Whether congressional Republicans (with their nihilistic cynicism and meanness) and congressional Democrats (milquetoast and directionless for the most part) and the national press corps (worthless down the line) continue to fuck it all up, we will see.

We are at the crossroads between two types of textual media: Dead trees, which continue to have the advantage for long form presentation (try reading the New Yorker on a netbook — ick) and electronic devices, which are great for short snippets of contents, such as blog posts. The iPad will be fine at the latter, just like other devices like the iPhone, but will finally make it tenable to sit back and read something longer than a page on a portable device. The display (LCD backlit, and assuming Apple’s superiority in display quality) will be stunning, and the shape and size will be well suited for sitting back and reading — and more importantly, comprehending.

The implications of this are particularly interesting when you look at the current types of long form content: newspapers, magazine articles, and books. Each has a certain profile of timeliness, length, style, etc. There’s no reason that these categories need to continue. Could this be a new dawn for the short story? Could books (particularly non-fiction) be updated continuously, rather than every few years? There’s a lot there that’s going to happen.

The iPad has a lot else going for it — the price is great, it should be great for games and movies, etc, but to me that’s not the game changer. It’s how we interact with information that’s going to be new.

So our politics are going to get even more shrill, Fox News will ride this wave even more, and people (to wit: 40 million people with no healthcare insurance) will continue to suffer. Ultimately the system, because it is on an unsustainable trend, will either get fixed, or collapse and then get fixed.

Whatever.

The past year has been a very difficult one for me, personally and professionally. I’ve been up a lot more than I’ve been down, and I’ve been angry and frustrated with life, as we all are at times. But I can’t remember the last time I felt such overwhelming rage toward a group of people as I have felt toward the Republican Party and the conservative movement since President Obama’s election.

I simply cannot grasp what motivates these people, what compels them to thwart even the smallest attempts to clean up the enormous destruction they wrought under Bush and Cheney. Irresponsible, hateful, mendacious, sleazy, destructive – these words do not even begin to describe them.

I am unemployed and have not found a new job after almost a year of searching. I have a mortgage. I also have a preexisting medical condition, thanks to emergency surgery I had to undergo nearly 18 months ago. My unemployment benefits expire in five months, my COBRA not long after. Like untold millions of Americans, I am preparing for the worst as the economy slogs through its agonizing turnaround.

I voted for Obama with proud but open eyes, knowing full well not just the magnitude of the tasks he faced, but the pure, unrestrained malevolence of his opposition. Health care reform will unquestionably help people like me. And now some low-rent hairdo, whose sole claim to fame is posing naked for some ladies’ magazine way back when, may happily destroy whatever chance this country has at moving in a more just, humane, and morally and fiscally responsible direction.

As you stated, the Republican Party of this new century is shot through with nihilists. Unabashed nihilists. But what leaves me shaking with anger damn near every day since President Obama’s inauguration is the pure smugness and nonchalance of their nihilism.

Palin, McConnell, DeMint, Boehner, Cantor, Rubio, Scott Brown and the rest of the Ailes- and Limbaugh-warped GOP: Would you trust any one of these goons to greet you at Wal-Mart, much less govern our country? The question answers itself. They literally care nothing for America. They have spent the past decade doubling the national debt, running up record deficits, indulging the depradations of Wall Street, expanding Medicare by a trillion dollars while refusing to cover the cost, needlessly and shamelessly cutting taxes by two trillion dollars while again refusing to cover the cost, degrading the Army and Marine Corps to the point where it will take them both at least a decade to recover, jailing and torturing detainees and lying about it, manipulating intelligence in order to invade Iraq out of some sick neocon thirst for vanity and glory. I could go on, but that would take hours, and only make me angrier.

Suffice to say that Republicans lecturing the country about fiscal responsibility, economic recovery, governing – or anything else, for that matter – would be like Mick Jagger lecturing Mother Teresa about excessive promiscuity.

Karl Rove and Dick Cheney were thankfully not present at America’s founding. But their political descendants will certainly be present at America’s demise.

Strong words, yes. Over the top? Not by much if at all. The reader is right; these leaders don’t give a shit about America, only themselves.

The best argument that the pro-8 people have – the best they’ve got – is that because there is a pretext for preventing gay marriage (protecting heterosexual marriage), no matter that that pretext doesn’t make any logical sense, that therefore the states should be able to discriminate because the standard that should be applied should be one that is sufficiently lax as to allow discrimination.

To me this boils down to equal protection under the law. The argument that the status quo is constitutional depends on making the case that gays are free to marry someone of the opposite sex, even absent love. This argument depends, of course, on people clinging to discredited notions of sexual orientation being a “lifestyle choice” rather than innateness. Twenty years from now this will be laughable but today we take it seriously.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has signed on as a contributor to the Fox News Channel.
The network confirmed that Ms. Palin would appear on the network’s programming on a regular basis as part of a multiyear deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Was Christmas Day 2009 the same kind of wake-up call for Barack Obama that Sept. 11, 2001, had been for George W. Bush?
…
Both presidents had had plenty of warnings in the form of threats and even incidents. But both were caught off guard: Bush reading to a classroom of youngsters; Obama on a family vacation in Hawaii.
…
Many have been looking for a similar shift of tone in his dealings with the dictators in Iran and North Korea and even in his tolerance for the politics-as-usual maneuverings of many Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.

The intellectual laziness of the national press is stunning, but even more amazing is that people take the results seriously.

Pretty cool. Instructions to use the localization are here.

The download page is here.

“[Tiger Woods Is] said to be a Buddhist,” Hume said. “I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. … Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery.”

What a shithead.