"... concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming..."

"... flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicillin and succedanea in a word I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously...."

We got [l]ucky and went to the theater last night. Waiting for the show to begin, we ate popsicles on the patio, overlooking the woods...



... and Meade saved me from a tick.

Later, the next morning, we reminisced and danced The Net. You know the new dance craze, The Net? You dance as if you are entangled in a net.

"The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York" — Frank Rich makes it all sound so scary.

Or at least the NYT headline makes it sound as though Frank Rich is about to scare us over the Stalinist invasion. But, reading the text, I see: "The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P." Are they killing the poor citizens of upstate New York or are they killing themselves? Get the image straight, Frank. Are liberals supposed to be aghast that conservatives were able to promote a conservative ahead of the Republican Party's liberal candidate? Or should liberals be delighted that the Republican Party is destroying itself from the inside?

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck... would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity....

Now, Rich himself sounds pretty wacky and paranoid to me. He tells us that it's "better for Democrats if Hoffman wins." He wants Hoffman to win. Really.

Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure....

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes....

Punch-drunk... pathology... hysteria... seething... fear... maniacal... Rich's perception of craziness seems... crazy. Hoffman and others are saying that conservatives should stand for traditional conservative values, and not, like Scozzafava, be more like the liberals. Give the electorate a choice between conservative and liberal and see who wins. That strikes me as quite sane. And I am speaking as someone who voted for Barack Obama in part because John McCain was not a solid, coherent conservative. Faced with the need to trust either a (seemingly) thoughtful, intelligent liberal and a confusing partly liberal candidate, I chose the former. I would do the same thing today. But I would like a real choice. Let the G.O.P. be conservative and defend and develop conservatism and see if people want it. I'm not surprised Rich is trying to portray that strategy as insane: He's a hardcore liberal.

These conservatives’ whiny cries of victimization also parrot a tic they once condemned in liberals....

Oh, I've already said what I had to say. I just threw in one more line because "parrot a tic" amuses me.

Don't tick off a parrot. And as for what to do with a tick... we don't parrot it. We do this.

Now, I'm getting far afield, and I'm manufacturing what could be perceived as evidence that we wingers are crazy. So let me, at long last, bring this post in for a landing. With something positive. Because, you know, we right-wing ideologues are an optimistic bunch. I want to compliment Rich — and the NYT — for studding the column with hyperlinks, many of which send us away from the NYT website. For example, when Rich attributes "whiny cries of victimization" to Rush Limbaugh, there is a link to Limbaugh's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Maybe some NYT readers who would never listen to the radio show will pop over there to see how terrible Rush is and find to their amazement that it's completely cogent and impressive. It might even strike a sympathetic chord for some readers. ("My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race?")

I love tick flicks!

The New Year's Tick has arrrived, replacing Father Time, The New Year Baby, and The Ball.

I asked for your drawings and photoshoppings of the new New Year's mascot, the New Year's Tick. That lovable master of the animated gif, Chip Ahoy, has come forward, so let's do the countdown.

I'm still looking for drawing of the tick that make him lovable and memorable. I've thought of a name: Tock the Tick. See? He represents time.

***

I've done all my out-of-the-house New Year's celebrating yesterday and today, and now I'll be home blogging tonight, so please hang out here. I've got a couple things I want to post, and then I'll start a New Year's Eve live-blog post. We'll talk about the old and the new and what's on TV, we may reproduce some of what passes for conversation chez Althouse, and if we are lucky, as the clock ticks, there will be more New Year's ticks.

I'm quite serious about replacing the depressing Father Time/Baby New Year with the New Year's Tick.

I like to frontpage comments, you know, and now and then, I need to frontpage my own comments. This is one of those times.

There was that "tick" post on New Year's Eve Eve (i.e., last night):

"New Year to arrive a tick later."

Oh! A tick!

