ExLg was honored to contribute to John Hawkins' latest list, The 25 Most Influential People On The Right According To Conservative Bloggers.

Here was the list of 12 that I submitted, along with the ranking they received on Right Wing News' final list:

• Antonin Scalia (#19)
• Glenn Beck (#14)
• Bill Kristol (#13)
• Charles Krauthammer (#10)
• Karl Rove (#9)
• Jonah Goldberg (#8)
• Mark Steyn (#3)
• Newt Gingrich (#5)
• Michelle Malkin (#2)
• Rush Limbaugh (#1)
• Michael Barone (unranked)
• Jim Geraghty (unranked)

Thanks for letting us help out, John!

Some serious 70's wakajawakja guitar work going on here.



Man, I loved that show.

... who needs enemies?

Please tell me this is a joke, a la "It's Raining McCain".

Please.

It's not?

Oh my. This won't help things. Caution: Craptacular hiphop video ahead.

The Obamessiah claims that McCain was "losing his bearings" when McCain pointed out that Hamas would love an Obama Presidency.

Hamas will have to wait in line. There's plenty of terrorists on Obama's side, and this could go on for quite a while...

McCain: "Hamas supports you!" 
Obama: "You've lost your bearings!"

McCain: "F.A.R.C supports you!"
Obama: "Isn't time for your shuffleboard game, old man?"

McCain: "The Weathermen support you!"
Obama: "I can no more disown them than I can disown my own grandmother. My old, very old grandmother who is still younger than you!"

McCain: "Hugo Chavez supports you!"
Obama: "Look, can we talk about something else, please, like hope or change?"

McCain: "Nigerian terrorists support you!"
Obama: "Hope! Change! Chope! Hange!"

McCain: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supports you!"
Obama: "Look, I'm sure there are some terrorists out there that don't support me. Pretty certain of it, in fact. Like, say, the Methodists. They're mostly terrorists, right? At least, that's what my pastor told me, although I don't remember him saying so and I'd disown him if he did. Yep, the Methodists are terrorists, they cling to guns and religion, after all. And if they're not, then the Presbyterians are."

The Iraqi Defense Ministry is claiming that the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, has been arrested. Let's hope this early report pans out.

U.S. officials said al-Masri joined an extremist group led by al-Qaida's No.2 official in 1982. He joined al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and trained as a car bombing expert before traveling to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Few details are known about him, but he is believed to have been born in 1969 in Egypt's Nile Delta province of El-Sharqiya. He reportedly left school in the early 1980s to join Islamic Jihad, a group that opposed Egypt's pro-American government and linked to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

According to associates in Afghanistan, al-Masri has been involved in Islamic extremist movements since 1982, when he joined Islamic Jihad, a terror group led by Ayman al-Zawahri, who became bin Laden's chief deputy.

Hey, I thought Al-Qaeda wasn't in Iraq! Oh who cares; the war is obviously a distraction from Change and Hope and The Future and stuff.

But just look at this loser. I've seen manlier facial hair on 9th graders. Dude, try shaving for a while to see if it grows back fuller. At least use that Rogaine shampoo for a while.

You know, the more I look at that photo, the more familiar it looks. No, not the headgear and robe, just the face. Let me check something in Photoshop...



Hey, that's Trevor — the 20-year-old dude who hung out in my high school parking lot with his El Camino!

Man, it'll be an awkward class reunion this year.

American Idol winners are like mini-Terminators. You think the market has killed them, but when you look back, all the molten metal has pooled back into a new, more deadly singer. Case in point? The lead news item on Yahoo! today is that Clay Aiken has a "new look." I would mock them for wasting bandwidth on it, but I'm kind of doing the Exact Same Thing (while adopting a morally superior tone, natch).

In an unrelated note, why can't I look at Clay Aiken's photo without thinking, "Tomorrow, on the next Ellen":

A Myanmar girl eats a meal of rice and peanuts while staying at a shelter, in Kyauktan Township, in southern Myanmar on Thursday May 8, 2008. (AP Photo)

This just in from ExLg's charity of choice, Food for the Hungry:

The death toll continues to rise, with latest estimates at more than 30,000, and some officials estimating a final count near 100,000. The cyclone, which struck on Saturday, May 3, has left nearly a million people homeless and with little or no food, water and shelter. Officials warn that the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis could be more lethal than the storm. Will you prayerfully consider helping Food for the Hungry respond so that more people do not die?

