Via Associated Press:
Not all Republican insiders are pessimistic.
Obama’s failure to achieve a double-digit lead and maintain it “has given a lot of hope to Republicans,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres said.
There are people out there who actually want an old father figure, who has an ability for daring stunts of drama in the White House.
Driving a car comes to mind for some reason.
Despite my attitude towards religion, vivid displays of worship move me in an “awe-porn” sort of way. This picture captures Muslims in prayer around the Kaaba in Mecca-a form of worship that appears to be like none other. Despite all of the bad acts mandated by the gods, the pomp and circumstance of the average religious occurrence can be more inspiring than that of the average secular event.
Although, there is enough interpretation room to see this as simply a dissipitating [sic] love story or virginal confrontation, I believe this song is telling the story of a Jewish prisoner in a German concentration camp.
I realize that Mercer uses advanced vocabulary here, but I think there’s at least one guy for every song who interprets it as a “story of a Jewish prisoner in a German concentration camp.” On the plus side, Springsteen gets a new pair of wings every time a song is misinterpreted.
Pelosi missed a huge opportunity to become an historic speaker and instead invited comparisons to Tom DeLay by deciding to deliver a more partisan speech than necessary at the time. There would have been time for partisan politics AFTER the vote, but to do it before seemed like a strategic blunder.
Pelosi played into the stereotype she had been very adept at avoiding most of these last two years. That said, did it really cost any GOP votes? Unlikely. But it did give the House GOP leadership a talking point to deflect from its own failure.
Chuck Todd’s usually sober but this part of his analysis is unpleasantly histrionic. Historic speaker? Strategic blunder? After eight years, it’s bleedin’ obvious that, if most Republicans want something to pass the House or the Senate, it passes the House or the Senate. Attributing the nays to Pelosi’s speech and not to specific disagreements with the package made the Republicans look like pathetic wieners.
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
- Thomas Sowell, Unsourced
The race, that is. From the McCain campaign:
“From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators Obama and Reid, Speaker Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.
“Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill.
“Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome.
“This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country.”
Dazed and confused at the Brunswick County school board meeting in Brunswick County, NC:
“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”
The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it was unfair for evolution to be taught as fact, saying it should be taught as a theory because there’s no tangible proof it’s true.
“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”
The board allowed Fanti to speak longer than he was allowed, and at the end of his speech he volunteered to teach creationism and received applause from the audience.
When he walked away, school board Chairwoman Shirley Babson took the podium and said another state had tried to teach evolution and creationism together and failed, and that the school system must teach by the law.
“Evolution is taught because that’s what the General Assembly tells us to teach,” Babson said, adding that she doesn’t agree with it, but that students must learn it to graduate.
Now, I’m 100% sure that Joel thinks he’s a nice guy. He runs some sort of nonprofit ministry and it looks like he and his wife have adopted two children and live as pleasantly fruity Christians:
I have been and continue to be a blessed man. God has given me a family that I am thankful for. I have been married nearly 13 years. I have been back in North Carolina since 1997. My focus is living the life that is pleasing to God so that it leads others to Him.
There are a lot of earnest Joels out there who will continuously organize and whine. The Joels are half of why I support the teaching of the creation myth in place of evolution provided the school board approves.
The consequences of teaching creation as science encompass the other half of my support. It’s fun to organize and it’s fun to fight. But, the darkness that follows the expulsion of scientific inquiry is not fun. And, if the residents of these school districts are not brave enough to confront the lies of the Joels, they deserve to suffer under the patriarchy and the emotional and psychological brutality of organized religion.
“You can’t be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: ‘Holy Christ, whaddya know - I’m still around!’ It’s absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.”
- Paul Newman, 1925 - 2008
TPM has a great rundown of the talking head blather about McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign and “postpone” the first presidential debate. Unsurprisingly, this move by McCain seems to have caught all of them off guard. Look, this is McCain’s modus operandi. He doesn’t care about the presidential debates. He doesn’t care about the quality of his veep pick. He does care about becoming president and believes that his odds improve if he pretends to be president during every crisis. Remember Georgia? The immigration legislation? To pull it off, though, he needs the media to Lewinsky him after every bold proclamation. Unfortunately for him, it looks like the sore throat virus is especially contagious this week.
