Here’s something dug up from the bottom of the ocean:
No, I don’t mean the clamshell; I’m talking about the gold thingee inside it. Continue reading →
No Sanity Squad tonight
You may have noticed that my highly-esteemed Sanity Squad colleague and good friend Dr. Sanity is taking a break from blogging and podcasting. I understand how difficult it is to keep up the pace, and how important it can be to recharge the batteries. I wish her well, and hope she returns soon.
So right now the Squad is in the midst of deciding whether to take a break from our podcasts, as well. No podcast tonight, however.
Obama: don’t know much about history, but I know what I like
I have long lamented the decline of the teaching of history and of critical thinking. One can be a highly intelligent intellectual today and know almost nothing about either.
This is where it’s led us. A Democratic nominee this ignorant, and a populace who can’t tell the difference.
Obama is the least qualified serious contender for the Presidency from either party that I can recall in my lifetime. And that includes Ross Perot.
Now, here’s a novel idea for legislators: how about some domestic oil development?
Last week a proposal to lift the moratorium on shale oil extraction was narrowly defeated in a Senate committee. The vote was along strictly party lines, Republicans for lifting the ban and Democrats against. What a surprise.
All of this despite the fact that everyone pays lip service to the idea that we need to get closer to that dream of energy independence. And this despite the fact that oil prices have gone through the roof and then some, raising the motivation (and cost-effectiveness) of developing our own reserves.
Many people have come to distrust oil companies, and think everything they do is suspect and perhaps even evil. And many people—especially of the Democrat persuasion—would like nothing better than to for us to go back to some golden age of low energy needs, although how this would happen without a huge culling of the present population I can’t quite imagine. Short of that, they would prefer us to do without oil entirely, to develop alternative energy sources that are clean and have the blessing of environmentalists, although none of these promise to be any more than slight adjuncts to the task of meeting our current and future energy demands (and why alternative energy companies, if successful, would be any less profit-motivated or venal in the end than the oil companies are perceived to be is anybody’s guess. Maybe because they’d be run by Democrats? [/sarcasm]) Continue reading →
Obama: so vain
Others have observed that the Carly Simon song “You’re So Vain” is an excellent description of Obama’s reaction to Bush’s Knesset speech.
But they haven’t gone far enough with the lyrics. I have attempted to fill that need: Continue reading →
The President “goes negative” (??)—and the Times goes fully insane…
…and completely in the tank for the glass–jawed Obama.
According to the outraged Times, Bush’s “shameful” and “damaging” “slash-and-burn politics” were demonstrated by his mentioning in front of the Knesset that appeasement of terrorists is a bad thing, although some people advocate it. Oh, the horror!
And what’s more to the point, this statement of Bush’s constitutes a “barely veiled attack” (there’s that “a” word again!) against wunderkind Obama and therefore is the equivalent of a stab in the back. Or the front. Or somewhere. Continue reading →
I left my jello mold in San Francisco
It may be a “distraction,” and no doubt the word “silly” could be said to apply, but I think it’s important to inject a bit of levity—and jello (preferably jello mold)—into life every now and then.
Not to mention beauty and creativity. And I have found a photo that fits the bill in every way.
What does it represent? The city of San Francisco made of jello, part of an installation at that city’s Exploratorium appearing in the spring of 2006.
Feast your eyes:
Everything is an “attack”—Obama is now officially beyond criticism
It has now become a low blow to strike any blow at Obama. It has now become officially an “attack” to campaign at all against him—or even to suggest opposition to something he may have done or may have said, whether you mention him or not.
Case in point: President Bush is not allowed to allude to appeasement as a bad thing without Obama (and many Democrats) getting into an outraged hissy fit about it. Continue reading →
Photoshopping gone wild: ah, but you should see the pictures!
There’s an old Jewish joke that goes something like this:
A Jewish grandmother walks down the street proudly pushing her new grandchild in a baby carriage [that’s how old this joke is; a carriage rather than the $1000 stroller that I hear is now de rigueur in Manhattan]. She stops near another elderly woman, who looks into the carriage and admires the baby.
“What a beautiful baby!” the other woman says dutifully.
“You think that’s beautiful? That’s nothing,” says the grandma. “You should see the pictures!”
And since life imitates art—as art (and artifice) gets further and further from life—I refer you to this Newsweek piece about airbrushing in fashion layouts. Continue reading →
Neocon copycats?
Sent in by a reader:
I guess you can’t accuse someone of copying what you’ve already stolen, though, can you?
Food for thought
In a piece by Cinque Henderson (an African-American supporter of Hillary Clinton) appearing in TNR, we find the following bit of insider information, which so far as I know has not been pointed out before: Continue reading →
The arguments Hillary hasn’t been able to sell
Hillary won big yesterday in West Virginia. Really, really big.
And it couldn’t matter less.
Once again, the press is filled with pleas for her to go. Now. Clean out her desk and her locker and turn in her keys, and quit ruining the fun for everybody else.
The math is clear; she is about to be eliminated. Nothing can save her short of a host of superdelegates charging over to her side, and why would they? Everybody loves a winner, a frontrunner, and in this case that’s the younger and more charismatic and even more politically correct (race trumping gender in the victim sweepstakes every time) Obama. Continue reading →