The damage caused by the cyclone is devastating:

• Entire villages have been destroyed - many communities in the worst affected areas are reporting 90-95% damage
• Washed out roads have left many people in remote, inaccessible areas
• Vast rice-growing areas have been washed out
• Millions have been left homeless, in dire need of food, water, medical care and shelter

"Basically the entire lower delta region is under water," said Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid.

"Teams are talking about bodies floating around in the water," he said. This is "a major, major disaster we're dealing with."

With almost 200 staff and our Asia operations center in neighboring Bangladesh, our staff is there. This is the team who swiftly and expertly responded to Cyclone Sidr last November using decades of experience in disaster relief.

We're partnering with local agencies and are moving fast to help displaced families with food, clean water, emergency shelter and medical help. We need your help immediately. Lives are at stake. Please respond today to speed God's care and tangible assistance to Myanmar.

Your prayerful action and generosity will rush powerful and practical expressions of God's love to people in desperate need.

Click here to help Food for the Hungry bring emergency relief to the hungry and hurting in Myanmar.

Toss them a few bucks. You know you can afford it.

We're finally getting in more data sources on global climate trends, and guess what? We may not be as bad off as Dr. James Hansen, NASA's chief climatologist and primary science adviser to Al Gore, says we are.

Go figure.


Bravo for scientists who rely on actual scientific data rather than dogma and prevailing conventional wisdom to draw their conclusions, and may Dr. Hansen be relegated to fringes of scientific debate along with Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome.

"Kids can be so cruel. I mean you work hard to explain something simple like how in Baudrillardist simulation, one is faced with a choice: either reject subdialectic patriarchialist theory or conclude that society, somewhat paradoxically, has objective value, but only if language is equal to culture; if that is not the case, Sartre’s model of Baudrillardist simulation is one of 'neodialectic narrative', and therefore a legal fiction — and they just refuse to respect you as a teacher."
   — Mark Hemingway, NRO The Corner, on a Dartmouth professor's harassment lawsuit against her students for being "unreceptive of French narrative theory."

Have no fear, Citizens of Earth! Cindy Crawford is going to save our planet:

“I mean, we’ve all have seen the Al Gore movie and green is on, it’s on top of the mind for everybody,” Crawford said. “But, it is overwhelming. I have a very full life as well, so it’s like ‘Oh, I can’t compost my own stuff.’”

“But my kids go to a school in Malibu and it’s super-environmentally conscious,” Crawford said. “We do beach clean-ups, try to use less plastic as a school. And so, that kind of made me think, 'what can I do?' And, I teamed up with PUR, which is a water filtration company. They do the things you can attach to your faucets, as well as those pitchers and we came up with a reusable water bottle.”

What's that? A re-usable water bottle? What will those scientists think up next?! I hope you got a patent, Cindy!!! (BTW, diagram her last sentence. I dare you.)

“The other great thing, which is on their Web site, Thirstyforchange.com, if you buy one of these, which is $19.99, which is the normal price – the proceeds go toward safe drinking water for children in undeveloped countries. You know, kids are dying if they don’t have clean water.”

"And, like, that totally sucks, you know. Cause clean water is super awesome, and so are kids that aren't dead!"

According to Crawford and the “Thirsty for Change” Web site, Americans use 50 billion water bottles a year.

“Fifty billion in America and only 50 percent are recycled,” Crawford said. “So that’s like 38 billion that aren’t recycled.”

Let's see... 50 Billion x 50% = 25 Billion, subtract the loss factor, add in the safety margin, carry the missing supermodel brain cells... yep, 38 billion!

So basically, if I fly my private jet from the Malibu mansion to the summer home on Martha's Vineyard, but I use the $20 re-usable water bottle rather than guzzle my usual three bottles a day of Fiji water, I'm about carbon neutral. Forget what Kermit said, it is easy being green.

