Nellie McKay to audience, during interactive portion of concert: Now try to cry if you can… Think of the saddest thing you can… Like Anne Coulter holding a puppy… or Dick Cheney’s smile.
( Audience member groans loudly)
Nellie: What, you like Dick Cheney? (under her breath) Ugh, Midwest…
*Note: I would have included a photo of Anne Coulter holding a puppy, but such an image apparently doesn’t exist.
Kurt Campbell, guesting today on Nicholas Kristof’s blog over at the Times, does an elegant and capable job of skewering the Bushists and other RNC recalcitrants for trying, yet again, to rewrite history. This time, the very recent past. Here is an excerpt:
Take for instance the president’s characterization of the 1990’s during his second inaugural address, just as the hopes of a new bipartisan approach to the new global challenges were fading in the wind: “After the shipwreck of communism,†Bush declared, “came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical – and then there came a day of fire.†The language perfectly captures the Bushist critique of the Democrats; elitist in their university cocoons or trial lawyer firms, fundamentally lazy, and lucky too. Thank God Republicans were finally back in power when things got serious on 9/11.
Yet this picture of being lost in the 1990’s, of a Gatsby-like holiday from history during a fun-filled and frolicking interwar period, ignores all of the drama that played out almost exclusively in America’s favor during this supposedly relaxed decade. Indeed, the 1990’s involved enormous and important good works internationally and helped set the scene for continued American power on the global stage. Increasingly, the first Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration can be seen in retrospect as essentially fitting together to complete a decade of accomplishment that paints President George W. Bush’s subsequent term in office as an outlier.
Nicholas D. Kristof – Opinion – New York Times Blog
Hillary Clinton came out swinging, calling into doubt the International credentials of opponent Barack Obama, as recounted over at The Note, at Mickey Mouse dot com:
This cold-cock Tuesday from the smiling frontrunner, the eschewer of mudslinging, the rise-above-it-all leader: “Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face. I think we need a president with more experience than that,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
THE NOTE: Hillary Starts Playground Fight
This from the same woman who just a week ago was complaining to her fellow Democrats, “But when somebody starts throwing mud, at least we can hope that it’s both accurate and not right out of the Republican playbook.” Well, let’s look at that Republican playbook.
OBAMA’S TOP 5 FOREIGN POLICY CREDENTIALS Foreign Policy Credential #1: “Life Of Living Overseas” For 4 Years…In Elementary School: Obama Lived Overseas From Ages 6 To 10.
GOP.com | Republican National Committee :: Obama’s Foreign Policy Credentials
I’m not the only one to notice this overlap. Here is TPMElectionCentral‘s take on the same point.
The Note then goes on to mock Clinton mocking Obama:
But does mocking Sen. Barack Obama’s, D-Ill., international upbringing get Clinton traction? Surely by now Obama’s supporters (including those who see him as their second choice) know that his resume is light. They favor him because he represents a new direction, the change half of the magical “change and experience” formula.
Would Clinton supporters care if they were reminded that — around the time Obama was living in Indonesia — their candidate was a “Goldwater Girl”? And does she want to be reminded about those incredibly important trips she took as first lady like the one (as recounted in Carl Bernstein’s book) where she and Chelsea joined Sinbad and Sheryl Crowd in post-war Bosnia?
Tom Villsack, though, assures us that Hillary “assumed tremendous responsibility” on foreign affairs while her husband was president, as per Anne Kornblut of The Washington Post
The former Iowa governor, interviewed on MSNBC, said Clinton “There is no question she was the face of the administration in foreign affairs,” Vilsack said.Really? Hillary Clinton was the face of the Clinton administration in foreign affairs? More than, say, the secretary of state? Or his vice president? Or his, um, ambassador to the United Nations?
Au contraire, said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who served in the last of those jobs – -and is now seeking the presidency himself.
“Gov. Vilsack’s enthusiasm for his candidate has clouded his judgment,” Richardson spokesman Tom Reynolds said on Tuesday night. “Considering that Gov. Bill Richardson served as a Special Envoy and US Ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton, we take some exception to this opinion. I also think Madeline Albright might disagree too.”
