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Just watch it. Handkerchief alert.

In case you haven’t seen this video yet: the title says it all. Actually, Fox News’s (!) Carl Cameron says it all to Shepard Smith. Viz., that Palin didn’t know that Africa was a continent and not a single country, didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA, refused to prep for the Katie Couric interview, etc. etc. etc. etc.

The single best No on Prop 8 ad—official or unofficial—I’ve ever seen. Just watch it. Seriously.

The pictures are from Beth Chayim Chadashim, the first gay and lesbian synagogue in the world, located in Los Angeles.

(Via.)

A couple of friends of mine have said something like this in days past, and I completely agree. Ashley Todd should be off-limits because anyone who cuts backwards letters into her face, let alone making up stories about being beaten up and then lying to the police, for political or any other reasons, is not right and needs help. Especially when it appears this is part of a behavioural pattern. People, just leave her alone already. What I feel for Ashley Todd is not derision, but pity.

On the other hand, I fully support going after “journalist” Barbara West of WFTV-TV in Orlando for her amazingly asinine interview with Joe Biden. Going after her is legitimate because she is trying to defend herself and Bill O’Reilly is helping out (her defence apparently consists of “I’m a journalist”). In case you’re one of the few people left who hasn’t seen this interview, I invite you to behold as Joe Biden lays the smackdown on this “journalist”:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that there’s a proposition on the ballot in California that, if passed, would deny the rights of same-sex couples to get married. In May 2008, the California Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples, and if passed, Proposition 8 would take these rights away. Thousands of married same-sex couples would lose their status, similar couples would be unable to get married in California in the future, and California would lose its reputation as a tolerant and welcoming state.

You can help defeat Prop 8 by going to the website of No on Prop 8, where you can donate (if you’re a U.S. citizen) and find other ways to help defeat this ugly homophobic initiative. And if you’re registered to vote in California, make sure to vote against Prop 8 on November 4th.

Via No on Prop 8, here’s a video of the famous violinist Itzhak Perlman explaining why he’s going to vote no on Prop 8:

Allegri’s Miserere is one of the most beautiful pieces of Western music ever written. It was only supposed to be performed by the Sistine Chapel choir and only on special occasions, and the Pope declared that nobody should ever write it down, but it should be passed down orally from one chorister to the next. 14-year-old Mozart, on a visit to Rome, heard it once and wrote down the entire thing, and instead of excommunicating him the Pope told him he was all right. Mendelssohn did the same thing eighty years later at the age of 21, and Franz Liszt did it too. It was officially published anyway in 1840.

The piece, which is a setting of Psalm 51, alternates a five-part choir singing polyphonically with a single tenor (or in some performances the tenor section) singing plainchant. The most notable feature, of course, is the haunting high piercing notes soaring above the polyphony, which impart an otherworldliness and etherealness to the piece.

This performance is sung by the King’s College Choir of Cambridge University.

Just watch it, and then send it to all your Jewish friends—even your grandparents in Florida.

http://tinyurl.com/ObamaIsrael

Via AMERICAblog—also, make sure to check out their related post about McCain’s and Palin’s associations with well-known anti-Semites.

As they said, oh just watch it:

Nyac, the celebrity hand-holding otter at the Vancouver Aquarium, sadly has passed away at the age of 20 after a long battle with various illnesses. Rescued from the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, she became one of the highlights of the aquarium and a celebrity around Vancouver and all over the internet thanks to the cutest video ever. The Vancouver Aquarium simply won’t be the same place without her.

One of the commenters on YouTube put it best:

As a member of the Vancouver Aquarium, I’m deeply saddened by the death of Nyac - what a sweetheart. Every time I went to see her at the Aquarium, she would always look right at you as if she knew you and understood you. Her mate Milo will be so lonely. If you’re in the Vancouver area, drop by and say hi to him.

As another member of the Vancouver Aquarium, I promise I will.

It’s about bloody time. The Obama people are finally taking John McCain to task for championing his “man-of-the-people” bona fides and still believing, against all evidence and logic, that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” because not one of his seven houses has been reposessed yet. When asked by Politico yesterday how many houses he has, McCain stumbled into this little gem:

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

The man couldn’t (wouldn’t?) answer a question about how many houses he owns. His staff then lowballed the “correct answer”. John Aravosis is right on the money when he says that the Democrats absolutely must capitalize on this:

NOTE TO DEMOCRATS: This is manna from heaven. Run a freaking ad about this, non-stop. Unless of course you think it’s too mean and you just can’t touch it, then we can just have an independent group do it. Oh, that’s right - you killed the independent groups. Never mind. I hear the White House isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.

