That's the title of an entry at Collectibles Today's site. And yes, it's adorable:

The ad continues:

Price: $149.99 US s&s: $16.99 US
Available in 5 installments of $30.00 US

Those new to installments can click on a link that reads

*How do Installments work?

Which opens the following pop-up:

About Installments

Installments make shopping affordable!

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Oh, good Krist, this is wonderful Combined with this, I nearly fainted today, it's so nice to see this sort of thing. Stark is showing the Way, for those truly interested in being a New Media or whatever. It's so frakking simple.

Let me put it this way: I always thought I couldn't take good pictures. Trad film and I don't get along. Then they invented fancee digi cams that I can sort of use, and voila! I'm ansel adams, or something. But anyway, my point is that there should be a lot more of this, please.

My response to Natasha on why she's quite right to worry about "Conscience Clause" expansion and other slip-sliding further into a rightwing agenda:

Sadly, progressives have done the opposite of giving themselves leverage on issues like this.

Most are reticent to criticize Obama or "make him do it," and most are content amusing themselves with the foibles of the rump Republican Party (Look, over there -- Sarah Palin! How about that Joe Wilson!)

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Andrew McCarthy at Echindne has thrown in the towel.

In the comments (ironically), Andrew fleshes out his reasoning:

"My biggest objection to blogging (as usually practiced) is that the "format" doesn't really allow room for deep thinking. It puts a premium on fast response time and provocative "sound bytes".

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(I'll try to place spoilers below the cut, but there will be plenty of them about the rebooted Star Trek franchise.)

This has nothing to do with politics save the tendency of marketers to copy what works. I saw Star Trek (XI), and agree with most critics that it's a lively, fast, fun movie with nothing else on its mind but entertainment. (That's its problem, but I'll get to that in a bit.) What its larger marketing phenomenon has reminded me of is a certain space of days in 2008, between the end of the primaries and the DNC, when blog posts flew fast and furious in an attempt to discredit anyone who did not support Obama. This was when the irregularities in seating and counting were still quite fresh, when caucus legitimacy had not yet been overshadowed by disinfo birth certificate disputes.

So, there will probably be some silly incoherent right-wing protests in the future. There is a very real danger, though, that they won't have such an LOL-worthy rallying cry as "Teabag the White House!!11". Well, we need to get out in front of this, gang. I propose that all evil ACORN infiltrators make the following sign, to be used where/whenever wingnuts and cameras come together:

After You Teabag... DVDA!
Don't
Vote
Democrat
Again!

I knew I shoulda taken off work yesterday...

Much of what we do as bloggers is fact-checking and logic-checking of prevailing political narratives, many of which are absurdly and dangerously wrong... and sussing out the morals of the stories.

It's not for nothing that one of the finest bloggers runs a site variously known as "Power of Narrative" and "Once upon a time...."

For a thoughtful post on such themes, see Ian Welsh's "Can't You See! Can't You See?" (inspired by Keith Johnstone's eye-opening book on theatrical improvisation, Impro):

For a good two years, now, Time Magazine has been putting out meta puff pieces on Obama on a reliable, weekly basis. The one I'm going to discuss from last weeks edition by Michael Grunwald is not much different. But, this part caught my attention:

Some of you may have noticed that a certain recent thread has been embroiled in the endless discussion of the primary and the general, and 11-dimensional chess, and progressive A-list bloggers and so on and so forth. It would be pointless not to acknowledge at the outset that that isn't the initial motivation for writing this post. And some of my critics are ultimately correct in pointing out after a certain point, it's not productive. So let's abstract away from it for a moment.

So, it's also been suggested that I "be the change I want to see" or whatever. Well, the change I want to see is, actually, more serious discussions of what I'll call "process issues". Leaving aside the fact that I have done this before, I'm going to ask the question again: can anyone spell out the process by which you see leftist political blogging parlay itself into elected power and policy?

Author Kurt Anderson penned a piece for Time, last week, essentially taking down Modern America since the Reagan Revolution. The piece is long, and goes all over the place, going between deep meta and more readily observable facts. Sometimes, its very much on point, and other times he goes way off in the reeds. In fact, that's the reason I skimmed it rather than reading through the whole thing, but one particular part caught my eye:

The reset button has been pushed. So what will be the protocols and look and feel of the America about to emerge?

