At the Shrunken Snowman Tavern...

... shun shrinkage. Be as expansive as you like. Swell!

"Dmitry Medvedev called for the resignation of the nation's top Olympic officials..."

... after the country's worst performance in a Winter Olympics in nearly a hundred years."

Worst performance? You mean this?



Yeah, Plushenko's "personality is unbelievable" — don't you think? (I hope you watched the whole thing.)

How many calories in an order of fries?

Think again! (Via BoingBoing.)

The other night we shared an order of fries and counted it as our entire dinner. But even then, we were probably eating too much.

Imagine "Reverse Yoo."

Orin Kerr poses a hypo in which John Yoo is asked to interpret a federal statute that fairly appears to permit enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. The Reverse Yoo believes, personally, that these techniques really are torture and should be forbidden:

[Reverse Yoo] is not going to be like the Nazi lawyers who let the Holocaust occur... So Yoo decides that he must write a memo concluding that these techniques are unlawful.  Granted, he needs to get a bit creative to reach that result.   He needs to stretch a legal term here, bend a legal term there.  But by fudging the analysis when necessary, he manages to write a memo that gets to the result he wants to reach that the CIA is not permitted by law to engage in these interrogation methods.   With OLC’s opinion issued, the CIA never uses these techniques and no one is ever waterboarded.

Now, did the real John Yoo do basically the same thing as the Reverse Yoo? Or is the bending and stretching justified to prevent torture but not to permit it? Does it all depend on whether you think enhanced interrogation techniques are torture?

We love our jobs!

70% of Americans who have jobs say their jobs are ideal.

Even people who make less than $12,000 a year are immensely satisfied: 57% say their jobs are ideal.

At the link, you can also see how perceptions of the job varies by the kind of job it is. The perception is highest among those who own their own business: 87%. But even if you go down to the lowest level, which is "service," you still get 60% of people saying their jobs are ideal.

What's going on?

How many beers a day would Obama need to be drinking before his doctor would recommend "moderation of [in?] alcohol intake"?

Drudge picks out this bit from Obama's health report:

The link goes to this report — which stresses the advice to "continue smoking cessation efforts" (which means he's still smoking, apparently) — and ends:

The doctors also recommended "moderation of alcohol intake."

Considering that there is a great deal of research showing that it is a positive health benefit for a man to drink 1 or 2 beers a day, I would think that a 6 foot 1 1/2 inch man like Obama could easily drink 3 or 4 beers a day without there being an actual negative effect of concern to a doctor.

How much is Obama drinking?

(If you think we shouldn't be talking about the President this way, let's remember how people called Bush a "dry drunk." That is, he was criticized for being a drunk when he didn't drink at all!)

IN THE COMMENTS: madawaskan said...

Who was it that edited it like that? The Guardian?...

The actual wording is (PDF):

Continue smoking cessation efforts, a daily exercise program, healthy diet, moderation in alcohol intake, periodic dental care, and remain up to date with recommended immunizations. 

Why does The Guardian hate our President?!

Recommending "moderation of" is completely different from recommending continuation of "moderation in." Reading the original report, I'd say the doctor told Obama that the amount he was drinking was just fine.

"Wouldn't it be *awesome* if Obama were as radical as the Rights thinks he is?"

Tweets Ana Marie Cox about an article that I didn't click to when I originally read it yesterday. This morning, I happened upon an Andy McCarthy post over at NRO, decided to blog about it, and thought it would go perfectly with what Cox had written. I'd almost blogged Cox's remark, because I thought it was scarily left wing, and I wanted to blog McCarthy because I thought interestingly extreme. I thought it would be clever to put Cox and McCarthy together. Digging out the Cox tweet, I finally clicked her link. It went to the McCarthy post.

Here's what McCarthy said:

Today's Democrats are controlled by the radical Left, and it is more important to them to execute the permanent transformation of American society than it is to win the upcoming election cycles. They have already factored in losing in November — even losing big. For them, winning big now outweighs that. I think they're right.

I hear Republicans getting giddy over the fact that "reconciliation," if it comes to that, is a huge political loser. That's the wrong way to look at it. The Democratic leadership has already internalized the inevitablility [sic] of taking its political lumps. That makes reconciliation truly scary. Since the Dems know they will have to ram this monstrosity through, they figure it might as well be as monstrous as they can get wavering Democrats to go along with.... [I]f the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority....

I hope McCarthy's understanding of what's going on is wrong, and it shapes my view of Cox to know that's what she thinks is "awesome."