A Good Thing: Ralph Ellison's very big book is now available for pre-order

Three Days Before the Shooting… will be out early next year. I'm excited and looking forward to it, as this has been a long time coming.

Important people send us Christmas greetings through the email

The Land Without Bread feels the love and is grateful.

Teabagger, PhD

What do you know, Paul Rahe has a gig at the Big Government. He sees big changes ahead.

With the Senate’s passage of Harry Reid’s version of the healthcare bill in the wee hours this morning, the die is cast.

The ball is tipped.

Realignments take place when the American people come to feel — I use that last word advisedly — that one of the two parties is a conspiracy to take away their liberties.

The American people have come to feel a party is a conspiracy to take away their liberties. Such diction is why they pay him the big bucks.

So, health care reform—a conspiracy exposed, the straw that breaks the camel's back, the tip of the socialist iceberg, the end of the world as we know it, and Rahe feels fine. Realignment and it feels so good. Rahe the historian is at the top of his craft when he's excitedly predicting the future.

He is also good at referring to things that happened in the past, because that's history.

The argument that FDR lodged in 1936 –that “a small group” is intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives” — was then a lie. But it worked. Americans were suffering, and someone had to be blamed.

FDR’s charge is now quite obviously true. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have unmasked the Democratic Party. We now know who and what they are. We know that the entire party supports what I once described as “Obama’s Tyrannical Ambition.”

Roosevelt was a liar then, but now he's telling the truth. Or he would be telling the truth if only…

All that it now takes to turn American politics upside down is for someone on the Republican side to rearticulate FDR’s charge and drive it home.

…if only he were St. Ronald reincarnate, with tea bags hanging from his ten-gallon hat.

What the hell happened to Christmas spirit?

Yesterday Santa robbed a bank in Tennessee and escaped in a "gray midsize car." You can't land on rooftops in a midsize car. And gray? That's the color of boredom, decay, and urban sprawl, not the Season. Brothers and sisters, I don't know what this world coming to.

New approaches to US-Cuban relations: Open sesame!

From the Latin Americanist, we learn Kool and the Gang played Havana this weekend. For a time, the Malecón became the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum after an A's victory.

Next stop for the band, Miami. No word as to whether or not Cuban-Americans there will host a smash-the-CDs celebration in their honor.

We in the Land Without Bread are experts on Chilean presidential politics, too

High-speed internet connection allows for it, you see.

Fernando Mires shares his reflections on the primera vuelta in Chile's presidential election.

Ahora, el triunfo en la primera vuelta de Piñera no es sólo consecuencia de que el candidato de la Concertación hubiera sido un político aburrido en un país donde lo que más abunda, después del vino tinto, son los políticos aburridos.

[Now, Piñera's triumph in the first round is not just a consequence of the fact that Concertación's candidate was a boring politician in a country where, after red wine, boring politicians abound.]

He has useful insights on Piñera and the Chilean right, on Frei, Concertación, and the Chilean left, and on revolution in Chilean political discourse, but I'll just quote this because it amuses me. Primary purpose of the internet and all that.

Health Care Reform and the Trepidation of Right-Wing Millenarianism

Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal is concerned, very concerned about the impact health care reform might have on right-wing Democrats' electoral prospects in the next cycle or two. But she verily trembles when she considers what consequences its passage may have in general over the longer term.

So why the stubborn insistence on passing health reform? Think big. The liberal wing of the party—the Barney Franks, the David Obeys—are focused beyond November 2010, to the long-term political prize. They want a health-care program that inevitably leads to a value-added tax and a permanent welfare state. Big government then becomes fact, and another Ronald Reagan becomes impossible. See Continental Europe.

Keep St. Ronald in his tomb; pass that shit and move on to immigration. It would be nice to start the new year with a freak-out or two over a new Sign of a Republic Doomed, for if the internet is good for anything, it's tracking the shifts and turns in wingnut rages and worries.

Support the Arts, Collect the Dots

This year one of the Art Institute's most beloved paintings, Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884, is 125 years old. Help us celebrate by adopting one of the dots that compose this masterpiece! When you adopt a dot, you will receive a commemorative button pin in one of six colors chosen from the painting as well as a card describing the location of your dot.

[…]

Adoption fees are $10 for one dot, $25 for three dots, and $50 for all six colors.

I wanted to go in on half a dot, but the nice woman on the phone said a dot's the minimum, and I repeated that I wanted a half, just cut it down the middle, and she said when you break a dot in two, you don't get two half dots, you get shit. So I guess I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and spring for the whole thing.

But which color. There are so many, and each is special. Red is bold, green is natural, pink is subtle and demure, and black is a star, baby—just like Prince.

These are the difficult decisions we make here at the Land Without Bread.

Via.

It's the most wonderful song of the year

To the tune of "Feliz Navidad."

Illegals in my yard.
Illegals in my yard.
Illegals in my yard.
Throw then some pesos and they work so hard.