Ricpic waxes poetic:

The New Year came in wobbly.
A tick or two behind.
It threw off lonely sticklers.
The rest? They didn't mind.

And Stephanie says:

?retal kcot a evirra ti t'nseoD

(Wait a sec, I have to do this.)

Then blogging cockroach says...

tou ieduv siht kcehc einahpets yeh

... and links to this:



That drives reader_iam to poesy:

i do love the backwards elements of the cockroach nature
as don't we all
or at least should
if not ought

Blogging cockroach responds in kind:

that should be tuo
which proves i ve had too much
spilled cheap merlot tonight
to be hopping around backwards
lookout when the champaign flows
tomorrow night wheee
which i hope doesn t turn into
eeehw
anyway here is tick tock gone bad
and too long
but you can stop it when it
ceases being funny about 40 seconds in
hey they can t all be gems
and i promise never to trip
trippingly to reader s ear
a cockroach doing that would
freak some people out
but just don t sleep on the kitchen floor
and we ll all be fine

Chip Ahoy says:

.diputs era stac yhW

dnuora gnifoog tsuj s'ti swohs swollof taht oediv etunim 4 ehT .yllaer toN

The cockroach continues to inspire reader_iam:

ah but cockroach
your trips are tweets to the ear
like birds in dawn of spring s own dawn
here here see here they sing
back again as always are we
so wake up
if only, and to ...

The cockroach skitters on across the keyboard again:

not having the vers libre poet in me
i fear my prosaic nature sometimes
misses the subtleties of
dear reader s lovely lines
which is not to say
reader should not write
a lot more of them
because you always want more
when someone doesn t quite
write enough rather than when
they write too much
which is also true about food
but i m not as appreciative when
the cook has cleaned up
too well afterwards

Then, when everyone is nestled all snug in their beds, I am awake. It's 2:23 a.m.:

And where is everyone? Last night, you guys were talking all night, and now here I am with insomnia and no one is around.

Were you afraid of the tick?

Thanks for all the poetry, but it was all before midnight. If you can't stay up until midnight tonight, how do you expect to celebrate New Year's Eve tomorrow night?

I think I'll try to draw a picture of the New Year's Tick. Or see if I can get people to send pictures of the New Year's Tick. And I'm going to push for the adoption of the New Year's Tick as the new New Year's mascot, replacing that stupid — and frankly depressing — Old Man and Baby mascot. Or the Ball. What the hell kind of symbol is a Ball?

I hope that doesn't offend blogging cockroach. You must understand that we can't have a cockroach as a holiday symbol. Not for New Year's anyway.

This insomnia is giving me grandiose thoughts, but I really think this New Year's Tick thing can catch on. Perhaps if we draw it the right way. I think Santa Claus wasn't such a big deal until those Coca Cola ads got the character drawn just the right way. People loved him once his attributes became appealing and standardized.

Help me do that with the Tick.

Also, that "Night Before Christmas" poem helped with the popularization of Santa Claus, so maybe some of you poets can write something similarly beguiling about the annual arachnid.

Inside the kitty cat wall clock he hid/Our eagerly awaited arachnid.

See? I can't do it!

An arthropod/From God/Trod...

No... I need help with the poem. And with the drawing. And with the sleeping.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds/Not knowing the Tick crept so close to their heads....

(Links added.)

In the cold light of morning — and it's 0° — I can see these are not mere insomniac ravings. I really do want drawings — or photoshoppings — of the New Year's Tick. I will reward you with frontpagings and tags. More poems too. I love the poems and the depictions of ticks — detickshuns, if you will.

We went out in the icy snow and celebrated last night. Tonight we stay in. I'll be live-blogging New Year's Eve, so please join me. I will reward you profusely with frontpagings and tags... and ticks.

"New Year to arrive a tick later."

Oh! A tick!

One of the great lessons of the blogosphere: never Palmieri on an Yglesias.

