“Remember, drinking buddies don’t let drinking buddies get marched off for mandatory sensitivity training.”

It’s the last line of a good article on the decline of academic relationships inside the academy itself (via Ann Althouse, via Glenn Reynolds). The very short version? Professors and teachers in the same college don’t hang out any more, which makes them easy meat every time somebody with a chip on their shoulder decides to offer one of them up on the altar of insensitivity.  And the people running the colleges don’t actually mind, because this works out for them in the long run: makes it easier for them to do the diversity hiring that keeps the chip-on-their-shoulder people quiet.  Of course, hiring primarily for diversity makes it harder to develop personal academic relationships (which leads to hanging out), so…

This would all be Nasty Fun hysterical, with a double helping of schadenfreude, except for one thing: in about sixteen years I have to send my kid to one of these places for an education.  Having them collectively remove their craniums from their rectums before then would be optimal.

Moe Lane

PS: It’s been years since high school Latin, sorry.  I don’t even feel like looking up what those two plurals would be.

Crossposted at RedState.

Geez, the new Whitehouse.gov site is just plain *bad*.

Don’t they have people for this?

It was Mary Katherine Ham’s article that tipped me to the problem:

Barack Obama’s administration may be promising the “greatest ethical standard ever administered to an executive branch,” and increased transparency over his predecessor, but it seems to be forgoing at least one transparency practice that was routine in the Bush White House— transcripts of the daily press briefing.

It’s been four days since Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ first (and widely panned) appearance before the White House press corps, but no transcript, summary, or video of the event has shown up on WhiteHouse.gov. The delay could be forgiven in a less tech-savvy bunch, but given the Obama team’s considerable online skill, the omission of the the transcript is clearly intentional.

The decision to withhold transcripts is not a departure from the Obama Team’s online posture during the campaign, and signals that’s exactly the posture they intend to take for the next four years. Team Obama got a lot of credit for being an active online presence, which indeed it was, but that presence was built for message control, not openness. (My.BarackObama, the campaign’s social networking platform, is a different story, but it was cordoned off from the official campaign material, which was pretty tightly controlled.)

Continue reading Geez, the new Whitehouse.gov site is just plain *bad*.

Susan Collins (R-ME) “simply can’t in good conscience vote for Mr. Geithner.”

Obama’s advocate gave her every opportunity to recant her heresy, too.

[UPDATE]: HA! In your FACE, Allahpundit. 60/34. Which still means that we’re putting in charge of our taxes somebody who can’t do his.

But Senator Collins (R-ME) wasn’t having any of it.

Oh, did I say “Obama’s advocate?” I meant to say “Andrea Mitchell, objective journalist for NBC News.” Be sure to go all to the end; the point where Ms. Mitchell plaintively asks why such a moderate Republican as Senator Collins (R-ME) is thinking to hold the line on this one is almost worth it right there. Mind you, Allahpundit’s right: Geithner is going to get confirmed.

But what the heck: I’ll take the under. 63/36.

Crossposted at RedState.

The Scotsman Abides.

It’s not doing its usual insane growth, but Mickey D’s isn’t losing money, either:

McDonald’s profit tops view, sales growth slows

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – McDonald’s Corp reported a quarterly profit that handily topped Wall Street estimates, but said it saw growth in some overseas markets soften as a U.S.-led recession went global.

Shares of the world’s largest hamburger chain were down 0.5 percent in afternoon trade after falling as much as 2.6 percent earlier in the session.

McDonald’s posted a 5.8 percent rise in worldwide December sales at restaurants open at least 13 months.

The results are still ahead of most other restaurant operators, but mark a slowdown from the company’s own November and October results, when McDonald’s said same-store sales rose 7.7 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively.

Continue reading The Scotsman Abides.

It’s the biography of Churchill that makes this picture.

Ride that puppy all the way down, Rod.
Blagojevich Impeachment

Impeachment trial to proceed without Ill. governor

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Gov. Rod Blagojevich, taking his defense to television rather than his impeachment trial, lashed out at his accusers Monday and revealed he had considered naming Oprah Winfrey to the U.S. Senate.

The embattled governor told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the idea of nominating the talk show host came to him as he explored potential candidates for the job that federal prosecutors allege he tried to sell to the highest bidder.

“She seemed to be someone who would help Barack Obama in a significant way become president,” he said. “She was obviously someone with a much broader bully pulpit than other senators.”

Continue reading It’s the biography of Churchill that makes this picture.

Fireproof?

Come, I will hide nothing from you: my basic criterion for a decent film is whether or not an exploding starship is in it at any point (although a sufficient number of explosions, preferably involving techno music, will make up for it). So the movie Fireproof neither pinged on my radar, nor am I particularly planning to see it when it comes out on DVD tomorrow.

But I have noticed that it’s being ordered through links to my site, and that made me curious enough to look it up.  That led me to Big Hollywood’s article about how the directors have been quietly making successful Christian-friendly independent films for the last few years was very interesting: so was the fact that it managed to score positive reviews from The New York Times and Variety on Rotten Tomatoes. Fireproof has apparently grossed 33.4 million on a 500K budget; I understand that a certain contingent of my readership may roll their eyes at this particular part of the counterculture, but that’s one heck of an ROI. There are indy filmmakers who would hyperventilate at the thought of making half that. Continue reading Fireproof?