Archive for August, 2008
Sunday, August 31st, 2008My Google Reader has been overflowing with stories and opinions about Sarah Palin, and I’ve been sharing a lot of it. But I thought it would be useful to do a quick round-up here.
To start with, if you haven’t read anything at all and are just wondering, “What are people saying,” Andy Tanenbaum at Electoral Vote has a decent summary, along with a hypothetical dialog explaining the choice.
PZ Myers has a post that, at first, seems to be about the completely unrelated subject of a militaristic evangelical sect. There are quotes like:
“An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion,” Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada.
But then PZ ends with this:
Let’s hope this is a fringe cult that will fade away, rather than rising to greater power. Let’s hope. But … Sarah Palin’s home church is dominionist, with connections to Joel’s Army.
Afraid yet?
So, uh, that’s awesome. Anyway, back to Palin. Two good posts by Alaskans about the way she is perceived in her home state at Statistical Modeling and Lawyers, Guns and Money. But by far the best coverage so far as been by Edge of the American West. There’s this excellent post about the right and the wrong way to go about attacking the choice. Hint: leave the beauty queeen bit out. There are two great illustrations of how Palin represents four more years of embarassing political cronyism. The posts respectively compare Palin to a “Mayberry Machiavelli” and to Alberto Gonzales. So, you know, that’s pretty flattering. And then there’s this, which begins with a most important question:
“Why is Sarah Palin running with John McCain if she hates old people so much?”
To wrap up on a more serious note, I have Henry Abbott making an important point. With Barack Obama and Sarah Palin on the Democratic and Republican tickets, America is guaranteed something significant: a serious basketball player in the White House.
Everyone who spends a lot of time following American basketball knows the name Frederic Weis. Not because he’s any good, but because he was once in the wrong place at the wrong time. Frederic Weis is a household name (in the homes of hoops nerds) because he’s 7′2″ tall, and because Vince Carter once jumped over him. Like, over him over him.
Why would anyone who reads this blog care about this? Because I want it to make sense when I say in November that McCain got Weis’d.
This terrific design is courtesy of the people at UNDRCRWN, purveyors of awesome shit, all of which would look completely ridiculous on me. (Via First Cuts, by way of Ball Don’t Lie.)
Neil Gaiman points to a podcast called The Moth, which consists of people on stage telling true stories without any notes. Neil’s is OK, but I laughed harder at the end of this story by playwright Edgar Oliver than I have at anything else in a very long time. It’s only about 15 minutes long, and Oliver’s storytelling voice is priceless.