The State of the Audience of the State of the Union
With pictures!

I captured a few stills of my favorite audience shots. Four highlights:

Like Mother-in-Law, Like Daughter-in-Law

A bit over-the-top, isn't it? The apple-by-marriage doesn't fall far from the tree, I guess.

Wink, Wink

A wink or a blink? Your call.

The Printer Cartridges

Do you suppose they sat together on purpose? (From left: Sue "Yellow" Myrick (NC-9), Jo Ann "Red" Davis (VA-1), Jean "Blue" Schmidt (OH-2), and Candice "Beige" Miller (MI-10). Also visible in the second picture is Anne "Green" Northrup (KY-3).¹)

You Disgust Me, Liddy

What the camera doesn't show is that right before these shots were taken, Dole leaned over and whispered, "My husband is better at beating cancer than you are."²

1 - I'm not completely sure on the identities of Miller and Northrup. Confirmations and corrections are welcome.
2 - Almost certainly not true.

Jeb Bush, we thought we knew ye:

"I'm excited you're looking at Florida State. [FSU President] T.K. Wetherell and I are friends. When you come to Tallahassee again, let's hook up with each other. — Jeb Bush"

That was the text message, as Rolle remembered it, from the state's governor. Rolle said it hit his cellphone the same weekend he hit Florida State for a recruiting visit. Two weeks ago, after sifting through 80-plus scholarship offers, Rolle enrolled at FSU.

The recruiting implications are what they are, but RGA may have a more pressing concern: it would appear that Jeb Bush wants to "hook up" with Myron Rolle. "Cornerback Mountain" jokes, anyone? (My apologies; too obvious to avoid.)

The Washington Post writes about a study linking anti-black bias and Republicanism:

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did.

"What automatic biases reveal is that while we have the feeling we are living up to our values, that feeling may not be right," said University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek, who helped conduct the race analysis. "We are not aware of everything that causes our behavior, even things in our own lives."

Over/under on the number of days before AEI or Heritage produces a study indicating - using complicated statistical analysis - that Brian Nosek is simply trying to cover his own racism by accusing others: 12.

Ann Coulter: always good for a (nervous) chuckle.

"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media." ...

At one point during her address, which was part of a lecture series, some audience members booed when she cut off two questioners. "I'm not going to be lectured to," Coulter told one man in a raised voice. She drew more boos when she said the crack cocaine problem "has pretty much gone away."

Added Pat Buchanan, who was praying in the wings: "You know who's good at rat poison? God."

Arguing that "it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy," Joseph Ellis dips into his textbooks to find historical analogues for our response to 9/11:

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the 'quasi-war' with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.

Saddam's trial takes another flying leap down the road to befuddlement. (Note: I couldn't decide which parts of this magnificent article to quote, so instead I'll summarize it in the manner of the teasers one finds at the end of Lemony Snicket books.)

[Click here to read an article containing brazen walkings-out, "daughters of a whore," takings of umbrage, and "evil" court-appointed defense attorneys.]

Seriously, he called his defense lawyers evil. The man's killed like nine billion people, and the best he can come up with is "evil"? Come on, Saddam! Put a little muscle into it!

Twenty years ago, on the morning of January 28, 1986, a faulty O-ring seal in one of the Space Shuttle Challenger's booster rockets started a chain reaction that ended seventy-three seconds later in the loss of the shuttle and the deaths of all seven of its crewmembers. I didn't like Reagan much (obviously), but the speech he gave following the shuttle explosion is one of the greatest political speeches of the past several decades. To wit:

There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

The quoted lines reference a poem written in 1941 by a nineteen-year-old Spitfire pilot named John Magee. Magee died a few months later, prompting his father to forward the poem to the Library of Congress, where it was included in an exhibition in 1942. And from thence to fame. (To this day, "High Flight" remains the official poem [who knew there were such things?] of both the Royal Canadian Air Force [for whom Magee flew] and the Royal Air Force [at whose base he was killed].)

Recipe o' the Day!

1 tbsp Ted Nugent
1 tbsp Tara Reid
1 tsp Rush Limbaugh
1 pint Grey Goose
½ oz. cocaine
4-5 FHM photo shoots
Salt to taste

Combine ingredients and stir until smooth.

Yield: 1 Anna Benson.

Serving suggestion (to quote her letter to PETA):

I also love to eat meat. I eat meat twice a day because I need the protein and soy gives me painful gas. Besides, I love a really big, really rare steak that's still mooing on my plate. Moooo - yum. I like fish too. I especially like to catch fish, cut off their little heads, and eat them. And I guess Chickens are okay... I liked that movie Chicken Run, but I would ring one of their little chicken necks in about two seconds if I was hungry. But what I'd really like to know is what the fuck is PETA gonna do about it?

According to Peter Bergen (by way of Rush and Molloy [by way of Wake-Up Call]), Osama bin Laden is "a Larry King fan." Stephen Colbert, eat your heart out.

In the LA Times, Joel Stein admits:

I don't support our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

...

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

...

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Super Mario turns over the reins. And then¹ gets off his horse, goes into his house, changes into pajama pants and a bathrobe, and then sits on his couch and throws things at the television while the Penguins get utterly pounded. Every night.

And in Steeler news, a high school teacher humiliates a student for wearing a Denver Broncos jersey.

Let's go Bucs!

1 - Because friends don't let friends use bad metaphors without hammering them (the metaphors) into the ground.

Tim Kaine, fresh off a few months of Kilgore-whompin', tries to mend some fences:

Marty H. Kilgore is returning to her former job as executive director of a foundation that oversees Virginia's youth-smoking prevention campaign.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat, announced the appointment yesterday. Last August, Kilgore left the job she held since 2001 to help her husband, Republican Jerry W. Kilgore, campaign for governor.