The New York Times prints a tale of two lovers who were married, but not to each other.
Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla met in 2006 in a pre-kindergarten classroom. They both had children attending the same Upper West Side school. They also both had spouses.
Part “Brady Bunch” and part “The Scarlet Letter,” their story has played out as fodder for neighborhood gossip. But from their perspective, the drama was as unlikely as it was unstoppable.
Unstoppable, we can guess. Unlikely? She's a TV person for chrissakes. There's no mention of it in the Times' article, but I'm going to take a big guess that neither of these two were on their first spouses when they met.
In May 2008, Mr. Partilla invited her for a drink at O’Connell’s, a neighborhood bar. She said she knew something was up, because they had never met on their own before.
“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he recalled saying to her. She jumped up, knocking a glass of beer into his lap, and rushed out of the bar. Five minutes later, he said, she returned and told him, “I feel exactly the same way.” Then she left again.
It's just like that scene with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Play It Again, Sam! Well, except for the part about her leaving again; that didn't happen.
Anyway, the sign of progress is not the Times publishing this fawning profile. It's the reactions. The Village Voice:
"I did a terrible thing as honorably as I could," said the man who left his wife and three children. THEN HE TOLD THE MOST FAMOUS NEWSPAPER ALL ABOUT IT SO WHEN HIS KIDS GROW UP THEY CAN GOOGLE HIS NAME AND SLAM THE DOOR OF THEIR ROOMS AND SIDE WITH THEIR MOTHER.
Only one year ago, we noted the Times' gross habit of including people in the "Vows" column who very clearly cheated on and abandoned a former spouse or lover before getting hitched to the current one, then went on to revel in it in the Times, so their exes can relive that period in all its painful glory.
It helps that the U.S. is a country now in the throes of a hatred for knowledge, education, and the pursuit of understanding of the world around us, amounting to a worship of ignorance and imbecility, all of which handsomely serves the economic interests of the people who increasingly own us, or at least act as if they do.
Of course, what he really wants is to be the tyrant himself.
I still ride a bike. I do 12 miles, several days a week, and as I do so I listen to music -- the Pandora service on my iPhone. I have created a station that plays folk rock. Lately, it has repeatedly played the Neil Young song "Ohio": "What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?" On the bike, I have to repress a tear.
I still ride a bike, too. But for Chrissakes, I don't listen to Neil Young anymore, except for laughs. The right can be sanctimonious at times, but they'd have a hard time catching up to ol' Neil on that score.
Anyway, Cohen's tie-in to today is that the right is being nasty just like they were in May of 1970, with lots of hateful words:
That was the language of that time. And now it is the language of our time. It is the language of Glenn Beck, who fetishizes about liberals and calls Barack Obama a racist.
Where was Cohen during that last 10 years, when liberals routinely compared Bush unfavorably to Hitler? For that matter, where was he back in the 1960s when the Left called LBJ (and Nixon after him) a baby-killer?
Angry and hateful words are not limited to the right, by any means. Neil Young was and is a demagogue just like Glenn Beck. And Richard Cohen? To paraphrase Coven:
When you came into office, you felt you would be able to work with the other side. When did you realize that the Republicans had abandoned any real effort to work with you and create bipartisan policy?
And:
How do you feel about the fact that day after day, there's this really destructive attack on whatever you propose? Does that bother you? Has it shocked you?
And they really grilled him with this one:
You've passed more progressive legislation than any president since Lyndon Johnson. Yet your base does not seem nearly as fired up as the opposition, and you don't seem to be getting the credit for those legislative victories. There was talk that you were going to mobilize your grass-roots volunteers and use them to pressure Congress, but you decided for whatever reason not to involve the public directly and not to force a filibuster on issues like health care. What do you say to those people who have developed a sense of frustration — your base — who feel that you need to fight harder?
Edward R. Murrow would be proud that Rolling Stone stands for first class urinalism.
