First Looks category archive

Mr. Swift, following the National Review’s example, offers his list of the 10 best conservative movies. A nugget:

But these lists are not meant to identify every great conservative movie. The real purpose of these lists is to show that conservatives are actually normal people, who love movies and rock music and video games, who talk a lot about hot women and what we would like to do to them if we were able to get any of them in bed and who use a lot of baseball and basketball metaphors just like regular guys.

For a short while, I subscribed to the RSS feed from Patterico’s Pontifications (if you want to read to waste your time, you Google it yourself).

When he posted the obligatory wingnut “because there was a snow storm, therefore global warming isn’t” post today, I couldn’t take teh stupid any more.

All gone. Not wasting the electrons.

Read more »

Phawker, via Atrios.

Will Bunch has more.

Read this. All the way through.

The first three were taken about 8 a. m. while the snow was still falling.

Read more »

Nice catch by CC.

Here.

What Digby didn’t say:

These people are nutcases.

Tuesday, Triumph Brewing Company, Chestnut between Letitia and 2nd, Philadelphia, Pa., USA, 6 p.

Sane persons talking about sanity.

If the weather forecast holds true, I’ll be there. Otherwise, otherwise.

Hell, your job is going away anyway. What else is there to do?

The forecast is for snow.

Looks like they may be right this time (radar as of 4 p. m.):

The worst snow storms we get in these parts are not the ones Karen sends here from Colorado. They tend to drop most of their snow over the Midwest and the western slope of the Appalachians.

The worst ones are the ones that come up from the south, all full of moisture sucked up from the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay.

Like this one six years ago.

Right now, the prediction is for two to four inches, enough to be annoying.

Yes, we have bread and milk.

D-Day on the failure of (George) Will.

I mentioned the “Watermelon Mayor” here. (By the way, he’s resigned as mayor.)

If you just don’t get what the fuss was about, read this.

Oh, heck. Read it anyway. It’s worth three minutes of your time.

I’ve pretty much stayed away from Nadya Suleman except for one drive-by post, but, honest to Pete, this is worth reading. (This blog lives up to its name.)

Minor Quibbles Below

Jon Swift discusses reaction to his recent post, which I discussed here. A nugget:

Unfortunately, however, some people apparently took offense to referring to Gov. Jindal as a “slumdog millionaire,” such as Amitabh Pal, writing on a website called The Progressive, which claims to have been on the Internet since 1909, which strikes me as being highly unlikely. He wrote that “comments relating to [Gov. Jindal’s] Indian background” are “repugnant” and insultingly referred to my piece as “satirical.”

Well, that was quick.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”

With apologies to John Donne.

Via TPM.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Brendan makes a phone call.

Friday evening is when the FDIC eats banks.

of this life:

And, for a sense of perspective, the other side of that life.

Yesterday’s Radio Times included a discussion on social networking websites and on Facebook in particular. From the website:

The popular social networking site Facebook celebrated it’s fifth anniversary earlier this month. We talk about how online sites like Facebook and MySpace have evolved over the years and now is attracting an older generation of users. Our guests are Time Magazine Nerd World columnist LEV GROSSMAN and MARY MADDEN of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Follow the link above to visit the website and search for February 25, 2009, or listen here (MP3).

(I really have to write them a letter about how lame it is that you can’t link the particular episodes at the site.)

Must be Obama’s fault:

Signaling persistent labor market weakness, first-time applications for state unemployment benefits for the week ending Feb. 21 rose 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 667,000. The level of initial claims is the highest since October 1982 and up 86% from the same period in the prior year.

As is his custom, Mr. Swift cuts to the quick. Two nuggets:

But what really inspired me was the story he told about how people in leaky little boats tried to save the citizens of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina even though government bureaucrats tried to stop them. If the government had stayed out of New Orleans entirely and encouraged more people to use their boats or to make their own boats out of things around the house, more people would probably be alive today. And instead of waiting for inefficient government workers to fix the levies, ordinary New Orleans citizens could have patched them up using bubble gum and duct tape and good old American know-how.

(snip)

And instead of having bureaucrats build roads and bridges why not let people build their own roads and bridges? With all of the companies laying off people and outsourcing jobs to Gov. Jindal’s native country, there are plenty of people with time on their hands looking for something to do during the day. It would give people a sense of accomplishment and distract them from worrying about how they will pay the mortgage or pay for health care for their children.

Follow the link for the rest.