Patterico's Pontifications

12/31/2013

New Year’s Eve Open Thread

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 4:52 pm



Thanks for reading in 2013. This is the best group of commenters on these here Intertubes. It is a pleasure to ring in the New Year with you.

12/30/2013

MSNBC Cretins Mock Mitt Romney’s Black Adopted Grandson

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:52 am



If you weren’t familiar with the channel, this might seem shocking:

I can’t editorialize any better than Ken White from Popehat:

You’re a Doofus, Jerry Jones

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:16 am



The frustrations of an entire Metroplex, neatly summarized in a whimsical children’s song:

“The three words that define your player evaluation are as follows, and I quote: Stink! STANK! STUNK!

12/29/2013

Dave Barry’s End of Year Roundup, Plus, Eliot Spitzer Liked to Choke His Call Girls

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:43 pm



Well, there’s certainly nothing disturbing about this:

Eliot Spitzer lusted after violence, a former hooker says in a new tell-all book — revealing in graphic detail how the love gov pinned her to a bed inside a posh, Murray Hill apartment and then gripped her by the neck until she feared for her safety.

The violence was scripted by Spitzer, who wanted his hooker to follow a role-play dialogue in which she would pretend she had just taken a self-defense class.

The kinky politician would then pretend to test her skills by announcing, “Well, then, let’s see if you learned anything,” and attacking her.

“The more struggle there was, the more he was into it,” foxy blond escort Rebecca Woodard recalls of her sadistic tryst with Spitzer, whom she serviced for $1,500 at the behest of notorious hooker booker Kristin Davis.

Can’t we get this guy elected to something?

Dave Barry has great commentary on this in his 2013 roundup:

It was the Year of the Zombies. Not in the sense of most of humanity dying from a horrible plague and then reanimating as mindless flesh-eating ghouls. No, it was much worse than that. Because as bad as a zombie apocalypse would be, at least it wouldn’t involve the resurrection of Anthony Weiner’s most private part.

We thought that thing was out of our lives forever, but suddenly there it was again, all over the Internet, as Weiner came back from the political grave like the phoenix, the mythical bird that arose from the ashes to run for mayor of New York and use the name “Carlos Danger” to text obscene photos of its privates to somebody named “Sydney Leathers.”

Speaking of pathologically narcissistic sex weasels: Also coming back from the dead in 2013 to seek elective office in New York (What IS it with New York?) was Eliot “Client 9” Spitzer, who ran for city comptroller under the slogan: “If you can’t trust a proven sleazebag with your municipal finances, who CAN you trust?”

Read the whole thing. I may quote more from it in the next couple of days, because a) hey, easy content! and b) it’s very funny. Dave has a very solid outlook on Obama and the fiscal disaster we face in the this country. One more quote:

[January] begins with a crisis in Washington, a city that — despite having no industries and a workforce consisting almost entirely of former student council presidents — manages to produce 93 percent of the nation’s crises. This particular crisis is a “fiscal cliff” caused by the fact that for years the government has been spending spectacular quantities of money that it does not have, which has resulted in a mess that nobody could possibly have foreseen unless that person had a higher level of financial awareness than a cucumber. At the last minute, congressional leaders and the White House reach an agreement under which the government will be able to continue spending spectacular quantities of money that it does not have, thus temporarily averting the very real looming danger that somebody might have to make a decision.

Indeed.

Eliot Spitzer for nothing; Dave Barry for President.

12/28/2013

Long Term Unemployment Benefits Set to Expire for Many

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:45 pm



It can’t go on forever.

12/27/2013

Unrelated Links: NSA Phone Surveillance Suddenly Constitutional; Phil Robertson Suddenly Unsuspended

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:59 pm



NSA decision.

Phil Robertson.

12/26/2013

Wrong But Funny Test Answers

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:25 pm



Funny stuff.

12/24/2013

Merry Christmas Eve

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:40 pm



Merry Christmas to those who celebrate Christmas today.

12/23/2013

Where Are You From? Take the Dialect Test

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:22 pm



Regular readers will remember a fun video about regional dialects that I published here on Thanksgiving. Well, now the New York Times has gone and created a 25-question quiz that claims to be able to place your dialect on the map. I learned about it from my brother-in-law, who lives in Lexington, Kentucky — and whose map put him in Lexington, Kentucky. (Each quiz generates a map with three cities whose dialects are most similar to yours. Lexington was one of the cities on his map.) As for me, here is my map:

Screen Shot 2013-12-23 at 10.56.47 PM

That . . . is pretty much dead on. Sure, I live in California, but I speak pretty much the same way today as I always have — and I grew up in Fort Worth, one of the towns on my map. All my towns center narrowly around the area where I grew up. That makes sense to me, as I think my speech patterns have changed very little since I was a teenager. It gives people in California fits at times. I think I have mentioned before how I got back a transcript where my “y’all” was annotated with a parenthetical reading “phonetic.” And how I had an interview with a law firm once in Los Angeles, years ago, where a woman asked me if I really said “y’all.” I opened my mouth to say “yes” and the male interviewer snapped: “Of COURSE he doesn’t! He speaks English!” (I didn’t get the job.)

Our kids’ maps center around California: Long Beach, Corona, Fremont, and Glendale are the types of towns I see on theirs.

This thing seems to be going viral. Our waitress last night had just taken it. It’s all over Facebook. Fun stuff.

Is your map accurate? What questions amuse you? And: are there really people out there who call a median “neutral ground”? Do y’all think a street is some kind of a battlefield? What is wrong with you? Learn to speak correctly!

Tom Friedman: I Don’t Keep Scorecards . . . For Democrats, That Is

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:23 am



Watch New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Howard Kurtz’s show. The hypocrisy I want to highlight is at 5:44:

KURTZ: I’m surprised you haven’t written a column saying what a disappointing year he’s had, and perhaps, expressing any frustration.

FRIEDMAN: You know, I tend to take the long view. I really don’t, you know, I mean, I’ve seen —

KURTZ: But does the country have that benefit?

FRIEDMAN: Well, whether we have the benefit or not, we’re gonna have to [crosstalk]

KURTZ: You’re saying that even if Obama — I don’t think even his fiercest defenders would dispute this — he’s had a lousy year, in terms of not getting bills through Congress, in terms of the health care debacle — that you are trying to look beyond that?

FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I’m not a big scorecard guy, I mean, generally, so, you know . . .

Yeah, Thomas Friedman is not a guy who keeps a scorecard.

For Democrats, that is.

For Republicans? You betcha!

Screen Shot 2013-12-22 at 10.23.51 PM

No scorecards here!

I was in a restaurant at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on Sunday, and it had an NCAA basketball game playing on the TV at one end of the bar and the Iraq war on the other. Most people were watching the basketball game — probably because it’s so much easier to keep score. How will we know if we are winning in Iraq?

[Blather follows]

If you see these things happening, you’ll know that the political ends for which this war was launched are being achieved. If you don’t, you’ll know we’re lost in a sandstorm.

Now, I’m not a big scorecard guy, generally, heh heh, you know.

But . . .

The scorecard here is easily read: My anonymous tipster: 1, Friedman: 0.

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