(There is nothing wrong with the turkey I make for the Seder. Really, there isn’t. It might be too dry for next year, though.)

Very good Chabon interview from KQED archives In which he explains why I was wrong in the last comment.

I am going to wish Tbogg a happy premature Thanksgiving, although it’s about 1 am here. My husband was so desperate for me not to cook anything that he donated enough to the Sefer Torah campaign that we are having dinner at the shul at 5:30. The Jets might be able to hold out until the meal is over. You never know.

Books–

Hacker and Pierson looked at the subject of this column from a different POV. Their take was that it was more difficult to counteract the increasing political power of the wealthy when you didn’t have strong communal institutions and that evangelical churches were one institution that was very successful–but to mobilize people to the right. So Douthat may actually have something. But he contradicted his last column that I saw about the Obama campaign having a strong appeal in communitarianism. If you really believe you are on your own you are going to be cynical about liberal politics, too. And I have left obvious that Douthat doesn’t want to say that strong institutions are not necessarily right-wing. They may leave you with an appreciation of the limits of what private actors can do.

I finished Telegraph Avenue. There was a strict time constraint because my dad has gotten it out of the library for only 2 weeks. Now that I know how it came out,
The book may be a mess because he’s writing about people who feel their lives to be a mess and value “all that is human and messy”. A strictly disciplined approach might look as if you are condescending to them.
It might be instructive to compare that book to “Among Others” by Jo Walton, which was one of the Hugo contenders and was such absolute candy that AFAIK it might have won. That book was dedicated to the idea that SF will save you–the heroine does magic to find a karass and finds it in the form of an SF club at the library. Simply having friends gives her a reason to choose life and not myth. And although she does not have a perfect mother and father by any stretch, one gives her LOTR and one gives her Trouble on Triton, and those make her willing to have adventures. But Chabon is writing about people who want to find objects of desire different from those their fathers had. He is writing about becoming a parent and coming to the limits of the things you thought would save you before. That is a reasonable subject for even a very sprawling book.
(Strauss is where neoconservatism comes from, but not necessarily the kind of thing Douthat wants to do.)

Steve Savard: “The Rams were not very good at all this afternoon.” Unbelievably, the Jets still have a chance in the mad scrum of 4-6 teams in the AFC if one of the two nameless 6-3 teams falter.

I’ve got 100 pages to go in Telegraph Avenue. I am giving it a lot of credit because TNC is in the acknowledgements and you can see his influence in how the black characters are portrayed. If this was Tom Wolfe every black character would be a caricature. It is also so vividly written that it blew all the Hugo candidates out of the water. But so far a spinning record seems to be a metaphor for the whole story. It looks as if everything is going to happen and nothing is going to happen at once. If Chabon had thought that Nat and Archy could come up with a really clever plot to save the store, you would have had an exciting story, but he hasn’t gone that way yet.

Didn’t read the Three Failures one yet, but Team EW is in their element with something like this. It is a puzzle where you have to carefully find all the pieces.

LOL

According to wikipedia, and that jogs my memory, Stuxnet infects Siemens industrial equipment. If the US does not use any of that, Iran has to do the equivalent of writing new code for different hardware. Also, if you are the mullahs, you know that the US would love to have something they can call an act of war.

In Analyzing The Failures of the Jets, Start At The Top Read the whole thing — it is good eviscerating. After a few paragraphs, we get, “The trade for Tim Tebow has been a debacle. His presence is a distraction…the Jets acquired Tebow eight months ago, and they are no closer to knowing how and when–if at all– to deploy him than they were in March and after a full training camp and nine regular-season games.” (The Teblood thread was getting old) The Rams have almost the same record, and blew the last game because of two utterly stupid penalties and a fumble, and they are still playing over their heads. I am not going to accept that the season is over for them anyway.

On topic–
Frank Bruni had an approximation of a decent column on people who want to blame only the woman for this. If the man values marriage enough that this is unthinkable, you are going to know it. My take was that Petraeus resigned because he knew that there was going to be a prurient frenzy that would harm the CIA. But Petraeus also knew more than us peons if there was a real national security impact to any of this.

Tbogg, if you thought you were helping John by putting this up, you are a good friend.

Very late– Harvey Araton: Sanchez Shows There Is No Quarterback Debate. Sharpest quote: “….maybe now we can at least believe Ryan, who has insisted since the beginning of Tebow that Sanchez would be his starter and that Tebow was here as a multipurpose player, a fancy toy with a huge and fanatical following.”

If you are not watching this men’s final, you are missing out :) Absolutely spectacular by both players.

33-yard pass from Sanchez for a 14-0 lead. There should be no need for Tebow posts for some time.

all over the Internet

The last I heard, this was about mocking Romney, not about apologizing for some idiotic drone comment I made two months ago and realized how stupid it was four days later.

“It could be seen as Jews and money.”

But Tbogg, it isn’t. To show I am all-American, that dog won’t hunt. Sheldon Adelson and a number of other rich Jews who are convinced that Obama is bad for Israel are in that audience. What Romney is doing is flattering rich people no matter what ethnicity they are, which he is good at. He can also be seen as telling them, “You can believe that my strength and the might of my hand made me all this wealth!” There is also what I wrote at LG&M. Romney may not share Dan Senor’s views, but Dan Senor put in his book that there are specific features of Israeli culture that foster entrepreneurship including the army and the intelligence services. Maybe EW picked up on that, but it should get more play.

(I am lucky there is a second minyan at 8 am so that I can afford to be pissed off all over the Internet.)

BTW, my Mom, who at the time thought Santorum was a complete fascist, has decided she likes him better than Ron Paul because of the newsletters. (“But Ron Paul didn’t really say those things. You have to look at TNC’s post to see this point made well.”)

After all the publicity he got for beating Wofford, it’s hard to believe there’s anyone over 40 who doesn’t know who Rick Santorum is. But my husband did not know who Tom DeLay was until I told him.

Yes, this is where anyone would say that a miracle is required.

No insult to the good folks on other blogs, but Mike Tanier continues, and it is AWESOME.

“In the other corner, levitating is Denver’s Tim Tebow: cultural icon, folk hero, bruising off-tackle runner and quarterback, in precisely that order. His 7-1 record, built almost entirely from low-scoring, last-minute wins against opponents with severe offensive deficiencies, has made him a living, breathing, Tebowing challenge to the laws of probability and the tenets of football strategy.
Tebow is imbued with the competitiveness, work ethic and inspirational qualities to overcome being shut out for three and a half quarters, which is somehow different and more desirable than possessing the competitiveness, work ethic and inspirational qualities to avoid being shut out for three and a half quarters. The gap between what Tebow accomplishes and what he gets credit for grows every time the Broncos’ defense hands him the ball on a turnover or Matt Prater caps a brief drive with a 59-yard field goal, but the same could be said of Brady a decade ago. Beneath the hoopla may be a quarterback growing, if not into greatness, at least into durable, affable, scramble-oriented decency….
With Tebow, the harder a situation is to believe, the more likely it is to occur, but these picks are not made with the heart, but what is left of the mind.” PICK: Patriots

This week we are enjoying the Bungles and the honoring of Marshall Faulk at halftime.

I hope it is On Topic that the Jets are absolutely destroying KC right now and that Sanchez has 154 yards and has run for one TD and passed for another. I really thought this would be a much closer game.

He did. I considered that to be very pointed because what I am used to hearing is that it is a great merit to be one of the first 10 to show up. At my synagogue there is a pool of about 20 guys who will show up for minyan every day.

Hoshiakadurregel means “Football Savior”. However, “Israkadurregel” makes sense and is clearer and funnier.