Even better best line of the night

“Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama responded today to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s charge that he plagiarized a speech, saying of the controversy, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ ”

Andy Borowitz He has more.

Best line of the night, so far

“Many observers believe Fidel Castro will either be replaced by his brother Raul, or by his idiot son, Fidel W. Castro.”

David Letterman (reported at Daily Kos)

Best line of the day, so far

“I wonder when Politico will give us the ’scoop’ that Clinton is planning to hire the hit man who killed Vince Foster to take out all of Obama’s delegates.”

Atrios

The TSA Blog

Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune has found “the soon-to-be-propagated Rules” for the new Transportation Security Agency blog. The first three:

1. Commenters must arrive at the blog 45 minutes before attempting to post a comment.

2. Comments cannot last more than three paragraphs.

3. Comments that are longer than three paragraphs are subject to confiscation. For more on the handling of comments, see our post, “Why 1-Quart Zip-Loc Bags are Much More Secure than 1-Gallon Zip-Loc Bags.”

Johnson has more. He also has a funny item about spam here.

Best line of the day, so far

“And President Bush is now pushing Congress to expand the government’s ability to spy on Americans now that the current phone tap bill has expired. In fact, to gain support for a new spying Bill, they’re bringing in coach Bill Belichick. Yeah. They are going to rename it the New England Patriot Act.”

Jay Leno

A scourge for years

A Lexus with cojones

Dan Neil takes the new Lexus IS-F for a spin. His review includes this:

The car also sings. The IS-F is equipped with an eight-speed automatic transmission, in which the gear ratio intervals are very evenly spaced. Eight speeds happen to correlate to eight notes of the diatonic scale — do, re, mi, etc. If you hold the throttle and speed steady, and you shift up and down with the shifter paddles, you can actually coax simple melodies out of the stacked-pipe quad exhaust, for instance, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” And, yes, I get paid for this.

An 8-speed transmission!

Executive Order 9066

E.O. 9066, signed 66 years ago today by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. An excerpt:

Now therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action to be necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any persons to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restriction the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.

The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order.

Within two weeks the western portion of California, Oregon and Washington, and part of Arizona were designated an area from which “any and all persons” might be excluded. The designation was made by Lt.Gen. John L. DeWitt, the commander of the western defense command. DeWitt was later quoted as saying, “a Jap’s a Jap” and “it makes no difference whether he is an American citizen or not…the west coast is too vital and too vulnerable to take any chances.”

Sounds like today, only the ethnic groups have changed.

The newspaper headline is from just eight days after the E.O.

Oscars 2008 — Best Supporting Actor

NewMexiKen is going to run a series of polls this week on the Oscars. Each will run for about 24 hours — the last for best picture will run a little longer. Not sure we can expect many votes in these polls, so yours will count all the more.

I’m a little uncertain how to phrase the poll. Part of me wants to ask “Who do you think should win?” But I’m going to start with “Who do you think will win?”

We’ll start with Best Actor in a Supporting Role. You do NOT have to have seen the films to vote. (I’ve seen just two of these performances.)

[POLL REMOVED. BEING CONSOLIDATED ON ONE PAGE.]

I will post the results as each poll gives way to the next. Sunday I will post all the results and my own picks — and invite you to post yours. The Oscars are awarded Sunday evening.

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial (Indiana)

… was authorized by the signature of President Kennedy on this date in 1962. It was the first unit of the National Park Service in Indiana. Indiana Dunes and George Rogers Clark National Historical Park have been added since.

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial preserves the site of the farm where Abraham Lincoln spent 14 formative years of his life, from the ages of 7 to 21. He and his family moved to Indiana in 1816 and stayed until 1830 when they moved on to Illinois.

National Park Service

February 19th

Today is the birthday

… of William “Smokey” Robinson, born in Detroit on this date in 1940.

Some Smokey Robinson trivia:

• The nickname Smokey was given him as a child by an uncle.
• The Robinsons were neighbors of the Franklins; Smokey is two years older than Aretha.
• They both attended Detroit’s Northern Senior High School (as did NewMexiKen’s mom).
• Smokey wrote both “My Guy” and “My Girl.”
• Bob Dylan called Smokey “America’s greatest living poet.”
• Smokey has written more than 4,000 songs.

… of author Amy Tan, 56 today.

When Tan was 15, her father and older brother both died of brain tumors, within six months of each other. Her mother became convinced spirits were cursing the family, and she moved Tan and her younger brother to Switzerland. Tan continued to rebel against her mother, who wanted her to become a part-time concert pianist and a full-time brain surgeon. Instead, Tan became an English and linguistics major, and fell in love with an Italian. She and her mother didn’t speak for six months.

Tan worked as a freelance business writer, working 90-hour weeks to keep up with demand. But she eventually realized she was addicted to work she didn’t like. She went into counseling and began writing short stories.

When her mother went into the hospital in 1985, Tan promised herself that if her mother survived, she would take her to China and learn her mother’s stories. It was a trip that would change Tan’s perspective. She said later, “When my feet touched China, I became Chinese.”

Tan’s short stories became The Joy Luck Club (1989), a novel about four Chinese immigrant mothers and their relationships with their American-born daughters. It was an instant best seller and was made into a film. Tan has written five novels, all best sellers, including The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) and The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001). Her most recent novel is Saving Fish from Drowning (2005).

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

… of Jeff Daniels, 53. Daniels has been nominated for several acting awards, most recently for The Squid and the Whale.

… of “Family Ties” actress Justine Bateman. Mallory Keaton is 42.

… of Benicio Del Toro. The supporting actor Oscar winner, for Traffic, is 41. Del Toro was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar again for 21 Grams.

Author Carson McCullers was born on in Columbus, Georgia, on this date in 1917.

Her most famous novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940, delves into the “lonely hearts” of four individuals—an adolescent girl, an embittered radical, a black physician, and a widower who owns a cafe—struggling to find their way in a Southern mill town during the Great Depression. (Library of Congress)

The great jockey Eddie Arcaro was born on this date in 1916.

Iwo

Two Marine divisions landed on Iwo Jima on this date in 1945; 30,000 troops came ashore that first day. Their initial objective was Mt. Suribachi.

130 years ago today

Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph on this date in 1878 and ultimately music changed forever.

The phonograph was developed as a result of Thomas Edison’s work on two other inventions, the telegraph and the telephone. In 1877, Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape…This development led Edison to speculate that a telephone message could also be recorded in a similar fashion. He experimented with a diaphragm which had an embossing point and was held against rapidly-moving paraffin paper. The speaking vibrations made indentations in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback. When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale) groove pattern. Edison gave a sketch of the machine to his mechanic, John Kreusi, to build, which Kreusi supposedly did within 30 hours. Edison immediately tested the machine by speaking the nursery rhyme into the mouthpiece, “Mary had a little lamb.” To his amazement, the machine played his words back to him. …

The invention was highly original. The only other recorded evidence of such an invention was in a paper by French scientist Charles Cros, written on April 18, 1877. There were some differences, however, between the two men’s ideas, and Cros’s work remained only a theory, since he did not produce a working model of it.

Source: Library of Congress

It didn’t look much like an iPod. Click image for larger version.