Which, Mitch?

Kevin Drum (at "Mother Jones") jumps on board The Episconixonian's Daniels in 2016 bandwagon, since if the Indiana governor runs in 2012:

...how does he get through the primaries? When he hops over to Iowa, they'll expect him to denounce sharia law, make jokes about Obama's Kenyan birth, throw himself wholeheartedly into the culture wars, pretend that global warming is a liberal conspiracy, and make dire remarks about the specter of socialism taking over America. In other words, he'll have to act like a public clown, and if he doesn't do it, he'll lose.

I say here, now: In 2012, it's Obama vs. Bachmann.
Hat tip to "The Daily Dish"

"It Happened Today," R.E.M.

Hat tip to the R.E.M. fans at "The Daily Dish" for this lyrical video. I'd noted the biblical reference in December. If Michael Stipe's not an Episcopalian, he should be.

Take Qaddafi. Please.

A provocative analysis from one of the unidentified readers of "The Daily Dish":

The Arab League has played us well. Our intervention in Libya is the perfect distraction.

Now that we're enmeshed in Libya, we will have far less attention to pay to Saudi intervention in Bahrain, or to the regimes' responses to protests in Jordan, Syria and Yemen. And what easy marks we are. We find it impossible to sit on the sidelines as critical events unfold in other nations, and we are desperately afraid that the Middle East, and its oil, is slipping away from our control. Libya, with a madman for a tyrant, is an easy intervention target. Here, the Arab League seemed to say, do you need to make a stand for human rights in the Middle East? Take Libya. We all hate him anyway.

We are gullible beyond belief. Did Obama, Clinton, Cameron and Sarkozy ever stop to ask themselves who really benefits from our intervention in Libya? No, a bottomless stockpile of missiles combined with a sincere, if narcissistic, belief in ourselves as a "force for good" in the world, made us ripe for the con.

More Cautious, And Experienced, Than Obama

Colin Powell, speaking before the attacks on Libya
Hat tip to "The Daily Dish"

Where Is God?

Hat tip to "The Daily Dish" for this astonishing graphic as well a reflection on theodicy in the wake of the disaster in Japan

George Will Really Gets Ugly On Obama

As reported by "The Daily Dish," he writes:

To the notion that Obama has a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview, the sensible response is: If only. Obama's natural habitat is as American as the nearest faculty club; he is a distillation of America's academic mentality; he is as American as the other professor-president, Woodrow Wilson. A question for former history professor Gingrich: Why implicate Kenya?

New Media Leaving Old Media For Newer Media

"The Daily Dish" is abandoning the Atlantic Monthly Group for "The Daily Beast."

A Jug Of Wine, Moose Stew, And Thou

From the leaked manuscript of an ex-Palin aide, an explanation of how John McCain, and the GOP, ended up with Sarah Palin:

["Weekly Standard" editor Bill Kristol had] gone to Alaska on a cruise in June, 2007 and sat across the table from the sexy future of the Republican Party. Much as President Bush, when looking into Vlad Putin‘s eyes, saw his soul, Kristol understood that deliverance for his beloved GOP lived inside this stunning, five foot five inch Aphrodite from Wasilla. Due Diligence was conducted over moose stew, red wine, and winky charm. He did not need to ask about foreign policy or current event expertise. He saw a winner. Kristol began bongo-drumming her out-Mavericking John McCain virtues in every venue at his disposal... In public and to his contacts within the McCain camp, he made it known that she was not only legitimate, but the only intelligent choice if McCain hoped to have any chance in the upcoming election.

Hat tip to The Daily Dish

The Feast Of Andrew

After a scary-sounding three-week illness, the definitive blogger is Dishing again.

The Death Of Free Speech

Claremont McKenna College in southern California bans the use of campus e-mail to disparage someone's religious and political beliefs. What's left? Go here to complain.
Hat tip to The Daily Dish

The Hackosphere Matures

From Andrew Sullivan, a welcome if tardy acknowledgment that bloggers should observe traditional journalistic standards.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, when another web site published the fabricated story that Sarah Palin wasn't the mother of her youngest child, Sullivan linked to it before checking the facts and thus lent his substantial prestige to the most effective libel of the campaign.

With reasons that seem to have to do with professional pride and his considerable and understandable alarm at the idea of Palin ever getting close to the White House again, Sullivan hasn't quite given up on the pass-the-baby story. But whether it's a question of ethics, potential legal liability for his publisher, the Atlantic Monthly Group, or both, he's tightened up procedures at The Daily Dish. This week, when the National Inquirer published a story about the Palins, he wrote:

I'm not linking because I have no way to confirm the story.

We Need Balance, Not Space

From a "National Geographic" ad for its year-long series on world population (which will reach seven billion next year), we learn that, standing shoulder to shoulder, we could all fit in the city of Los Angeles.

Hat tip to the Daily Dish

Conner Friedersdorf Takes Down Jon Stewart

"The Daily Dish:"

What I hate to break to Jon Stewart, whose takedowns of cable news I very much enjoy, is that compared to the American population at large, not very many people actually watch cable news, let alone the particular shows he ridicules – and, in fact, by focusing his considerable satirical talents on that niche medium, he is arguably contributing to the strange illusion that it is the primary vehicle for public discourse in the United States.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

More here. Hat tip to the Daily Dish.

Here's Hoping For Dr. Laura

From Andrew Sullivan's blog, a balanced assessment of Laura Schlessinger's career and sudden retirement from radio, and then this benediction:

Here's hoping that her hate mail stops, that her post-talk radio career is an improved one, and that the number of people she helps -- even her critics can acknowledge there have been many over the years -- only increases.

Amen!

"Come Home America" Watch, Day 34

After Dick Cheney accused President Obama of dithering over Afghanistan, Cheney's fellow Republican, former Gov. Lamar Alexander, spoke wisely:

I think President Obama is entitled to take sufficient time to decide what our long-term role ought to be in Afghanistan. Then I think he should come to Congress and say to the American people what that plan is and see if he can persuade us and all of the American people of the rightness of it because he needs to have support all the way through to the end of that mission, so I want him to take the time to get it right.

Hat tip to the "Daily Dish"

Trippy

From San Francisco to Washington, D.C. in four minutes and 35 seconds

Hat tip to the "Daily Dish"

Stalking Source

Hat tip to the "Daily Dish"

On Vacation With My Daily Dish

The view from Kathy's and my window in Twentynine Palms, California last week was featured this morning on Andrew Sullivan's "Daily Dish." Thanks, Andrew & Co.!