"I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals...."

"Frankly, Marianne and I could use a break." Who said it?

Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln.

Perfect!

"If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

"If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do ...

"President Obama is coming to town solely to raise money from the richest of the rich."

OWS protest Obama. ADDED: Non-OWS folk ticked too.

New Media Meade... on the radio, for the first time.

Listen! ADDED: The main subject is what Meade is talking about here: "Where does Brian Solomon go to get his reputation back?"

"Who cares about duplicate signatures in Wisconsin Recall?"

"Anti-recall forces will have to establish their own database and run checks for duplicates, in other words, do the government’s work f...

Need to shop?

May I recommend Amazon ? (Purchases made through that link will result in a contribution to this blog, with no difference in the price you p...

"Fiction just doesn't reach me the way nonfiction does."

"Even when nonfiction tries to be engaging by using personal narratives, I often lose patience with the details and just want the write...

"No political correctness, no caring about anyone's feelings... or any of that - these are just ideas, finally free..."

"... and they must (and will) be dealt with. Fortunately, people do laugh at what he says," says Crack Emcee about Patrice O'N...

Mark Steyn on Newt Gingrich: "It’s all ‘profoundly, dramatically deeply compelling.'"

"All the action is in the adverbs. One of my problems again with Newt is like he’s bursting with ideas that sound all as if they are co...

Asking Siri "Where can I get an abortion?"

Prompted by this blog post — "10 things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion" — I asked my iPhone "Where...

"The Longest Argument Ever."

This is the point of DVDs with extra features. If you're amused by 2 females insulting each other and you think the more the better — wh...

Adorable rickshaw — a terrible or an awesome gift?

According to Jessica Grose at XXfactor ("What women really think"), this is a terrible gift — "completely insane" — bec...

Whatever happened to Occupy [Your City]?

The Occupy movement seems to have dropped out of the news lately. Why did that happen? I think the people are still out there, but the cover...

"For a time, our culture celebrated the rebel and the outsider."

"The most miserable of my correspondents fit this mold. They were forever in revolt against the world and ended up sourly achieving lit...

Bloggingheads collapses.

Essentially. Remnants will remain, but, basically, it was never economically viable. Here 's the whole clip explaining it, and here'...

At the Museum Café...

... you can talk all night.

Cain "reassessing."

"We have to do an assessment as to whether or not this is going to create too much of a cloud, in some people’s minds, as to whether or...

"The only career I wanted — as his wife — was just beginning!"

Meade sent me that a propos of the discussion the other day about the little girl who said "When I’m a mom I’m not going to get a job....

Elvis Costello finds himself "unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire."

The statement is, of course, getting far more publicity for his fancy gift box of 3 CDS, vinyl record, concert DVD, and book — which you ca...

Shopping for toys?

Here are some links: Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals Week. Amazon's Holiday Toy List. ADDED: I'd get this: Crayon Maker .

"The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom."

Bret Stephens characterizes belief in cataclysmic global warming as a religion and examining how religions die: As with religion, it is pres...

"If you are a Democrat or independent who has lost confidence in Mr. Obama, what might you like about Mr. Romney?"

"You might like that he's proved himself successful in business. You might find that especially attractive if you are someone who h...

Chris Christie asks Obama: "What the hell are we paying you for?"

Calls him a "bystander."

Women's racist rant on a London train goes viral... and now she's been arrested.

Here 's the report of her arrest. Here 's the clip, posted 2 days ago, with almost 7,000 comments. Here 's the Metafilter discus...

"I don't really want to get into the sexual assault stuff at all."

"What I'm amazed by is how these alders apparently pack away the booze." So begins a forum, over at Isthmus, about "the S...

Oxford University Press bows to pressure from religionists...

... who were offended by an essay that said something wrong about Rama. The press was sued in India over distribution of the essay and -- ac...

At the Hot Soup Café...

... you can hang out all night.

Recall Walker organizers say they have 300,000 signatures.

They need 540,208 by January 17th. Organizers' signature counts can't be independently verified. The petitions won't be submitte...

Oscar Wilde to be protected from kisses...

