JULES CRITTENDEN ON WAR COVERAGE: A Tale of Two Bureaus.
Related: The Mother Of All Expiration Dates.
Archive for 2009
October 9, 2009
OBAMA WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE? “For what?”
UPDATE: What do Barack Obama and Yassir Arafat have in common?
Plus, Mickey Kaus: Turn It Down. “Say he’s honored but he hasn’t had the time yet to accomplish what he wants to accomplish.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Doug Mataconis on Facebook: “Teddy Roosevelt wins Peace Prize for stopping a war. Carter wins Peace Prize for a lifetime of work. Obama wins Peace prize for breathing.”
MORE: Heh.
I say, not bad for a guy who’s been acting like Bambi caught in the headlights of history.
STILL MORE: London Times: Absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize. Oh, it was already a mockery.
Meanwhile, Mataconis is on a roll on Facebook: “How can Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize on the same day that he’s becoming the first POTUS to bomb the Moon?”
It’s Frank J. Fleming’s world. The rest of us just live in it.
MORE STILL: Various reader comments:
“It’s a peace prize, not a peace peace prize.”
“How do you say ‘jumped the shark’ in Norwegian?”
“Today the Nobel Committee announced a posthumous Peace Prize for Neville Chamberlain.”
“Why not the Cy Young Award, too?”
“Let’s be fair . . . he did pull off the Beer Summit.”
Plus, Jacob T. Levy on Facebook: “The US border agent in Toronto– the armed representative of the state who was holding my passport– asked me what I thought of the Nobel, got angry when I was anything less than celebratory, and didn’t want to give my passport back– wanted to keep arguing.”
Salena Zito: “Well, this makes his meeting with his war team today awkward.”
HuffPo: Whatever Happened to Awarding For Deeds Actually Done?
In a stunning announcement, Millard Fillmore Senior High School chose Shawn Rabinowitz, an incoming junior, as next year’s valedictorian. The award was made, the valedictorian committee announced from Norway of all places, on the basis of “Mr. Rabinowitz’s intention to ace every course and graduate number one in class.” In a prepared statement, young Shawn called the unprecedented award, “f—ing awesome.”
At the same time, and amazingly enough, the Pulitzer Prize for Literature went to Sarah Palin for her stated intention “to read a book someday.” The former Alaska governor was described as “floored” by the award, announced in Stockholm by nude Swedes beating themselves with birch branches, and insisted that while she was very busy right now, someday she would make good on her vow to read a book. “You’ll see,” she said from her winter home in San Diego.
And again in a stunning coincidence, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the Oscar for best picture will be given this year to the Vince Vaughn vehicle “Guys Weekend to Burp,” which is being story-boarded at the moment but looks very good indeed. Mr. Vaughn, speaking through his publicist, said was “touched and moved” by the award and would do everything in his power to see that the picture lives up to expectation and opens big sometime next March.
Heh.
CAN I JUST SAY that there’s nothing in the least stimulative about this photo on Drudge? Which I’m pretty sure is intentional on Drudge’s part . . . .
October 8, 2009
POLITICO: How long can Democrats stand by Charlie Rangel? “The House ethics committee expanded a sprawling investigation into Rangel Thursday, digging into allegations stemming from an August restatement of his personal finances, in which he under reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets. The ethics committee action – which was unanimous — came a day after House Democrats turned back a Republican attempt to force Rangel from his Ways and Means chairmanship while the investigation, now in its second year, is completed. . . . But even if Pelosi relented and asked Rangel to relinquish his gavel, there would be a political firestorm, as she would be moving to oust a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus from a chairmanship he waited nearly four decades to get.”
NOT-SO-MAGNIFICENT obsession. See, this is one reason why I don’t have comments: People will attribute them to you as they try to score a point.
Related: “Ann Althouse permitting free speech in her comments is no different than The Atlantic permitting Andrew Sullivan to repeatedly question Sarah Palin’s baby bump and when/where/how her water broke.” Except that David Bradley is actually paying Sullivan . . . .
FAIR AND DECENT?
UH OH: A Dave Letterman divorce?
PROVIDING INEXPENSIVE RURAL DENTAL CARE. There’s a lesson for the Obamacare debate here, too — high costs don’t come from evil insurance companies so much as from licensing regimes that keep out lower-cost competition.
DON DRAPER: Most influential guy of 2009? And he’s fictional. That must mean something . . . .
RON ZIEGLER’S Revenge!
TECHNOLOGIES MISSING from the “Clean Energy” bill.
SO I GUESS STEPHEN GREEN WAS UNAVAILABLE? Talking Cocktails With Danny Meyer.
AN INTERVIEW WITH Andrew Breitbart. “Even when he fights dishonest critics, the right’s New Media leader is of good cheer.” Indeed.
OH, GOOD GRIEF: French minister in ‘boy sex’ row.
France’s Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand is facing intense pressure over a book he wrote that described paying for “young boys” in Thailand.
The book was written four years ago, before he joined the government, but is back in the headlines following his impassioned support for Roman Polanski.
Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on child sex charges.
Mr Mitterrand, nephew of late President Francois Mitterrand, is expected to defend himself on TV later on Thursday.
Passage from the book: “All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously… the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire.” Really, you can’t make this stuff up. But he rejects “criticism from the far right!” (Via Ann Althouse).
UPDATE: Related: The Polanski Culture.
BUT THEY’RE SAVING THE PLANET, SO CUT THEM SOME SLACK: “Psychologists in Canada have revealed new research suggesting that people who become eco-conscious ‘green consumers’ are ‘more likely to steal and lie’ than others.”
AT BLOGCRITICS, an interview with Kevin Jackson, author of The Big Black Lie. He talks about the Tea Party movement, health care “reform,” and more.
A.P. ANALYSIS: Obama’s Woes Keep Piling Up Around The Globe.
SOME COOL KNOXVILLE PICS from George Fillmore.
BUSH SPEAKS, refrains from criticizing Obama.
RUSSIAN MERCENARIES: We’ll out-Blackwater Blackwater.
CHANGE: Asian Banks Intervene to Try to Save Dollar. “The U.S. dollar continued to tumble Thursday, prompting a wave of foreign-exchange intervention by central banks in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Thailand seeking to limit damage to their export industries.”
Is it a sneak attack?
STORIES ABOUT SUICIDE DOORS.
ANDREW KLAVAN: IS BARACK OBAMA JESUS CHRIST?
PEW POLL: 47% Oppose ObamaCare, 34% Favor.
That’s even worse than the Quinnipiac poll. And a reader points out: “And that’s even after Pew interviews a margin of 11% more democrats than republicans.”