The artist whose poster of Barack Obama became a rallying image during the hope-and-change election of 2008 says he understands why so many people have lost faith.
In an exclusive interview with National Journal on Thursday, Shepard Fairey expressed his disappointment with the president -- a malaise that seems representative of many Democrats who had great expectations for Obama.
Within hours and possibly minutes I expect the president will name Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer protection agency, and if he does, the Democratic base will erupt and turn out to vote in far greater numbers than any current poll suggests.
I could be wrong; Obama might give up at the last minute, which would be the last betrayal of the Democratic base and very possibly the death knell of the Democratic House of Representatives. But if he names Warren, the pundits be will amazed, astonished and flabbergasted by the lift this would give to the Democratic base and by the voter turnout that would follow.
Why? Because Elizabeth Warren is The Greatest; Mohammed Ali was just borrowing the title. She will trump the economy, she will trump the deficit. Liberals will turn out in droves to reelect the Democrats to an even greater majority than they currently enjoy. In fact, the Republican party may have to disband.
Or something. Why all this will happen is left unsaid. Who Elizabeth Warren is, and her qualifications for the job are also not mentioned. It's hard to imagine that Warren's six-year-old son could write a less compelling article.
With the NFL's season starting tonight, here's something I did a few years ago on the NFL teams that have had the longest wait for a playoff appearance, playoff win, Super Bowl appearance and Super Bowl win, updated as of this season.
Longest Wait for a Playoff Appearance: Never made the playoffs (years missed in parentheses): Texans (8) 1999 Bills, Lions 2002 49ers, Browns, Raiders 2004 Rams 2005 Broncos 2006 Chiefs, Bears, 2007 Jaguars, Seahawks, Bucs, Redskins 2008 Titans, Steelers, Dolphins, Giants, Panthers, Falcons 2009 Chargers, Jets, Colts, Saints, Vikings, Cowboys, Ravens, Cardinals, Bengals, Eagles, Packers, Patriots
Longest Wait for a Playoff Win Never won a playoff game (years missed in parentheses): Texans (8) 1990 Bengals 1991 Lions 1993 Chiefs 1994 Browns 1995 Bills 2000 Dolphins 2002 49ers, Bucs, Raiders 2003 Titans 2004 Falcons, Rams, 2005 Panthers, Redskins, Broncos 2006 Bears 2007 Seahawks, Jaguars, Giants, Packers, Patriots, 2008 Chargers, Eagles, Steelers 2009 Saints, Colts, Vikings, Jets, Cowboys, Cardinals, Ravens
Longest Wait for a Super Bowl Appearance Never Appeared (years missed in parentheses): Lions (44), Browns (41), Jaguars (15) and Texans (8)
Note: Years given are the year as of the beginning of the NFL season. Per numerous league rulings the current Cleveland Browns are the same team that played in Cleveland until 1995, and they are considered to have gone dormant as a franchise for three seasons.
“We don’t have a very vibrant anti-war movement anymore,” lamented Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Codepink, one of the anti-war movement’s most visible organizations. “The issues have not changed very much. … Now we have a surge [in Afghanistan] that we would have been furious about under George Bush, yet it’s hard to mobilize people under Obama. We have the same anti -war movement and not the same passion.”
Well, you know how it is, when you're a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrats, you're not going to be needed once they're in power. The story goes on in that vein for awhile. I don't have a lot of respect for Cindy Sheehan, but I'll give her credit for at least being consistent in her opposition to the war, unlike many of the people around her back in 2005.
And the agony of victory. I confess to being a bit baffled by my fellow Republicans these days. Two years in the wilderness seems to have taught them nothing. Consider Erick Erickson, at Red State, rooting for the Democrats to keep the Senate:
I’d rather see the Democrat get elected than see Mike Castle get elected. Seriously, I know many of you disagree with me, but if the majority depends on Mike Castle, to hell with the majority.
Meanwhile, Dan Riehl seconds Mark Levin about the National Review's endorsement of John McCain (which only came about a month ago; sheesh, it's been ten days since the primary election):
Think I'm being too harsh? Leftist movement publications would never do what NRO does.