... on his tomb. In "A Woman of No Importance," Oscar Wilde wrote about kissing: MRS. ALLONBY. You think there is no woman in the...

Kindle books.

The best books of 2011. Monthly deals on Kindle books. I like reading Kindle books with the Kindle app on iPad, but if you want a Kindle-bra...

"The Democrat Party is just abandoning white working class voters."

"The Democrat Party is punting. The Democrat Party is saying, 'Sayonara, we don't care.' They are going after the welfare...

"People say, 'Stalin's daughter, Stalin's daughter,' meaning I'm supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans."

"Or they say, 'No, she came here. She is an American citizen.' That means I'm with a bomb against the others. No, I'm n...

Herman Cain "made it very intriguing," says Ginger White.

"It was fun. It was something that took me away from my humdrum life at the time. And it was exciting." I don't know if it hap...

Teaching school kids how to debate about politics.

It's a great idea... if you can do it right. [University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor Diana Hess] is a nationally renowned ...

“Fighting is what redneck people do.”

Police not swayed by excuse.

We're alive!

Deer congregate for the great end-of-deer-hunting-season celebration.

Cyber Monday deals.

Shop Amazon's Cyber Monday Week. Get $120 Off Amazon Kindle DX - Featuring Large 9.7” E Ink Display and Free 3G Wireless And more genera...

"Canada will be a pariah globally if it goes through with this."

Says Green Party Leader Elizabeth May about this "very damaging act of sabotage" that "will reverberate around the world....

The era of Barney Frank...

... is over.

Law schools use search engines and Facebook to check out applicants.

According to a Kaplan Test Prep survey, 41% of law school admissions officers admit it. Mathiew Le, director of admissions at the Universit...

The disgraced psychologist Diederik Stapel, whose findings people found so intriguing.

But they're only intriguing when you believe he really did a study producing the result. According to [Tilburg University's] interim...

The art professor who photographs himself — with his students — "in various stages of undress, enacting sexually charged (and sometimes classical) scenes."

At Michigan State University, they're talking about Professor Danny Guthrie . Check out his photographs here . He says: In the last coup...

Despite unemployment, there is a shortage of applicants for skilled jobs.

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the problem of unfilled job openings: Union Pacific struggles to find enough electricians who...

"I believe in what I’m doing wholeheartedly, passionately, and what’s more, I simply go about my business. I suppose such a thing can be annoying to some people."

Thank you, Ken Russell, for that insight, and for committing passionately to your business. Carrying on without the great filmmaker — dead n...

At the Question Mark Café...

... I wonder what you can talk about.

Censored political slogan: "Tired of vegetables? Vote for [APPLE]."

The Moscow Times reports: The head of the Moscow metro ordered election ads for the opposition party Yabloko [Russian for "apple"]...

"What If Our Daughters Don't Want to Work?"

Writes Dorothy Pomerantz (in Forbes) , whose 7-year-old daughter said to her "When I’m a mom I’m not going to get a job. I’m just going...

Politico's most sycophantic headline ever?

"Obama's toughest critic: Obama."

"Bush would be regarded as a lefty today."

From Crack Skull Bob, documenting this morning's talking heads: Brilliant, as always. I love the Jon Huntsman: See and read the whole th...

The recall Scott Walker election will cost the state $650,000 — "with potentially millions of dollars more in costs for local governments."

They don't have the signatures yet to force the election, and the question of the cost of the election has probably just about zero effe...

Another shopping reminder.

You know you need stuff: Shop Amazon's 100 Best Books of 2011 Shop Amazon's Movies - Daily Lightning Deals Shop Magazine Deals and G...

"Joe Kapp and Angelo Mosca get into a fight on stage at the 2011 CFL Alumni Legends Luncheon in Vancouver."

"It appears there is still some Bad blood between these two after a controversial hit on the field nearly 48 years ago." Who start...

"Werner Herzog meditates on the Google logo."

Roger Ebert is fooled by what is a very funny parody of Werner Herzog (which you should get if you've seen the movie "Grizzly Man...

"Pakistan Tells U.S. to 'Vacate' Air Base as Border Strike Inflames Tensions."

"... Islamabad had already ordered the country's border crossings into Afghanistan closed, blocking off NATO supply lines, after th...

