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Yul Brynner! Hats off…
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Batman and Robin by Darwyn Cooke
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Things you need to know:
Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch.
The Mental Floss team has...
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Ever had your camera stolen? Thanks to Matt Burns you now have a chance at recovering it! WOOT!
Enter the aptly named “Stolen Camera...
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Play
bedlam boys | heidi talbot
for to see mad tom of bedlam
ten thousand miles i’d travel
mad maudlin goes on dirty toes
for to save her shoes...
RIP George Gallup, Jr. The picture above is from a clip of Gallup fils explaining the methodology that produces the People’s Choice Awards. But Gallup also had vastly more substantial impacts on his family’s public opinion firm (especially focusing on religion), as detailed in the New York Times‘ obit.
Where have you gone, Andy Rooney?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo woo woo.
Who is the only US president to call an All-Star Game? That’s right, Ronald Reagan. Reagan called the first inning of the 1989 Midsummer Classic with the legendary Vin Scully.
On 11 July 1804, Alexander Hamilton was shot by his rival Aaron Burr. Hamilton lingered until the 12th, when he did. Hamilton has been my political hero since I was 14, and he is even more important now when the Republican Party seems to be ignoring their debt to him.
Here is Broadway’s Lin-Manuel Miranda (also seen in guest appearances on House and Modern Family) singing “The Hamilton Mixtape”—his rap about Hamilton’s life from the perspective of Hamilton’s assassin, Aaron Burr. It is certainly unique, and provides an overview of Hamilton’s amazing life.
Incidentally, I don’t care who anyone thinks belongs on the $10 bill—Reagan, FDR, whoever—Hamilton should stay there. You can thank him that we have paper money at all.
RIP Betty Ford. One of the last vestiges of an era where women were more likely to vote Republican.
Speaking recently to the Republican Leadership Conference, Rep. Ron Paul raised an overlooked issue in American politics. The federal government, he warned, is imposing a regime of oppressive pasteurization. To cheers, Paul said, “I think we ought to vote for the right to drink raw milk!”
Never mind that the heating of milk to 161 degrees, common in America since the 1920s, kills brucellosis, tuberculosis and a variety of harmful bacteria. Americans, it seems, are being simultaneously deprived of healthy enzymes and of liberty….
Which brings us back to Ron Paul, who may well oppose federal efforts to prevent the sale of rotting meat. After all, he accuses Abraham Lincoln of starting the Civil War in order to strengthen the “centralized state” and to “get rid of the original tenet of the Republic.”
Paul is sometimes viewed as a naive but fearless conservative role model — implying that other Republicans are timid or compromised. But the project of reversing the Great Society, the New Deal and progressive reform is not ideological purity; it is socially disruptive radicalism. Conservatives hold a strong preference for individual freedom. But they traditionally have recognized a limited role for government in smoothing the rough edges of a free society. This concern for the general welfare helps minimize the potential for revolutionary change, while honoring a shared moral commitment to the vulnerable.
It is neither necessary nor healthy for conservatives to reject Lincoln or Louis Pasteur.
Going back to 2009 and culminating in the 2010 elections, there is now an accepted news media narrative about the Republican Party. It’s ideologically kooky. It’s furiously partisan. It’s full of hate.
Mitt Romney seems essentially to buy into this narrative. So does Tim Pawlenty. For all I know, they’re right.
But Mr. Huntsman is advancing the notion that there is a more nuanced, less reactionary strain in the party that feels underrepresented.