Yep, he thinks NRO should ape the Nation and the American Prospect. Personally I always thought that those mags were crazy, but not in Riehl's world.
A month ago I was betting that the Republicans would make big gains in both the House and Senate, but would fail to gain a majority in either chamber. Today I think the Republicans might win the House but still come up short in the Senate (primary results in several states have hurt the GOP’s prospects). Next month the picture could be a bit different, and by November it could change even more. Today’s CNN analysis may turn out to be prescient. But it also might turn out to be bogus. I suggest we wait until the morning of November 3 to make that judgment.
The narrative that the writer (Les Francis at the Frum Forum) is pushing is that the current GOP is far too extremist, and while they may be looking good now for November's elections, that could change in an instant. I disagree.
First, he dismisses the polls. But as Nate Silver points out, the polls even a few months out are meaningful. They may not turn out to be completely accurate in individual years, but they are very accurate on average.
Second he engages in the commonplace "the Republicans are much more extremist than they used to be," BS that we've been hearing almost every two years. Those of us who've been around the block know that those charges were leveled in the Bush years, the Gingrich years, and the Reagan years.
Third, it is silly to say that the Republicans may be looking good this month, but the Democrats could still turn it around. Sorry, but there are now only about 2-1/2 months to the election. There is no way to turn the ship away from the iceberg at this point, even with a couple of positive jobs reports (which are looking increasingly unlikely anyway).
My guess is the GOP takes over the House, with a slim margin. In the Senate, it is looking increasingly possible that they will emerge with a split, although I admit that would require them to virtually run the table.
With all the speculation about whether he's on for 2010 or not, I thought it might be worth posting what I wrote about Favre in 1992, after his first season in Green Bay:
The local paper had a picture of him after an early season comeback victory. He's a big, burly kid, looks nothing like a quarterback. With Atlanta in his rookie year of 1991, he threw five passes, none of which were completed. That is, none to his own team. Two were complete to the other guys. The other guys happened to be the Redskins, who were en route to a Super Bowl title.
In 1992, he atoned for that lousy start, and then some. If you were to offer me the future earnings of any one player in the National Football League, I'd choose Brett Favre. Want to know who's going to be remembered as the player of the 1990s? Brett Favre. Who's going to win the Super Bowl sometime in the next three years? Yes, he is.
Brett Favre was the sixth best quarterback int he league last year. He was also 22 when the season started. You can't name five quarterbacks who've had this good a season at the same age or younger. Bernie Kosar, Dan Marino and Fran Tarkenton are the only ones I could come up with and I looked hard.
Brett Favre completed 64% of his passes last season. He only ranked seventh in that category, but that figure would lead the league about half the time.
His rapid development makes the Packers' GM Ron Wolf look like a genius. As the Jets' director of player personnel a year earlier, Wolf tried desperately to trade into a position to draft Favre, but the Falcons grabbed him before New York had the chance. Wolf wouldn't take know for an answer, and set Atlanta a first-round draft pick for Favre when he got to Green Bay. It looks like the steal of the century.
I don't believe in looking at game-by-game statistics, but in this case I couldn't resist the temptation. In his worst effort last year, Favre's completion percentage was 54.1%. He had three games where he completed 70% of his passes, and eight others where he completed over 60%. That's getting the job done consistently.
There are only a few warts on the season. The major one was the loss in the final week to Minnesota, in which Favre was miserable after an early scoring drive. He was also ineffective in Week 10 against the Giants. Outside of those two games, he rated 92.9 by the NFL's method.
In the Jay Schroeder comment, I made some points about yards per completion. Brett Favre three for 10.7 yards per completed pass, one of the lowest of anybody in the NFL. The guys below him weren't any good--DeBerg, Millen, Esiason and Stouffer. The only reason Favre was able to succeed at that level was his phenomenal completion percentage. However, he really does need to throw a little longer.
