It’s Nice To Be Important, But It’s More Important To Be Nice from Manifesto NYC on Vimeo.

We probably have a detail wrong, but as we recall it, we were at the babysitter’s after school one afternoon, when her teenage daughter suddenly jumped from the couch:

“Did you hear that?! They just bleeped Merv Griffin!”

At this late date, we should explain that Merv Griffin had an afternoon talk show, featuring trumpeter Jack Sheldon, whose popular claim to fame is singing “I’m just a bill.” We should also explain that in the 1960s, bleeping was extremely rare — this was only a few years after Jack Paar walked off the Tonight Show because NBC censored a “water closet” joke.

So that’s our historical baseline: Bleeping is naughty. Bleeping is so naughty, it’s good for shits & giggles by its very nature. And to our arcane taste, the Daily Show and South Park are more amusing when they’re bleeped — and more interesting on those special occasions when they’re not.

As proof of concept, we present scenes from an execrable cartoon that’s suddenly hilarious when just a smidgen of audio spice is added.

[via Know Your Meme]

The places in this video were shot about five or six miles west of where we live. Mt Tremper was a quiet little creekside community on the way to the village of Phoenicia. It’s almost completely gone. The damage in this region is considerable. Villages have been devastated. (You’ll have to cope with the music. They mean well.)

We don’t have rivers here. They’re creeks. The creek you see raging is the Esopus. This picture was taken between Mt Tremper and Phoenicia on a sunny day in early fall. This is how it usually looks here.

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Our guest interlocutors are Chuck Todd and Rick Perry, conversing in November 2010.

TODD: What is your timeline for making a decision about whether or not to run for President in 2012?

PERRY: I wouldn’t have written that book if I was going to run for the Presidency of the United States. Obviously, you haven’t read it all.

I’m not interested in being the President of the United States. I’ve said that for the last two years, and still I’m consistent, I’m consistent in my position.

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While America’s Top War Criminal makes the rounds this week before departing for a Secure, Undisclosed Location in Hell, WaPo’s Jonathan Bernstein ponders why he’s not festering in a Supermax somewhere, enjoying his very own live performance of Oz:

Would it have been worse had the government attempted to prosecute, only to fail to get guilty verdicts? This points to the complexity of the issue from the perspective of the incoming Obama administration in 2009.

Or you could just enforce the damn law.

Assuming one wants to prevent torture from returning, would prosecution have been the best step? Perhaps. Perhaps, however, it would have made things worse. Even successful prosecution, unfortunately, could create a backlash.

Or you could just enforce the damn law.

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A pick-up truck carrying a load of marijuana in large bags overturned in San Jose early Wednesday morning, but passers-by and other drivers helpfully cleared the roadway of all weed before police could even arrive on the scene.

[SF Chronicle: Crash witnesses make off with spilled marijuana]