Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Tuesday Topics

Hey y'all. First of all: Happy Chinese New Year! Gong Hay Fat Choy! Which does not actually mean, "Happy New Year." That's "Xin nian kuaile." Gong Hay Fat Choy means, sort of: "Congratulations! Get Rich!" So you all can have a xin nian kuaile if you'd prefer. I personally am going to attempt some gong hay fat choying in 2009.

In some delightful new Year of the Ox news: Bill Kristol is out at the New York Times for writing mostly bull. Sweet! Some of his greatest hits from HuffPo:

His very first column earned a correction, when he misattributed a Michael Medved quote to Michelle Malkin.

-- Several other corrections followed, and his track record as a pundit was so poor it drove Jon Stewart to often ask, "Oh, Bill Kristol, aren't you ever right?"

-- Who can forget when he told Stewart he was getting wrong information because he was relying too much on... the New York Times. Stewart replied: "But you work for the New York Times, Bill!"

-- He touted, of all people, Clarence Thomas as a GOP vice-presidential candidate. Or, as the sage wrote of McCain, "He could persuade the most impressive conservative in American public life, Clarence Thomas, to join the ticket."

-- Later, smitten with Sarah Palin in a brief cruise stopover in Alaska, he pushed her for Veep, publicly and privately. Then he lobbied for McCain to let Palin be Palin, or as he urged: "Hockey Mom Knows Best." So we have Kristol partly to thank for McCain's single worst blunder and a real game-changer (though not as he intended) in the fall campaign.


Next up, the Rightosphere is all up and wiggy about Obama's first formal interview as POTUS with--wait for it!--Al Arabiya TV. See?! He's a "half-breed muslin!" I think he did the right thing, diplomatically speaking. It's CNN covering the speech, some of which they show. It's worth watching, especially for David Gergen's comments around 5 minutes in, which are a far better explication of my thoughts than mine. Watch it for yourself:

Next up, another movie for you, a very funny spoof on the "hazing" Robert Gibbs received in his first press secretarial outing. Hat tip to Oliver Willis:

More tomorrow!
*Mwah!*

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