Pun Salad

… that a headline-writer waits an entire career for a moment like this.

(The story is from 2007, but still: best headline of the last decade.)

At the New York Times, Maureen Dowd seems to have lost patience with Barackrobatics:

“We must do better,” Captain Obvious said Thursday at the White House, “in keeping dangerous people off airplanes while still facilitating air travel.”

Ms. Dowd's column is entertaining, but (for most of us) doesn't break any new ground; most of us right-wing knuckle-draggers have long been pointing out Obama's empty rhetoric. What took her so long to break out of the spell?

Not that she's perfect:

Unlike the Republicans, who have yet to take responsibility for a single disastrous thing they did, President Obama said “ultimately the buck stops with me.”

Probably it's required for an NYT columnist to do this, but a couple seconds with the Google found this (from 2005):

On the eve of Iraq's historic election, President Bush took responsibility Wednesday for "wrong" intelligence that led to the war, but he said removing Saddam Hussein was still necessary.

And this (also from 2005):

President Bush struggling to find his footing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina said Tuesday that he accepted responsibility for shortcomings in the federal government's response and prepared to address the nation from Louisiana on Thursday evening.

I've little doubt I could find other examples, too. But it's pointless. Dowd "knows" that Republicans didn't "take responsibility", and this particular meme is buried deep enough to be immune to facts.

Nevertheless, the fact that Dowd is snapping out of her Obama-induced trance is a welcome sign.

Steven E. Landsburg bemoans the ideologically-driven silence of NYT columnist Paul Krugman.

Once upon a time in America, whenever an administration spokesman spouted economic nonsense, you could rely on Paul Krugman for a sneer, a blast of outrage, and frequently an imputation of the basest motives. That time ended on approximately January 20, 2009.

Landsburg is only too happy to step up to the plate, analyzing recent utterings by Obama's top spokesmodel, Robert Gibbs. (In this case, involving the "green jobs" fallacy. Check it out.)

Neither the economic illiteracy of the Obama Administration, nor Krugman's partisan criticism is anything new, but they deserve to be harped upon. Recently, Greg Mankiw pointed out Krugman's distortion of history in relation to the brief, happy repeal of the federal Death Tax.

OK, so we all know that the Google hates America (sometimes). But does it also hate Christianity? Wouldn't be surprised, but more likely it's just doing clumsy, albeit politically correct, tweaking of its "hate" filters.

Actual USA Today headline:

Comments by Fox's Brit Hume upset some Buddhists