Visual source: Newseum
Quick, check the window. Is the world still there? Just you wait, buddy, because expert Nostradamian-Mayan-Easter Islandian-Ancient Egyptian astrologers say that we're not going to survive the caucus vote on Tuesday. In the meantime, here are a few columns to fill the time before the world dies in screaming horror caused by the mass psychic damage of ten million people simultaneously googling "Santorum."
Nate Silver uses his NYT inches to play The Ghost of Iowa Past, delivering a grab bag of hits and misses from a state and a process with an uncertain relationship to actually picking the nominee. A sampler:
In 1972, Iowa’s caucuses were moved to January so the Democratic Party’s antiquated mimeograph machine could produce the necessary paperwork in time for its May convention.
...
1988: Vice President Bush is himself caught off guard in Iowa by a new force in G.O.P. politics: evangelical Christians, led by Pat Robertson, a televangelist who finishes second behind Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. Still, Mr. Bush goes on to win the presidency.
Lots of interesting tidbits, including a major reminder of why we put up with this system that everyone claims to hate.
1968: After President Lyndon B. Johnson declines to run and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York is assassinated, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey is nominated without competing in the primaries, at a Democratic convention in Chicago marred by violent anti-Vietnam War protests.
Maureen Dowd reveals yet another example of Mitt Romney completely changing his position to please a small but strident faction.
Ann Romney told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that she insisted to her reluctant spouse: “You know what, Mitt, you’ve got to do this again.”
Mitt resisted, she said, because “he remembered how difficult it is and what the hurdles were going to be.” Mittens, as her not-so-cuddly mate is called by reporters, knew he was not a natural with voters.
According to Mitt, their pillow talk sounded like a political ad. “She said, ‘Look, no one else can beat President Obama. No one else has the background to actually get the economy going, understand the economy in a very fundamental way.’ ”
And then she told him what his positions were that day.
Frank Bruni recognizes that the GOP primaries have become a freak show dominated by an unbroken string of zaniness.
Ron Paul’s campaign trumpeted his endorsement by a pastor who, as it happens, has spoken of executing homosexuals. Rick Perry pledged to devote predator drones and thousands of troops to the protection of the Mexican border, making the mission to keep every last illegal immigrant from crossing sound as urgent as rooting out terrorists in Pakistan.
And Rick Santorum, bringing his “Faith, Family and Freedom” tour to this eastern Iowa town on Thursday, promised never to be cowed by all those craven secularists who believe that a stable, healthy household needn’t be headed by a God-fearing mom and dad.
Bruni moans that these strident radicals are giving the Republicans a black eye. Like most pundits (before they move to a prime time hour on Fox), Bruni still does't get that crazy isn't just the mainstream for today's GOP, its the minimum requirement. Nobody who is actually going to vote for these guys would be the least bit bothered if they delivered their speeches in their boxer shorts. The only complaint is that these guys aren't
crazy enough.
The New York Times looks ahead and looks at the sad truth: we know what to do, but we won't do it.
The way to revive sustainable growth is with more government aid to help create jobs, support demand and prevent foreclosures. As things stand now, however, Washington will provide less help, not more, in 2012. Republican lawmakers refuse to acknowledge that government cutbacks at a time of economic weakness will only make the economy weaker. And too many Democrats, who should know better, have for too long been reluctant to challenge them.
Republicans have made gains by wrecking the government and "elect me so I can make it suck more" still gets plenty of nods. Why should they change?
Nicholas Kristof points up the difference between politicians who make fun of "Hollywood liberals," and actual celebrities: one of these groups is providing real moral leadership.
I started off rather scornful of celebrities dabbling in humanitarian causes. When Mia Farrow inquired about going to Darfur with me, I archly declined on the presumption that she couldn’t hack it. Then she traveled to the region on her own, and I began to run into her anyway. ...
Farrow has since become a friend, but I’m now afraid to travel with her. I might not be able to hack it.
Likewise, the war in Congo is the most lethal since World War II, but it hasn’t been much covered by many news organizations. One person who has visited repeatedly is Ben Affleck. He has made himself an expert on Congo, and he plans to return this month.
Or think of Sean Penn and Olivia Wilde, who have shown a more sustained commitment to Haiti than most news organizations.
Look, as a journalist, I’m proud of my profession. Yet it’s also clear that commercial pressures are driving some news organizations, television in particular, to drop the ball. Instead of covering Congo, it’s cheaper and easier to put a Democrat and a Republican in a studio and have them yell at each other.
Frankly, it’s just humiliating when news organizations cover George Clooney (my travel buddy on one Darfur trip) more attentively when he breaks up with a girlfriend than when he travels to Sudan and uses satellite photos to catch the Sudanese government committing mass atrocities.
The bolding is mine. Happy New Year, Mr. Kristof, and I hope you get your wish on this one.
Bill Mahr delivers new rules for the new year.
New Rule Now that we have no money, and all our soldiers have come home from Iraq and they’ve all got experience building infrastructure, and no jobs ... we must immediately solve all of our problems by declaring war on the United States.
...
New Rule Jon Huntsman must get a sex change. The only way he’s going to get any press coverage is by turning into a white woman and disappearing.
Grant Barrett looks at the newly coined words of 2011 and predicts which of them have the power to outlast the winter.
In 10 years, some of last year’s words will be relics. We’ll think of them the way we now think of the decades-old phrase “gag me with a spoon.” ...
SUPER COMMITTEE A group of 12 lawmakers, 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans, 3 each from the House and the Senate, that tried to make a plan on how to reduce the deficit. Also, the Gang of Six, three Democratic and three Republican senators who worked on reducing the federal government’s debt.
...
KARDASH A unit of time measuring 72 days. Coined by the musician Weird Al Yankovic in response to the 72-day marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries.
Barrett has several other examples. I pulled out the two that are clearly the most likely to make anyone remembering 2011 do so with a wince.
Charles Krauthammer delivers a column in which I agree with 95% of everything he says, even the conclusion. I'd even suggest that you go read it. Quick, someone start a stopwatch. Either one of us is going to be a very different person in 2012, or this isn't going to last long.
Sure, it's that time when you get round ups of all the big stories of the year, including the big science stories. But it's also time for stories about snow and ice.
It is not often Stephen Morris helps save a life - he is a physicist, after all, not a physician. But when an architect telephoned him in his office at the University of Toronto, Canada, last year, with a potentially lethal problem, his advice was to the point.
The architect's problem was icicles. He had designed a building whose windowsills accumulated snow in bad weather. Worried about a passer-by being engulfed by a sudden avalanche and suing, he had installed heaters on the windowsills. Consequently meltwater was dripping off the sill and forming enormous icicles that loomed dagger-like overhead. The architect was still worried, and with good reason. Falling icicles reportedly killed five and injured 150 in St Petersburg, Russia, last winter.
Death by falling icicle is definitely not on my to-do list. After all, everything hurts worse when it's cold.
Darksyde already made a (well-deserved) salute to several science blogs, but let me add one more: Nobel Intent at ars technica. Ars has more of a reputation as a gadget blog, but the writers for Nobel Intent have been consistently among the best on the web when it comes to digging into difficult issues and explaining them in ways that are understandable to a lay audience. Kudos, guys. I'm a fan.