And no. That is not Tunch.

I’m off to bed- I can’t keep my eyes open.

When you get right down to it, this (via NoMoreMisterNiceGuy) is ultimately more benign than uniting Christians for the coming holy war with Islam, though the apostrophe here makes the holiday look a little more Islamic:

The Vatican issued the warning through its official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in an article headlined “Hallowe’en’s Dangerous Messages”.

The paper quoted a liturgical expert, Joan Maria Canals, who said: “Hallowe’en has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.”

Parents should “be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death,” said Father Canals, a member of a Spanish commission on church rites.

I really wish Steve Gilliard were here to share his opinions on the Hoffman Surge in NY-23. There is a war between the native NYCers and the appleknockers cowhumpers upstaters with at least 200 years of history behind it, and the Ankh Morpork Big Apple team has all the good snarksters.

I am not superstitious but I am a devout animist, and this worked for the first game:

Finally home with both animals back. Apparently I have the kids that can not behave outside of the home. Lily whined and was generally super needy the whole time I was gone, and according to Tammy, Tunch refused to use the litter boxes and in a fit of pique shit on her pumpkin table display.

Bastard.

Why do all the kids in the At pack have to say things like this?

Hoffman has harnessed several shoots of energy, including anti-incumbent sentiment, conservative opposition to liberal Republicans, and the iatropic excitement that’s generated when conservative activists suddenly coalesce around a candidate.

Iatropic excitement?

If Pete Sessions escapes with anything less than being publicly stoned with fake dog poop, he should consider himself lucky:

Make no mistake about it, Pete Sessions and the NRCC must shoulder most of the blame and responsibility, with Michael Steele and the RNC coming right behind them. They did not listen. They would not listen. They posited themselves as the smartest people in the room.

And we’ve cleaned their clocks.

Now? We should be magnanimous in victory — and whether Hoffman wins or loses, as long as Dede Scozzafava loses it is a victory — but we should demand accountability, we should demand a reckoning, and we should demand a purge from the party establishment of those people most responsible for the Republican disaster in NY-23.

Well, I’m sad to say that I was not selected as one of the ten finalists for the WaPo next great pundit competition. It’s probably just as well, because I wouldn’t want to spend the next six months living in a house with nine people I’ve never met before.

Here are the winning essays. They’re about what you’d expect: three full-tilt concern trollings, a couple MoDo/Double X style gender pieces, a pointless piece about that college kid who’s hiring a personal assistant, a snoozer about good government (which does make a good point), a predictable rant about cable news, and one thoughtful piece about health care.

I guess I’m just jealous that mine didn’t make the cut.

It goes without saying that whatever happens in NY-23 on Tuesday, it will be good news for conservatives. If teabagger Hoffman wins, it will signal a profound political realignment, the likes of which have not been seen since the days of Ronaldus Magnus. If the Democrat Owens wins, it will still be amazing that Hoffman came out of nowhere to make the race so close; this will probably be true no matter what the vote totals are, though there is also the possibility that Hoffman will lose by so much that it will turn out that he wasn’t a true conservative.

I have some serious question here. First off, what benefit does all the good news, here and elsewhere, actually bring conservatives? Is it really a smart tactic to claim that everything that happens is good news for your political movement? The only parallel I can think of is communism where good economic times for capitalist countries meant that capitalists were getting fat and lazy while bad economic times meant the workers were getting ready to rise up. Is this a fair comparison? And was it smart for communists to spin things that way?

An earned day of rest and celebration for teabaggers, who claimed their first political scalp today.

In a huge development in the NY-23 special election, Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has announced that she is suspending her campaign, citing an inability to win in light of recent polls and a lack of money—leaving this race as a vote between Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and a strong message that the Republican Party can no longer nominate moderate candidates, or else face a right-wing revolt.

Think that this one taste of blood will satisfy the birthers, supremacists and Christianist extremists who fuel the teabagging movement? Wingnut, my friends, has not yet begun to peak.

Before moving on to something else, take a moment to sympathize with coalition builders like Newt and David Frum, no doubt tearing their hair out at the runaway success of Sarah Starbursts’ insurgent crusade.

