It's never the right time to have kids, but it's always the right time for screwing. God's not a dumbshit. He knows how it works.
Newsmax reports that Sarah Palin has recovered from her earlier popularity dip.
Riding a wave of positive publicity from her book tour, Sarah Palin's favorable rating has crept within just 1 percent of President Barack Obama's job approval rating, according to the latest polls by CNN and USA Today/Gallup.
The results suggest Palin has fixed the dent in her popularity ratings created this summer when she announced she was stepping down as governor of Alaska.
According to a CNN poll released Monday, 46 percent of voters now say they like Palin. That's the same level of popularity she enjoyed before she resigned the Alaska governorship.
So that naturally reminded me of Pete Behrens (this one).
Here's a beautiful blitzkrieg from Der Spiegel on Obama's West Point bellyflop. I heard about 10 minutes of the speech, and this Kraut, Steingart, nails it up by it's lederhosen. The piece is short, so read the whole thing. I'm not going to excerpt any of it because I'm lazy and kind of drunk, too. But the ending is sweet: "The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself." Maybe Obama should look in der mirror.
This NYT piece pulls no punches. My fave excerpts follow.
One of the downsides of having a president who is also Celebrity in Chief is that it creates the impression that the leader of the free world is part of a milieu that is more TMZ than C-SPAN. In an effort to remain connected to the social media world that was so much a part of his electoral victory, the Obama administration may be guilty of a very contemporary common offense: Oversharing.
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The president can’t be blamed for a few knuckleheads trying to game their way into his presence, but his shared love of the camera leaves him vulnerable to suggestions that he is too busy appearing as the president and not busy enough being one. And we all know that television shows — reality or otherwise — can jump the shark.
Compare that to Mr. Obama’s outing to Five Guys, where he is filmed taking burger orders from staff members — “You want fries?” — and then sets off with Mr. Williams in the limo, sitting with jacket off and feet up on the seats.
I like that the current president gets out of the bubble, that he enjoys a burger, and is willing to walk back into the White House with a greasy go-bag for the staff. I’m not sure being able to watch it all unfold is good for his presidency.
“When he ran, the Obamas were pitched as kind of a reality show to the public. We’d hear about his dinners with Michelle and we felt like we knew them,” said Michael Hirschorn, a former executive at VH1 who now runs Ish Entertainment, which produces reality programming. “But now that he is in office, there is a danger of the mystique going away. The problem with social media and constant video is that it flows like water and reduces everything to the same level. Not much of it is special, and it all becomes content, even if it’s the president.”
Mrs. Kennedy may have been impossibly glamorous and done her share of image management, but she had a chaste relationship with the camera and the public.
“I want to live my life, not record it,” she said.
This is the best one yet! More action! More silliness! More pratfalls!
From John Templeton's wikipedia page:
Templeton became a billionaire by pioneering the use of globally diversified mutual funds. His Templeton Growth, Ltd. (investment fund), established in 1954, was among the first who invested in Japan in the middle of the 1960s.[8] He is noted for buying 100 shares of each company for less than $1 ($15 in current dollar terms) a share in 1939 and making many times the money back in a 4 year period. In 2006 he was listed in a 7-way tie for 129th place on the Sunday Times Rich List. He rejected technical analysis for stock trading, preferring instead to use fundamental analysis. Money magazine in 1999 called him "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century”. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1968, thus avoiding U.S. income taxes. He had dual naturalized Bahamian and British citizenship and lived in the Bahamas.
Templeton attributed much of his success to his ability to maintain an elevated mood, avoid anxiety and stay disciplined.
Uninterested in consumerism, he drove his own car[.]
As a member of the Presbyterian Church, Templeton was dedicated to his faith. However, Templeton remained open to the benefits and values of other faiths. Commenting on his commitment to what he called spiritual progress, “But why shouldn't I try to learn more? Why shouldn't I go to Hindu services? Why shouldn't I go to Muslim services? If you are not egotistical, you will welcome the opportunity to learn more." Similarly, one of the major goals of the Templeton Foundation is to proliferate the monetary support of spiritual discoveries. The Templeton Foundation encourages research into "big questions" by awarding philanthropic aide to institutions and people who pursue the answers to such questions through "explorations into the laws of nature and the universe, to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity."
The octogenarian Templeton has always been a devout Christian. (His own faith marries the strict Presbyterianism of his childhood with a sunny Norman Vincent Peale-y optimism.) But his genius as a philanthropist is secular: He brings capitalist hucksterism to religious charity. Templeton has transformed philanthropy into marketing, his own name into a brand. His earliest venture set the tone. In 1972, he inaugurated the annual Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion to remedy the Nobel Foundation's omission of religion. His brilliant stroke was to brag that his prize would be worth more than the Nobel, thus ensuring lavish press coverage. The first award went to Mother Teresa (six years before her Nobel Peace Prize. He has raised the prize's profile by awarding it to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Billy Graham, and Watergate-burglar-turned-minister Charles Colson. (The Templeton Prize helped its founder win a knighthood in 1987. In the '60s, Templeton had moved to the Bahamas--a tax haven--abandoned his U.S. citizenship, and become a British subject.)
