Snip

The New York Times has an article on the biggest challenge Obama will face on January 20th -- handing over his BlackBerry. I can't imagine having to give up email and become a phone person. Sheesh.

Aware Of All Casserole Traditions

Two things you can never have enough of: tasty food and blogs. In that spirit, a number of your favorite D.C. bloggers (including some friends of the Mineshaft and, well, myself) have come together to form the Internet Food Association. I heard once that swiss chard threads are the new porn threads so I thought y'all might want to check it out.

Good morning Saturday.

So Palin can't name all the countries in North America, which I assume is supposed to be an entre to say, "But...but there are only three!"

So are there two meanings to North America? Because if you mean the continent, Central America ought to be included. Whenever a world map is colored by continents, North America certainly connects with South America. Then what is the designation of the North America which excludes Central America?

I can't help but imagine I am grooming the boringest thread ever with this question.

Maybe this will help: the famous Heebie Butt, which was always the result of helpful lighting and reflective fabric, has shrunk from mild to preposterously g-o-n-e as I wrap up the 4th month of incubating this mini-heater. Part of it is the tuck-butt-stance which is more comfortable now than the normal swayback stance. Part of it is that the illusion of a waist has been replaced with the reality of a funnel-shape. Perhaps I'll enlist Jammies to help me photo the misplacedness when he gets home. If you all are good commenters.

Slowdown

I'd been too busy to make it to the mall for a while but finally went the other day to buy some winter work clothes. They sure aren't kidding about this recession. Most stores already have everything marked off by 25-40% and, even then, people aren't buying. I saw a couple of stores that seemed to have moved their entire fall inventory unsold to the sale rack. I can see how some are worried about deflation, too, because I noticed how it affected my buying behavior: "If they're already this marked off, imagine what they'll be after Thanksgiving."

The Thing of the Other Thing

Dahlia Lithwick likes to refer to Charlottesville as The Tribeca of the South. I read it as yep-that's-us-ism, and I think she's definitely using the term with a sardonic smirk.

The Paris of [X] comes to mind. But I suspect there probably are—and more importantly could be—many more such claims in the world.

Meta-Predictions

I'll admit to being skeptical of Five Thirty Eight before the election but now that Nate Silver has proven himself to be accurate and he's attracted many deserved followers and fans, I wonder how future elections might be impacted by so many people treating his word as gospel. Could an outcome be affected by people being complacent about a predicted win and not donating or volunteering? If he predicts a loss, will people just accept that as fate and give up? If so, how far out? As predictions get more accurate, what are the impacts they might have on the electoral process?

Begich can't be choosich

But he seems to be squeaking ahead of Stevens.

I'm going to put "Matthew Yglesias"

And it won't even be false.

The president-elect is one intrusive little bitch:

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to "please list all aliases or 'handles' you have used to communicate on the Internet."

I don't know what embarrasses the president-elect, so it's hard to know what to include. Like, would it embarrass Mr. Obama to read email with sexual content that was sent from one of his employees to that employee's significant other? Should that be included?

Who could have imagined this would happen?

"The New Trough: The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq -- a 'free-fraud zone' where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create."

Hey look! The banks aren't lending out the free government money, lots of it is going to (you guessed it) management bonuses, and now we're looking at having to spend several more times the original stated amount. I'd like to note for the record that multiple people here predicted exactly this outcome. I stand by my original judgment that the Democrats got played for suckers—just like always—and you and I and the rest of the country got fucked.

Meanwhile, in alternate reality land...

The Conservapedia entry on Barack Obama is pretty entertaining reading. "President-elect Obama will likely become the first Muslim President, and may use the Koran to be sworn into office," "Obama is the first person having ties to a known former terrorist to gain control over America's nuclear weapons," and "Doctors from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons have stated that Obama uses techniques of mind control in his speeches" are just the appetizers. It's going to be an entertaining four years watching the crazies crank back up into full froth mode again.

