South of the Suwannee

Bob Norman's The Daily Pulp is the rabid racoon of the blogosphere -- clever, bold and resourceful, but look closely and you'll see foam at the corners of its mouth.

Except when he gives space to John DeGroot -- then the enterprise resembles a bag of inbred squirrels.

Read DeGroot's latest; as my wife would say, "I feel sorry for his mother."

"The White House has gone from moving the goalposts in Iraq to just quietly taking them down altogether."

David Kurtz at TPM

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and we head off to the mother-in-laws for a family feast.

It will be a very traditional meal -- the sort of food you would have expected to see in a Norman Rockwell painting. I'll eat it all, and gladly, but would prefer to sample the tandoori turkey being offer as part of the Thanksgiving buffet at Madras Cafe in Pompano Beach.

Actually, if given the choice I'd opt for barbecued turkey (or pork), which is a long was to introduce the Far Outliers' post on the earliest uses of the word:

The earliest use of the English word that I've encountered comes from 1661, when Edmund Hickeringill's Jamaica Viewed reported that animals "are slain, And their flesh forthwith Barbacu'd and eat," but by 1689 in a play called THE Widdow Ranter OR, The HISTORY of Bacon in Virginia, "the rabble" fixing to lynch one Colonel Wellman cry, "Let's barbicu this fat rogue." That the word could be used casually on the stage shows that by then it must have been familiar to London audiences. . . . About the same time, the Boston Puritan Cotton Mather used the word in the same gruesome sense when he reported that several hundred Narragansetts slaughtered by New England troops in 1675 (among them women, children, and elders burned in their lodges) had been "terribly Barbikew'd."

On second thought, I'll stay with the yams and green beans.

I guess the Sun-Sentinel editorial board missed yesterday's post here on how meaningless is President Bush's opening of military airspace during the holidays for commercial airlines -- today they extol the "proactive thinking" of the administration in coming up with this measure.

Over at Peer Review, Mr. G smiles as he lays down a hand with three hearts and two diamonds. "Sorry, you pathetic losers," he chortles, "I've got a flush."

When informed that he is mistaken, he pulls back, but insists that even though he was wrong in this case, the other players are pricks for knowing the rules (and suspecting he is a dimwit).

James Fallows is not impressed with President Bush's efforts to help airline passengers by opening up military airspace for commercial jets during the holiday season.

There are at least two problems with the President's directive:

1. It won't help the problem since its primary cause is congested airports.

2. The military airspace has already been opened during past holiday seasons.

Fallows points out that despite the President's posturing, the only real solutions involve ". . . either more runways at LaGuardia, O'Hare, JFK, et cetera, or more use of the 4,000 small airports in America that now are lightly trafficked. Or more travel by other means. Or less travel."

Everyone to get from street!

James Wolcott points us to a post on a conservative website that uses a snippet from the TV comedy Scrubs to make the larger point that men are being humiliated and made subservient to women.

It's the usual women as controlling bitches argument that is common on the right-hand side of the political spectrum, but found in more upscale environs as well.

The comments following the post are full of misogyny and finger-pointing. I thought this one pretty well summed up what's bothering these people (as well as making me wonder whether this commenter, "Mark A.," has ever shown up spread-eagle over a police cruiser on Cops):

It is useful to remember that the modern police force is a creature of the gigantic Liberal state. Women no longer need men to protect them, neither from violence nor from poverty. The loud, brash, arrogant woman of modern times is nothing more than a petulant child. When she cries, she gets something. If she screams for the police, they come. If she cries in poverty, the state rushes forward with rent money and food for her and her illegitimate child. The family has been replaced by the state. Men really are not needed. They are sperm donors. That is the function they serve in 2007. Some posters portray men as being weak. Well, there is some truth to that. But have those posters been smashed in the head with a PR-24 batton [sic] from a cop? Have they stared down a 9mm? When the state comes down on you, it comes down hard. The only hope for a brighter future is through smaller government. If the government remains as large as it is, forget about it.

Oh, for the good old days.

Is it treason if you hold up a sign that says "We did not vote for Bush"?

Apparently some people think so.

Balloon Juice notes:

1. Georgia is in severe drought
2. Governor Perdue decides to pray for rain on Tuesday
3. Forecast called for rain Tuesday
4. Prayer service goes ahead as planned
5. Skies completely clear up immediately following prayer service
6. No rain

Oh, that Gov. Perdue would have prayed for a Bulldog victory before the Florida - Georgia game in Jacksonville this year.

Lew Rockwell:

I am not at all surprised that Christian right leaders like the Rev. Robertson are endorsing men like Giuliani. The core values of the "Values Voters" are war and the police state. So long as a Republican candidate is for killing Muslims and taking a taser to anyone who says a discouraging word domestically, they are on his side.

A story of national security and an old man who does not speak English.

It seems we have become a country that trembles in fear and the only response is to institute stupid rules, suspect everyone and justify any abuse of justice (or reason) as preventing another 9-11.

Conservative blogger Kevin McCullough:

Women - vote irrationally. Some women will be offended by the observation but most will agree, women do not vote according to what they know. They tend instead to vote based on intuition. They get "a feeling" about a candidate and that's what they trust. Hillary has understood this better than anyone else. Her consistent campaign "story" of "90 year old women 'remembering when they didn't have the right to vote' and 'determined to live until they see a woman president' has been thoroughly mocked by talk radio for its lack of believability. Which is true - no one believes Hillary is being swarmed by a bunch silver-haired Susan B. Anthonys. But talk radio is missing the point. Thirty year old women don't care if it's true, it makes them feel like they are part of history and for that reason alone "its time" for them to vote for a woman. Smart women understand this as well. Ann Coulter recently confided to me off air - that she would gladly give up her vote because she is tired of using her informed knowledge of candidate selection being overridden by four to five other women who could not even name all of the candidates running for President, much less identify what they stand for. The only group less rational in its voting patterns than women are African Americans who consistently elect people who keep them poor, keep them uneducated, and keep them killing their own. It should be noted - Hillary does exceptionally well with that demographic as well.