The good news is that he was so successful at the short game last year that there's little doubt the Packers can stretch his arm a little without the inevitable negative consequences--interceptions and incompletions--destroying his value.
And look at the NFC Central. The Bears collapsed so hard they took down Mike Ditka with them. The Vikings played well last year, but they don't have a quarterback they feel confident with. The Lions fell apart, and the Bucs are still the Bucs.
Doubters will probably compare Favre with Don Majkowski in 1989. However, the Majic Man was three years older than Favre in his big season.
Card shops report that his most expensive rookie card--the 1991 Topps Stadium Club, in which his name is misspelled Farve--runs only $9. Other rookie cards can be had for 75 cents or less. At those prices he looks like a steal. If you've got a couple hundred earning 3% in a savings account, you might consider investing in Favre Preferred. It's got strong upside potential.
Our country is faced with an impending economic catastrophe, a Second Great Depression. It is being brought about on purpose by a political party that cares only for keeping and expanding its power, and looks upon prosperity as a threat to that power.
That party is now being threatened with being thrown out of power. If that party is evil enough and fascist enough to cause an economic catastrophe, it is certainly evil and fascist enough to cause a physical catastrophe, an Ultimate October Surprise, that will frighten and enrage voters enough to preserve its power in November.
What could this be? The most likely would be another 9/11, a massively horrific terrorist attack, perhaps even nuclear. An attack for which no one or no group will claim responsibility, no Al Qaeda, no Osama bin Laden, no Timothy McVeigh - just a plethora of pointed fingers at a multitude of suspects, without any sufficiently hard evidence to implicate one in particular.
Wheeler closes with a call for a campaign to let Obama know he won't get away with it:
Second, this comprehensive counter needs to have two components. One is the message of anger: get the Dems to understand that whatever they are planning in October, all it will serve to do is make TeaPartyers, conservatives, and independents - a majority of voters - mad. It will serve to increase their anger, not deflect it. So an October Surprise will do no good and will even be counter-productive.
And if the predicted terrorist attack doesn't happen?
And then, on an Election Day that has seen no October Surprise but a Dem Demolition instead, we can all congratulate ourselves and say to each other, This was no accident, comrades.
Where have we heard this crap before? Well, Alex Jones used the same sort of rhetoric about Bush back before 9-11:
Massive evidence has come to our attention which shows that the backers, controllers, and allies of Vice President Dick Cheney are determined to orchestrate and manufacture a new 9/11 terror incident, and/or a new Gulf of Tonkin war provocation over the coming weeks and months. Such events would be used by the Bush administration as a pretext for launching an aggressive war against Iran, quite possibly with nuclear weapons, and for imposing a regime of martial law here in the United States. We call on the House of Representatives to proceed immediately to the impeachment of Cheney, as an urgent measure for avoiding a wider and more catastrophic war. Once impeachment has begun, it will be easier for loyal and patriotic military officers to refuse illegal orders coming from the Cheney faction. We solemnly warn the people of the world that any terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction taking place inside the United States or elsewhere in the immediate future must be considered the prima facie responsibility of the Cheney faction. We urge responsible political leaders everywhere to begin at once to inoculate the public opinion of their countries against such a threatened false flag terror operation.
So congratulations, Pam and Jack; you're proudly in company with 9-11 Truthers and Lyndon LaRouche kooks. Let's see, October is the 10th month; we could call them 10-10 Truthers.
Kos publishes a critique of the polling firm he used for the last year or so, and comes to the (correct in my opinion) conclusion that he was defrauded.
A combination of random sampling error and systematic difference should make the M results differ a bit from the F results, and in almost every case they do differ. In one respect, however, the numbers for M and F do not differ: if one is even, so is the other, and likewise for odd. Given that the M and F results usually differ, knowing that say 43% of M were favorable (Fav) to Obama gives essentially no clue as to whether say 59% or say 60% of F would be. Thus knowing whether M Fav is even or odd tells us essentially nothing about whether F Fav would be even or odd.
