A recap of stuff that's been hashed and rehashed, but, in case you missed it:

Jennifer Rubin on Buckley, Brooks, and even Maureen Dowd (!!!?!!?) expressing buyer's remorse over their bright, shiny new Messiah.

Peter Robinson on a point so moronically obvious even I made it:

The elite journalists, I repeat, got Obama wrong. The troglodytes got him right. As our national drama continues to unfold, bear that in mind.

And if you think Maureen Dowd is a good "get," how about Chris Matthews sighing in exasperation about Obama's broken promise to excise earmarks from the budget, or Whoopi Goldberrg suddenly realizing it's not fair to overtax the rich?

I don't think these people are terribly influential. But they are representative of a certain kind of liberal-leaning voter who is, nevertheless, not in favor of leftism or radicalism, suddenly waking up to the fact that they been had. Bamboozled. Run amok.

As Obama -- the non-radical pragmatic centrist -- frequently said on the campaign trail, quoting the equally non-radical pragmatic centrist Malcolm X.

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Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (4)
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Rich and bold, like Columbian coffee flavored with stag testes.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (8)
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The Expansion of Ignorance (IMO, its probably our salvation, H/T Strange Monkey Doll which is a pretty thoughtful blog BTW)
The stuff I'm working on is smack in the middle of the ignorance curve, so I fully appreciate what he's talking about here. We know just enough to make some very interesting and practical stuff, but the number of experiments we want to make to further explore this "magic shit" we've concocted is expanding a lot faster than our ability to conduct them.

Barnett's TED presentation on how to structure the military and something else to handle what happens after some miscreants get their asses kicked by our traditional war fighters (which he calls the Leviathan Force). H/T Cobb, another thoughtful blog

A lot of what Barnett is saying in this talk appears to make a lot of sense. We know how to kick ass and do it pretty efficiently. Handling the aftermath is where we fall down (Iraq, prime example). What he describes is an admin force following very closely in the wake of the ass kicking force. Will the Pentagon buy it? Will Obama buy it? Dunno, but it does seem clear we need a better way to bridge to "messy middle" between the ass whooping and "peace".

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:40 AM | Comments (17)
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So whatever tickles your fancy, floats your boat, inflates your balloon, sucks yourÂ…well, you get the picture. SorryÂ…no P-I update tonight. HereÂ’s a collection of heartwarming animal-related stories to keep you mesmerized. Or to ignore. The P-I stuff has pushed these critical articles to the back burner for a couple of days. On tonightÂ’s episode of Mutual of Ace of SpadeÂ’s Wild Kingdom:

First: Snakes in a Car! Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? (HereÂ’s the cobra story I kept promising you Methos)

”A couple drove 170 kilometres (100 miles) from South Africa's famous Kruger National Park with a highly venomous spitting cobra in their car, the Beeld newspaper reported on Wednesday.”

“Gordon Parratt, 69, felt the 85-centimetre (33-inch) long snake wind itself around his leg while he was driving.”

A few more below the fold:
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Posted by: Open Blog at 09:52 PM | Comments (50)
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So far in the last half of Season 4, we've had episode titles quoting Emily Dickinson and Sartre. Not to mention Adama went around quoting Dickinson during an episode. Blech.

Continuing in the literary tradition is tonight's title, "Islanded in a Stream of Stars" which is a quote from naturalist Henry Beston. Here's the full quote:

"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars— pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time."

I guess no one thought that would be a little bit too much on the nose.

No recap today of last week's episode, Someone to Watch Over Me. I was too busy today keeping an eye on a rather contentious post below to finish it. The really, really short version: about five minutes of substance and 35 minutes of "oh, who really cares anymore?"

Spoiler Policy: Anything from the miniseries and the show up to and including tonight's episode is fair game; no need to warn or in some way obscure text for anything that comes from that material. However, anything you may have heard about future episodes should be kept to yourself. Won't be needing this for much longer, will we? more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:45 PM | Comments (45)
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So far in the last half of Season 4, we've had episode titles quoting Emily Dickinson and Sartre. Not to mention Adama went around quoting Dickinson during an episode. Blech.

Continuing in the literary tradition is tonight's title, "Islanded in a Stream of Stars" which is a quote from naturalist Henry Beston. Here's the full quote:

"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars— pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time."

I guess no one thought that would be a little bit too much on the nose.

No recap today of last week's episode, Someone to Watch Over Me. I was too busy today keeping an eye on a rather contentious post below to finish it. The really, really short version: about five minutes of substance and 35 minutes of "oh, who really cares anymore?" more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:43 PM | Comments (9)
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Sounds pretty watered down, but I suppose that's necessary to skirt around the constitutional issues that sunk V1.0

The main problem I see is the "default mode" of operation here is for the item in question to slide through rather than be rejected.

It would also be much stronger if a super majority were required to retain an item rather than a simple majority. Its easy to get a majority to vote for a grab bag of stuff with only a few turd garnishes slipped in on the whole bill, harder to get a super majority to affirmatively vote for steamy turds in isolation. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:47 PM | Comments (35)
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A WWII veteran gets one last look at a B-24 Liberator, the same type of bomber he flew in as a ball turret gunner.

My father was a ball gunner on a B-24J Liberator bomber in the Pacific during WW2. He rarely spoke about that. My father and his confreres considered themselves part of a thing greater than the sum of their parts in it --or so it seems to me -- and more or less did what was expected of them as a sort of unpleasant chore, kept themselves safe as much as was practicable, amused themselves when possible, and got back to being regular people as soon as they could.

Part of a thing greater than the sum of their parts in it. Well, yes, and no. Their greatness is perhaps a simple thing, but it is greatness.

May he rest in peace.

via The Man of Substance

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:45 PM | Comments (41)
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Just to be clear, that's 47% of those discarded, not 47% of all provisionals.

Hey, I've got an idea -- let's not prosecute any of them! So they'll be encouraged to do it next cycle! Indeed, with all the non-prosecuted fraud, we might see voter fraud increase exponentially!

Oh wait, they've already thought of that, haven't they?

Sigh. I always have these brilliant ideas which unfortunately someone already thought up.

I can't wait to here the spin "This is a small problem we don't need to address."

Oh wait -- we won't hear that spin either, because no one in the media is going to ask them.

Thanks to William A.

Posted by: Ace at 03:36 PM | Comments (44)
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I have no beef with short people, I just wanted to use one more bit of opprobrium (Thanks to all who help my vocabularizing) to spit at UnterReichsFuhrer Robby the whining, pissy little bitch. In karmic response I give you a pint-sized badass, who plays piano and talks shite like a pro. R in ass-kicking peace Mr. Petrucciani.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 03:22 PM | Comments (17)
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