Mitt Romney is not John McCain

Why are so many Democrats such blatant racists?

Reactions to Justice Thomas' dissent from the Supreme Court's Affordable Care Act decision seem to have a theme.

I'm not a racist. You're a racist.

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a resolution holding Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, to be in contempt of Congress.

The National Journal reports:

The Congressional Black Caucus has called a members-only "emergency" meeting on Thursday to plot a "walkout strategy" ahead of the scheduled contempt vote of Attorney General Eric Holder later in the day. The plans, detailed in an email from the executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus obtained by the Alley, include circulating a letter disapproving of the vote and having lawmakers walk out of the Capitol to hold a press conference during the roll call.

Members of the House of Representatives have created a pile of special-interest "caucuses."  In addition to the Black Caucus, there's a Bike Caucus, a Congressional Bourbon Caucus, a Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, a Congressional Diabetes Caucus, a 4-H Caucus, a Shellfish Caucus and a Second Amendment Caucus.

We're just wondering what it is about the Attorney General, or the ATF's gunrunning operation (the scandal that's sparked the contempt citation), that is of particular and overriding interest to the Congressional Black Caucus.

Way cool, but is it art?

Ha!  Trick question: I don't care.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art: "Levitated Mass."

Some people are honest, honorable, and keep their promises

Law professor is shocked.

Alan Turing (June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954)

Via xkcd.

The President is Creepy

We don't know Mr. Obama personally, so we can't, technically, say that we're entitled to an opinion respecting how creepy he is in person.  But by the well-known Transitive Property of Creepiness, we infer that he must actually be pretty creepy, since otherwise he'd not hire folks to do stuff like this:

We certainly expect this to start popping up on wedding registries (which are themselves pretty creepy), with the bride-to-be begging her friends to buy her 1200-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and, while they're about it, kicking in some Obama Bux.

Via Weasel Zippers.

But why does Dog say "Hello"?

Dog could say "Ahoy!" or "What?!" or any number of things. Why do we say "Hello"? Because Thomas Edison thought it would be a good idea.

The Two-Minute (Self-) Hate: 2012 Edition

Produced by the "Un-Fair Campaign," under the auspices of the University of Minnesota (Duluth). While the people of Oceania could be expected to carry on for a full two minutes, what with today's attention spans it's more like a 30 Second Hate.

If Westeros had Super-PACS

More at Mother Jones.

Figure it out for yourself . . . .

Because if I explain everything to you, you'll never learn a thing, and you'll still be living in my basement when you're 50 years old.

Them!

Walter Russell Mead observes correctly:

Conspiracy theories give true believers the illusion of power by offering a “secret” and, to believers, a convincing account of how the world works; but they simultaneously disempower the believers because they buy into a narrative in which the Powers are so smart, so well-organized and so far-sighted that nothing short of an apocalyptic meltdown will ever bring them down. Belief in conspiracy theories is less a sign of organizing for social change than it is a psychological mechanism that helps people come to grips with their lack of control over the forces shaping their lives.

You'll have to follow the link to discover exactly who believes exactly which clever conspiracy is being used to promote world domination.

But here's a hint.



 

Science marches on

"After leaving its detachable penis to finish inseminating the female, the male . . . fights to the death to protect the impregnated gal. Without the extra weight of its sexual organs, [he] . . . can outlast [his] competition, new research has found."


More HERE.


Why does Rule 34 immediately come to mind?


Via Professor Althouse.  No, really!

Fathers Day Gift Ideas

"That's a clown question, bro."

A celebrity needs to know how to answer questions from the press without getting into trouble. Sometimes, a celebrity needs to know how to NOT answer questions from the press.

Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 — June 5, 2012)

We Are the 1%!

We here at Glib & Superficial sometimes have problems interpreting the Universe, because there seems to be so much stuff that Everybody Knows of which we're ignorant. For example, there's a television commercial for Burger King featuring Some Handsome Guy, who is unidentified in the ad. Apparently Everybody Knows that SHG is actually David Beckham, who apparently plays "football" (presumably because he can't hit a curve ball).

Whatever.

We had the same experience when we saw a recent advertisement that has something to do with President Obama's reelection campaign, and is narrated by someone who identifies herself as "Anna Wintour."  Here's the ad:

As it turns out, this is even worse than our experience with the Burger King ad.  There, if the Handsome Guy had said "Hi!  I'm David Beckham," we'd have known that this was some guy who played soccer, because we've certainly heard of "David Beckham," even if we remained unable to pick him out of a police lineup.

