- Barack Obama demanded that Iran turn over blueprints to its underground ex-secret nuclear hideaway, and threatened to take away the US’s gas and oil investment money. Iran responded by test-firing a bunch of short-range missiles and then claiming they were medium-range missiles. Sassy/grim! [New York Times]
- NATO and the US have decided to side with current Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai in his quest to continue to be President of Afghanistan, despite very mean-spirited gossip about how the election was maybe a sham. [Washington Post]
- Angela Merkel and her party, the Christian Democratic Union, have WON THE COUNTRY OF GERMANY for another four years. Well, congratulations. [Wall Street Journal]
- Flighty auteur Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland of all places for the his famous sex crime of sex with a 13 year old in 1978. [Los Angeles Times]
- William Safire died this weekend. Before his noted death, he was also famous for writing a bunch of lies for Richard Nixon and as well as the New York Times‘ “On Language” column. [Reuters]
- The more Obama insists that New York Governor David Paterson not attempt to be governor again, the more committed Paterson is to doing exactly that. [CNN]











Before his noted death, he was also famous for writing a bunch of lies for Richard Nixon
Does this mean Ben Stein is next? Do conservatives die in threes?
This Polanski thing reminds me… I’ve got to drive from Little Rock to Chicago this week but I absolutely cannot enter Missouri. Especially that county with that one sheep farm. Any suggestions?
Novakula, Kristol, Safire, I doubt Ben is likely to drop anytime soon. Seems pretty spry for his age.
The USA fighting man wants to go into Iran, because they have better looking whores there. The whores are plumper thatn those bony Afghan chicks, and have less body hair thatn the Iraqi trollops.
ahm purty fukk’n PIYUSSED AWFF, y’all. fukk’n GAY azz HEYLL.
wait…..whut ?
@Larry Fine: You should probably keep your travel photos away from children.
Patterson’s to be committed? About time - he’s been overdue at Dr. Dippy’s Retreat for years.
Perhaps Client No 9 will get back in the game. The lulz is strong with that one.
And now 30 years after the idiots Reagan & Thatcher blew enormous holes in their country’s economies with voodoo, or supply side, economics, the Germans will finally do the same after voters gave Merkel & some other dumbkopf conservatives a right-wing coalition govt.
We have our own north (non US) America examples of Tejas, Alberta and sometimes Okladumo as case studies for the question: is there something in oil that makes many people from oil producing areas arrogant, stupid and stubborn?
I’m guessing it’s easy as adding oil (apologies to the Onion.)
Is David Patterson a teenager? Because this is exactly what would happen if I told one of my teenagers that he or she should not run for re-election as Governor of New York.
As Governor Paterson prepares to lead the Ship of the State of New York through perilous and rocky waters, we should all get behind him - about 12 or 13 miles behind him.
You realize that every party in Germany has Democrat in its name? It’s some freaky groupthink shit, but then again, when in Germany…
ChernobylSoup v2:
Shave your head, get the family size pack of flavored dip, rent a pick up truck and you’ll sail unnoticed through the Sheeplands.
ChernobylSoup v2: 40 East to Nashville, then turn north. Of course, that would take you through Kentucky, where you might meet up with this guy, so tit-for-tat, I say.
Say what you will about Ahmadinejad, but hiding your nuclear facilities in a hollow mountain takes him out of madman territory into bondish super-villan.
Aren’t you guys going to give Safire his own personal snark feature? If he were alive, he’d be insulted that he was the fifth bullet out of six. Of course, he’s dead now, so probably doesn’t give a ****.
Also, Florida flys quarterback to infect entire state of Kentucky with pig flu.
Receives concussion instead, sometime life is fair.
Whatever (everything) was wrong with his politics, language lovers fapped to Safire’s NYT column every Sunday while simultaneously guessing the puzzle answers on Weekend Edition Sunday — it was that good.
ManchuCandidate: There’s a whole body of thinking in economics about “the resource curse,” the gist of which is that capital-intensive extraction industries lead inevitably to corrupt oligarchal government. Holds up pretty well in the Oil Patch here.
colonel sassy n. grimm of the secret resolution force says not to worry, israel is upwind of iran, pakistan is downwind, and several situations could be adjusted in a long-term fashion if necessary. the colonel has a blinding smile, but his eyes don’t laugh.
Hell just got a little more crowded with Safire’s passing.
V572625694: Yes, I always liked his language columns.
ex-secret nuclear hideaway: I read that as ’sex-secret nuclear hideaway’, but then Juli affects me that way.
