Michael Bérubé‘s son Jaime took won gold medals in all four swimming events he competed in at the central Pennsylvania Special Olympics Sectionals. Michael documented the victories and also included some video reporting. And since it’s Bérubé, he snuck some humor in as well:
The coach urged him to come on back out, adding that the entire team would be disqualified if Jamie didn’t swim. I dutifully noted that there is no I in team, and no J either, but there is an A and an M and an E. I don’t think that argument carried the day.
MORE: If someone calls you a racist and you know that you’re not, you either a) ignore them or b) explain to them why you’re not. What you don’t do is loudly bellyache over and over (sometimes for months on end) about how terrible it was that someone called you a racist. I’ll just hang that thought out there…
UPDATE: Yet another great quote from (guess who?) StrangeAppar8us in the comments below…
Byron York’s casual, effortless suggestion that America’s Blacks are the “Free” space on the Bingo Card of US public opinion is so insanely appalling that my eyes are still facing backwards from reading it.
Loathing Obama and having to deal with him running the country for what may be the next eight years or admiring Obama and having to deal with interminable, horribly lame teleprompter jokes during that same time period. I’m siding with the latter.
I just went to check if anyone had grabbed a web domain for a possible Sarah Palin - Michelle Bachmann ticket in 2012. Go ahead and click it: www.PalinBachmann.com.
Yep, that’s pretty much what the outcome would be. Whatever you do, don’t tell the Republicans.
Writing in an op ed piece for the New York Times today, Olympia Snowe mourns the loss of Arlen Specter to the Democrats and reminisces on what might have been.
I have said that, without question, we cannot prevail as a party without conservatives. But it is equally certain we cannot prevail in the future without moderates.
In that same vein, I am reminded of a briefing by a prominent Republican pollster after the 2004 election. He was asked what voter groups Republicans might be able to win over. He responded: women in general, married women with children, Hispanics, the middle class in general, and independents.
How well have we done as a party with these groups? Unfortunately, the answer is obvious from the results of the last two elections. We should be reaching out to these segments of our population — not de facto ceding them to the opposing party.
There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
She further states that “we can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand.”
What is fundamentally sad about this statement is that this folding of the tent into an exclusive umbrella is exactly what most Republican leaders today want for their party.
Granted, I don’t know anything about the history of official White House photographers, but there’s no doubt that photojournalist Pete Souza will go down as one of the best. He’s uploaded a bunch of his photographs to Flickr and they’re quite stunning. I’d go right to Flickr to check them out (better quality), but you can preview a smaller slideshow below if you’d like. Feel free to link to your favorites in the comments. [via Wonkette]
As he enters his 100th day in office, President Barack Obama enjoys higher marks from the American public than his most recent predecessors did at similar points in their presidencies, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
More than six in 10 approve of Obama’s job, nearly two-thirds view him favorably, and a majority believe he has gotten off to a solid start during his first three months on the job. [...]
“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”
One problem, though, as ShortsandPants notes, the year was 1976 and the president was Republic [sic] Gerald Ford.
In 1976, an Army recruit at Ford Dix, New Jersey, complained that he was feeling tired and weak. He died the following day. After Swine flu was diagnosed panicked officials persuaded Gerald Ford that the entire population needed vaccination. About 40 million people were vaccinated before another fear took hold - that the vaccine was more dangerous than the disease - and the programme was aborted.
“Rachel Maddow hates poor people because she’s a Metallica fan and their drummer Lars Ulrich would rather live in San Francisco or Denmark than anywhere else in the world.”
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.
Specter’s decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken’s victory in the state Supreme Court.)
“I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary,” said Specter in a statement. “I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.”
He added: “Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”
This recipe is a modified version of one I got on a political blog of all places—the old Rural Votes site where Al Giordano of Narco News fame used to blog. Somewhat labor-intensive but worth it!
I lived here during 9/11 and I’m surprised folks are still this jumpy (make sure to watch the video at the bottom of page). Maybe I’m used to low-flying planes living out here in Brooklyn, but I can’t believe that many people got freaked out, even people in Jersey City. Weird.
