The votes have been cast, the results are in, and your television just lost its last reason for existing. If there were a plug on your TV similar to the plug in your bathtub that could be pulled to drain out all the glamour and gooodness in life, then that plug would have been unceremoniously pulled last night when teen pregnancy advocate Bristol Plain was finally voted off the most important talent show in America: Dancing With The Stars. Despite being the best bad dancer in the nation who gets better with every show (but is still, on the whole, bad) a nefarious cabal of un-elected judges pushed Bristol aside and instead took it upon themselves to hand the prize over to Jennifer Grey, a Hollywood insider whose only redeeming virtue is that she’s a talented dancer. The star-chamber judges clearly did this because they hate Bristol’s mother Sarah, for not aborting her son Trig when she had the chance. Readers will recall that Palin instead rushed back to Alaska on a 3 hour flight from Texas as soon as her water broke and there was a danger that the child might suffer the indignity of being born in the “lower 48” –thus making him an “untouchable” according to Alaskan Separatist Party lore. At any rate, if you’re still with me this far: Gawker has video evidence of Bristol losing (which I can’t see at work because it’s blocked, but which I’m sure is awesome heartrending).

The past few weeks have been intensely frustrating. Not because of the election — everybody saw that coming — but because of all the unsolicited misdiagnosed advice we’ve had to slog through since then.

It was the economy, stupid. It was always the economy. And it’ll still be the economy two years from now.

Unless, of course, it was the stories.

That’s the remedy a couple of pixel-pushers at HuffPo are hawking — Republicans tell better stories than Democrats:

Conservatives are the heroes of their own stories. Progressives need to internalize that same sense of pride in their efforts and then infuse their policy narratives with political champions.

Before we continue, let’s note for the record that “infuse their policy narratives” is a compelling example of shitty storytelling. In the movie version, the doctor would be smoking like a chimney in the examination room.

Read more »

It is obvious to me that the Irish-British model is the way of the future, and the only question is when Germany and France will face reality: either they become Ireland or they become museums:

-Thomas Friedman, in 2005

Here is a staggering fact: right now, as I write this, every single citizen of the Republic of Ireland owes foreign creditors over $535,000.00.

How did this happen in a nation that free marketers from the CATO instutute to Thomas Friedman were just recently holding up as a model of 21st century economic development, and whose laissez faire policies were held in stark and favorable contrast with the Social Democratic welfare states of Germany and France?

Hery Farrell at Crookerd Timber thinks he knows: the genesis of the Irish economic catastrophe lies in the country’s corporate tax rate. More speficially, Farrell finds fault in Ireland’s low corporate tax rates: Read more »

“Sarah Palin lost almost half of her premiere audience in the second airing of her TLC reality series Sarah Palin’s Alaska. On Sunday, the series executive produced by Mark Burnett, drew 3 million viewers. That is down 40% from the 5 million who tuned in for the debut last Sunday… Meanwhile, AMC’s zombie drama The Walking Dead (4.8 million), continued to hold steady, down 5% from the previous week in total viewers.” [Deadline.com]

“The South Korean military went to ‘crisis status’ on Tuesday and threatened military strikes after the North fired dozens of shells at a South Korean island, killing two of the South’s soldiers and setting off an exchange of fire in one of the most serious clashes between the two sides in decades.” [NYT]

Larry King gets to the bottom of The Great Fetus Jar Mystery:

KING: You also disclose, Barbara — George discloses something very personal about you, which he says you gave him special permission to write about. He wrote that when you once had a miscarriage, you showed him the fetus in the jar.

BARBARA BUSH: No, really, the truth is…

KING: We touched on it before. But we didn’t elaborate.

BARBARA BUSH: I didn’t put it in the jar.

KING: What?

Read more »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPw0UGZwTvk

We spent Monday evening dwelling on what to do about the new Senator from Utah — besides six years of unsatisfying oblique references — but we’re not quite sure yet about our Course of Devious Action. Instead, to buy some time, we bring you The Most Awesome Mike Lee in the World.

A Hard Line on Debt: Tea Party Sen Says “No Way” [ABC]