[…]

They're going to spread bubonic plague this Christmas.
They're going to bring me lots of bed bugs this Christmas.
They're going to pass tuberculosis this Christmas.
Those illegals in my yard.

Full lyrics and audio here.

This Grinch won't be stealing Christmas

Another month, another attempted burglary by vent descent in La Florida. Sadly, this one ended in death by asphyxiation. Maddeningly, the police got a call in the night, went out to the site, and responded to the wrong problem.

You got your tea bag in my morality play!

You got your morality play in my tea bag!

Health care reform is not only the road the serfdom. It is the road to Hell.

Randall Terry stars.

This post is not about Joe Lieberman

Damn it, that didn't work. I'll try again later.

God bless the Orange Blossom Trail

Orlando's long, narrow bazaar.

Crack Obama Code Cracker Tracks Barack's Extract

Trolling Powerline for Miss World 2009 content (success!), I came across this guest post from Paul Rahe, the United States history professor with a peculiar blind spot. Barack Obama's Oslo itinerary gives him the opportunity to consider the mysteries of the Obama Code. Rahe insists that over a year after the general election and almost 11 months into the Obama Administration, we still know nothing about the man. Nonetheless, he can say with certainty that the President is, at heart, an Angry Black Man.

And that, my friends, is why they pay the professor the big bucks.

Why the wingnuts we watch watch what they watch: Miss World 2009

The Associated Press tells me Gibraltar's representative won the Miss World competition today, which means that one can say with mathematical certainty that yesterday John Hinderaker posted…

MISS WORLD: A FINAL PREVIEW

in which the Powerline blogger, in addition to going through his usual ritual of posting pictures of hot chicks under the guise of handicapping their chances of winning, reveals the personal pleasure he derives from beauty pageants:

I, too, enjoy the politically incorrect aspect of pageantry.

Hinderaker, a man of principle, chooses his wank material based on whether or not it pisses off the liberals. A conservative to the bone.

Orrin Hatch had nothing to do with this

I learned of this project reading about Major League Dreidel.

On a mission trying write with Mr. Orrin G

Senator Orrin G. Hatch has put his sublime and funky love for the Jews into song.



Just in time.

One small addition:

Is this payback for Bob Dylan’s Xmas album?

Klezmer artist Elizabeth Schwartz commenting on Jeffrey Goldberg's gushing over Hatch's composition.

Today's Words of Wisdom and Inspiration

Wingnuts may think they enjoy a monopoly over the sacred text of Winston Churchill's every utterance, but they don't. I too can read the words on the wall, literally.

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

—Winston Churchill

The above posted on the wall over the rowing machines at the gym.

Below, a portrait in courage.

Next time I'll keep the $20 and just watch Springer on TV

Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater, Slight Return. The Talent Unlimited High School Choir sang some songs. The Harlem Gospel Choir had backed out at the last minute, and Talent Unlimited filled in on short notice, which was nice of them. Then Beck came out and said it was sweater time. He was going to show the show he did last year based on the book he wrote that helped him get out of a shitty place in his life. Everyone has a storm or storms they must face. Every person, our country, the world even faces an imminent storm, and you can either succumb to it and be a Victim or face it and be a Victor. After the tape of the show of the book, Beck was going to present four individuals, four Victors, who confronted their storms, just like the boy in The Christmas Sweater, who is and isn't Beck.

A crappy, sentimental, cliched, manipulative story about a boy who feels like shit and is angry at the world and at himself because his father dies of cancer, his family is poor, he wants a bike for Christmas but gets a sweater knit by his mother instead, and then she falls asleep at the wheel and crashes and dies because he insists they drive home from his grandparents' farm so he could play with his friends' toys. And he goes orphaned to live at that farm and feels even more angry and guilty and meets a wise old neighbor, a Jesus Figure who always stands in a Gotta Go Poo Squat. He argues with his grandfather because it turns out the family had actually bought that bike for him but sent him home without it since he had been such a jerk, and that's when mom crashed and died. The boy then rejects God and religion, runs away on the bike and ends up crashing it in a corn field where he finds his storm and it scares him. But with the help of the Pooping Jesus Figure he faces it and gets to the other side, which is bright and clear and clean and joyous.

Back to the live auditorium on the NYU campus with prominent Napa sponsor signs, which was nice of them. Beck introduced each person who faced their storm, some with the help of the Christmas Sweater book, and recounted their tales. Victims or Victors. Everyone needs a Pooping Jesus Figure and needs to be a Pooping Jesus Figure for someone else, he says. Group hug, and the Talent Unlimited High School Choir takes us to credits.

He never really explained the storm currently facing us as a nation though. Funny that. He certainly does cry a lot.

And I just bought my ticket for Thursday's show

The Harlem Gospel Choir has bailed on Glenn Beck's sweater. Oh well, maybe that means more of his personal redemption. Or maybe through the collective power of the blogosphere we can come up with a hasty musical replacement. Suggestions welcomed.