Thus the even-odd property should match about half the time, just like the odds of getting both heads or both tails if you tossed a penny and nickel. If you were to toss the penny and the nickel 18 times (like the 18 entries in the first two columns of the table) you would expect them to show about the same number of heads, but would rightly be shocked if they each showed exactly the same random-looking pattern of heads and tails.
Were the results in our little table a fluke? The R2K weekly polls report 778 M-F pairs. For their favorable ratings (Fav), the even-odd property matched 776 times. For unfavorable (Unf) there were 777 matches.
That's pretty obviously hanky-panky; indeed, it suggests that the three outliers were mistakes by the person compiling--err, creating--the poll results.
Is being covered extensively by the blogs. Brief version: Former Reason blogger Dave Weigel was hired by the Washington Post to cover the conservative movement. Weigel supposedly has conservative leanings himself. But it turns out that he blasted several conservatives on a private e-mail list.
Doesn't sound all that bad, until I mention what the private e-mail list is: JournoList, the listserve that juicebox boy Ezra Klein started up a few years ago. And at that point, Weigel had to go. Not for his statements, but for being part of that list, which means that he has no credibility as a conservative.
To start with, it's important to note that all of the comments at the center of the recent uproar were made on a private email list that was supposed to be off the record. Just for a moment, think of the things that you'd say if you were joking or venting anger among friends, and imagine if they became public with context removed. If everything we said privately were public, I wonder how many of us would be able to maintain jobs or friendships. Weigel is being attacked for writing that the world would be better if Matt Drudge could "set himself on fire." But people make off hand remarks like that all the time without literally wishing bodily harm upon other humans.
It's not so much what he said that matters; it's where he said it.
If there ever was a phrase that sums up what conservatism is all about fighting, it's "Money for Nothing." Worse, according to Jim Geraghty, the product he was pitching was a scam.
The infomercial promotes seminars that ostensibly instruct attendees how to get the “free money grants.” Tucson TV station KVOA did an investigation of National Grants Conferences that you can watch here. The TV station’s investigative team found that the workshops cost from $999 to $1,200 and federal government grants really aren’t even available to individuals.
Despite all that McCain still looks like a solid favorite against likely Democratic opponent Rodney Glassman, leading him 49-33. That does represent a significant tightening since September when McCain led 55-25, but doesn't put him in a particularly dire situation. The reason for the disconnect between McCain's approval rating and his support for reelection is that while only 48% of Republicans express approval of his job performance, 78% will still vote for him in a general election.
Democrats' only real shot at winning the seat then is if Hayworth can win the primary, and we find Glassman leading Hayworth 42-39 in such a scenario. Hayworth is extremely unpopular with only 23% of voters holding a favorable opinion of him to 50% with an unfavorable one. Democrats (6/68 favorability) predictably see him in a dim light but he doesn't do a whole lot better with independents (22/49). Republicans are evenly divided with 37% viewing him favorably and 37% unfavorably.
If we want to win back the Senate (still a slim possibility), we can't give up an own goal.
Matt Yglesias wants us to know he had a brilliant idea all on his little own:
This competitive market sure looks like a horrible place! You might make a living there, but you sure as hell aren’t going to get rich. Think of the immigrant family that owns the dry cleaning shop around the corner—long hours, hard work, modest income. That’s your capitalism and it pretty much sucks.
Obviously the whole reason to become a businessman in the first place is to get rich. Operating a business in a competitive marketplace is for suckers, or immigrants with limited English ability.
The whole reason to become a businessman is not necessarily to get rich. It's to make money, which is not necessarily the same thing. Sure, some businessman use their smarts and their customer service skills and become wealthy. But a whole heckuva lot of them just achieve the middle class, which doesn't really suck in this country at all; it's a pretty nice lifestyle, especially if you don't live beyond your means.
