24 September 2008

Obama-Bartlet Exchange?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

Link to the whole article.

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18 September 2008

This Just In: Palin Needs To Read Aquinias

Why, you ask?

Well, moveon.org has a few nice talking points. My favorite: she was a Buchanan supporter in 2000 (you know, the year that George W. Bush was running). Needing to read Aquinas, by association?

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Zapatero: Not with US, so with the terrorists?

From the Washington Post's "The Trail," according to a McCain aide writing to clarify McCain's position on whether he would meet with Spain's president:

"The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain's willingness to meet Zapatero (and id'd him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred). Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview."

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17 September 2008

Can Fat Teens Hunt (!?)

I wish I were making this up.


Series description: Ten overweight teens live with a tribe of former headhunters in the remote jungles of Borneo. (Stereo)

They're British. They're yobs. At the moment, the participants are squeamishly eating frogs. This program is on the Health Network. It's not just the West's financial system that deserves to collapse...

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Plug

Do people think the tooth fairy exists? Do they secretly hope that John McCain will die?

Now that the blogging season is back upon us I want to use this (not very elevated or well-attended) soapbox to promote a website started in part by one of my high-school compatriots: Urtak.

According to the creators, "Urtak is the world's first experiment in collaborative public opinion." Promoted as a sounder, saner alternative to mainstream public opinion research, any user can ask any question, answers are always in a yes/no/don't care format, and questions are randomly posed to users. The only thing missing is a truly representative sample, but as the creators point out, (a) no sample can be adequately representative, and (b) it's more important to prioritize good questions over representative answers.

Check it out.

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16 September 2008

Free range

The New York Times reports that flocks of chickens have been seen wandering around East Harlem recently, and that a new flock appears whenever the city's animal control people have captured all the last gang. Though the perpetrator has not been caught, the word on the street seems to be that some local eccentric has been periodically buying the chickens from a wholesale poultry market and releasing them in the area. We trust that this is not, in fact, a postmodernist installation from one of Nick's IFA colleagues.

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Elitist Liberal Media Continues to Pour It on...

...in two interesting articles about the Republican ticket's truthiness that will hopefully be interesting fodder in a swing state near you:

From The Post, on Sarah Palin: "it's weird for a politician -- or anyone else, really -- to maintain that an assertion is true after admitting that it isn't true."

And on John McCain: "His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most."

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13 September 2008

Everything in Order Here

BBC vocabulary, rappers' good behaviour and Italian efficiency all seem to be alive and well:
West arrested after airport row
Alitalia 'running out of fuel'

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