Vilsack: Hillary Was ‘the Face of the Administration on Foreign Affairs’ | The Trail | washingtonpost.com
Oh yes, the gloves are off!
Animal abuse is rampant in Chicago, it seems. Early Saturday morning I saw a woman walking her terrier, and the poor thing was wearing little rubber boots. The dog, not the woman. A short while later I saw a hansom cab and the horse was adorned with reindeer antlers. I saw this same horse some time later, downtown, and was a ble to snap the above photos of the poor creature.
Saturday was the Festival of Lights parade along The Miracle Mile. The staging area was just a few blocks from home. Below is a shot of the final float, Santa himself, prior to his entry to the parade.
Another beautiful day here in Chicago, the temperature hovering around a seasonally balmy 40-something degrees. Spent the afternoon at the Art Institute, which, despite several galleries being closed due to construction, continues to impress and amaze.
Galleries 200 and 201, the Impressionists, were truly marvellous. No matter how many times you see Renoir, Degas, Suerat, Monet, Manet, etc. they can still provoke awe. What a wonderful collection!
Caught the fellow above along South State Street
Visiting Chicago this weekending, and have much to report from my recent sojourn to “Iggys” on Dearborn. “Sublime Martinis” the sign outside proclaims, so I decide to imbibe in one to verify this claim. I enter and order. Out of the corner of my eye I see a blond curse.
After watching the bartender for a while I finally asked him how many martinis he might make in a night. “Oh, I don’t know.” he said. “Tonight, maybe 40 or so. It’s slow… But, a couple of months ago, over on North Avenue (there are 3 locations for Iggy’s) I made 500 in one night!” he proudly proclaims.
“And,” I ask, “how many can you drink?”
“Oh 20!” he replies. I doubt this.
“I am from Mexico,” he offers by way of explanation to me and the guy sitting just a few seats down the bar from me. “We have a very high tolerance.”
He’s slight of build with dark hair, a sprinkle of facial hair and has a voice like a Speyside scotch, dry and light. His lilting accent almost sounds more Italian than Mexican — almost like Don Novello’s Father Guido Sarducci character.
A quartet of lava lamps dance lazily on the back bar to strains of Sinatra, which anachronistically alternates with house music on the sound system. The back wall is adorned with a large painting of Sinatra with Count Basie.
I am at seat 6 at the bar, Carlos is tending. A nervous woman, kind of a tightly wound seating savant, hovers near the door like a ninja stalker. This is the blond who I saw cursing earlier. She will spend her night hovering, stalking and cursing. She manages to scare away a young grunge couple who just wanted some pasta.
With each martini ordered Carlos patiently fills a pint glass with ice, then ½ way with spirits. He caps it with a metal shaker, shakes it vigorously but not to excess, then bringing it over the waiting glass, cracks it like an egg, letting the chilled liquid run out while holding back the ice. Any ice which sneaks past he artfully scoops out with the lip of the pint glass.
A pair of cute, young girls come in and whip out their ID cards. They order gin and tonics. Later, when they ask for menus, Carlos explains the specials. “And there’s one special which isn’t on the menu,” he says, winking at his brother, seated at the bar. “Order this,” he says, pointing at the menu “and you get a free Martini, from Level Vodka.” No one else was offered this special. The girls demure.
The Stirling Cycle engine is a nearly two hundred year old invention which has had new currency of late. Pawn experimented with these efficient little puppies as long ago as 1973 (Yikes!) and even presented a paper at an international conference on the subject of solar powered Stirling engines over 30 years ago, as a young pup. Now NASA is looking at using a Stirling Cooler, which is simply a Stirling engine run in reverse as a heat pump, to cool Venus landers.
The surface of Venus broils at a temperature of about 450 °C – hot enough to melt lead. Several probes in the Soviet Venera and Vega series, as well as a NASA Pioneer Venus probe, landed on Venus and returned data from the surface in the 1970s and early 1980s. But they all expired in less than 2 hours because of the tremendous heat.
