Here is ABL on the Hal Sparks show.
Non-debate open thread
Blue loves catch only in so far as he can get a hold of the ball and burrow a comfortable bed in the snow with it. If you get close you hear a growl that sounds like it’s coming from somewhere underground. Not that it means anything; Blue is about the sweetest animal I have ever met, but it seems to work on Max. Once in a while, though, with persistence even a marshmallow like Max can win the day. Turn the audio down if you don’t like church bells.
The vid shows nicely how cloudy dusk light on snow gives my white balance fits.
The full Somerby
I find it harder and harder not to sympathize with Robespierre these days (h/t commenter hitchhiker):
[T]he food on the plane is crucial. Like the army, the press travels on its stomach and in this regard, Gore was no match for Bush. Gore wanted the snacks to be environmentally and nutritionally correct, but somehow granola bars ended up giving way to Fruit Roll-Ups and the sandwiches came wrapped and looked long past their sell-by date. On a lucky day, someone would remember to buy supermarket doughnuts. By contrast, a typical day of food on Air Bush (going from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to Newark to East Brunswick to Austin) consisted of five meals with access to a sixth, if you count grazing at a cocktail buffet. Breakfast one was French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and fruit, followed by a midmorning breakfast of spinach and tomato omelets. Lunch one was grilled chicken and beef with mashed potatoes, and lunch two was mushrooms stuffed with crab, shrimp kebabs, and pizza. There were Dove Bars and designer water on demand . . . but lobster wasn’t what Al Gore lacked. It was a candidate comfortable with himself.
Open Thread: GOP Debate, Myrtle Beach
(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)
__
At this point, I guess Newt the Destroyer and across-the-field injuries is the most entertainment we can hope for. Fox News is responsible for this one, two full hours live (well, life-like) from the South Carolina vacation spot, starting at 9pm. Not gonna try livestreaming from Darth Ailes’ site, which keeps crashing my desktop, but fortunately Richard Adams and his fellows at the Guardian will be liveblogging:
… There’s two vital questions at stake in tonight’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina – well, three if you count “Another debate?” as a question. The first is: Can Mitt Romney be stopped from winning the GOP presidential nomination? And the second is: Which one of the remaining losers on stage tonight is going to stop him?
__
One hates to (as the British say) micturate on your french fries, but the answer to the first is “no” and to the second is “duh”.
__
Should Romney win the South Carolina primary next Saturday – and the latest polling suggests he will – then that effectively ends the GOP contest. The only way that story line is going to change is if Romney doesn’t win the South Carolina primary, and probably the only way that will happen is if he is figuratively disemboweled by his debate rivals, namely Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Rick Perry.
__
That’s why tonight’s debate – and the following debate on Thursday, also in South Carolina – are so important for the shrinking “anyone but Romney” segment of the Republican party….
***********
9.43pm: Asked why he hasn’t released his tax records, Mitt Romney basically says “I’ll do that when I’m the nominee”
…. and after the Board has signed the contract spelling out the details of Willard’s golden parachute, should he fail to achieve Leadership in his new postion…
***********
WIN:
Old Dan and Little Ann – January 16, 2012 | 10:19 pm
__
The Hope of the World needs MORE GUNS! – Shorter Willard
***********
LOL:
Brett Smiley at NYMag‘s Daily Intel:
Responding to a question about gun rights in Fox News’ Republican debate, Mitt Romney feigned an interest in hunting. It was an uncomfortable moment. Romney said that he’s not a great hunter but he’s happy to go when he’s invited. Are you out there, Mr. Cheney?
***********
Richard Adams, again:
Oh, Fox News has a Twitter gadget showing if viewers liked or disliked candidate’s answers. Looks like everyone thinks Mitt Romney is an evasive charlatan. This probably makes him a more attractive candidate.
Random Ben Stein story
Ben Stein is suing a company called Kyocera for not using him in is commercials. Felix Salmon summarizes:
The whole suit is ludicrous, of course: Stein is claiming breach of a nonexistent contract. (The closest thing the suit comes to saying that there was any contract at all is the part when it says that Stein’s agent, Marcia Hurwitz, “considered the deal done”. Which, obviously, she was wrong about.
The basic story is simple. Kyocera wanted to hire Stein to do some TV commercials, but the company is very environmentally conscious, and it decided not to use him after learning of his anti-science views on global warming.
Stein somehow manages to turn this into a question of religious freedom, claiming that Kyocera’s refusal to let him pitch their products constitutes “wrongful discharge in violation of fundamental public policy”…
I don’t have much to add except ha-ha to the New York Times for employing this clown as an occasional economics columnist.
There’s that number again…
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire has an item on a Fox News poll that asked Republican voters which candidate was running a nasty campaign. The Professor came in second after “Don’t know” to win the honors and Mittens was third. But it was the question about positive campaigning that brought out the magical number of the wingnut base:
In contrast, 27% say Mitt Romney has waged the most positive campaign among the GOP candidates.
Willard is running a campaign of dog-whistles, outright lies and smears that would make Lee Atwater blush. Somehow I’m not surprised that the crazification factor thinks that kind of campaign is “positive”.
And with that how about an Open Thread.
Cheers
Required Reading, MLK Day edition
I’m ashamed to say that until Charlie Pierce in his own, powerful essay on MLK day pointed me to it, I had never actually read Lyndon B. Johnson’s speech to Congress urging — almost ordering — the legislators before him to pass the Voting Rghts Act.
Here’s a sample:
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.
Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.
As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society.
But a century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight.
It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great President of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact.
A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal.
A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is unkept.
The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American.
For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated, how many white families have lived in stark poverty, how many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we have wasted our energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror?
So I say to all of you here, and to all in the Nation tonight, that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future.
This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we shall overcome.
Pierce calls this “the greatest speech an American president has delivered in my lifetime.”
Mine too.
One last thought: One strand I draw from Johnson’s speech is that it is possible to have a politics that transcends the mere purchase and sale of interest; one in which words have both power and integrity.
I want that politics back.
Update: Boss Bitch points us to newly recovered audio of an MLK speech to an Ohio High School in 1967.
Image: Lyndon Baines Johnson with Martin Luther King on August 6, 1965, at the signing of the Voting Rights Act.