I actually thought he had died thirty years ago.
Such a great British name, though. Sir Edmund Hillary. And yes, I know he is a kiwi.
Archives for 2008
Open Thread
John Cole, AKA Karl Rove, makes you read when you could be watching YouTube.
And all except Punchy rejoiced.
Another Day in Paradise
Michael Goldfarb, yesterday at the Weekly Standard:
Watch the tape for yourself–no one but an apologist for the Iranian regime could possibly claim that the boats shown were not acting in a threatening and reckless manner. And Majd has absolutely no evidence on which to base his accusation that the Pentagon manufactured or concocted any of this.
The Navy today:
Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.
The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, “I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes.”
The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.
Queue Monty Python:
The Witch: I’m not a witch I’m not a witch!
Sir Bedevere: But you are dressed as one
The Witch: *They* dressed me up like this!
Crowd: We didn’t! We didn’t…
The Witch: And this isn’t my nose. It’s a false one.
Sir Bedevere: [lifts up her false nose] Well?
Peasant 1: Well, we did do the nose.
Sir Bedevere: The nose?
Peasant 1: And the hat, but she is a witch!
Crowd: Yeah! Burn her! Burn her!
Sir Bedevere: Did you dress her up like this?
Peasant 1: No!
Peasant 3, Peasant 2: No!
Peasant 3: No!
Peasant 1: No!
Peasant 3, Peasant 2: No!
Peasant 1: Yes!
Peasant 2: Yes!
Peasant 1: Yeah a bit.
Peasant 3: A bit!
Peasant 1, Peasant 2: A bit!
Peasant 2: a bit
Peasant 1: But she has got a wart!
Random Person in the crowd: *cough* *cough*
Glenn Beck Hallucinates
I know this makes me an awful person, but this just made me laugh:
My “routine” outpatient surgery (which was on my butt — get all your sophomoric jokes out of the way now) went awry and I was in terrible, excruciating pain. To help, my doctors who were absolutely fantastic, created a sinister cocktail of pain medications so strong that it’s usually reserved only for Hollywood starlets. It included morphine, Percocet, Toradol, some sort of synthetic morphine derivative on a pump, and my personal favorite — Fentanyl, which my doctor told me is an opiate 80 times more powerful than morphine.
That combination took me to an incredibly dark place. I began having trouble breathing, and I started to hallucinate. Every time I closed my eyes it was like I entered my very own movie theater running the movie “Saw” on a loop.
Two things- How does a butt operation go awry, and Beck is just lucky his personal movie theatre was not showing re-runs of the Glenn Beck show. Talk about a freak show.
I Can Has Unity Pony?
Another example of what I am talking about. An interview Obama gave to NPR. Not a stump speech for the masses. An interview that will be heard by people who can juggle actual ideas:
Steve Inskeep: Can you name one concrete thing you can do that other candidates would not do to move things forward?
Obama: Well, it is going to require the American people, enlisting them in putting pressure on Congress to make it happen. This is part of the point that I’ve been trying to make, Steve. There’s no shortage of plans out there. There’s no shortage of policy papers. This is not a technical problem. It’s a problem of politics. It’s a problem of getting a big enough coalition of people who are organized, inspired, mobilized and will then put pressure on those who are elected — in combination with a president who is able to lead — in order to get it done. There are no magic solutions here. And the problems that we face, whether it’s climate change, or health care, or making college more affordable, or dealing with our foreign policy is less a problem of, you know, getting the perfectly calibrated policy. It has to do with are we able to get people to work in the same direction, and that’s what I can do.
If we are inspired and work together we are just magically going to defeat the people who have spent the last thirty years opposing single-payer, global warming reforms, etc. Yeah. I am just a concern troll.
In a somewhat related vein, read this Barney Frank piece at the HuffPo.
BTW, for fun, I have decided that I am going to compile a list of things that Obama supporters claim he has transcended. Off the top of my head, we have race and politics.
Call Me Karl Rove
Given the crap I have taken for pointing out that “lofty” rhetoric and “elevating the spirits” of a few excitable people is not enough to win a general election, I enjoyed reading this prevew of what is to come from Karl Rove should Obama win the nomination:
The fourth and biggest reason why Mrs. Clinton won two nights ago is that, while Mr. Obama can draw on the deep doubts of many Democrats about Mrs. Clinton, he can’t close out the argument. Mr. Obama is an inspiring figure playing a historical role, but that’s not enough to push aside the former First Lady and senator from New York. She’s an historic figure, too. When it comes to making the case against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama comes across as a vitamin-starved Adlai Stevenson. His rhetoric, while eloquent and moving at times, has been too often light as air.
Mr. Obama began to find his voice at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, when he took four deliberate swipes at the Clintons. He called for Democrats to tackle problems “that had festered long before” President Bush, “problems that we’ve talked about year after year after year after year.”
He dismissed the Clinton style of campaigning and governing, saying “Triangulating and poll-driven positions . . . just won’t do.” He attacked Mrs. Clinton on Iraq, torture and her opposition to direct presidential talks with Syria and Iran. Then he rejected a new Clinton era by saying, “I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s.” It deftly, if often indirectly, played on the deep concerns of Democrats who look at the Clinton era as a time of decline for their party and unfulfilled potential for their cause.
But rather than sharpen and build on this message of contrast and change, Mr. Obama chose soaring rhetoric and inspirational rallies. While his speeches galvanized true believers at his events, his words were neither filling nor sustaining for New Hampshire Democrats concerned about the Clintons and looking for a substantive alternative.
Flame away, but I am not out in left field when I point this out. This is a weak point for Obama, and while all of you are high on the ether of his “positive message for change,” Karl Rove and his friends are taking notes and loading up. Although I suppose what you will really do is ignore everything and just accuse me of parroting GOP/Clinton talking points.
Jimmy Carter: An Editorial
This has got to be the funniest thing I’ve read on The Onion in a long time:
Oh, what’s that I hear? The weather’s all screwy? You got a global warming problem? Boo-fucking-hoo! I was telling you morons to turn off your lights and unplug all your shit at night to conserve energy in 19-fuckin’-75, for chrissake. Gee, I wonder what woulda happened if we’d all switched to solar power like I fucking did back when we had a fucking chance to do something about it. Think we’d still be sucking Saudi Arabia’s dick like a five-dollar whore? I sure as fuck didn’t get no fancy Oscar for that little spiel, though, did I? No. But Al Gore, that cum-sucking pig, steals the shit from me and now he’s the greatest thing since Jesus Christ made a fucking sandwich.
Well, he can lick my asshole right after George W. Bush, that fuck. […]
You had your chance with Jimmy Carter, and you fucking blew it. So get fucked. Fucking country.