Fess Up

Speaking of BFFs, why am I not best friends with Ta-Nehisi Coates? Make it happen, internets.

Consider this your new blogcrush thread.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

All the rude things I've said about the Harry Potter books over the years? I've just spent most of the afternoon and evening crocheting a red and gold Gryffindor scarf at Newt's request. I thought part of the point of reproducing was that the kids were supposed to be shaped by my literary tastes.

You don't even want to know how many goddamn dicks he has

Hey, guys. I think I'm gonna have to stop blogging. I might write something that BURNS YOUR EYES.

No, seriously.

That warm, glowy feeling

I think petit fours are adorable and I like a Hardees or White Castle burger once in a while, merely because they're itty-bitty. Puppies have big paws and kittens, with their pouncing and tails - who could resist? But baby nuclear reactors in your own backyard somehow give me the willies.

Amplitude Modulation

In high school, I listened to Rush Limbaugh and a few other right-wing talk radio shows as a sort of ongoing let-me-try-to-understand-what-I'm-increasingly-sure-I-disagree-with project. Opposition research, in a crude and high-school sort of way.

I pretty much gave up on the project about the time that Limbaugh was sliming John McCain during the 2000 primary. Just viscerally nasty stuff that seemed to paint McCain as insane because of his experiences in Vietnam.

When McCain got the nod for the GOP in 2008, I was wondering how Limbaugh would reconcile his earlier nastiness, a pivot he accomplished by sliming Obama instead (for example). None of which is all that surprising, but I think Yglesias gets Limbaugh right here:

What Limbaugh doesn't pretend to do is to be even-handed. His show is clear where it stands, on the conservative side. This blog, similarly, doesn't apologize that it's fighting for progressive policies and ideas. But at the same time, I try to be fair. I'm not going to peddle a damaging story about a person whose policy ideas I disagree with if I think the story is false. I'm not going to say Jonah Goldberg is secretly a fascist. I'm not going to claim that John Boehner wants to feed atheists to lions. That would be unfair. The whole point of Rainey's article is that Limbaugh isn't just right-wing -- he's inaccurate and dishonest. But he certainly does pretend that he's both honest and accurate. He's pretending to be fair. He just isn't.

I think that's right. Also: the lion thing? Are lions more efficient eaters than hogs? These questions are important.

Birther's Remorse

Revisiting topics I didn't have a chance to blog before the election: Nebraska and some other states have passed safe harbor laws meant to let overwhelmed parents drop off babies at a safe place like a hospital or police station with no repercussions. The laws were written broadly to technically allow people to abandon children up to age 18 but states never expected people to take advantage of the laws for older children. But they are.

Should the laws be changed and parents charged with abandonment or is it better that these kids are at least safely leaving environments where the parents don't feel they can take care of them?

Humour and the lack thereof

I find David Letterman actively unfunny. So I had high hopes for his bit letting Ricky Gervais, whom I usually do find funny, write the "Top Ten Stupid Things Americans Say To Brits":

And: disappointment. Seriously, jokes about British people's teeth? Lame. But I suspect the Mineshaft can come up with better ones.

Fishy

Obviously something odd is going on in Alaska. There's no reason for turnout to be lower than in 2004 when one of their own is on the GOP ticket and their Senator has been convicted on seven felony counts.

Alaska's a small state -- wouldn't there be a way to do some kind of sampling survey to gauge turnout by polling people as to whether they voted in 2004 and 2008 to see if self-reported turnout was anywhere near the turnout reported by the Board of Elections? I'd say this should be super easy because you'd only even have to do it in one representative county but, how convenient, Alaska doesn't report results by county.

I saw the angel of light

This video may have been made just for me:

More could have been done with the KrV cameo, I think, and the audio's rather poor (possibly a deliberate strategy): Vander's falsetto is actually much better than you might think based on the video [better video found]. It was featured in a lecture on screaming I once attended, in fact.