South of the Suwannee

How bad do you have to be to get expelled from the University of Alabama for racism?

In 1972!

Don Black did, and it seems to have confirmed, in his mind, that all the batshit, paranoid voices he was hearing were on the money.

A third of a century later he is hanging out in West Palm Beach running a "white power" website. Naturally he expects the election of Obama to bring him a flock of new recruits.

Take a look at the Palm Beach Post article about Black and his wife -- it reads like a Carl Hiaasen novel.

I'm glad to see that today's students have not let a proud tradition slip. I know that when I was a student there, we worked hard to be the best at this.

It's great to be a Florida Gator!

Remember the old joke about the person looking for his lost watch under the streetlight? When queried about it he said he lost it elsewhere, but the light is better here.

Pretty lame, but not so lame that it couldn't be bested at the NRO:

Even Rudyard Kipling thought Afghanistan was a hellish place to fight. So why is Obama itching to fight al-Qaeda there rather than Iraq? Yes, we did draw the bloody monsters to Iraq, but, as it turns out, it was a better place to fight them. But the Left dogmatically insists that it is better to confront al-Qaeda in Afghanistan’s fastness, a terrain that gives al-Qaeda a huge advantage.

It's been a while, but our troops did pretty well in the Mexican War -- maybe we could invade and fight al-Qaeda there!

There are plenty of issues on which to base your choice for president, but is this one of them?

If a rockstar you like gets too popular and everyone's squealing over him, including a lot of people who seem to be excited by the popularity itself, well, then, it's just not cool to like him anymore. He's now popular for his popularity, and it makes you want to discover something new.

(Ann Althouse on why her support for Obama may be waiving because of the favorable press about his foreign trip).

We've all been treated to the indignant response of right wingers to accusations that a good portion of their opposition to Brack Obama is his race.

And yet how else to explain this email I received today?

I'm sure by now that all of you have seen the sad report on the evening news.

It was announced yesterday that the Rose Garden at the White House was being torn out.

It is being replaced by a water melon patch.

All in good fun, I suppose they would say.

Once again James Lileks throws rocks at fellow Twin Citian Garrison Keillor, getting the hurled stones up as high as GK's knees.

We have to assume that Lileks wants us to take his "fisking" seriously, but he must realize that what he is complaining about in GK's writing is just a mirror image of his own work?

Surely he does . . . or maybe not.

Why am I not surprised?

Mr Bush also faced criticism at the [G8] summit after Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, was described in the White House press pack given to journalists as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice".

The White House apologised for what it called "sloppy work" and said an official had simply lifted the characterisation from the internet without reading it. [my emphasis]

Isn't this how most of the work is done in the White House these days?

Right Wing News lists what it considers to be the 24 individuals with the best chance to be selected by Obama as his vice presidential candidate.

Among them is one Floridian:

Bill Nelson: Florida Senator Bill Nelson has a lot of experience, a reputation as a moderate, and actually once flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia, which admittedly, is pretty cool. If Obama's polling finds that Nelson will give the ticket enough of a boost to carry Florida, Obama would almost have to seriously consider him for the #2 slot.

RWN seems to think Sam Nunn is the best fit for Obama.

Although I'm not that sure about Nunn, I think RWN's analysis of the field is probably as good as anyone else's.