And of course Matt's later observation about how smart businessmen seek to limit competition, etc., is hardly a shock. Even the dry cleaner knows that barriers to entry exist in the competitive marketplace; if there are three dry cleaners at a intersection, nobody in their right mind is going to open one on the fourth corner.
Was obviously set up to portray her and the Silky Pony rather favorably.
My first impression of Hunter, when she opened the back door of the screened porch filled with toys and strollers in the three-bedroom house she is renting (for $1,500 a month), her hair pulled up in a scrunchy, was that she was much prettier, and a whole lot softer, than all those National Enquirer spy photos suggest.
We learn that she calls him Johnny:
I feel comfortable talking now, because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity. I didn't feel like I could ever speak until he did that. Because had I spoken, I would have emasculated him. And I could not emasculate him. Also, it is not my desire to teach my daughter that when Mommy's upset with Daddy, you take matters into your own hands and fix Daddy's mistakes. Which I view as one of the biggest problems in all female-and-male relationships.
Unless we pass some environmental measure or other, in which case we might be saved, even though they're claiming we're doomed:
Methane release from the not-so-perma-frost is the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle. Research published in Friday’s journal Science finds a key “lid” on “the large sub-sea permafrost carbon reservoir” near Eastern Siberia “is clearly perforated, and sedimentary CH4 [methane] is escaping to the atmosphere.”
Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,” much of which would be released as methane. Methane is is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years!
So we're doomed, start buying oceanfront property in Las Vegas?
It is increasingly clear that if the world strays significantly above 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide for any length of time, we will find it unimaginably difficult to stop short of 800 to 1000 ppm.
Reconcile this, you distasteful, malevolent little quisling punk - a timely reminder of some words I never thought would have such import during my lifetime.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
The cause is well known and it is just. When the alleged leader of a democratic republic places his own wishes so above those of the complete body politic, he is no longer worthy of the title, leader, no matter what office he might occupy.
Get a grip, man! Conservatives don't do revolution. We have to fight off Obamacare at the ballot box.
To set the background on this, I had gone up to Flagstaff with three of my buddies, Mort (the photographer), Craig (his brother) and Jorge. We were staying in a million-dollar plus home on the fairway at Forest Highlands. Our plan was to get established and then go back down via Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona. But inevitably things got delayed and so we're going up Schnebly Hill Road for a mountain bike excursion as the sun is going down.
First run down the hill, the sun has actually set, and it's rapidly getting dark. Mort is driving the truck, while the other three of us are biking down the road. Because of the darkness we actually had to keep close to the truck so we could see the road in front of us. At this one point, I think the road is turning right, but after committing myself in that direction, I see that it's actually a dogleg left. So I'm turning hard, while trying not to go down on the dirt and rock of the road.
I almost made it. In fact, I actually managed to turn the bike to the left, but my balance was still on the right side. And when I put my right foot down, the ground crumbled underneath me and I went over the cliff.
No kidding, I thought I was going to die. Instead, I fell about four feet, past some rocks and into a bush. My injuries were limited to a scratch on my right wrist. At the point you see me, I'm laughing hysterically. Winston Churchill once observed that there is nothing quite so exhilarating as to be shot and and missed, and I had definitely dodged a bullet that time. Kudos to Mort for getting the shot on one of the early digital cameras (my guess is that this was around 1996-1997).
To nobody's surprise, Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith sailed into the Pro Football Hall Of Fame. Somewhat to my surprise, five other men joined them. As described by Vic Carucci, all of the players on the list deserve induction, and probably (based on past results) all but one will eventually be inducted.
To get there, we started with a list of 15 names. With the exception of Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith, there would be plenty of debate and discussion about the "other 13" because they were mostly equal in their worthiness to enter the Hall.
Reporting from Denver - The Air Force Academy, stung several years ago by accusations of Christian bias, has built a new outdoor worship area for pagans and other practitioners of Earth-based religions.
But its opening, heralded as a sign of a more tolerant religious climate at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., was marred by the discovery two weeks ago of a large wooden cross placed there.
