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Romney v. Newt: How the GOP and the conservative media killed the TEA Party

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The TEA Party is dead.  The corpse of hope has rigor mortis, and is beginning to produce a funky odor.  I write this as a funeral dirge for the light of the right, a remembrance of what was, and a lament for what should have been.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but the fact remains that the TEA Party is done, and its influence has faded like the last flickers from a guttering candle.

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The city of Los Angeles cares more about pornographic film performers than the rest of us, apparently

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Kudos to the city council and mayor of Los Angeles, California for exhibiting rare leadership by mandating that pornographic film actors wear condoms when they make their films within the LA city limits.

With just a few strokes of his pen, the mayor has saved literally dozens of lives, probably. Actually, it’s probably millions of lives, because now not only will the performers in pornographic films be completely protected from uncovered penises, but the people who watch pornographic films will be reminded of how great condoms are, and they will emulate their pornographic film performer heroes and put them on when they engage in their own coitus. [Read more →]

Learn Japanese the World War II way!

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Recently I was browsing in a used book store when I stumbled upon a soldier’s Japanese phrasebook from World War II. Between faded orange covers I found a treasure trove of fascinating words and phrases- certainly it’s the most useful text published by the U.S. War Department I’ve encountered since that pamphlet on sexual hygiene for GIs I found in a Texas ghost town a few years back. It does lack for detailed diagrams of human genitalia, however.

Like most phrasebooks it contains all the standard terminology related to greetings, asking for directions and finding lodgings, but the structure and at least half of the language is strictly determined by the context of war. Thus it begins not with “Hello” and “My name is…” but rather a set of “Emergency Expressions” the very first of which is: [Read more →]

Bad sports, good sports: The Peyton Manning drama in Indianapolis is just beginning

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A very challenging situation is developing in Indianapolis. Peyton Manning, arguably one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, may be seeing his time in that Midwestern city coming to an end. It could, in fact, be his NFL career that is ending. The only part that is certain is that Colts fans are experiencing plenty of agita right now, and it is likely to last a little while. [Read more →]

Top ten answers to the question “How cold is it?”

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10. It’s so cold, you have trouble jump-starting your penguin

9. It’s so cold, you’re shivering like Rick Santorum at a Gay Pride parade

8. It’s so cold, when Wall Street investors jumping off buildings hit the sidewalk, they shatter into a million tiny pieces

7. It’s so cold, Osama bin Laden actually saw a snowball where he is

6. It’s so cold, Michele Bachmann’s husband is staying in the closet – for the coats

5. It’s so cold, nobody’s calling the fire department when their house catches on fire

4. It’s so cold, when police tell a robber to freeze, it’s redundant

3. It’s so cold, five rednecks have frozen off their truck nuts

2. It’s so cold, Anthony Weiner is Tweeting pictures of his mukluks

1. It’s so cold, you’re teeth won’t stop chattering – and they’re still in the glass

 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

The Keynesian mating call

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A good place to start?: Demystifying Wikipedia for students

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Wikipedia, for most, resides on the Web like a neighbor we see and interact with often, so we may be surprised to learn that this seemingly friendly presence has caused all kinds of trouble with schools. Some teachers and even a few institutions have considered banning their students’ from having a relationship with Wikipedia at all. [Read more →]

Audio files: The worst thing about music is the people who play it

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I’m back with a rare Thursday night edition of  the once weekly and now sporadic “Audio Files” column.  And look out, because I’m armed with the contents of my Google Reader, namely…

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Lisa reads Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright

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To be honest, when I started Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright, I wasn’t sure that I was going to love it. The book came to me through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program, and when I got the notice I was getting it, I couldn’t remember requesting it. It was a little slow going at first, but the story really draws you in. These aren’t always very likable people, but you find yourself interested in them and wondering how things will turn out for them. Eventually, I found I did not want to put it down.

Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal has been the head of Tubal & Co., a small privately-owned bank in England, for decades. The bank is in trouble. His son, Julian, was suckered in, like so many financiers, and now the bank is sunk deep in worthless mortgages and complex financial instruments that he barely understands. His father always said he wanted to run a bank, not a casino, but his son gambled and lost. Now Julian will need some fancy footwork — and shady dealing — to keep the bank solvent. [Read more →]

The plague of dads

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Mitt Romney has suffered serial pantsing through the primaries, some of it self-inflicted. Count the Iowa caucuses as an own-goal. If he hadn’t made his puny “win” by eight votes (against Rick Santorum for cripes!) into some sort of historical landslide then his puny loss by thirty-odd votes and the quick-change dealing involved would not have landed with such a thump. The lash bit especially deep as he also played his genuine and unsurprising win in New Hampshire as the second in a streak! And don’t you know that NOBODY has ever won both Iowa and New Hampshire and NOT won the Republican primaries! This factoid suffers explosive decompression when it is likewise understood that none of those gents ever won the general. But Triumphalism is largely the coin of the primary realm. With momentum any uptrend is rideable all the way to the White House, so Mitt was certainly counseled, that is IF he had to be convinced to take his victory lap and did not, as seemed to happen, leave all salaried employees in the dust. We can forgive Willard his enthusiasm perhaps as he was doing it for Dear Old Dad. [Read more →]

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