But we had to google "Anna Wintour" before we knew that Everybody Knows that she's been the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine for, like, 25 years or something.  Without Google, we'd have been left knowing only that she was some middle-aged woman with a really creepy accent that she's obviously been practicing for a long time.  [Don't misunderstand: speaking English would be simpler if there weren't so many sounds you have to be able to make, and deleting "R", as Ms. Wintour has done, has advantages.]

Which is to say that our whole experience with this piece started out oddly.  But while still confused about who this woman was, we learn that she's from another planet, only visiting here on earth, because, in her universe, two of "the most incredible women in the world" are Sarah Jessica Parker and Michelle Obama.  In fact, on the subject of "the most incredible women in the world," those are the only two examples proffered by "Anna Wintour."

This caused us to pause the ad, and take out pencil and paper and start sketching Venn Diagrams, trying to figure out what qualities and life experiences were shared by Sarah Jessica Parker and Michelle Obama, which overlap might be the basis of their being "the most incredible women in the world."

But we digress.

Fortunately, we now see that someone at the Romney campaign also saw the ad, and also thought it was awfully strange:

Which still leaves us with a question: what percentage of registered voters in the United States can afford to buy anything that's ever been mentioned in Vogue magazine?

What a Difference Two Years Makes

I smell better than you do

Because I'm old. HERE's the science.

There are Only Two Kinds of Religions

First, there are those religions whose adherents will happily blow you up if you irritate them; Islam and Communism come to mind. Then, there are those religions whose followers don't generally kill you if you irritate them: Catholics and Protestants tried that a while back, but have since thought better of it and, these days, various varieties of Protestants (Episcopalians, for example) will apologize to you if you happen to say or do something annoying.

Which brings us to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Mormons don't seem even to be easily irritated and, in general, are kind, temperate and friendly. Which means, here in 21st Century America, that it's ok to say about Mormons the sort of bigoted, intolerant and narrow-minded things that would earn you a harsh reprimand from the New York Times, or your Dean of Students, if you said it about, say, Barney Frank.

Professor Thomas Terry writes in Inside Higher Education:

It was a fairly typical lunch at an academic conference in the East after the New Hampshire primary in 2008. There was a smattering of endowed professorships and international reputations at the table, perhaps eight academics in all.

Along with the sweet tea and penne pasta came the inevitable skewering of George W. Bush.

"Never has a president experienced such horrible poll approval numbers in the midst of a war," one professor quipped.

"That is, if you overlook Harry Truman," I interjected into an uncomfortable silence.

It was going to be that kind of meal.

Dessert made its appearance and talk turned to the relative merits of the developing college basketball season and presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were hotly debated – the state’s primary promised to be a pivotal one. Then it was onto the Republicans, and Mitt Romney’s name popped up.

"I couldn’t vote for a Mormon," one professor said. There was some polite (or perhaps impolite) head-bobbing. "It’s a cult. Very intolerant, and their opinions about women, and, well ... ” and his voice trailed off.

I mentioned I had just been hired at a college in the West with a sizeable student and local population of Mormons -- Idaho State University, in Pocatello. I wondered rhetorically whether anyone said the same thing in 1960 about voting for John F. Kennedy because he was Roman Catholic. Or for then-Senator Obama because he is African-American. There was that same uncomfortable silence again. I think they felt sorry for me.

I’ve attended numerous scholarly conferences since that lunch where Mormonism has been discussed, and it is amazing to confront snide and disdainful comments and even overt prejudice from intellectually and sophisticated academics. And it seems perfectly acceptable to express this bias. Mormons are abnormal, outside the mainstream; everybody knows that. They don’t drink alcohol and coffee. Their women are suppressed. They don’t like the cross, and their most holy book seems made up. And there’s that multiple-wives thing.

I'm just guessing, but I suspect we're going to be hearing a lot more about those wacky Mormons in the next five months or so. I don't expect the President to opine that, while it's just his opinion, he certainly DOES think that Joseph Smith was a whack-job. But I do think we're going to be treated to rhetoric that includes words like "buttoned-up" and "straight-laced" and such, as well as bank-shot "praise," along the lines of "I think it's admirable that all Mormon teens are required to go on two-year proselytizing missions."

But that's OK. You're unlikely to be assassinated by a Saint.  Besides, everybody knows . . . .