Son of a Geek

And a righty in the music business. Glenn and Helen have a podcast with the Anti-Dixie Chick, John Ondrasik (Five For Fighting). Listen, then go and make a video for his new charity, What Kind of World Do You Want?

You Want More Trees? Waste More Paper

This one's just for The Daddy -- Charles Johnson links to Penn and Teller's show on recycling.

Honest Work

Mark Krikorian has this post at the Corner on the Republican candidates weakness on immigration. Read the whole thing.

According to a congressman's wife who attended a Republican women's luncheon yesterday, Karl Rove explained the rationale behind the president's amnesty/open-borders proposal this way: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

There should be no need to explain why this is an obscene statement coming from a leader in the party that promotes the virtues of hard work, thrift, and sobriety, a party whose demi-god actually split fence rails as a young man, a party where "respectable Republican cloth coat" once actually meant something. But it does seem to be necessary to explain.

Rove's comment illustrates how the Bush-McCain-Giuliani-Hagel-Martinez-Brownback-Huckabee approach to immigration strikes at the very heart of self-government. It is precisely Rove's son (and my own, and those of the rest of us in the educated elite) who should work picking tomatoes or making beds, or washing restaurant dishes, or mowing lawns, especially when they're young, to help them develop some of the personal and civic virtues needed for self-government. It's not that I want my kids to make careers of picking tomatoes; Mexican farmworkers don't want that either. But we must inculcate in our children, especially those likely to go on to high-paying occupations, that there is no such thing as work that is beneath them.

The idea that there is work that Americans won't do is un-American, and it's been painful to watch Republican leaders embrace it. The Democrats, who seem to be running because they're pretty (except for Senator Clinton, who's running because she isn't pretty) are just as bad.

It's hard to believe, but we stand a very good chance of having to choose between two people for President who both think there's no real reason not to flout the nation's laws on immigration, and who both believe that the nation is made up of elitist snobs who prefer not to let themselves or their children get dirty whilst making a living. I am afraid that may ultimately be very destabilizing for both our security and our character.

Another Hat in the Ring

Former Arkansas governor and fitness guru Mike Huckabee has entered the race for the presidency. "He's not a doofus" says The Piano Teacher, who has met him. She's right, of course, but he is a Creationist. It remains to be seen whether the media can tell the difference.

I hope he makes a good run at it, not only because it might help force Guiliani to the right on guns (assuming Guiliani runs), but also because a pro-life, pro-gun (he has his own concealed carry permit), pro-flat tax, fiscal conservative, Creationist, Southern Baptist Minister is just the absolute worst nightmare of 90% of the talking heads. It's going to be so much fun watching them!

Dick Cheney vs. Nancy Pelosi: The Blink-Off

Quoth The Daughter "Someone's allergic to her eye make-up."

Wedding Thriller Dance

Okay, this is way better that everybody doing the electric slide, but by the time you can get something like this together for your wedding party it'll be sooo over...

Gladys Hardy on The Ellen DeGeneres Show

So cute.

You Can't Do This

And if you can, should you?

Small Yappy Dog to be Supreme Leader

Venezuela continues its long, slow national suicide.

The Woman in the Mirror

They've got Hillary Clinton's number over in mirror-world, and they aren't impressed.

The Great Black Hope

James Taranto has a nice piece about the latest foolishness surrounding Barack Obama. Read the whole thing, then scroll down and read "Obama's Racial Obsessions" as well, which contains this little gem:

Obama wrote that in high school, he and a black friend would sometimes speak disparagingly "about white folks this or white folks that, and I would suddenly remember my mother's smile, and the words that I spoke would seem awkward and false."

As a result, he concluded that "certain whites could be excluded from the general category of our distrust."

"Certain whites" being his mother. Pretty open-minded for an adolescent, really.

Remember when everybody knowing your name qualified you for the barstools at Cheers, not the Oval Office?

Another One Bites the Dust

Osama Bin Laden's brother-in-law, and terrorist financier extraordinaire, has been killed in Madagascar. I think the President oughta start celebrating these NASCAR fashion, jumping up on top of his desk and spraying the cabinet with cheap champagne.

Maybe when they catch Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, who, by the way, still wants to kill you. And everyone you've ever met.

Cruise Ship Runs Aground in Antarctic

Best Vacation Ever. Seriously. If you're the sort of person who would vacation in the antarctic, which The Mama most definitely is, then running aground on Deception Island and having to be transferred to another ship while the HMS Endurance stands by only makes the whole thing that much sweeter. I am sooooo jealous.

Shooting a Dead Spy

It seems an elite Russian security agency has been using photos of Alexander Litvinenko for target practice. Their spokesman explained thus:

"We did not shoot at Litvinenko, we shot at a target."

