Thank goodness I only saw one of these

The worst movies of the last ten years

Courting Hispanics

RNC's Hispanic outreach doesn't translate well

No Saturn, no mo

GM shuttering Saturn.

I've always thought of Saturn as the kind of car company GM should be as a whole. Pretty bad when your best division can't be spun off and sold.

Teaching 9/11

Marc Ambinder with a smart post about teaching 9/11 to schoolkids, many of whom have no idea of what 9/11 was about.

Got a Toyota with a driver's side mat with a mind of its own?

Toyota to recall 3.8 million cars over faulty floor mats.

My guess is that these mats probably slide around a bit and can interfere with the peddles.

From the article, the models (and model years) involved:

Toyota Camry (2007-2010)
Toyota Avalon (2005-2010)
Toyota Prius (2004-2009)
Tacoma (2005-2010)
Toyota Tundra (2007-2010)
Lexus ES350 (2007-2010)
Lexus IS250 (2006-2010)
Lexus IS350 (2006-2010)

Roman Polanski

Will we finally see this guy sentenced? Kate Harding with a fierce reply to the Polanski apologists. Amy Sullivan piles on.

Been awhile since I could say "F*ck yeah!" as I read an article.

Why more gambling probably isn't the answer to state tax revenue blues

Nate Silver, in a very good Esquire piece, believes we may be at the saturation point for gambling (sorry, I can't call it "gaming").

GOP deference

Andrew Sullivan riffs a little strangely on an excellent Conor Friedorsdorf column about how conservatives give military leaders great latitude (deference, even) when talking about military matters but experts in other fields are leavened by balancing costs and so on.

[I say strangely since Andrew goes off on neocons, perhaps because he has them on his mind today. But the GOP is much more than neocons, and the non-neocons are more likely to defer to military matters because the military goes to the heart of why there is a government in the first place. Andrew writes without his usual nuance in his post].

Vista!

Stupid Vista. Just got a new Gateway since my seven-year-old Dell is just too slow and full, but half my programs won't work on Vista (though, helpfully, several software companies offered to sell me upgrades ranging from $125 to $300. How nice.).

The worst is that BestBuy seems to have mangled the data transfer, both not transferring everything to the new computer, but preventing me from accessing the old computer (no boot drive). Nice, again!

Nice job, Dad

Man finally catches the first foul ball at a game in his life, gives the ball to his little girl, who promptly throws it back on the field! What does the dad do? Take a look:

Sign of our times

I'm liking this guy in the middle:

Texas yahoo with money doesn't get it

Hotelier's Rules Rile Hispanics (free reg required)

Being a hardass boss is one thing. But forcing Hispanic employees to "simply" their names and so on is really over-the-top.

The pain-in-the-assness of British libel law

Science writing might be suffering as a result.

What a bunch of weenies.

Just when you think all young professional athletes are assholes...

Vince Young goes and ruins the curve.

Hat's off to Young, who I've never liked as a player but that is what being a man is all about.

Counting, counting, Or: up to 2 million people are reading this blog!

How the Right Wing noise machine strokes itself: Case file "How many teabaggers?".

The College Republicans

A great rant from a reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog.

The Battle of Jericho (Arkansas)

Town Fire Chief, tired of the ticket crazy police force, gets shot in open court.

Seriously.

Seven cops for one little town? And no one knows where the ticket money is.

HT: Megan

Republicans against Medicare

In April, the GOP was against Medicare but for subsidies to help retirees enroll into private plans. In August the GOP ran screaming against subsidies to help non-retires enroll into private plans and made videos extolling the virtues of keeping Medicare.

Hard to tell what the GOP is for anymore. Except they are against whatever Obama is for.

Great bike prank

HT: MITH


Funny Tour De France Prank - Watch more Funny Videos

The Let's domestic terrorists

Earth Liberation Front (ELF) topple radio towers because the AM signals cause cancer.

Does anyone listen to AM radio anymore? Couldn't they have just let the free market do their work for them?

Putting that aside, I hope many on the left continue to call ELF what they are: domestic terrorists.

Just a reminder

From Fivethirtyeight.com, Not all socialist countries are alike

How can he backpedal when he wasn't pedalling?

A Tom Ridge simulacrum?

Or, what happens when the press doesn't check original sources:

So it has gone with the story of Tom Ridge's assertion. He made a statement. His publisher summarized the statement, distorting it slightly. The press distorted the statement further. The press began talking to itself about the distortion. And then the original statement, which Ridge had put down in the book and remained unchanged, ceased to exist. His statement was replaced by a popular simulacrum: All that remained was the distortion of what Ridge said in his book. The original statement was gone. And so, we have big news today: Ridge Backpedals!!!