Betsy, White Sands, NM.

shoutingattherain, winter home.

Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

As much as I love the professional climatologists who write RealClimate, they rarely let the anti-science crowd bait them into the kind of high dudgeon that makes PZ Myers or Tom Levenson so much fun to read.

Part of the reason for their patient tone is that most denialists are either too limited (e.g., Inhofe) or too mercenary (TechCentralStation, George Will) to absorb any correction. Since the debate opponent won’t even acknowledge that you exist most of the time, real climate scientists usually write for interested third parties. That is what makes the response from RC to the pseudo-denialist authors of Superfreakonomics (in truth, contrarians of the vanity kind that DougJ writes about), professionals with credibility to defend, so worthwhile to read.

I have very much enjoyed and benefited from the growing collaborations between Geosciences and the Economics department here at the University of Chicago, and had hoped someday to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. It is more in disappointment than anger that I am writing to you now.

I am addressing this to you rather than your journalist-coauthor because one has become all too accustomed to tendentious screeds from media personalities (think Glenn Beck) with a reckless disregard for the truth. However, if it has come to pass that we can’t expect the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor (and Clark Medalist to boot) at a top-rated department of a respected university to think clearly and honestly with numbers, we are indeed in a sad way.

No more excerpts. The whole post is great so go read it.

Sort of been out of the loop for the last 24 hours. Sitting in the airport now, waiting for my plane to board.

A note from Bad Horse’s Filly:

So it’s Friday and I totally forgot to send you the link for last night’s menu. It is one of my favorite recipes, Garlic, Garlic Chicken... I forgot yesterday was Thursday until I saw on my own blog this morning that it posted.

On the board tonight:
(1) Garlic, Garlic Chicken
(2) Loaf of a good crusty Artisan bread
(3) Sliced Pepper Salad
(4) Hot Apple Cider with Ginger Snaps

Click here for recipes and shopping list.

P.S. I compounded the delay by not reading John’s forwarded email sooner. My apologies to BHF, and I hope she’s been able to dig out from the Denver area’s surprise snowfall(s) without too much pain!

Having fun with the new toy.

Some of you guys have posted first-rate pics on my photo threads, so I will turn it over to you for a while. Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

David Broder inveighs against Harry Reid with a tone normally reserved for politicians who have had sexual relations with interns:

There is an air of desperate improvisation to Sen. Harry Reid’s scheme to pass a “public option” as part of health-care reform but at the same time provide an easy exemption for any state that objects to it. The warning flags ought to be flying for anyone who can count to three—let alone 60.

[....]

I’m not entirely convinced that the public option is as essential as liberals seem to think it is. But if they are right, I don’t see how they can justify abandoning it for an uncertain number of people who have the bad luck to live in states with conservative governors and legislatures.

If a compromise is needed to get the bill to the Senate floor, far better to try Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe’s suggestion of a trigger mechanism that would activate a public option if private insurance policies at affordable rates were not broadly available.

If I am ever so senile that I believe that insurance companies wouldn’t find a way to rig a trigger mechanism, I want my feeding tubes removed.

Update. Commenter dmsilev makes an excellent point about one of Broder’s claims.
—————————-

And there’s also this bit of history FAIL:

That issue was settled in the realm of economic policy during FDR’s second term, after enough new Supreme Court justices were seated to uphold the New Deal measures an earlier conservative majority had struck down. In the area of civil rights, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress put an end to the doctrine of states’ rights. Are we now to reopen those issues to make it easier for this generation of Democrats to short-circuit the legislative process?

From the Wikipedia article on Medicaid:

Medicaid was created on July 30, 1965, through Title XIX of the Social Security Act. Each state administers its own Medicaid program while the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) monitors the state-run programs and establishes requirements for service delivery, quality, funding, and eligibility standards.

State participation in Medicaid is voluntary; however, all states have participated since 1982 when Arizona formed its Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) program. In some states Medicaid is subcontracted to private health insurance companies, while other states pay providers (i.e., doctors, clinics and hospitals) directly.

And there are a whole bunch of other programs (highway funding and education come to mind) which are run in a similar manner; states can opt out if they want, but then they don’t get the money.

-dms