Month: January 2008

"I didn’t think that there was a way Democrats could fail to win the Presidency in 2008. But I underestimated us… Virtually the entire campaign against Obama has been smear and innuendo with a racial subtext.

It better stop, but I expect it won’t. It won’t stop because after Iowa it was decided that Obama could not be defeated fair and square. So fair and square went out the window. The result?

A Republican victory especially if McCain is the nominee and pledges to serve only one term," – M.J . Rosenberg, TPMCafe.

Artist Juan Francisco Casas uses a bic pen to create stunning, photo-realistic drawings.Think Chuck Close meets that kid in high school always doodling on his notebooks. Casa’s work is currently up at the Galeria Fernando Pradilla in Madrid.

More images after the jump.

Casa’s work is yet more proof that Bic is, indeed, the perfect ballpoint pen. Other creative uses for Bics here. 

An NPR report on Latino voting – especially in the South.

And about time. From Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay on the decline of reading:

Over the years, books kept in print may earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for their publisher and author. A few steady earners, even though the annual earnings are in what is now dismissively called “the midlist,” can keep publishers in business for years, and even allow them to take a risk or two on new authors. If I were a publisher, I’d rather own J.R.R. Tolkien than J. K. Rowling.

But capitalists count weeks, not years. To get big quick money, the publisher must risk a multimillion-dollar advance on a hot author who’s supposed to provide this week’s bestseller. These millions—often a dead loss—come out of funds that used to go to pay normal advances to reliable midlist authors and the royalties on older books that kept selling. Many midlist authors have been dropped, many reliably selling books remaindered, in order to feed Moloch. Is that any way to run a business?

Hat Tip: Scott Esposito

Thomas Golianopoulos profiles Joel Osteen, leader of the biggest congregation in America:

“The reason [Osteen is] so popular is because of the spiritual infantilism of America. Not just spiritual, the infantilism of American culture,” [Ole] Anthony [president of the Trinty Foundation] says. “And he feeds the Paris Hilton, Britney Spears culture. It’s all me. Benefit me. What can I do for me? How can I feel better? What can I do about me? How you can get the best of your life? It’s all me-centered.”

And a misbegotten invasion of Albania by a seven-foot monarchical pretender.

A blog dedicated to one complaint from an ornery Caucasian a day.

If this is her couch, what does the end table look like?

Stephen Colbert beat Tufts to the chase.

A report from the March To Life and the usual disembodied Republican leadership.