Biden's new role: Good cop.
A post-election view of McCain
Terry McAuliffe to run for Virginia governor
Al Franken's odds of winning the Minnesota recount long -- and short
Howard Dean to step down as DNC chair. Who's going to replace him?
Join the Impact - Protest information for upcoming Prop 8 protests
Obama roasts Rahm Emanuel in 2005. Funny stuff. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
Snicks over at After Elton has a recap of the tenth episode, "I Don't Wanna Know" of True Blood: "Bill goes before The Legion of Doom, Tara tries to purge the devil inside, Jason has his hands full with Eddie, and Sookie learns why Sam is always trying to lick himself. Because he can! See it all after the break!"
We also got to see a few shots of Sam's surprisingly round and meaty ass. (No pic, though. Yet. I'm still looking.) And I'll post the Blood Work vlog later in the week when it becomes available. I love those guys.
Read the spoiler-laden recap after the jump. We start off with Sookie screaming because Sam is sleeping naked at the edge of the bed. He wakes up and groggily explains that he's a method actor, and is doing research for his role in the upcoming The Robert Downey Jr. Story.
She screams more and runs into the bathroom, where she hides in the shower and picks up a scrub stick. She shouts out "come any closer and I'll exfoliate you!", but when she looks out she sees Dean the dog, who then transforms into Sam. He says "I'm not the killer, I'm a shapeshifter". Sookie responds in the only appropriate way, by simply stating "shut the f**k up".
After Sookie calms down, Sam tries to explain everything. He has what is known as Manimal-itis, and there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of them in the world. He knows it's hereditary, but he was adopted, and the family who took him in never spoke about it (which is hard to believe, considering they show a flashback of him as his adoptive parents watch him turn into Airbud.)
Sookie asks if he can "shift" into other humans, and Sam says no, that humans are too complex an organism to imitate (but for some reason, he can do the entire cast of Gossip Girl). He can do other animals like cats and birds, but flying is hard. I was hoping he could shift into cool stuff like a winged monkey from Wizard of Oz or Ookla The Mok from Thundarr the Barbarian, but alas ... he says he needs a live animal as an "imprint."
Read the rest over at snicks's blog.
Interview: Securing gay rights in Jamaica vital to AIDS struggle
Scientists turn tequila into diamonds: "The key to the surprising discovery is tequila's ratio of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, which lies within the 'diamond growth region.' The resulting diamond films could have inexpensive commercial applications as electrical insulators."
Is "Dollhouse" doomed before it even starts?
Glenn Close, the amazing star of the amazing "Damages," receives the THR Leadership Award, honoring women in entertainment
MoD "pleased" compensation claims from dismissed gays are settled
Video of Drew Barrymore at the LA Prop 8 protestKeith Olbermann may not vote, but he does care about us gays. Tonight he takes on Prop 8 in his "Special Comments." And he just renewed with MSNBC through 2011
Document Found Older Than Dead Sea Scrolls. With all the talk of Prop 8 and religion, this little bit of info seemed especially appropriate.
Interview with a bed-headed Robert Pattinson of "Twilight"
ABC News is reporting that Barack and Michelle Obama have arrived at The White House and were greeted by President and Mrs. Bush.
President Bush and President-elect Obama have now entered the Oval Office and plan to spend the next hour and a half discussing the transition. A quick transition from one administration to the next was a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.
CNN reports:
The meeting between the president and president-elect is a historic formality, but it's also a time for serious talks. Monday will mark the first time that Obama has visited the Oval Office. The two are expected to discuss "a broad range of issues," focusing on the economy, according to a leader of Obama's transition team. "It's clear that we need to stabilize the economy, to deal with the financial meltdown that's now spreading across the rest of the economy. The auto industry is really, really back on its heels," transition team leader John Podesta said.
From today's show (11/10/08 - clip via Good As You.)
Hearing the women of The View talk about Prop 8 is a demonstration of how intractable this issue can be. Whoopi and Joy deserve a hat tip for being clear-headed about all of this and for keeping the spread of mis-information to a minimum.
I will say this - Hearing one African-American woman talk to another African-American woman about the issue of gay marriage shows that race is really just a component of this problem. This "issue" of race is cloaking a more important explanation for this apparent bigotry -- the level and kind of faith of the people who voted for Prop 8. No reasonable person of color can argue for separate-but-equal without first hanging his or her reasoning skills on a religious hatrack.
But this does not mean that it's time to start attacking the Mormons. I will be attending the NYC protest at the Mormon temple in Manhattan, but I can't help but think that these marches are targeting Mormons because they themselves are easy targets.
Dale Carpenter agrees:
Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable with pickets directed at specific places of worship like the Mormon church in Los Angeles. It's too easy for such protests to degenerate into the kinds of ugly religious intolerance this country has long endured. Mormons, in particular, have historically suffered rank prejudice and even violence. Epithets and taunts directed at individuals are especially abhorrent.
Via Dan Savage's Slog
I hadn't seen Rachel Maddow's take on the Prop 8 post-election issues. I've been wondering what her take on this is. And I'm thinking that she waited just a bit to get all of the information in. A pundit scholar! She is becoming one of our best voices.
At the end of the interview, I think what Maddow was getting at was that there might be an opportunity for Republicans to exploit African-American ambivalence on the issue of gay marriage to swoop in and scoop up at least some of the African-American vote in the coming years. We'll see.
Joe Scarborough is losing it. Now that he's being chased by the Democrats, he's started throwing F-bombs around on live TV. I love the panelist's face -- his jaw actually drops.
It's between 11 am and 12 pm, so I am, of course, listening to/watching The View. Keith Olbermann was on in the last segment, and I just learned that he does not vote. As a gesture to prove he's non-partisan and doesn't have "a horse in the race." (His words.)
Now, anyone who has heard Olbermann speak knows that he is profoundly partisan. Does he really think his audience isn't able to interpret his liberal-ness? Those who watch are liberal and they watch him because he is liberal. So who is he proving his point to? No one! He's trying to prove a point to a non-existent audience.
Yet another reason to watch Rachel Maddow instead.