"Maybe it’s just me, but this post is kind of creepy." That's the first of nearly 500 comments on a post at Matt Yglesias's blog -- a post that is not written by Matt Yglegias. Here's the post:

A Special Note Re: Third Way

This is Jennifer Palmieri, acting CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Most readers know that the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s comments about Third Way. Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.

If "the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own," then what the hell is this? Lady, you are on Matt's blog! How did you get there? Did you just barge in like some burglar in the night? Do you know the first thing about blogging and a blogger's relationship with his readers?

I'd never heard of "Third Way" until I read this post. Now, I think it sucks. Not because of something Matt once wrote about it -- which I hadn't noticed -- but because of this completely creepy intrusion into Matt's space. Why didn't Palmieri email Matt and ask him to quote a statement from the Center for American Progress Action Fund? Maybe she did and he refused. But either way, the invasion of a man's blog is unjustified, wrong, and also stupid. It's stupid, because even if you don't mind pushing around a respected blogger, you're doing it where everyone can see.

Let me quote some more of the comments:

"Why did Matt leave The Atlantic? This ‘bullshit’ post reveals the limits how independent-minded one can be when associated with this website. (Not to say CAP doesn’t do a lot of good - it does) I think this really is a big deal - Matt needs to decide if he is a independent thinker or an activist. This post shows how hard it is to be both. Did he even approve this post - on his blog?"

"Think of all the posts that didn’t merit a ghostly materialization of the CEO! Perhaps CAP really does support all those other views of Matt’s. The CAP Action Fund hates turkey."

"Next post from Jennifer Palmieri: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."

"VERY CREEPY. that being said, matt said he left the atlantic because he wanted some skin in the game. well, i think perhaps his indy days gave him some impolitic ticks that now coming back to bite him now that he’s part of The Movement."

"Fuck off Palmieri. If we were interested in what you thought, we’d read it on your own blog. Jeez."

"Sadly, after his workplace retreat in the Pine Barrens, Matt was never heard from again…"

"Dear Jennifer, Nice boneheaded move. Dear Matthew, You left The Atlantic for this? Take your fucking balls—er, blog—back man, and perhaps you won’t suffer a loss of readers. This is just embarrassing."

"Jennifer, fabulous job. In one short post, you managed to focus attention on Matt’s original post, convince folks Third Way is nothing but a bunch of lame frauds, alienate loyal readers, cast a pall on CAP’s credibility, and possibly shoot your job prospects in both feet. Heckuva job."

And Kos has posted on it too:

The Center for American Progress should not make a habit of doing this.

And for the record, the editors on the site can say whatever they want about whoever and I won't get all creepy and Big Brother on them.

p.s. And yes, the Third Way is a bunch of assholes who make the DLC look downright palatable.

Kos points us to the original Yglesias post:

I’m getting sort of tired of the endless discussion of whether Barack Obama is a wholesome liberal or an evil centrist, but I have to say something about one aspect of this story:

“Barack Obama has never made any bones about it: He is a moderate,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a moderate public policy think tank. “People who ignored that did so at their peril.”

Third Way is a neat organization — I used to work across the hall from them. And they do a lot of clever messaging stuff that a lot of candidates find very useful. But their domestic policy agenda is hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit. There are a variety of issues that they have nothing whatsoever to say on, and what policy ideas they do have are laughable in comparison to the scale of the problems they allegedly address. Which is fine, because Third Way isn’t really a “public policy think tank” at all, it’s a messaging and political tactics outfit. But Barack Obama’s policy proposals aren’t like that. At all. Nor do personnel on his policy teams — including the more ideologically moderate members — stand for anything that’s remotely as weak a brew as the stuff Third Way puts out. And yet, Third Way loves Barack Obama and says he’s a moderate just like them. Which is great. But everyone needs to see that these things are moving in two directions simultaneously. At the very same time Obama is disappointing progressive supporters on a number of fronts, he’s also bringing moderates on board for things that are way more ambitious than anything they were endorsing two or three years ago.

