The Keynes / Hayek Rematch Video

This is pretty epic and if the sergeant stripes were not inverted and it didn't flow over my template it would be near perfect.

What we've learned this month

I think a good blogmaster should post, at minimum, annually. I'm here to weigh in recent big news and our reaction to it.

Osama  Bin Laden is dead, and it was at the hands of the U.S. military acting on the orders of Barack Obama. My reactions follow.

1. Good.  Wish it had happened sooner.
2. The celebrations outside the White House was ridiculous. I honestly think some Spring Fling kegger just relocated at the word from CNN. What was more ridiculous was the news networks covering the party like it was reflective of how most Americans reacted. 
3. Release the pictures. It won't dispel the conspiracy theororists, but it will at least make them work harder.
4. I was saddened by my friends who immediately reacted by hoping OBL sudden exit from this life will bring about the end of the Kinetic Military Action to Mitigate Man Made Disasters. In other words, our troops are not coming home next week because their mission is not to get Bin Laden.
5. It is unfortunate that the White House/Pentagon press office seems to have changed details of the mission form say-to-day. Those who do not understand how and why this happens are also the same people who plant and fertalize conspiracy theories.
6. God Bless the Navy SEALs

Let's talk again in a few months or sooner.

Dragnet Meets Obama

This is a bit of brilliant editing. Seems like we have passed this way before and we may pass this way again.

H/T The Anchoress

The kind of stimulus we can do without

I saw this first at The Corner at National Review. Reason.tv has a little fun with the snake oil we are being sold.

Drumming up support?

I'm asking anyone who may have been in a marching unit...oh...perhaps even a pipe band...what to make of the story embedded below. I think there is more to the suspension of this drum major (or is he a pipe major?) than a wink and a nod.

Come to think of it, why are the anchors supporting this guy for such a harmless gesture? Wasn't Sarah Palin regarded as a ditzy yokel because of a wink and a nod? Could these reports be biased? You betcha!

Update: Check out the comments for an authoritative analysis.

Advice form the Bush girls to the Obama girls

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

My son, the future investigative reporter

John came home from school today with a Barack Obama coloring book. A beautiful commemorative edition ready for individual crayon customization. It was a mini-biography of the president-elect. A whirlwind tour of Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya, Chicago and DC.

On the last page it asks "If you could ask the President to do something, what would it be?" I misread it and asked John "If you could ask Barack Obama one thing, what would it be?" (I told him I'd ask him what his favorite baseball team is.) John thought for a moment and said "Where did you get all your money?"

It may be snarky, but I think I agree with it.

I was browsing Google News headlines and I came across an emoticon in a headline. You don't see that every day. The LA Times political blog has a smiley face after the  headline that reports McCain won't run in 2012.  I kind of feel the same way. But I suspect I'm happy for different reasons than the LAT staff.

Snazzy new seal you got there

You know how the two teams in the Super Bowl or World Series always have t-shirts and hats and other gee-gaws made up in advance proclaiming them champions? One team always has to throw them away or donate them to some relief agency. Children in foreign lands scamper about in "Cleveland Indians 1997 World Champions" gear, I suppose.

This thought crosses my mind as I catch a glimpse of Barack Obama's first news conference in a LONG time. Remember how he had a cute seal on the campaign trail? Folks thought it was a bit presumptuous, so he put it in mothballs.

But today is different. Today he is President-Elect and he has an office and everything. To be fair, it does not seem to say "Obama" or "The One" on it. Maybe these are government issue and McCain has one in the dumpster outside his office.



Update: I know that many people remarked that the President-elect was an inspirational leader. I did not really see it until now. He has moved me.



Get your own at Says-it.com

This Just In: UN Staffers ♥ Obama

The Washington Post really digs deep on this one. My comments in bold brackets.

An informal survey of more than two dozen [more than 24 - that must have taken half the morning!] U.N. staff members and foreign delegates showed that the overwhelming majority would prefer that Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency, saying they think that the Democrat would usher in a new agenda of multilateralism after an era marked by Republican [entirely justifiable] disdain for the world body.

Obama supporters hail from Russia, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere. [like Leavenworth - where Ayers should live in a perfect world] One American employee here seemed puzzled that he was being asked whether Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was even a consideration. "Obama was and is unstoppable," the official said. "Please, God, let him win," he added. [so much for separation of church and the one world state]

"It would be hard to find anybody, I think, at the U.N. who would not believe that Obama would be a considerable improvement over any other alternative," said William H. Luers, executive director of the United Nations Association. "It's been a bad eight years, and there is a lot of bad feeling over it."[tell me; why do we host the U.N. on American soil?]

Palin on SNL

I didn't watch it, because I knew the good people at Hulu would let me check it out. A part of me thinks that undecideds might see this and think "She seems pretty cool. Why all the hate?" But then the realist in me says "The aren't laughing WITH you Sarah."

The moose part is good but the best part is "When I say Obama -you say Ayers"

Remember Joe the Plumber

The lefties are saying he is a McCain plant. Of course they would. They can't come to terms that there are people out here in fly-over country that actually hold these opinions, LIKE this country and don't apologize for it.

You knew what was going to happen to him because he caused Obama to share with us that he really does think and talk like a Marxist in unrehearsed moments, right? The city of Toledo, the leftist blogs, the media and the labor unions are causing a shitstorm to fall on him.

Update: Is this bit from the Associated Press supposed to be an labeled "analysis" or are they usually this snarky?

How does one study for a lipness test?

Google Trends is a fun website to monitor popular searches on Google on a day-to-day basis. Some blogging types use it as the proverbial finger in the wind to help them determine what subject might drive traffic to their site. Shameless or savvy? I report, you decide.

