Dear god the cuteness

Not too long after we moved to New York, nellorat and I realized we have a fictional daughter, Chelsea; Chelsea has a pet capybara, Fabio, who is also fictional.

Here's a pet capybara who is not.

via drelmo

My idea for the Onion Headline

"Nation Mourns Beloved Child Molester"

Some points about Gov. Sanford

Some of this is for my own record-keeping, and some to respond to other points that have been made:

A. Sanford was affiliated with, though may not have actually been a resident of "C Street", a

Capitol Hill town house that is subsidized by a secretive religious organization, tax records show.

The lawmakers, all Christians, pay low rent to live in the stately red brick, three-story house on C Street, two blocks from the Capitol. It is maintained by a group alternately known as the “Fellowship” and the “Foundation” and brings together world leaders and elected officials through religion.

B. Mark Kleiman posted an article entitled "Why it is a mistake to call Mark Sanford a hypocrite" which discusses Sanford purely in terms of a person who believes something is a moral failing and does it anyway (likening him to someone who believe that taxes on the rich are morally just but cheats on his taxes). This discussion is fine as far as it goes, but it ignores the most important part of right-wing public sanctimony: People like Sanford, and Louisiana senator David Vitter, and current inescapable-on-cable-talking-head-shows Newt Gingrich want to avoid for themselves the public shaming and removal from office that they try to enact upon their political enemies. And they're completely willing to overlook similar bad behavior among their own--Rudy Giuliani conducted himself far, far worse than Sanford has, by any reasonable standard, conducting a very public and unremorseful affair while mayor--and is never called to account on it by the national press or the right wing.

(In the case of Larry Craig, Craig wanted to actually send people to jail for harmless acts he himself regularly committed. That's worse than mere hypocrisy; it's pathological.)

C. On the other hand, Kleiman also made the excellent point that The State, the major newspaper of South Carolina, had the e-mails between Sanford and his lover six months ago. They were silent about them during Sanford's disappearance, when they might have provided valuable information about Sanford's whereabouts when he was apparently vanished; however, "now, when publication serves only the prurient interest, [they published] the full text." This is "fish wrap" behavior, in his terms, and I have to agree, though I'll point out something he doesn't.

Kleiman feels that The State acted properly to not publicize the letters six months ago. I disagree. I disagree not because I feel that the sexual misconduct of political figures should be publicized, but because it will be publicized, asymmetrically. By burying the letters until Sanford had publicly blown the gaffe, The State has participated in the single most important American news media trend of this century: things can only be talked about if Republicans talk about them. Get it all out there, I say, Democrat and Republican, and let's start being grown-ups about it.

[ETA: ( And a bonus LOLPundit )

Poltical flashback

One of my occasional hobbies is to re-read my old Usenet posts (or my old LJ posts, for that matter). I just came across this from September 20092000:

I listened to Woody Bush on _The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer_(*) last night--they played long excerpts from stump speeches from both Bush and Gore.

I was really struck by a slip of Bush's tongue: He referred to everyone having the right to "live in a private safe neighborhood".

I don't know about you, but I find this very revealing.

*WNYC-AM radio broadcasts the sound of that evening's _NewsHour_ every weeknight. I find it very pleasant to listen to as I am preparing for bed.

So, hey, we were warned.

(ETA: Sheesh.)

Parkour, extremis

Via Shamus Young's Twenty Sided, Damien Walters Showreel 2009. A combination of parkour, acrobatics, and ninja trickery--as Shamus points out, the "taking of all my clothes in mid-tumble" trick around 0:55 is amazing, as is the backwards leap over the 7' barrier.