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So my excuse for poor blogging today is that I'm trying to "work" while keeping at least one nosehair in the mess that is the implosion of the Obama Halo of Perfectedness. It's Hard, I tell you! Anyway, I got turned on to this bullshit post over at a place I adore and respect, and I've been having fun there all day. While not making money, that is, the better to pay taxes for bankers to have Hermes-appointed ass warmers.

Being Serious: now, like never before, is the time to kill the "libertarian" ideology for the bullshit it truly is. Hello? Massive numbers of the newly unemployed aren't so hateful of "government handouts" when its their house/job/health car on the line, yo? Don't get me wrong: for a "progressive," I'm actually pretty conservative, and I've defended Libs here more than once, and tend to agree with some of their...let's call them more "nascent" points. But I will not ever accept that a "tax free" society is some kind of utopian solution. It's just a stupid idea.

I've said time and time again: Libs are our friends; they just don't know it. It's a simple matter of making them understand who is really ripping them off. As you know, it's not Scary Brown People or Shiftless Welfare Immigrants. I ask again, how do we convince them of that? Because, as a friend of mine likes to say, "the rich stay in power by convincing one half of the poor to kill the other half." The debate between true progressives and uninformed libertarians seems very much like that to me, in this country. Feel free to flame away at my stupidity.

Well, not exactly:

Bloggers as America's Watchdogs: New Administration, New Roles?
Sponsored by the American Constitution Society Philadelphia Lawyers and Penn Law School chapters:

The blogosphere began during the early months of the Bush Administration with opposition and criticism being the dominant modes for online progressives. With a new administration in the White House, how will the role of the netroots change? How do leaders of online opinion see their responsibilities with respect to the new President?

Featuring:
John Aravosis -- Editor, AMERICAblog
Christy Hardin Smith -- Blogger, Firedoglake
Baratunde Thurston -- Co-Founder, Jack & Jill Politics and Blogger, The Huffington Post
Daniel Urevick-Ackelsberg -- Founder, Young Philly Politics

Moderator: Adam Bonin, chairman of the board of directors, Netroots Nation

Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 5:30pm - 7:00pm
University of Pennsylvania Law School
3400 Chestnut Street, Phila PA
Please RSVP at http://www.acslaw.org/chapters/lawyer/ph...

I sent a note to the moderator. I basically said that I've never been a "blogger for the party" sort, as if that's not blindingly obvious. I also said that I seriously doubt that Villagers and high-ranking Dems give a shit about what I write, think or say. There are some people who blog who think the political blogosphere can and does make a difference in national politics, but since the MoveOn vote, I've pretty much lost faith in that idea. I find the formulation of the questions of the panel sort of interesting. Yes, a lot of my pre-Obama administration blogging was in response to what Bush was doing. But not all of it, nor would I have been any less engaged and enraged had Bush had a (D) after his name. What do you think?

The Impolitic:

I know a lot of people became angry with Corrente during the presidential campaign and have avoided the site, if not mocked it bitterly ever since. But when it comes to single payer, national health insurance, Lambert owns the issue and he's doing some terrific work on it. He finds some hope in the latest developments inside the Beltway and looks at the obstacles.

Thank you to The Impolitic for being so impolitic as to praise this shrill, C-list blog.

Pam catches a funny part of the whole explosion of the the Jammy folk:

Roger quips: Actually that part of our business has been losing money from the beginning, so the people getting their quarterly checks from PJM were getting a form of stipend from us in the hopes that advertisers would start to cotton to blogs and we could possibly make a profit. Didn't happen. No wonder those people are kicking and screaming now that they are off the dole. I might too. [What's their beef? I thought most of them were free marketeer libertarians or something.-ed. Go figure.]

Dan Responds:
Here's the thing, Roger: you never once told us that the blog network you kept insisting was the next great thing "has been losing money from the beginning" - at least, not to our faces, and certainly not in any way that would suggest that you were carrying us like welfare recipients.

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Blue Gal:

Tuesday, February 3 is Blogroll Amnesty Day. Old timers know that this holiday has a rather sullen history, but now it is a happy occasion: On February 3, bloggers are invited to post links to five blogs you like, that have smaller traffic than your own. It's a great celebration and a time to discover new blogs and link them and stuff. As I said last year, "not to get all mushy here, but do you know how fucking great it is to be here in the blogosphere? Take a moment. Take it in." Spread some linky love.

