Back during the Democratic convention, we enjoyed lurking at PUMA liveblogs — with every cutaway to Michelle Obama sitting in the audience, there would be a handful of comments remarking on her “scowl”. Part of us wanted Obama to win just so we could enjoy Michelle looming over the Bitters as First Lady.

At least there was a flimsy excuse for their displeasure: If you were watching the convention on TV, the Michelle shots were inevitable. By contrast, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds had to dig through the White House Flickr stream — no, we never heard of it either — to fetch this winner of Barry & Plugz from the Kennedy Center Honors, posted December 16.

“Analyze the body language,” Glenn says knowingly. Well, um, okay, Joe looks like a putz, and Barry looks like he just slipped out of a wetsuit while headed for his first martini.

Read more »

Walt Disney (right, in copyright-violating jacket) and UO Athletic Director Leo Harris (holding non-animatronic duck) meet in 1947, reaching a handshake agreement that would piss off lawyers decades later.

With the Oregon Ducks playing in the Rose Bowl this afternoon, and the Official History forever confused, we thought we’d explain once and for all why the University of Oregon mascot is a Disney-licensed cartoon character, and why it’s all our fault.

UO yearbook, 1906. The phrase "Fuck a Duck" stems from misbehavior by early Eugene settlers, leading to genetic anomalies that are still visible in local natives.

The full story goes back long before our time. The real team nickname was “Webfoots”, which had nothing to do with delicious waterfowl. Instead, the original Webfoots were Massachusetts fishermen (even longer story), the name came West with the settlers, and eventually it landed on the UO’s doorstep in Eugene.

The Media (then quaintly known as The Press) couldn’t handle eight-letter names in headlines, so “Ducks” started showing up in sports sections. The UO students offically confirmed Ducks as the team mascot in 1932.

Ducks. Not Donald.

However, since Donald was introduced in 1934, a casual association was inevitable, and the Duck became that duck in the local imagination. Walt Disney himself informally approved the use in 1947 — that’s a photo of him posing with the UO athletic director and a real bird — and after Walt’s death, a legal agreement was drawn up.

And there things stood.

Until 1978. Our freshman year.

Read more »

Hey, remember when everyone thought the Y2K rolllover would be the worst thing to happen to us in the new millennium? Good times.

It’s either that, or fly naked.

Debate Over Full-Body Scans vs. Invasion of Privacy Flares Anew After Incident [NYT]

Our guest columnist this morning is Charles Lincoln, former legal assistant to Orly Taitz. Not only did he help Orly with her filings, it appears he helped her with her drawers.

I do not think for two nano-seconds that what has happened between Orly and me is merely a “falling out.”…

Honest and righteous people can, from time-to-time, fall in love across “normative” boundaries of marriage and family. It was my belief that Orly and I were such people and I begged her to “come clean” and openly admit what had happened. My feelings for her were always entirely honorable. My intentions were always honorable. I was committed to her. She said she was committed to me.

Perhaps we should have ended up like (ironically) that famed French Socialist President Mitterand, mourned at his funeral by his wife and mistress crying on each other’s shoulders. I don’t know. I would have rather Orly left her husband because it would have been a clean break, and it would have accurately reflected how much we had in common and how much work we had to do on the mortgage front as well as the political front — fighting socialism’s highest ranking symbol (the President)…

Read more »

Our C-SPAN streaming plug-in is on the fritz, so we’ve invited famed political illustrator Pieter Bruegel the Elder to depict the Senate as it casts its historic healthcare vote at this hour.

Ornament		Meaning
	Mao	The Che ornament was sold out.
	Transvestite	We know why Rudy’s not running for Senate.
	Rushmore Obama	Will Smith has been signed to the North by Northwest remake.

Read more »