Archive for 2010

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Ramsey emails:

Shame on you for making Amazon so easy to link to and to use. I probably hit them almost as many times a day as I do you (their special deals are great), and have been doing more and more shopping there. This past week, I decided to get a netbook, and after two days research and talking to lots of folks, I decided on a Toshiba 205, and then ordered it from Amazon on Thursday afternoon. Chose “Free Shipping” and expected to wait for four to nine days to get it. It arrived Friday morning, less than 24 hours after ordering it. That is pretty damned impressive. The rest of my order (who orders just one item?) is slated to arrive on Monday, all less that the advertised time for free shipping. Every time I order from Amazon, I am impressed, have never been disappointed, and have had my loyalty grow. Thanks for all you do.

I do most of my shopping on Amazon, too. It’s easy and fun.

A TEA PARTY ANNIVERSARY:

Keli Carender has a pierced nose, performs improv on weekends and lives here in a neighborhood with more Mexican grocers than coffeehouses. You might mistake her for the kind of young person whose vote powered President Obama to the White House. You probably would not think of her as a Tea Party type. But leaders of the Tea Party movement credit her with being the first. . . .

She, like many Tea Party members, resists the idea of a Tea Party leader — “there are a thousand leaders,” she says.

Glenn Beck? “He can be a Tea Partier, but it’s not like the movement bends to him.”

Sarah Palin? She will have to campaign on Tea Party ideas if she wants Tea Party support, Ms. Carender said, adding, “And if she were elected, she’d have to govern on those principles or be fired.”

Indeed.

READER BRENT KILPATRICK WRITES: “After watching the U.S. 4-man bobsled team win Gold for the first time in 62 years I had a thought. Since President Obama seems embarrassed by ‘American exceptionalism’ do you think he would have preferred a Bronze?”

AL GORE CLIMBS OUT OF HIS IGLOO: “Gore might want to inform Kennedy of this whole weather-is-not-climate thing.”

HAWAII “DODGED A BULLET.” Some folks on Twitter seem almost disappointed. Meanwhile, remember that Chile didn’t dodge a bullet.

UPDATE: Neither did the Robinson Crusoe Islands.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A group of UT students and faculty are fine.

MORE: Some media criticism.

STILL MORE: Chile: “The situation right now is very bad.”

MORE STILL: Christopher Fountain writes: “Yeah, it was a bust, but imagine if Thailand had received that warning when the wave came their way. I mean, massive earthquake, measurable sea level rise indicating a tsunami, what’s a mother to do? I think they did the right thing.” Oh, absolutely. Even this could have killed some people in Hawaii if they’d been in or on the water. Did you see the video from Hilo Bay?

EVEN MORE: On Facebook, Anil Dash offers a horrifying thought: “Having found out Snooki is Chilean, I am dreading the inevitable ‘Snooki weighs in on the earthquake’ news interviews to come.”

Plus, tsunami video from San Diego.

OBAMA VS. KARLOFF: Stare-down!

DALLAS TEA PARTY ANNIVERSARY: Reader Don Brockette writes: “There seemed to be about a thousand to fifteen hundred attendees at the Dallas Tea Party today. Your boys from PJTV were the hit of the event.” Well, yeah. He sends some pics.

And here’s Steve Crowder on the stage:

MATT HAUGHEY on the Tsunami coverage: “So live news coverage in America is basically staring at webcams and reading wikipedia? Shit, I could be doing this myself.” Yep.

THE LIGHTS GO OUT on Hugo Chavez.

A REPORT FROM THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY New York Tea Party.

TOM SMITH TRIES TO RESIST TEMPTATION, and fails. “I mean dude. You’re the president. On TV all over the universe. You just gotta wait until the break. But we at the RC are above embedding the offending video. Oh OK, we’re not. But I tried at least not to. It’s hard to resist those impulses.”

REMINDER: There’s a Tsunami Warning in Hawaii, with the Tsunami expected to strike about 11:19 am local time, 4:19 pm Eastern. And if you’re elsewhere in the mid-Pacific, you might want to check to see if you’re under a warning, too . . . .