The irony is: I'm the sort of person who actually likes the sort of thing Matt would call "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit." I voted for Barack Obama because I was betting that he really is a pragmatic moderate. And now Palmieri has made me hate the Third Way.

We have now learned one of the great lessons in the history of blogging: Never Palmieri on an Yglesias.

UPDATE: Yglesias now has several posts since Jennifer Palmieri dropped that turd on his blog. One obliquely refers to the stink:

As we’ve clarified, speaking as ever purely for myself and not as an institutional position of CAP/AF, Third Way’s First 100 Days agenda strikes me as pretty weak tea. For starter’s here’s their retirement security agenda [blah blah blah].

Sample comment:

“As we’ve clarified …” We?

More sympathetically:

What’s going on here is pretty obvious: Matt doesn’t like that Third Way demanded the editorial wrist-slap that appeared on his blog, but doesn’t want to directly criticize his boss. So, having covered CAP’s ass with the previous post, he is now going to make a project of picking on Third Way with special relish. What is it people want Matt to address here, exactly?

AND: Julian Sanchez says it well:

It’s like they made a list of the dozen ways they could’ve handled some minor internecine friction—including just ignoring it—and asked: “Which of these is really guaranteed to blow up in our face in the most self-defeating way possible?”...

So congratulations, Third Way, a whole lot of people who’d never heard of you now know exactly one thing about you: You’re thin-skinned whiners.

AND: Yglesias finally gets around to addressing the question directly, not that he says anything interesting.

"I wonder if that family of ticks in my yard knows that they're going to change the Tennessee state Constitution as a result of their actions."

I was just about to create an "Insects and the Law" tag... and I was getting some big ideas about teaching an Insects and the Law course at the law school. (You know about my longstanding interest in insect politics.) But then I thought: Hey, wait a minute. Ticks are not insects. And all my grandiose ideas came crashing down at 6:44 a.m.

I confirmed my suspicion by consulting Tikipedia. Arachnid! Will there be enough posts to justify an "Arachnids and the Law" tag? The thing about tags is that you don't want them to be too small, but they shouldn't get too big either. Something that will have 5 to 35 posts -- that's the target zone. I'm thinking Arthropods and the Law. And then just a plain old arachnids tag.

Anyway, the quote in the title is from this news article, which is linked by Glenn Reynolds, in a post about -- naturally -- the Blagojevich controversy.

(We need a cute name for the Blagomess. Blagosmear? Not Blagogate. The opportunities are too ripe to squander on another "-gate." Blag-oh-no.)

Glenn agrees with me about the interpretation of the provision of the Illinois constitution that the state attorney general, Lisa Madigan, is trying to use to push Governor Blagojevich aside without the troublesome safeguards of the impeachment process. Glenn worked on an amendment to the Tennessee constitution that is analogous to the provision Madigan has seized upon in what I consider to be an illicit power grab.

The Tennessee amendment was the consequence of a tick bite: Governor Phil Bredesen got quite sick after an arachnid attack, and it was decided that there needed to be a procedure to transfer power in case the governor becomes incapacitated.

There's also a provision in the United States Constitution, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

You may remember the dramatic moment in the movie "Air Force One" -- spoiler alert -- when Secretary of Defense Dean Stockwell tries to use the 25th Amendment to oust President Harrison Ford, and Vice President Glenn Close refuses to sign.

Now, I've finally gotten Glenn Reynolds and Glenn Close together in one post -- with ticks. I think that says something about my authority to say that these constitutional provisions are about dealing with physical incapacity -- including unconsciousness and brain damage -- not with political and legal problems, however severe.

Impeachment has important procedural safeguards that should not be bypassed, and the importance of the protections of constitutional process is not diminished by an opinion that the executive in question is a blood-sucking tick.

IN THE COMMENTS: BlogDog coins "Blago-a-gogo."