The International House of Bacon

I must have partied so hard on my birthday, I’m sick now - what with the dirt cake and the John Adams miniseries…

* The folks at Improv Everywhere are awesome - they turned a little league baseball game into a spectacle that was pretty great to see.

* It’s Mathmeticious.

* One thing I’ve loved over the years are the attempts by “historians” to try and contextualize the unfinished Bush Presidency in terms of historical ranking. Yet another survey has come out ranking Bush dead last, which is ridiculous on two fronts: one, the Presidency isn’t over and the full effects of his policies and actions have yet to fully be determined, and two, ranking him last means that “historians” think that some light pushing of Constitutional boundaries and the Iraq war trump the Trail of Tears, the Sedition Acts, World War I, the late 1930s court packing attempts, Japanese internment, the Teapot Dome, Watergate, Vietnam, etc etc. In terms of my favorite Presidencies, I’d place Bush in the bottom quarter, but that’s recognizing that there’s a lot we simply do not know. After all, do we rank Bush I higher or lower based on how we had to deal with Iraq following the first Gulf War? Does it look like that much of a victory now? It’s all ridiculous, and people who call themselves historians should absolutely know better.

* Jacob Sullum at Reason on the bill to allow FDA approval of cigarettes. All kinds of ridiculous.

* Barack Obama’s campaign has requested a delegate step aside for telling some black children to “quit playing in the tree like monkeys,” because of the racial (but probably unintended) connotation. So let’s see - calling black children monkeys in a rather innocent way with unfortunate connotations, bad. Blaming “Hollywood Jews” for bringing Brokeback Mountain and expanding homosexuality, okay.

* It’s been noted numerous times that Obama isn’t really practicing what he preaches regarding a different type of campaign: Twisting McCain’s “100 years in Iraq” comment as Obama has certainly isn’t representative of new politics, not to mention completely dishonest.

* We’re facing the largest tax increase since the 1940s. Will your candidate step up to the plate?

* A wonderful link dump citing facts about the French nuclear program. The United States has got to embrace this technology, period.

More later.