"Althouse and her followers being expelled from the Garden of Bloggen to the Land of HuffPo."

Writes Meade, after I say "So let me slink away and contemplate my own offenses against The Creator." Here's the illustration he sends us to:


(Enlarge.)

What an amazing image! It's an 1880 painting called "Cain flying before Jehovah's Curse," by Fernand Cormon. It's at the Musée d'Orsay (in Paris), so I guess I've seen it, but I don't remember it.

Despite his moment of glory as a Beaux-Arts professor..., [Cormon] was almost forgotten by 1924 when he was run over by a taxi outside his studio, and is barely remembered today save as the teacher of more illustrious pupils.

Here's the relevant passage in the Bible, Genesis 4:16: "And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." I don't know where he got all those other people going with him or why they looks like cave-folk. I'm guessing Cormon was stoking our doubts — making it look especially bizarre to make us think about how bizarre the Biblical account really is.

"Now that Tampa is out of harm's way, mostly from Isaac, I'm alarmed to see what might happen in New Orleans."

"Head's up, all you central Gulf Coasters!" says MadisonMan, in the comments on the Crist thread, and Meade points me to this map, showing the predicted storm path as of 11 EDT:



First, MadisonMan's syntax makes me see a joke I don't think he intended. "Now that Tampa is out of harm's way, mostly from Isaac..." Didn't he only mean to say "Now that Tampa is mostly out of harm's way from Isaac"? Or did he mean to say that Tampa is still in harm's way? The major harm aimed its way was Isaac, and that's now going elsewhere, but Tampa is nevertheless in the path of the approaching the GOP convention.

But, anyway, let's move on to those people who have thought it was acceptable and funny to joke about God taking aim at the Republican convention. For example, at the Isthmus forum, which I linked to in the Crist thread, a commenter using the pseudonym Henry Vilas said "I wonder if Pat Robinson will claim that God is sending a hurricane to Tampa in order to punish the GOP."

Notice that Vilas is himself thinking of the hurricane as God's punishment, but he dredges up "Robinson"[sic-- it's Robertson] to put the vile observation into the mouth of someone who is not a liberal. But liberals were not refraining from joking about God's wrath aimed at the GOP. Remember that Dana Milbank's column.

Of course, the liberals are only joking about God. God is a joke. Robertson was (presumably) genuinely wondering about the things a God he believes in might do to punish sinful human beings. I don't know which is worse, but if you care about sin — or good and evil — you should give priority to the things you do, not to whether other people are offending God (and how God is assessing and reacting to these various offenses). If a hurricane is coming, that's a serious matter, and real people are in danger. That's not great material for your political jokes, even though it just seems so delicious that a hurricane is was pointed at the GOP convention.

And, I know, I'm violating my own principle in saying that you should look to your own sins. So let me slink away and contemplate my own offenses against The Creator.

"So if you were to pick one up, you'd be like, 'Oh! This is a homemade Mounds bar.' "

"Basically it's coconut and sugar dipped in chocolate"... but it's not, because it's got potatoes, and it's a needham, the food from Maine that you haven't heard of... or have you?

The origin of needhams is hazy, but lore centers around the late 1800s and a Rev. Needham....

I don't taste the potato, but [some guy in Maine] says that's the idea.

"It's less about tasting potato," he says, "and more about that it's just not really gummy and cloyingly sweet."

This is one article in a series over at NPR — "Americandy: Sweet Land Of Liberty'We're taking a cross-country tour of candies from around the U.S., sampling hometown sweets that deliver a nostalgic sugar rush." I was just looking at the NPR home page and said out loud: "Whatever happened to NPR? It's pretty much irrelevant politically, and all the news seems to be soft news about nice things that feel good to people who don't want to hear about politics. Maybe it's something about what works on the radio." And the next thing you know, I was swept into an article about using Maine potatoes to concoct some Mounds-like candy that not so gummy and sweet, and then on to a whole series of articles about local candy: Buffalo Sponge, Chukar Cherries, Valomilks, etc. etc.

"His only hope is a convention reinvention..." — a faux movie trailer from the Obama campaign...

... presenting Romney as the main character in a movie — "in a world..." — facing a terrible challenge and having very little hope....



I don't know if you're rolling on the floor laughing at all that comedy, but here's what I think. In the stereotypical "in a world..." movie trailer presenting one man who's up against a seemingly insurmountable challenge, that character is a hero, and in the movie, we identify with him and he wins.

AND: Some background on those "in a world" trailers (originated and implemented by "The Voice" Don LaFontaine):

Crist comes out for Obama because of "his vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class..."

"... in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility."

Crist's editorialidentifies him as "Charlie Crist is the former Republican governor of Florida" — and "former Republican" is unwittingly apt.

Speaking of apt, here's Meade, contributing to The Forum at our local Madison alternative paper Isthmus (quoting Crist's statement first):

"I applaud and share [Obama's] vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility. It is a vision of the future proven right by our history."

Yeah, Romney's vision is of a weak and frightened middle class in an economy without opportunity for prosperity.

Of course, that vision, unfortunately, comes from looking at the last four years of the Obama administration.

"[D]evelopments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects."

Writes Arthur S. Brisbane, in his last column as the NYT "Public Editor."

Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

Engaging in a trend called "Trash the Dress" — "where recent brides playfully destroy their wedding dress"...

... a beautiful woman dies:

The distraught photographer, Louis Pagakis, told CTV Montreal that he did everything he could to save [30-year-old Maria] Pantazopoulos after she got into danger.

She had her wedding dress on and she said, ‘take some pictures of me while I swim a little bit in the lake,’ she went in and her dress got heavy, I tried everything I could to save her,” he told the station, visibly emotional....

'She was doing the photo shoot in about 6 inches or 1-foot of water when part of her wedding dress got soaked and became extremely heavy,' [police spokesman Sgt. Ronald[ McInnis told MailOnline.

She was found 100 feet from the photo spot, sunk to the bottom, dragged down by the wedding dress.