Now, two NASA researchers have designed a refrigeration system that might be able to keep a robotic rover going for as long as 50 Earth days. The work was carried out by Geoffrey Landis and Kenneth Mellott of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, US.
The main concern is keeping the electronics cool. The NASA pair plan to do this by packing the electronics in a ceramic-based insulator and placing it inside a metal sphere about the size of a grapefruit.
Heat would then be pumped out of the sphere using a Stirling cooler, which works by compressing and then expanding a gas with a piston. When the gas expands, it cools down, absorbing heat from the electronics chamber. Then, as the gas is compressed and its temperature rises, the heat is allowed to dissipate in the atmosphere via a radiator.
Stirling coolers were invented in 1816 by Reverend Robert Stirling, a Scottish clergyman, but were largely ignored until the mid 20th century, when their impressive energy efficiency became better known.
Antique fridge could keep Venus rover cool – space – 12 November 2007 – New Scientist Space
Thanks to the eagle-eyed folks over at Slashdot /. for pointing out this story.
Here in Fortune Land we have never been quite so sanguine as the MSM has when it comes to picking dark horses and sticking with it. Here, from that very self-same MSM (The New York Times) we have a story of cum-upance to warm your heart. Pop open the rumble seat, this is starting to get interesting!
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, Nov. 8 — Mike Huckabee’s field staff had expected a modest crowd for a campaign event at a tiny rural community college near here on Wednesday. But as people began to cram into the shoe-box-size room, campaign organizers scurried to roll back a dividing wall and set up extra chairs.
To the Huckabee campaign, it was another small note in a recent trickle of encouraging moments. His fund-raising is up, the campaign just received its first major Christian conservative endorsement and most of all — to Mr. Huckabee’s obvious delight — opponents are beginning to take potshots at him.
From Back of G.O.P. Pack, Huckabee Is Stirring – New York Times
Huckabee has always hoped for this, to bloom too early would have killed his campaign, but now, less than two months out, is just about right. The Dems should be concerned, because Huckabee is the real deal, unlike his opponents, and his authenticity is the only real threat the Republicans have to face the Democrats with in less than a year from now (tick-tock)…
Got a note from my buddy John S., today. He seems a little shocked over a recent local headline:
I think we could more or less steal Vermont’s motto – did you hear that the three geniuses who became infatuated with the picture of a woman in her obituary notice and decided they would dig her(it) up and have sex with her(it) -got arrested and got off on appeal. Hard not to appreciate a good attorney – seems Wisconsin doesn’t actually have any laws forbidding necrophilia? We need to be very happy that the writers strike is on – Leno and co would have had a field day with this one.
Pawn, as a young child used to celebrate Guy Fawkes night on November 5th, a British holiday commemorating the attempt by Fawks to blow up Whitehall in support of Catholic’s rights. The children in the house make an effigy of Guy Fawkes, and then parade him around the neighborhood, reciting a simple rhyme* and begging “Penny for the Guy, penny for the Guy!” My parents encouraged us to continue this tradition in the US, and we combined it with our annual Unicef fund-raising effort.
Supporters of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) decided to leverage this holiday, and its anti-government theme as a fund raising appeal for their libertarian candidate. Here is what the organizer of this, the largest single-day on-line fund raiser in history had to say about the motivation:
“… this is a country of and by the people…The entire notion of Bush saying he is the decider when 70 or 80 percent of the country wants out of the war is ridiculous. He acts like a dictator.” — Trevor Lyman
ABC News: Victory For Ron Paul: Raises $4.3 Million in 24 Hours
Pawn certainly doesn’t relish a Ron Paul presidency, but likes to see anyone tweak the status quo, and perhaps startle the establishment a bit along the way.
* The version of the rhyme I remember from youth is simply “Please do remember the fifth of November, when poor old Guy Fawkes was reduced to an ember.” Not a very traditional one…
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