"We've been making great progress at the Air Force Academy. This is clearly a setback," said Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 graduate of the academy. He is founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and has often tangled with the academy over such issues.
Or if you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you.
Well, the mystery may be over. A woman who said her name was, in fact, Ellie Light called this morning into the radio show of Michael Smerconish, a national talker based in Philadelphia who has been friendly to Obama, to clear things up.
"I'm only me," she said, identifying herself as a traveling nurse who works for 13-week stretches at hospitals around the country, and whose primary residence is in Southern California.
"I need to own up – I did misrepresent my home town in some places," Light told Smerconish. Her logic in faking the addresses is one familiar to advocacy groups: "If I thought it was written by a neighbor of mine, I would give it more credence."
But according to Patterico, who's done yeoman work on this story since it broke, Ellie's claimed residency in 18 different states. Even if we accept her "13-week stretches" around the country claim, that would be at the most 4 states, and since her letter amounts to nothing more than whining that we aren't giving Obama enough time, I assume her letters only started popping up after November (and the Democratic losses in New Jersey and Virginia).
And I doubt very strongly that she's really doing this 13-week rotation to begin with, or that she's the actual letter writer. And as Patterico points out, the issue is not who Ellie Light is, it's why she was able to fool so many editors around the country. The local paper here requires letter writers to include a phone number and always calls before running one of my letters.
Depending on which liberal pundit you read today. Andrew Sullivan goes for the former:
What you have here is big babyism. After the worst downturn in memory, bequeathed a massive and growing debt, two failing wars, a financial sector threatening to bring down the entire economy, Obama has betrayed this person by preventing a Second Great Depression.
Yeah, who cares if unemployment is two percentage points higher than the One promised; at least it's not Hooverville time (yet). Andrew as usual can't read:
If Obama and Bush had refused to bail out the banks, does this small business owner believe she'd be in business at all?
According to her post she's not in business any longer:
I was a small business owner during 2008 election and my business ultimately failed under the weight of a horrendous economy.
Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it's been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package--$288 billion--is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you've been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills.
Swell, the right-wing is determined to be just as stupid as Jane Hamsher and Kos were with regard to Joe Lieberman. JD Hayworth's qualifications are that he lost his house seat in Scottsdale to a Democrat, for chrissakes, and he was a sportscaster.
A little revisionist history of his association with Pajamas Media, and an announcement of his latest venture in Vanity Fair, along with a soft-focus profile in the New York Times.
As Johnson recently reminded me, he once attempted a similar improvement on the blogosphere in 2004 by co-founding the conservative blog compendium Pajamas Media. He later repudiated it as “just another right-wing parrot organization” and sold off his share in 2007. I suggested to him that, in contrast to that particular project, we try to recruit bloggers who aren’t completely deranged. He agreed that this might be an effective approach.
Of course, that wasn't the way he described it at the time, and by non-completely deranged bloggers, I assume he's talking about idiots like John Cole of Balloon Juice. Moron the alliance:
Later this year, we’ll be launching a two-pronged campaign by which we hope to increase both the reach and efficiency of the blogosphere, as well as to bring pressure to bear on the media at large. Much of this effort will involve a loose network of bloggers that we’re now in the process of recruiting in order that we might all coordinate on exposing the failures of certain news outlets, for instance. This campaign is being planned in large part around software that’s currently in development by open-source advocate and information technology specialist Andrew Stein and which we believe will assist bloggers in making better use of their medium’s existing advantages; this system will provide for a measurable advance in the manner by which bloggers may distribute, obtain, evaluate, and build upon segments of information. Between the software in question and that skill set unique to those bloggers who have successfully adapted to the information age, we expect that we’ll have some success to the extent that we receive the assistance of others who are similarly concerned about the manner in which Americans are informed about crucial issues.
Translation: We're forming another FAIR, and we hope that George Soros will give us some funding.
