Your open thread. Discuss.
I know the feeling.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Previous Site Maintenance
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
But apparently half the readership of this website uses a neti pot, according to the last thread. I am already in love with mine.
I already think the neti pot is the best lifestyle discovery for me since since Hola Fruta, Grapples, the Bodum, and having an ice cold glass of Clamato with a tuna sandwich on rye. Oh, and cinnamon in coffee.
This is your open thread for the night.
This post is in: Religion
Well, as close as I have ever been to India anyway. Halef and I drove up to Lilburn to check out the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir. It is the largest traditional Vedic Hindu Temple of stone and marble to be constructed in the United States. The company he worked for did the landscape architecture.
Click the image for a high resolution view.
I’ve never quite seen anything like this. In fact, it was a little overwhelming. The detail in the carving of each piece of stone was incredible. I’ve heard it took 900 artisans to pull this off. The work was done in India, and the pieces were shipped to Atlanta and put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, we were not permitted to take pictures inside – unfortunate because, while you’re generally impressed with the outside, the inside will blow you away. We’re going to go back at night so we can see it lit by floodlights.
Update: Next week, we’re going to visit the new al-Farooq mosque in Atlanta. I’ll bring my camera, just in case I spot a certain presidential Candidate.
This post is in: Clown Shoes
The activist judiciary once again thumbs its nose at the grand conservative movement:
The order and memorandum came down at approximately 6:15 p.m. on Friday. Philip Berg’s lawsuit challenging Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president of the United States had been dismissed by the Hon. R. Barclay Surrick on grounds that the Philadelphia attorney and former Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania lacked standing.
Surrick, it seemed, was not satisfied with the nature of evidence provided by Berg to support his allegations.
Drats! Foiled again! What ever will Andy McCarthy write about now? Oh, nevermind:
I just caught up with an interview by one of my favorite guys, Hugh Hewitt, of another of my favorite guys, Stanley Kurtz. (It’s on Hugh’s Townhall blog, which always has plenty of required reading.)
Stanley, of course, has done singularly vital investigative work on Obama’s background — you should check out his NRO archive, here, as well as important articles he’s recently written in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal (see. e.g., here, here and here). But Hugh’s interview is a real primer for those who haven’t delved into it much. It also spotlights an important point that has largely been missed. That is, while there has been focus on the Obama/Ayers tie and the Obama/Khalidi tie, no real attention has been paid to the Ayers/Khalidi tie — which is very strong and tightens the circle significantly.
I swear they work in shifts over at the NRO. Today it seems that McCarthy, Kurtz, and Steyn are on call to provide the stoopid. At any rate, when this fails to bring down Obama, McCarthy can always pin his hopes on the Obama mistress story being peddled by Uncle Dimbo and company at BlackFive, who are doing their own citizen journalism. Now they have a super secret source that confirms privately there was an affair between Obama and a former staffer (and they name her, gleefully, the poor woman), but no one will go public with it.
My guess on their source? Larry Johnson.
If the conservative movement was a horse, we would be well beyond shooting it, and have decided to move on to grenades and claymore mines.
by John Cole| 96 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Just got back from the store, and I picked up a Nedi-pot. I have to say, it cleared things up quite nicely, even though it was disgusting and it is hard to pipe warm liquids in one nostril and out the other while aiming for the sink with a cat weaving in between your legs.
Picked up some odd things at the grocery- I was in the mood to experiment. I got some new type of greens that I had never seen called Mache Rosettes, I got a couple curious looking little fruits called blood oranges, something I also had never seen, and I picked up a container of black currant juice instead of the usual jug of POM. I was going to also try this odd looking thing called a dragonfruit, but the damned little thing rang up to ten bucks and I said to hell with that.
Also got a replacement coffee mug. I broke my favorite mug on Tuesday, and I am really particular about the size and shape of my mug- it has to contain a solid bit of coffee and feel right. I hate all the little coffee cups I have but never use, and for the last week I have been drinking coffee out of a… measuring cup. What the hell, I am single.
Not sure what to do with the Mache Rosettes. The packaging claims it has a nutty taste, so I am thinking I might serve it some sprouts, a little bit of crab meat, and some of the blood oranges and feta. Not sure how that will work and I can not decide on a dressing. Your thoughts?
*** Update ***
Actually, I am from WV, damnit. I will have two pepperoni rolls with yellow mustard washed down with a bottle of Strawberry Hill Boones Farm, and for dessert I will have a half-dozen twinkies. If I am feeling really frisky, later on I will have a shot of white lightning, brewed locally and filtered through one of the finest radiators in Randolph County.
by John Cole| 73 Comments
This post is in: Lies, Damned Lies, and Sarah Palin, Clown Shoes
The first rule of what will become the new Christian Nationalist party, should the Republicans be exiled in disgrace in a few days, will be that no one ever takes responsibility:
“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.
“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.
The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.
“These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves,” a McCain insider said, referring to McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin’s campaign. Palin’s partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin’s avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News’ Katie Couric, whose sometimes painful content the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.
“A number of Gov. Palin’s staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign’s best interests at heart,” the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.
Got it? The vapid moron made a total fool of herself, got completely humiliated by Katie Couric because she couldn’t answer even the most basic questions, and it is all the fault of… the person who scheduled the interview.
Well, it isn’t all Nicole Wallace’s fault. It is also partially the fault of the liberal gotcha media. And the viewers, who unfairly judged her a moron. They share some blame, too. But the one person who is most definitely not to blame, and, as you can see from this story, is really the big victim- that would be our mavericky maverick from Alaska, Sarah Palin.
Someone should ask her if maybe her disastrous performance was just God’s will.
The best thing about the upcoming circular firing squad is that once former true-believers like Nicole Wallace are screwed over royally by the wingnut fringe of the party, they will start to go all Scott McClellan. Take it from my experience- nothing hardens your resolve like being called a traitor after watching the Mayberry Machiavellis destroy your party. If you missed McClellan last night on Larry King, you really missed a treat. I personally don’t care much for the guy, but it is clear that he is done with the GOP for a good long while:
Now, I consider myself a centrist. When I went to work for then Governor Bush, I did so because I believed he was someone who was committed to working across the aisle to get things done, as he had done as governor of Texas. I thought we could bring that same sort of bipartisan spirit to Washington and change the tone. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
I’m supporting Barack Obama for two primary reasons. First, I believe that he can change the way Washington works for the better.
They never should have lied to him and used him to lie. Now you can laugh at McClellan if you want- I take him at his word that he really thought he was doing the right thing going to work for Bush. I thought I was doing the right thing, too, when I voted for him. But I really understand to some extent where he is right now- he is pissed. He feels used. He feels betrayed. He feels angry. And he knows who did it, and he is not going to fall for the same bullshit again.
I don’t think McClellan will ever be a Democrat, but I do think that the narrowing of the Republican party down to the vicious, ignorant, bitter core of Palin acolytes and Rovian hacks is a good thing, and the Christian Nationalists that will take over the party will be more than willing to throw aside the McClellans, the Powells, the Buckleys, and everyone who who they deem has shown insufficient fealty to the cause.
We should support that. The more we can marginalize the rancid remains of the GOP into a discredited Palin wing, the neo-cons with their hillbilly yokel Christian right front, the better.
by John Cole| 31 Comments
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Previous Site Maintenance
I am grouchy as hell today. I didn’t sleep well at all, I still have clogged sinuses, and it is crappy and drizzly outside. I think I may spend the morning drinking black coffee while cranking Pantera-Hostile repeatedly until the neighbors complain.
Here are some pics so you are not grumpy, too:
Claim your sleeping pets, folks.