I’m glad to see that the Democrats actually appear to be listening to this little bit of advice. They came out with an ad about this very quickly—a turnaround of one day, for a change!—and it’s pretty powerful:

About bloody time they did something like this in the time in which they did it. Next step: repeat this meme over and over again. The blogosphere has picked it up (and even started to question whether the number seven is, in fact, too low an “estimate”). The so-called liberal media, which you’d think would have always been more than eager to find indictments like this against the conservative candidate, has slowly started to pick this up. They’ve got to keep going with this. The precise number is less important than the idea: the meme that McCain owns many more houses than you (i.e. the average Joe Schmo) own has the potential to be extremely damaging to McCain—if the Democrats play it right. Use McCain’s own words against him. The audio is available via Politico. Hit McCain hard with it. (Aravosis thinks there ought to be a dance remix.) Hoist him by his own petard. String him up with his own idiocy. And for the love of Pete, don’t stop doing it until Obama gets elected.

In case you weren’t able to watch all the 4+ hours of the opening ceremony for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, here is all is—compressed into sixty eminently watchable seconds:

(Hat-tip: LW.)

Via SlateV: Ever had trouble remembering every single American political campaign gaffe of the past five years? No worries. They’ve all been compiled, for easy reference, into this video—and remixed for your dance pleasure.

(N.B. I am back from the road trip, the last several days of which were spent without Internet. I’m going through all the photos and will post them, as well as individual entries for each day of the trip, as soon as I’m able. Hopefully later today.)

As promised, here is Don Cherry’s tribute on Coach’s Corner to Luc Bourdon, the Vancouver Canucks hockey player who was killed in a motorcycle accident in Shippagan, New Brunswick on Thursday:

I feel kind of sorry for the third guy who can’t get a word in edgeways during Chris Matthews’s spectacular dismantlement of right-wing radio host Kevin James. The point is: when you make, or try to defend, incredibly stupid historical comparisons—like Bush’s recent comments to the Israeli Knesset that Barack Obama is an appeaser just like those who tried to appease Hitler before the war—you’d better have a fucking clue what actually happened. It’s not enough simply to yell “appeaser, appeaser, appeaser” and hope nobody notices that you are a complete ignoramus, primarily because it’s historically and intellectually irresponsible, but also because one day you’ll be on TV and get your ass owned by Chris Matthews.

Via TPM/Veracifier and Think Progress.

In an interview with Politico, President Bush asserted that he gave up golf during the Iraq War because, upon hearing of a Brazilian diplomat’s death overseas, “I was playing golf—I think I was in central Texas—and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do.”

David Froomkin’s special column in the Washington Post is a must-read, full of excellent invective, highlighting the hypocrisy of this generous and selfless act on the part of a president who still bikes, works out, goes on vacation more than any president in history, and has no trouble sleeping nights. And also, Keith Olbermann’s latest Special Comment is absolutely right on the mark. His analysis is thoughtful, provocative, and a must-watch. He doens’t even stoop to the low level—as well he could have done—of playing that idiotic clip of Bush saying “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.”

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you, six-and-a-half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people but the war in Iraq is Not. About. You.

Crooks and Liars has a full transcript plus downloadable video, or just watch the YouTube version:

Part 1:

Part 2:

This video seems to be going up and down all over the Internet, so we’re posting it here to seed it as widely as possible: classic footage of Bill O’Reilly goes totally nuts it on the set of Inside Edition when a teleprompter malfunctions. Warning: F-bombs and full heads of hair.

Link to download the QuickTime .mov of the amusing incident is here (3 MB).

Via the Slog: the cutest thing ever, truly, is two four-year-olds debating the pros and cons of a certain two Democrats. It’s like that old Daily Show segment in which inane things said by TV pundits would be reenacted by children, but this one is definitely sui generis.

Your must-watch for today: Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Hillary Clinton and the Geraldine Ferraro debacle. Seriously, take the ten minutes. It’s worth it for both the news/commentary value but also the journalistic candor that has been so lacking from the media lately.