Now it is eight years later, and Johnson, who is 56, sits in the ashes of an epic flame war that has destroyed his relationships with nearly every one of his old right-wing allies. People who have pledged their lives to fighting Islamic extremism, when asked about Charles Johnson now, unsheathe a word they do not throw around lightly: “evil.” Glenn Beck has taken the time to denounce him on air and at length. Johnson himself (Mad King Charles is one of his most frequent, and most printable, Web nicknames) has used his technical know-how to block thousands of his former readers not just from commenting on his site but even, in many cases, from viewing its home page.
What a genius; he knows how to do IP banning! Amazing (and futile, of course). We learn more of his mad skillz:
There is some dispute, even today, as to who was the first to expose the fraud behind the so-called Killian documents, but Johnson will forever be associated with the episode because, unlike most other bloggers — who know as much about the technical workings of their medium as a poet is likely to know about a printing press — he had the wherewithal to create, almost instantly, an animated .gif image that toggled between the original letter and that same letter typed in Microsoft Word 32 years later, illustrating the issue in a way that no 500-word blog post could have done.
It was a terrific post, but jeez, the wherewithal to create an animated .gif image is not exactly some arcane secret known to a few. The idea of doing it; that was the brilliant part.
Anyway, it's further evidence that if you want to get attention and praise from the lamestream media, there's no better way than becoming a Republican for a few years and then going back to being a Democrat.
I am Quinn’s father. I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves. I have been able to spend time with her during the past year and trust that future efforts to show her the love and affection she deserves can be done privately and in peace.
Gail Collins: Filibuster Has Prevented Obama from Doing Anything
What a joke this column is. Talking about the Massachusetts special election, Collins gripes that his status as the 41st Republican senator could prevent the health care bill from passing. She does a little exercise to show how only a small minority of the country could bring the process to a halt:
There are 100 members of the Senate. But as Brown is currently reminding us, because of the filibuster rule, it takes only 41 to stop any bill from passing.
U.S. population: 307,006,550.
Population for the 20 least-populated states: 31,434,822.
That means that in the Senate, all it takes to stop legislation is one guy plus 40 senators representing 10.2 percent of the country.
In theory, of course. In practice, the 40 Republican senators do not represent the 20 smallest states in population. Texas has two Republican senators and is the second largest state with a population of 24,000,000. Florida, the fourth largest, has one GOP senator.
Getting back to Massachusetts, Collins talks a bit about the enthusiasm gap:
The tea-party types are euphoric, pouring money in Brown’s direction. The people who voted for Barack Obama, meanwhile, are sullen and dispirited. This is, of course, partly because of the economy, but also partly because of the sense that the president is not getting anything done.
Which brings us back to the 10 percent rule. Don’t get me started again.
Doggone those nasty Republicans! Why are they filibustering all the president's programs!
Many of his friends started noticing a change—the arrival of what one of his aides referred to as “the ego monster”—after he was nearly chosen by Al Gore to be his running mate in 2000: the sudden interest in superficial stuff to which Edwards had been oblivious before, from the labels on his clothes to the size of his entourage. But the real transformation occurred in the 2004 race, and especially during the general election. Edwards reveled in being inside the bubble: the Secret Service, the chartered jet, the press pack, the swarm of factotums catering to his every whim. And the crowds! The ovations! The adoration! He ate it up. In the old days, when his aides asked how a rally had gone, he would roll his eyes and self-mockingly say, “Oh, they love me.” Now he would bound down from the stage beaming and exclaim, without the slightest shred of irony, “They looooove me!”
Saint Elizabeth does even worse:
With her husband, she could be intensely affectionate or brutally dismissive. At times subtly, at times blatantly, she was forever letting John know that she regarded him as her intellectual inferior. She called her spouse a “hick” in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks. One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Oh, he doesn’t read books,” she said. “I’m the one who reads books.”
It's an amazing read, but keep in mind that the sources for it are from the Edwards campaign and have a vested interest in maintaining their own viability for the future.