Well, of course not. Litvinenko wasn't shot, he was poisoned. Duh.

It all seems so amateurish. James Bond would never waste bullets on a dead guy.

The Eiffel Tower Goes Dark

For five minutes. On Thursday night.

As part of a campaign to save energy and draw attention to the plight of the planet.

Which sorta makes "French Energy Conservation" seem a lot like "French Military Restraint."

Ann Coulter: I Am Woman, Hear Me Bore

Love her or hate her, Ann has a way of saying things...

Girl-power feminists who got where they are by marrying men with money or power -- Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Arianna Huffington and John Kerry -- love to complain about how hard it is for a woman to be taken seriously.

It has nothing to do with their being women. It has to do with their cheap paths to power. Kevin Federline isn't taken seriously either.

I wish certain people would listen to her, at least about this, so the rest of us could get back to being real feminists.

Guitar Heroes, Nonvirtual Varient

CityRag has the 20 greatest guitar solos ever, with video.

These guys play guitars with strings.

Burma! He Said Burma!

I was very pleased to hear President Bush mention Burma in his State of the Union speech last night.

And we will continue to speak out for the cause of freedom in places like Cuba, Belarus, and Burma - and continue to awaken the conscience of the world to save the people of Darfur.

He put it right up there with Darfur, and Castro's colon. I knew I liked this president. This guy was a little less pleased. He felt the president should have talked about New Orleans instead.

One of these days, lord forbid, a dirty bomb or a horrible storm will get a clean hit on another patch we call home. Lives will be lost, people’s careers will be disabled and they will beg for the help of their fellow Americans. Hopefully, when that happens, the President will not be giving the same speech he gave only one week before about a war we never should have engaged. Hopefully, the President will remember that America might have the heart of gold, the best of intentions abroad, but that the people of this nation who make up that land of the free and home of the brave are not slaves to the President’s obsession with saving countries that are hardly on the map.

Burma? President Bush. You are really a fool.

Pretending, for a moment, that we've heard nothing of stolen and abused federal funds for Katrina victims, and that the local governments involved were not completely useless, I still feel that it's at least a little more important to draw attention to, and try to rally world opinion to stop, genocide than it is to reinforce levees around flood plains so that people can rebuild in said low-lying areas.

Here's what Bishop Tutu thinks about Burma:

The retired South African archbishop urged the Security Council to take action against the military regime of the South-east Asian country, in a 2005 report written with fellow Nobel laureate and former Czech President Vaclav Havel.

"I am deeply disappointed by our vote. It is a betrayal of our own noble past. Many in the international community can hardly believe it. It is inexplicable," Tutu said in an e-mail no Saturday to the Associated Press.

In its first vote since it secured a non-permanent seat on the Security Council last year, South Africa joined China and Russia in opposing the resolution proposed by the United States and backed by Britain and France.

I'm with Tutu and Vaclav Havel.

Save the Christians! Save the Karens!

Stick, Stones, Names

Isaiah Washington entered rehab this week in the aftermath of his Using of a Bad Word (twice).

Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington has entered a residential treatment facility in an effort to quell the controversy surrounding his anti-gay remarks — and save his job, Life & Style has learned exclusively.

According to an insider, Isaiah, who issued an apology for his statements on Jan. 18, agreed to undergo a psychological assessment after talks with ABC executives.

The married 43-year-old father of three was spotted entering the facility at 9 a.m. today (Jan. 24).

Note that absolutely no addictive behaviour is mentioned.

We here at The Mama strongly disapprove of consigning people to rehab for purposes of publicity. We feel it makes people inclined to take rehab less seriously. In addition, being sent to rehab by one's employers for something one has said surely tends to inhibit freedom of expression, which We thought was necessary for creative enterprises such as a TV show (but We are left-brained, so, whatever). Further, we feel that the employer-employee relationship is by its very nature somewhat coercive, and that it would therefore be preferable to limit employers to firing serious offenders, rather than allowing them to suggest that the employee have his or her mind reprogrammed by strangers. In short, We find the whole thing doubleplusungood.

Way doubleplusungood. Even for Really, Really Bad Words.

Liz Cheney Takes on the Wimps

She says Hillary Clinton has no "spine" when it comes to Iraq. Senator Clinton lately seems to be justifying her vote for the Iraq war in an if-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now kind of way, but she won't have that excuse for her current actions. Ms. Cheney is telling her now how it is:

"In fairness, Clinton, with her proposal for arbitrary caps on troop levels and hemming and hawing about her vote for the war resolution, has company on both sides of the aisle," Cheney wrote.

"Let's be clear: If we restrict the ability of our troops to fight and win this war, we help the terrorists," she wrote.

Good for Liz!