I'm big in Canada

Via the Trailer Park Boys, it's hilarious, for me anyway. Apparently I like weed and Enchiladas.

Check it out

Skank vs Skank

These two are awesome. Not safe for work

Line of the day

Via Megan McArdle "History may not repeat itself, but it stutters like hell."

The funniest thing I read today

Was this Construction signs warn of zombies - via Scarbrough via Facebook.

The wisdom of white people

From Stuff White People Like

Along with Jazz, white people have also taken quite a shine to The Blues, an art form that captured the pain of the black experience in America. Then, in the 1960s, a bunch of British bands started to play their own version of the music and white people have been loving it ever since. It makes sense considering that the British were the ones who created The Blues in the 17th Century.

The funniest thing I read today

Was the War Nerd defining crystal meth as the "Redneck Work Ethic".

So very true

Via Megan


More galling is the phony outrage from politicians about how the banks are actually spending the money.

The funniest thing I read today

Is this Urban Dictionary entry on Atlanta (Definition 26):

If you like ghetto fabulous craphole dumps, you will think you have died and gone to heaven in Atlanta.

The simple and direct entry on Forsyth County is good (and somewhat accurate) too.

Making little rocks out of big rocks

Sorry for the dreadfully light blogging lately - for the record, here is a short summation of my thoughts lately.

• Bush will issue between 150-200 pardons between now and when he leaves office
• I'm still furious about the bailouts
• I think my initial view of Obama, as being an excellent figurehead, with no fixed ideology, is coming into sharper focus.
• And this is the funniest commentary on the bailouts I've seen yet. It's a good indicator that popular opposition remains strong.
  

Quick Sunday link

• AtlHistory.com
• Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are
• BailOutSleuth.com
• The new demographics of the two parties
• A very good post from McArdle on the Detroit bailout
• The biggest internet takedown in history - for a good cause no less
  

Wrapping up a miserable week, and onto another

Work has sucked, my dog has somethign wrong with him, and I've got a massive toothache. But paying in art instead of money makes me smile.

Something funny

From this Wikipedia page on Melungeons

On the other hand, in the tensions about race and slavery leading up to the Civil War, several Melungeon men were tried in Hawkins County, Tennessee, in 1846 for "illegal voting", under suspicion of being black.

It brings to mind the Dick Gregory joke

"I'd rather be black than gay because you never have to tell your parents you're black."

Good bailout commentary

Monday links

Sorry I've just been posting links lately, I've been working a ton and my brain doesn't have much energy left for original thought. In any case, read these

• Reason inteviews Bob Barr
• Radley Balko on why the Republicans should lose big - basically it's the only way they'll clear out the deadwood. One thing to bear in mind; after the election of 2004 everyone was making noise about the demise of the Democratic Party and the permanent Republican majority - things change in a hurry, and the nature of the American system basically IS a push and a pull, and a mix of the good cop and the bad cop.
• Plastic surgeons voice their opinions
• McCain and Liddy - How high of an opinion does one have to have of politicians to be shocked by criminal associations anyway? Political careers are naked grabs for power.
• What we do or who we are...
  

Friday link clearing

• Sarah Silverman, Obama, and the Jewish vote - not safe for work, but worth watching
• Small Banks are doing fine it seems
• Israel asked Bush for permission to bomb Iran, and it seems Bush refused! Good. No point in throwing away all the gains in Iraq
• Making money twice - worth reading
• Who serves in the military? Well worth reading.
• Jetpacks!
• The difference between Sunni and Shia in short form
  
• And this little nugget - via Ezra Klein

  Dear American:
  
  I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
  
  I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
  
  I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
  
  This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
  
  Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
  
  Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

  
  

Thursday link roundup

• Church Sign Wars - very good
• What Russia Wants - written by my old Boss at Cato
  
• The path to citizenship - it makes illegal immigration much more understandable
• Making money twice - a very good read
• Julian Sanchez put it very well with

  we’re perpetually told the fundamental cause of the ongoing meltdown is Wall Street “greed,” as though that somehow counted as an explanation. How, pray, would we describe it if mortgage lenders had rejected many more applications from lower-income folks, on the grounds that they were poor risks? Well, greed, of course. Pretty much whatever they did, they’d be doing because they expected it to maximize their profit; the issue is their judgement, not their motives. Or put another way: The problem isn’t that people were greedy, it’s that they weren’t very good at being greedy.

• Ron Paul fades into further irrelevance
• More Bailout - Yglesias posits what is hopefully a liberal dilemma

  Simply put, if congressional Democrats manage to acquiesce in a plan that spends $700 billion on a bailout while doing nothing for average working people and giving the taxpayer virtually no upside in a way that guarantees that even electoral victory would give an Obama administration no resources with which to implement a progressive domestic agenda in 2009 then everyone’s going to have to give serious consideration to becoming a pretty hard-core libertarian.

• A nice article on Obama's community organizing days - notices the lack of anything measurable.
  

Triumph interviews Ralph Nader

The IPhone ad that never aired

I could do funnier, but not bad.

Laughing out loud

From Overcoming Bias

"As for the little green men... they don't want us to know about them, so they refrain from making contact... then they do silly aerobatics displays within radar range of military bases... with their exterior lights on... if that's extraterrestrial intelligence, I'm not sure I want to know what extraterrestrial stupidity looks like."
-- Russell Wallace

Palin!

Via the Agitator - I bring you VPILF.com!

And I now coin the term "McCain's other trophy wife" which the Dems will start using in approximately fifteen minutes.