E Pluribus Unum

• Enter the contest to make Christopher Hitchens laugh!

• Enter another contest to guess the father of Mary Cheney's baby.

• OK, this isn't a contest, per se, but here goes...Attention Rosemary Esmay, Mark Adams and Double-Plus-Ungood:
  1. Grab the book closest to you.
     
  2. Open to page 123, go down to the 4th sentence.
     
  3. Post the text of the following 3 sentences on your blog.
     
  4. Name of the book and the author.
     
  5. Tag three people of your own.
  
  Here's my entry from page 123 of Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas:

  The Bay of Pigs was a severe lesson. It taught the president, Bobby Kennedy later said, "that he could not substitute anybody else's judgement for his own." Lacerating himself for blindly following the CIA, the president repeatedly asked, "How could I have been so stupid?" (And, more wryly and ruefully, "Why couldn't this have happened to James Bond?")

• U.S. uses Google for Iran intel? WTF?

• Beware: A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals!

• Imagine a plane is sitting on a massive conveyor belt, as wide and as long as a runway. The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction. Will you miss your connecting flight in Memphis or not?

• President Bush is on a listening tour about Iraq? Why didn't he do this 4 years ago?

• Speaking of Iraq, Simon Rosenberg makes a decent point:

  While so much of our discussion now is about the Iraqis taking more responsibility for their country, in practical terms turning over the reigns of power to the Iraqis means turning over the reigns of power to the region's Shiites. It also almost certainly means the strengthening of Iran, the revival of Al-Qaeda, a potential regional war and oil soaring way beyong $100 a barrel. If this is where we are headed our government better start having a big conversation with its people about the consequences of so many bad and niave decisions by the Republicans in charge of our government these past six years.

  Bush has pushed his latest Iraq address to the American people past Christmas and into 2007. What about the State of the Union? Shouldn't he just address it all then?

• Barack Obama's middle name is (wait for it) Hussein. Will this be a factor in his (projected) candidacy for president?

• Andrew Sullivan placed first in Right Wing News' competition for "Most Annoying Right-of-Center Blog" and second in the competition for "Most Annoying Left-of-Center Blog." Yeah, yeah, we know: he swings both ways. Ha.

• Shouldn't Jack Black and Jack White do a remake of Ebony and Ivory?

(HT to Miss Julie)