"Black Friday sales rose 6.6% from a year ago..."

"Online sales grew 24.3%..."

Graphic conception-to-birth depiction.

Should this video affect what we think about abortion? Pro-life advocates are giving the video rave reviews. While the nation continues to b...

Some Amazon shopping links.

May I recommend... Visit Amazon's Home Kitchen and Lawn Gift Guide Visit endless.com: Endless Holiday Gift Guide Visit Amazon's Co...

Climategate collusion.

"More than 5,000 documents have been leaked online purporting to be the correspondence of climate scientists at the University of East ...

Romney has got to be lying...

... when he says he doesn't use any "product" to hold his hair in place. ADDED: Actually, it's only his hairstylist who sa...

Occupy Wall Street is "overwhelmingly white."

Stacey Patton, in the Washington Post, deploys the same phrase that was used against the Tea Party. When journalists used "overwhelmin...

GQ list of "25 least Influential People Alive" includes Barack Obama.

Ha ha. It all depends on what the meaning of "influential" is. This sends me not to GQ, but to the Online Etymology Dictionary: i...

The NYT editorializes against traditional classroom teaching in law schools.

Here. Instead of a curriculum taught largely through professors’ grilling of students about appellate cases, some schools are offering more ...

"No matter what I do... the kissing, the hugging... I'm more interested in what's going on on Mars...

Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to think the point of a DVD commentary track is to tell us what we can already obviously see happening in the mo...

Presmittdent.

I just wanted to be the first person on the internet to write that word.

"[Herman] Cain avoided some of the most heated moments of the 1960s, and he said his recollections of that era are hazy."

"He said he doesn't recall being aware of Dr. King, a 1948 graduate of Morehouse, ever visiting the campus, including a convocation...

"Frank Miller and the rise of cryptofascist Hollywood."

Rick Moody attacks "Batman" writer/artist Frank Miller who attacked Occupy Wall Street. Miller said: Everybody’s been too damn po...

Pepper-sprayed protesters had "encircled" the police and told them "if they wanted to clear the path they would have to go through us."

That's the description coming from one of the sprayed protesters. According to Elli Pearson , the protesters had linked arms in a way th...

What sort of place should you want to live in as you get old? A place with "non-Western ideas about healing"?

From a discussion with an architect (Wid Chapman) and a gerontologist (Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld): Along with grab bars (which are frequently men...

Black Friday.

Are you shopping today? There's always Amazon, rolling out great deals here on on hourly basis. Some extra links: Get $120 Off Amazon K...

At the Thanksgiving Dinner Café...

... you can eat anything you want. (That's what I ate last night.)

"We wish the people of Wisconsin would take care of their own business and leave us, and [Big Mountain Jesus], totally alone."

A 50-year-old statue in Montana, put up by the local Knights of Columbus to honor soldiers who had seen statues like this while serving in I...

Green Bay Packers, still undefeated.

That's Aaron Rodgers, just now, doing his "Justice Prosser" imitation.

"If you're guilty of a crime, you get more support from the state when you're released than if you're innocent."

"They have no authority over people whose conviction is overturned... There is nothing crafted to deal with this kind of situation....

Justice Stevens writes of his "extreme distaste for debates about campaign financing."

That's from his new book "Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir," and it refers to his experience immediately upon his ascent t...

The pepper-spray cop's "dissonantly casual body language in the context of violence brings to mind the photos from Abu Ghraib..."

"... Lynndie England smiling and giving the camera a thumbs-up in front of tortured prisoners. And, in a fit of macabre recursion, some...

"The question is not whether but how will the student section at Camp Randall Stadium humiliate their Penn State foes?"

"I'm guessing they make a show of wearing shower caps and bath towels. Just a guess. I know that's gross and insensitive but so...

"Three American college students arrested Monday on suspicion of throwing Molotov cocktails..."

"...  during a protest in Cairo against Egypt's ruling military council were released Thursday..." In other Molotov cocktail n...

Obama's religion-free Thanksgiving address.

"As Americans, each of us has our own list of things and people to be thankful for. But there are some blessings we all share.... But n...