because of his religious extremism, Zwerdling hastened to add, but because of his “unprofessional” behavior. [...]
It’s astonishing how hard people are working to pretend the hippo in the living room is really a coffee table. This morning on NPR, Daniel Zwerdling reported that Nidal Hasan’s colleagues were alarmed about him—not because of his religious extremism, Zwerdling hastened to add, but because of his “unprofessional” behavior. [...]
It’s astonishing how hard people are working to pretend the hippo in the living room is really a coffee table. This morning on NPR, Daniel Zwerdling reported that Nidal Hasan’s colleagues were alarmed about him—not because of his religious extremism, Zwerdling hastened to add, but because of his “unprofessional” behavior. [...]
Better late than never: Just noticed this fine contribution to the drunken-narrator parody genre by Tobacco Avenue.
[...]In Dallas, shopkeepers can decorate their windows with signs of any size and message they want—so long as the messages aren’t commercial in nature:
For example, a business could paint a giant Dallas Cowboys helmet on its window—but not advertise that' [...]
In this interview, President Obama suggests anyone without health insurance is a free rider getting subsidized by everybody else. Really? What about young people who don’t buy insurance because they’re in good health? Or rich folks who pay cash? Many people have paid insurance premiums for decades [...]
Today’s column suggests advocates of health-care reform have forgotten the first rule of holes.
[...]You have to read all the way to the end of this Elizabeth Kolbert piece in The New Yorker to enjoy it, but the piece is pretty good, so no harm done.
[...]Unless I’m missing something—always a possibility, since I’m not a techhead—Motorola has positioned its Droid as the upstart challenger to the iPhone, which (by implication) casts Apple as the Establishment Product. Apple = the new IBM? Wow.
[...]Some more postgame analysis (like you haven’t had enough!) from RCP.
[...]Today’s column asks why liberals aren’t applying the precautionary principle—first, do no harm—to health-care reform.
[...]Islamist violence leads to self-censorship: The disaster flick “2012” show the destruction of several iconic Christian structures, but fear of a fatwa led the director to spare showing an Islamic totem, the Kaaba, suffering a similar fate.
Hollywood remains pretty proud of itself for standing [...]
It’s in the Constitution. No, really. Congress is required to give every American a free bicycle. It’s right in the Preamble.
[...]Sabato’s Crystal Ball has some more postgame analysis, including this:
Democratic National Committee Chairman and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is also high up on the list of losers. He presided over an electoral debacle in his own state. Unlike his predecessor, Gov. Mark Warner, he failed to prepare [...]
Of another 9/11, that is? About 7 percent over the next 10 years, says one report.
[...]Remember the Angry White Male? He’s the jerk who votes Republican, in contemporary mythology. As Charles Krauthammer put it—14 years ago now!—:
The Angry White Male, suitably capitalized to indicate that the menace has become a media-certified trend, stalks the land, or at least the land of the media. In the [...]
