Red States are Now Red, Swollen States

Porn in the USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers

8 of Top 10 Porn-Consuming States Voted Republican in 2008 Presidential Election

"Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds. "

"Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama."

Oh, and the state that consumes the most porn? Utah.

Freepers are Angry when Liberals Blame the Perpetrator

Boston Bill reads Free Republic so I don't have to. Here's a recent email to me:

News: Chris Brown bought his 11-year-old son, Jordan, a 20-gauge shotgun for
Christmas. He wanted to teach him how to hunt.
Now, law enforcement authorities said, the shotgun is the suspected murder
weapon in the death of Mr. Brown's pregnant girlfriend, Kenzie Marie Houk,
26, who was shot in the back of the head Friday morning as she lay in bed at
their two-story farmhouse near New Castle, Lawrence County.

The Moral folk at Free Republic respond:

"Oh I don't know ... maybe the fact that the victim here was living with his
dad unmarried. Not justifying the kid, but this type of immorality and
breakdown of the family leads to these type of incidents"
"Kid could be like so many others that are ignored and left to play violent
video games where they come to believe this behavior is acceptable"
"Well the woman was 26 years old. What is she doing having a baby or at
least sex with an 11 year old? Maybe he found out the baby wasn't really his
child. After all, she does have a 4 year old daugther and I haven't read
anything about the "father" of that child"
"The victim is unsympathetic. She was shacking up with the child father and
was going to have a kid out of wedlock"


Comment: and these are the folks who proudly proclaim themselves 'right to
lifer-ers". It's amazing the twists of logic they will undertake to avoid
the obvious: why give a child that age a gun?

Free Ain't Always Free!

Great parody!

What Obama Has Done in One Month

Bad News: He has not undone the last eight years of damage, as he promised in my fantasies.

Good News: He has done all this:

(Thanks to Rachel Maddow and Crooks & Liars)

Lost at Sea

Famed sci-fi author Frederik Pohl recounts his seventeen harrowing days stranded on the ocean.

On an ocean liner.

An ocean liner with one available TV channel: Fox News.

Harper's Index...Now with an Index!

This is a dream come true.

Harper's Index is online, and it's searchable!

Litterbox mouth

This is really in poor taste. It's a talking cat that spouts obscenities.

I'm pretty offended, but here's the link anyway.

Oh, by the way, it doesn't automatically say dirty words. You have to type them in first.

Looking For Lincoln

Left this comment on "Looking For Lincoln" post on the cool blog, "If You've Got it, Flaunt It"

I saw the "Looking for Lincoln" and I thought it was great, but there were some things I thought it left untouched, like how for years the majority of white Americans downplayed Lincoln's role as the emancipator, while African-Americans strove to keep that memory alive.

Also, When Lincoln became an abolitionist, he became one wholeheartedly.

"For all his mystical, even bloody-minded, devotion to the Union’s preservation, Lincoln, the reluctant and strategic abolitionist, came to understand emancipation as his chief claim to immortality. A mental breakdown, in 1841, witnessed by his friend Joshua Speed, might have ended in suicide but for Lincoln’s realization, confided to Speed at the time, that if he were to die now he 'had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.' When Speed visited the White House in 1863, Lincoln went out of his way to recall this confidence and to declare, 'with earnest emphasis,' according to his reliable friend, that the Emancipation Proclamation had fulfilled his long-ago self-willed resurrection from depression."

I got these from a great essay in the New Yorker, linked here:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/10/13/081013crbo_books_mallon

This is my response to the "Why didn't CNN fired Glenn Beck years ago?" post in Media Matters' "County Fair"blog:

Beck was a ratings vacuum for years in Headline News before making the switch to Fox News, where he finally started posting strong numbers.

This reminds me of a point made by someones else (I wish I coud remember who) about the folly of trying to imitate Fox News. Fox News is not just a place with a lot of Republican personalities; Fox News is itself a Republican personality. You can turn it on any time of day and get a steady stream of GOP talking points, regardless of whose mouth they're coming from.

Maybe this will show the other TV news channels that there's no point in being Fox News lite. But I'm guessing someone at CNN is now saying, "If only we had kept Beck for three months more..."