(H/T: Business & Media Institute)


UPDATE: A hearty thanks to the quoteworthy Mark Hemingway and his readers at The Corner! Make yourself at home. Drinks are in the fridge.

MORE: And thanks to Infinite Monkeys, Ed Driscoll, Ace's morons, and all points beyond. I really should have straightened up the place...

After spending several weeks reading through my long backlog of dense non-fiction, I needed some lighter fare. After a few too-short hours I had finished James Lileks' latest paean to classic American cookery, Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery.

As with Lileks' many other mini-masterpieces, he simply reproduces odd pages from old cookbooks, then roundly mocks them. The formula is basic, but few can match his easy wit and off-kilter observations. As with most of his books, I purchase about five copies before Christmas; one for me and the rest for gifts. Everyone always loves them.

For some reason, this page near the end had me laughing for hours:

Don't believe it. Read between the lines, and you realize this is a sinister Canadian plot to take over America. Canada's military is no match for ours, so the crafty Canucks are using infancy instead of infantry to carry out their imperial designs."

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't of been for you meddling kids columnists.

Although I've abandoned the NBA, the Coach D'Antoni's employment saga is hard to avoid (even while I was on the East Coast). Sure, he has his weaknesses, but I can't place the team's failure on his shoulders alone.

In a similar front office over-reaction, Truther/Moron/Owner Mark Cuban petulantly canned the very impressive Avery Johnson from his coaching position with Dallas. In a fair world, maybe the Suns can end up with Johnson while the Mavs get D'Antoni. I'd take that trade.

Here's AzCentral's coverage.

Stop the presses, errrr, server! Looks like another violent fringe group has come out in support of Obama:

Some bizarre news from the Reuters wire:

Rebels who have stepped up attacks on Nigeria's oil industry in the last month said on Sunday they were considering a ceasefire appeal by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has launched five attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta since it resumed a campaign of violence in April, forcing Royal Dutch Shell to shut more than 164,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

"The MEND command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem," the militant group said in an e-mailed statement.

"Some bizarre news" ? Clearly, the Plank doesn't read Exurbanleague, or else they'd know this news isn't bizarre, it's just part of a pattern.

Want to help the cyclone victims in Myanmar (Burma)? Food for the Hungry, ExLg's charity of choice, has set up a special fund to address the needs. Click here if you can lend a hand to "the least of these".

This picture from NASA's Earth Observatory Satellite speaks volumes:



Pray for the people of Myanmar and surrounding regions, and pray that some good will come out of this tragedy.

"Why would she make something up? Because she's a flake, and a poser, and an attention-seeking diva. And that's on the record."
   — John McCain aide Mark Salter on Arianna Huffington's claim that McCain voted for Gore in 2000.

(Via The Corner)

Paging Mark Steyn! The thesis of America Alone continues to be proven correct:

TOKYO, May 5 — Japan celebrated a national holiday on Monday in honor of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning.

For this is the land of disappearing children and a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world.

The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.

...The economic and social consequences of these trends are difficult to overstate.

Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050 and economic growth will slow to zero, according to a report this year by the nonprofit Japan Center for Economic Research.

That sound you hear is Champagne corks popping in Beijing.

One of the joys of this election cycle is watching Democrats realize how pervasive media bias really is. The press is in the tank for Obama, and it's so self-evident that even New Yorker magazine has taken note:

The media didn’t see this coming. Back in February, when the new prince was gliding thrillingly up and up toward nomination, a part of the thrill for the media was their happy astonishment that they were no longer cosmopolitan outliers but finally (unlike in 1984 with Gary Hart) in sync with America: Regular folks, white people in Iowa and Virginia and Wisconsin, were actually voting for Obama!

And now Jeff Jarvis joins the chorus.

Welcome to the party, pal, welcome to the party.

CNN won't ask Obama about Jeremiah Wright anymore, saying that their viewers want to "Move on".

Could they be so kind as to provide us a list of character issue questions that are off-limits for McCain interviews?

Somehow I don't think they'll be that obsequious polite.