Sometimes the searches that percolate to the top just make you scratch your head. But today's takes the cake. During the debate, the candidates both invoked the "There will be no litmus test for Supreme Court nominees." promise.

Apparently more than a few people misheard that and bolted to Google to find out what a "lipness test" is. Check out #16 (update: now it is #18).

To quote Larry the Cable Guy (and Tow Mater), "I don't care who you are - that's funny!"

Give me a break, Greeley

Andrew Greeley is a Catholic priest and a writer of, um, popular literature. His way with words is so crafty, so nimble, so superior to most of us that he can write this:

I was wrong about the first McCain/Obama debate. A third of the way through the event, I said to one of my guests, "My guy is getting creamed!" Note that I did not say, "My candidate is being beaten into the ground." I don't have a candidate. Priests, like columnists, are not supposed to endorse a candidate. But one of the candidates is from my state and my city, and we shared a pulpit once. So of course I hope he wins. But that doesn't mean I endorse him. As I have said repeatedly in this column, I think he will lose because the country is not ready for a smart, attractive, charismatic man -- if he has skin slightly darker than a Sicilian's.

A breathtaking journey of name-dropping, sarcasm, political prognostication, disdain of his countrymen (countrypersons?) and bigotry in one short paragraph.

Keep keeping those endorsements to yourself Andy!

James Lileks does it again.

Lileks is a great writer. I sometimes literally (and I don't mean figuratively) laugh out loud when he is on a roll. On the reaction in some corners to Sarah Palin:

...one thing that’s amused me in the last two weeks, it’s the screechy distaste of Ms. Palin coming from men who embodied the Modern Alda Paradigm of masculinity, which is to say they are nervous around cars, think guns are icky, had their own Snugli, have wives in corporate jobs who make more money than they do, and still get dissed behind their backs because they can’t figure out how to make the bed. The Lost Boys, if you will. Now, some women can’t stand Sarah Palin for their own reasons, personal or ideological; same with men. Some men, however, are made deeply uneasy by her, because she’s the one who ignored the sensitive poet-guys in high school for the jocks, and didn’t seem to grasp the essential high-school truth that it’s cool to be a loser.

Now tell me he is not a Benchley for our times! Thank you James, and keep it coming!

Cute Kid There, Governor!

I'm posting this mostly so the mother of my children will see it. A funny unscripted moment from the Republican convention.

After much consideration...

I've discussed it with Joyce, and although I thought I might begin on the local level (dog catcher, parish council, etc.), I've decided to bring Hope, Change and an Extraordinary Head of Hair to the national scene. Together we (mostly using confiscatory tax rates) can change America. Possibly for the worse.

Great Moments in Journalistic Ignorance

I'm no expert on journalism or religion, but sometimes I pick up the morning paper and almost do a spit take with my iced tea. Yesterday was one of those mornings.

Take a gander at Georgie Ann Geyer writing about the Pope's visit next week. Before I got 5 column inches into it, I spotted errors that would have never made it past her first draft or an editor if either had an even passing familiarity with the subject.

Exhibit A:

Next to his predecessor, the image of Benedict was often that of a snarling defender at the gate of Vatican ultraconservativism, standing side by side with the Swiss Guards, moral bayonets at the ready, defending the past.

Colorful. But more of a reflection of a cartoon you may have seen He is constantly looking at current writers in theology and philosophy and accepting some thought - rejecting some.

Exhibit B:

A conservative who grew up in Germany during World War II, Benedict will never agree with Vatican II, the historic 1962-'65 liberal confab of the church.

Um...he was there and helped form some of the documents that where produced by the council. Vatican 2" wasn't just about giving us guitar masses. For the record, Pope Benedict ain't crazy about guitar masses.

Exhibit C:

Most important, he has overseen the church's efforts to define a series of "new sins" that could change the world, if applied. ...

(Quoting some guy that works in the curia -ed) He went on to speak of everything from illegal drug use, genetic manipulation, environmental pollution, bad ecological practices, and economic inequality in which the poor are getting poorer and the rich growing richer, fueling unsustainable social injustice. These, he said, are the "new sins."

Those all could fit under the tried and true seven. Besides attributing this claptrap to Benedict is like holding a head of state responsible for some bureaucrat's report about a proposed change on parking regulations on government leased property.

Exhibit D:

No one knows exactly why the pope chose to come to America at this particular time.

2008 is the bicentennial of the designation of Baltimore as an Archdiocese. Just sayin'

Exhibit E:

He is, amazingly, even an admirer of much of Protestantism.

Why are you amazed, Georgie? Are you assuming that Catholic leaders are by definition religious bigots? Wouldn't we be bigots to make such an assumption?

OH! The Pressures of Blogging

I'm tempted to make no apology for my lack of blogging here and elsewhere. I'll just try to pretend that the pressures of authoring a highly popular and influential site caused me to go into seclusion.

The NYT would be sympathetic to that argument while they make guesses as to how much cash I was pulling down for my torment.

Alas, I am just kind of lazy. But I'll be back into it now. The Supreme Pontiff's visit will provide lots of fodder for media criticism and the Tribe is off to a rocky start. I'm back!

A Daring Political Prediction

Given Mitt's retirement from the electoral fray, I now feel confident in a prediction; the next President of the United States of America will be plucked from the US Senate. Republicans have Mac, the Dems have Hillary and BO.

I'm not crazy about the idea that our next chief executive might have never been a chief executive before. It is not a novel observation that the skills of a Senator do not really translate as well as the skills of a governor. If I pursue this line of argument it might lead you to think that I'm a Huckabee supporter. I'm not. And mostly because of his Tonight Show appearance.

He's a charming guy. But seeing a Governor from Arkansas jamming with a late show band gave me a flashback to the 90's.

I don't want to go back to the 90's. I really don't.