flickering pictures

From CNN:

PHOENIX, Arizona (CNN) — A man toting an assault rifle was among a dozen protesters carrying weapons while demonstrating outside President Obama’s speech to veterans on Monday, but no laws were broken.

I’m not sure what’s more ridiculous about that sentence — the fact that a guy thought it was okay to bring an assault […]

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Go on, find Palau on a map without Googling it — I double dog dare you.
Its 21,000 citizens have only had a country for 15 years, but the Pacific mini-state of Palau is already distinguishing itself by welcoming 17 Chinese Guantanamo inmates with open arms, and inviting them to settle wherever they like on its […]

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The Vatican has rejected yet another potential U.S. ambassador — Caroline Kennedy this time — because even though she’s Catholic, she isn’t anti-abortion. And as if to drive home the point, the Vatican chose Easter to express its outrage at Washington’s “calculated insult to the Holy See.”
Washington’s previous nominee, a former lawyer for Reagan […]

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Population of Washington, D.C.: 572,059
Number of people attending Obama’s inauguration: 2,000,000+
Wow.
Update: The Toronto Star created a word cloud from Obama’s acceptance speech, and it turns out he didn’t use the word “evildoer” a single time.
Image via New York Times.

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Once again, the folks at FlowingData have taken reams and reams of inane-seeming data, compared it to scads and scads of other inane-seeming data, and turned the whole reamy scaddy mess into something fascinating. Check out these maps of cotton-picking intensity in 1860 and presidential voting today in America’s South — see anything interesting?

And […]

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Not that it’s any of my business, since I’m not American, but on behalf of the rest of the world, congratulations on choosing the best person for the job. We — and 52% of America — could be wrong about him, and we’ll have four years to find out, but in terms at least […]

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Peter Hitchens, an excellent — if fiercely conservative — writer and columnist at Britain’s right-leaning Daily Mail, is covering America’s pre-election mood from Moscow, Idaho, which is incidentally named after a town in Pennsylvania, not Russia. Though I don’t agree with his politics, his latest editorial piece is a thing of beauty — as […]

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Because they’re idiots, that’s why.

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“Boo hoo,” replied Obama.*
With Obama regaining his lead in the polls, McCain is starting to get existential about his presidential bid.
From the Boston Globe:

Asked why Obama has been rising as the Wall Street crisis has dominated attention, McCain said with a chuckle on Fox News Channel: “Because life isn’t fair.”
“He certainly did nothing for the […]

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Google In Quotes is still in beta, but it’s an excellent tool for finding out where the candidates stand on specific issues like abortion, oil, Iraq, human rights, etc. The app also compares quotes from Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, and the usual cast of six-o’clock-news types in the American […]

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