Small and newbie bloggers please be aware of the ironclad rule that you are not allowed to make "hey no blog is as small as mine" jokes regarding Blogroll Amnesty Day. The rule is, straight from the queen of the indy blogs herself (ahem), that you are not allowed to complain or mention your blog's low traffic until you have been posting daily for a year. If you're little, link other blogs that are new or still growing their audience, and encourage them to practice their craft daily. Then, show them how.

Ah, I do remember the great "amnesty" controversy quite well. Really didn't show the A-Listers in a very positive light, imho. John Swift sums it up nicely:

remember how difficult it was to get people to notice my blog when I first started out. "Build it and they will come," apparently only works with magic baseball fields. The only way to get anyone to notice my blog was to get them to link to me and that was not always easy. I linked to other bloggers and clicked on those links hoping they would notice my link in Sitemeter. I sent emails to other bloggers asking them to take a look at my latest piece or to add me to their blogrolls. I instituted my "Liberal Blogrolling Policy" offering to exchange links with anyone who linked to me. As more blogs began to link to me and add me to their blogrolls, a curious thing began to happen. More people came to my blog from those links and from Google. And many of those readers then visited the blogs that I linked to. Though it cost nothing to link to someone, I realized that on the Internet links are capital. Every link has value. And when two bloggers link to each other, they both profit.

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When is President Obama going to employ is Massive Army of Internet Based supporters to rally Congress for support for his stimulus bill? If it's "so hard" to pass truly liberal policies in the package, resist Republican whining for the inclusion of their failed crap, and discipline the naughty Blue Dogs...well, isn't that what the Screaming O-Hoarde is for?

Put another way: Rethugs used to do, and still do, the same thing for their bills all the time. Winger radio routinely gets their screaming minority to become involved in "phone actions" and suchlike, on everything from Janet's titties to immigration reform. And they get legislative results by doing so. Or, last year, when the original giveaway TARP proposals came out, I was told that the calls were 1200-1 against it, which resulted in at least some window-dressing in the final bill and scared a lot of progressives and heartened a lot of Republicans to continued opposition to more giveaways. So I don't want to hear about people being 'lazy' and 'nonparticipatory,' and anyway, I have read to my fill, plenty of celebratory "new techology in politics" crowing all during the primaries and thru the election and beyond.

So...what is the Administration doing with that much-celebrated "List" right now? Anything? Last time I checked, Congresscritters and Blue Dogs didn't read nor manage "change.gov" or "WH.org."

For those (few) not taking part in the current mad, frenzied humping leading up to the explosive Obamagasm (could someone please get this dog off my leg?), that will historically change history for all of history, take heart that Arthur Silber feels your pain.

Is there an Obama Coronation Festivus?

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

On Monday it was reported that Barack Obama would nominate Leon Panetta to be the next CIA director, and there was an immediate, sharp reaction from some fellow Democrats. The LA Times quoted incoming head of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein saying "I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The inescapable and ubiquitous Christmas songs, specials, etc -- and how us Jews helped create and embed them, have fought against them, and how some deal with it now -- fa-who dor-ay, fa-who dor-ay, ...

The white Christmases that Irving Berlin dreamed of weren't the earliest ones he used to know. ... watching his neighbors burn his family's house to the ground in a good old-fashioned, Jew-hating pogrom.
So it's no surprise that when Berlin got around to writing his great Christmas song in 1941, nearly half a century after his family had fled the shtetl of Mohilev for New York's Lower East Side, it was flatly devoid of Christian imagery. It is, for all that, a religious song. ...

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No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Barack Obama went to town a'riding on a Lincoln...

I had to blink when I saw this, but I looked in one of the papers I read, yesterday, and saw a recycled Politico 'article' concerning Obama's constant comparison to Lincoln, both by others and by himself. Most of us had noticed this Lincoln Syndrome very early on, but the media didn't just miss the narrative, they were complicit in pushing it.

But, guess what the MSM just figured out? And it's a shocker, apparently, "historians say Obama is no Lincoln." Don't worry; I'll be back when you all awake and pull yourselves off your fainting couches.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

An aspect of the coming Obama administration that I am greatly looking forward to is never again having to type the words "Attorney General Michael Mukasey". He deserves to be remembered as a much worse AG than Alberto Gonzales because there was never any real sense that Gonzales was independent. Mukasey's distinguished and separate career prior to becoming AG gave him a measure of credibility, and people generally gave him the benefit of the doubt. When he turned out to be just as willing to do the White House's bidding it therefore was much more damaging. Unlike his predecessor he could not be dismissed as just another crony brought in with the Texas gang.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post