brainrow

Saturday Night Live gets inside the thought processes of congressional Republicans:

If he had lived, Martin Luther King would turned 80 years old last Thursday.

He might have attended Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow in person. As it is, he will be unmistakably present in spirit.

I’ve posted this video before. It seems appropriate now. Martin Luther King in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 25, 1965:

Stanford has the full text of the speech.

The video is from the film King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis, which was shown in theaters as a “one-time only” event on March 24, 1970, and was later aired just once on network television. A truncated version of the film was once available on home video, and now the full film is being made available on DVD by A Filmed Record, Inc., a non-profit company. The DVD is pretty expensive, but it’s been awaited for a very long time.

From June 1, 2005, The Daily Show on Mark Felt, the Watergate source known as Deep Throat:

Perhaps a better way to assess a man’s character is to look at those who dislike him. …

Pat Buchanan, Bob Novak, and Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy don’t like Mark Felt. Mark Felt is truly a great man.

Mark Felt died on Thursday.

There’s a recount underway in the close Senate race in Minnesota. Minnesota Public Radio shows some of the challenged ballots:

It’s your turn to play election judge. Tell us how you would rule in the case of these challenged ballots.

Educational. It’s not always obvious how a particular ballot should be counted, but it’s enlightening to see the contortions both campaigns are willing to use in hopes of gaining an advantage in a squeaker of an election.

My newspaper wasn’t on my porch on Wednesday morning. I thought a souvenir hunter might have swiped it. When I went to a nearby convenience store in the afternoon, they had already sold out of every newspaper.

Several newspapers nationwide increased their normal press runs and, when even those sold out, printed special editions.

The Newseum has an online gallery of front pages from over 700 newspapers from all over the world.

The whole world is celebrating Obama’s election:

From the front lines of Iraq to more genteel spots like Harry’s Bar in Paris, the election of Barack Obama unlocked a floodgate of hope that a new American leader will redeem promises of change, rewrite the political script and, perhaps as important as anything else, provide a kind of leadership that will erase the bitterness of the Bush years.

No, really — the whole world, as seen in this exclusive documentary image at The Joy of Tech — click the image to see the complete cartoon.

Told ya!

Enough gloating. Work to be done.

Via Ruben Bolling, Hollywood elitists provide a couple blasts from the past, about our future:

I haven’t watched Saturday Night Live for years. This bit makes me feel sorry for poor John McCain.

Today I am older — by exactly one week, actually — than Abraham Lincoln was when he died.

If I were to fulfill my youthful ambition to surpass Lincoln in the history books now, I suppose the historians would have to put an asterisk next to my name, with a footnote explaining that Lincoln set all his records in a shorter season.

Some have suggested that I should just concede that Lincoln was a better man than I am. Perhaps that’s true, but I still hold a pretty high opinion of myself, and I hate to let it go.

Back in 1970, Senator Roman Hruska, a Republican from Nebraska, defended a disappointing Nixon Supreme Court nominee whom critics had branded a mediocrity. Hruska said:

Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.

I believe John McCain was thinking like Hruska when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate: he was catering to us mediocre people; expecting us to feel honored that he’d picked someone just like us. But I think he made a mistake.

Americans want Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos on the Supreme Court. We want Jeffersons, Roosevelts and Lincolns in the White House. We want the very best, and we aspire to be better, ourselves. We hold a pretty high opinion of ourselves, you see.

This wild maverick can’t be tamed:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official “duty station” is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

The governor’s daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.

Sounds like a mainstream Bush-era Republican to me!

It turns out that, when talking about the Republican ticket, the views of Republican pundits evolve over time. The Daily Show remembers things that “real” news organizations conveniently forget. (Warning: crude humor.)

Future presidents: do you want to turn America into a totalitarian dictatorship? Would you like to ignore the law and trample the Constitution at will? Would you like to commit treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors without the nagging worry of impeachment hanging over your head?

In Time magazine, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Nancy Pelosi tells you how:

I took [impeachment] off the table a long time ago. You can’t talk about impeachment unless you have the facts, and you can’t have the facts unless you have cooperation from the Administration.

It’s that simple! According to the Pelosi Doctrine, the most foolish thing a president can do is to cooperate with Congress.

By ignoring Congress, not only do you gain immunity from impeachment, but you’re already well on the way to establishing the Führerprinzip in U.S. government. It’s win-win!

I have to agree with Atrios (quote somewhat reformatted):

I’ve never quite been able figure out why the image of the burning twin towers is seen by Republicans as something in their favor. In my universe the timeline goes something like this:

Jan 20, 2001

Bush Inaugurated

Jan 25, 2001

Richard Clarke sends Condi Rice memo, warning about al Qaeda. Rice does nothing.

August 6, 2001

Bush gets memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to strike in US.” Bush responds by telling the briefer, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.” Then does nothing.

September 11, 2001

Bin Laden strikes in US.

I would add the transition-team briefing, before Bush was inaugurated, when outgoing Clinton Administration officials warned the incoming Bush team about the danger posed by al Qaeda. Naturally, the Bush people ignored the warnings. If they hadn’t, they might not have this great issue of 9/11 to beat Democrats over the head.

Republican failures show we need more Republicans? Maybe Karl Rove was a genius, after all.

Doctors say Dick Cheney’s heart is healthy:

US Vice President Dick Cheney, who has a history of cardiac trouble, underwent a routine medical checkup on Saturday and his heart was declared in stable condition, his spokeswoman said.

And here I thought Cheney’s heart was black and hard as a lump of anthracite. I guess I should forget about medical school.

Cheney’s black heart — speaking figuratively, of course — is steadily pumping blood. For more than five years, it has pumped American blood into the sands of Iraq.

As vice-president, Cheney has helped pump billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of Halliburton and its subsidiaries.

Reporters, when you say this man has a clean bill of health, remember to put quotation marks around “clean.”