CBS news this morning devoted 3 sentences to Iran and 6 minutes to Polanski.
Potater: The Germans do that to show they’re serious about Democracy, this time.
In a story related to the Polanski item, Laurence “Pinto” Kroger, 65, was arrested over the weekend for an incident that took place in 1962.
Naked Bunny with a Whip: I was kind of hoping it would be Pat Buchanan. MSNBC would have lots of holes to fill.
@Hedley Lamar: How can that be? MSNBC is a wacky liberal madhouse, I’ve heard!
It’s a good thing Polanski is a famous director, otherwise he’d just be another old pedophile sitting in jail.
Free Roman Polanski!
house of the blue lights: When they catch Iran in bed with a 15 year old blonde girl (preferably with lots of pictures of the girl looking very young and blonde), then Iran will get six minutes, too.
All this time I didn’t read Safire’s language column because, well, it was Willaim Safire. And now I find out my fellow progressives (probably just that glanton fellow) were reading him anyway. I have no regrets.
Not a fair fight, the blind guy hit me with his white stick. Blind people can’t fight mano-a-mano so they cheat. I know one hit me with his brailler after I told him if he could see he would know his mother was a …
For some odd reason, I somehow seem to be the only person in America that is fine with Polanski getting arrested for raping a minor.
glamourdammerung: No no, you’re not the only one. I’m just shocked that of all the countries that could have (and should have) extradited him, Switzerland was the one that finally got around to it.
Not to reveal myself as one with way too much interest in decades-old rape crimes, but the trial was in ‘78, and the crime in ‘77.
On a related note, CNN still has not corrected the article they used to break the story. My brain hurted reading the same paragraph twice (but disguised the second time as 3 separate sentences!). Ow.
glamourdammerung: It’s a brave stand, especially seeing as he was previously arrested and pled guilty for the offense.
queeraselvis v 2.0: You make the first comment I have seen (other than mine) supporting the arrest after seeing probably a couple of hundred people whining about it this weekend.
norbizness: I am just surprised at how much complaining their has been over the intertubes about it.
glamourdammerung: Yeah, it’s strange that the Hollywood crowd seems to be willing to give Polanski a pass. Why is that?
proudgrampa: Who among us hasn’t given roofies to a 13 year old in a hottub?
proudgrampa: Why would they want to give Polanaski a pass?
Because they are all librul ACORNS who want to set up their own tax-free underage brothels. Duh.
glamourdammerung: With you all on that one. If you plead guilty, you should expect consequences, not international “famous person” immunity.
V572625694: Yes, he was a language man of the first order. Too bad he used his powers for evil.
I hate those Swiss cocks.
glamourdammerung: I’m with you on feling that Polanski should go to jail. Someone posted a transcript of the victim’s testimony (in the Wapo comments section, I think). He not only drugged her, he then interrogated her about when she her last period was, and when she couldn’t remember, he decided to take no chances and did her anally. How very thoughtful! He’s a douchebag who deserves to serve time in a nice American prison like maybe Attica.
I think Switzerland is only doing this because it knows the dumb ass
Americans are bored with reading stories about health insurance. Maybe Rupert Murdoch told them to.
glamourdammerung: It probably stems a least partly from whining by the “victim” herself, who after 30 years, is kinda sick of every Los Angeles County district attorney wanting to run for higher office using her anal rape as an excuse to appear on Good Day LA.
glamourdammerung: No, I’m with you. I’m a little confused as to how it works that he served 42 days WHILE trying to hammer out a plea agreement and THEN fled the country? But this was all before my time, or technically, right around my time, so… well, anyway, rape bad.
hobospacejunkie: I never read it, because I can’t stand prissy people, even prissy people who are really good with words, whining about how language is deteriorating. It is not. Well, except for Grassley.
AnnieGetYourFun: Not that I am celebrating Safire’s death. The guy had class, and was a breed of conservative that you just don’t see anymore. But while I love an etymological foray, I get bored with the “this isn’t the CORRECT WAY to use THIS word” columns that are so common these days. Sure, I have my pet peeves with language usage, but if everyone starts saying irregardless, you can only fight it for so long.
William F. Buckley, Jr., Robert Novak, Irving Kristol, William Safire… It’s shaping up to be a good year. The new crop coming up, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, aren’t smart enough to earn the right to knock the chalk dust out of the old guy’s erasers. I may be feeling good about America again…
We should just bomb their baby milk factories. That solution always paid off before