RIP Michael Jackson

Great performance--I remember watching this and being riveted. Nobody can make lip-synching 60% of the song so compelling.

Great Colbert Shtick

Dig the great bit about Six Flags Great America, among other gems:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bears & Balls - Company Bailouts
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor First 100 Days

Right-wing Pre-positioning

Gingrich in full douche mode.

Krugman on the Financial Rescue

Any thoughts on the Krugman article in Rolling Stone?

Also, are you hip this Cramer stuff?

Michael Porter on The Rose

Business Professor Michael Porter makes some interesting points, and Charlie actually lets him talk for a while.
I'm interested in your takes.

How Obama gets to 60 from the National Journal

K Friedl over that Nash Journal breaks it down how Obama can get to 60 senators on a bunch of bills. Apparently there are 4 GOPers who are likely to pull an Iverson. Without looking at the article, can you guess who?

The Call: Episode 5, 22 June 2008

I'm attempting to incorporate the audio of The Call as a podcast from this weblog. Let's see how it goes.

The Rose, Samuel Beckett-style

This cracked me up.

Chill Out, Winston!

I hope Obama schools douchebags like Boehner.

Blagojevich Impeached in Record Time, Bush Flown Off in Executive One

Anyone else struggling with the fact that Blagojevich was whisked out of office for relatively minor corrupt-politics tactics, while only Kucinich had the balls to move to impeach Bush, and he was stonewalled on that? Does America find petty criminals disgusting, but reveres large-scale ones?

"You could grow orchids in there"

Maybe the best reason I'd want to work in the Obama White House--he likes it toasty:

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Here's the New York Times article on Obama's dress code and thermostat tactics.

Mike Birbiglia: Whiffleball Tony

It's just the audio, but enjoy this 2 minute clip from Mike Birbiglia's standup which compares the Bush presidency to "Whiffleball Tony", that goodtime guy who comes by to the barbecue and starts up the whiffleball game.

There are few standups I enjoy -- but this guy is the goods.

John Oliver on Long Island

Still one of the funniest bits from the campaign.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Indecision 2008 - Pander Auction

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Cowbell

The Chancellor hipped me to this. Hilarious.

Klosterman and the Obama Basketball Myth

I dig Klosterman, and loved this Esquire piece on Craig Robinson, brother-in-law of the baller-in-chief. Chuck examines the worn yarn about how Robinson was able to learn alot about Obama in their first pick-up game together.

Money paragraph:

In an interview with ESPN, Robinson described Obama's floor game like this: Barack is a left-handed player who can only go to his left. He's got a long frame. He'd rather drive than shoot. He isn't much of a passer. From this cursory description, it sounds as if Obama is a politicized version of ex-St. John's scoring machine Walter Berry. But this comparison is inaccurate. According to Robinson, the player Obama most resembles is stoic, Nixon-era point guard Lenny Wilkens. Now, this might be true. His logic works. But I assume Robinson also felt an obligation to select a southpaw doppelgänger who represents a certain class of positive, nebulous value. Wilkens has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame twice and has no negative baggage; conversely, nobody who understands basketball would want to think their president is like Walter Berry, an offensive black hole who once casually remarked, "My game does not consist of fundamentals." Such an allusion would not test well.

Alba Respresents!

Courtesy of the Bean Queen. Jessica Alba doesn't hesitate in dissing O'Reilly!

Maraniss on Obama

Of all of the Improbable-Journey-of-Barack-Obama articles out there, I'm calling David Maraniss Restless Searcher On an Improbable Path(of WaPo) piece the best one.

Goosebumps inducing passage:

On the evening of April 4, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. One of the young aides looking up to him from the parking lot, waiting for King to come with them for dinner, was Jesse Jackson, then 26, who ran the Southern Christian Leadership Conference office in the northern outpost of Chicago. In one of the more dramatic and controversial moments of Jackson's early career, he flew home the next day and appeared at a memorial session of the Chicago City Council still wearing the shirt he had worn the day before. "I come here with a heavy heart, because on my chest is the stain of blood from Dr. King's head," he said. "He went through, literally, a crucifixion. I was there. And I'll be there for the resurrection."

Twenty years later, in 1988, Jackson sought the Democratic presidential nomination for a second time. He received nearly 7 million votes and won primaries in Southern states that had been at the heart of the long political struggle for voting rights: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia. And 20 years after that, the television cameras seemed transfixed by the sight of that same Jesse Jackson, back in Chicago, standing in the crowd on election night 2008, tears streaming down his cheeks as he watched Barack Obama step onto the stage as the president-elect of the United States and evoke the words of the two great martyred figures of America's difficult racial history, Lincoln and King. Human interaction is never as uncomplicated as the symbolism, and Jackson did not always accept Obama's rise without envy and skepticism, but here, it seemed, was the political resurrection that he had long ago foreshadowed.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on The Rose

The author of The Black Swan (not to be confused with Vic's The Black Snake) talks with C Rose. I dig Fooled by Randomness, and I think Taleb makes some interesting points.
Watch the video

Testing, One, Two

Watson, come here; I want you.