A video and song extolling the virtue of “Big Underpants“, aka China Central Television’s physics defying headquarters in downtown Beijing. (H/T to Kelani Chan for the link and translation.)

In related news:

A MAN caught near Nobbys Beach with his penis in a pasta sauce jar led police on a 20 kmh car chase, Newcastle Local Court heard yesterday.

Police drew their weapons when they suspected Keith Roy Weatherley, 46, was armed.

Instead, they found him partially clothed with his genitals in a jar, a police statement said. . . .

Police believed Weatherley was doing something with his hands in his lap and thought that he might have a weapon. . . .

They found a 750-millilitre jar around his penis and noted that Weatherley attempted to continue “pleasuring himself in between bouts of wrestling”.

A search of his car uncovered pornography, a home-made sex aid, women’s stockings and a Jack Russell terrier.

(Hat tip: JG)

they were too wedded to the Bush administration and its failed record, and they were too dependent on reciting the trite slogans they heard on the radio and read in syndicated conservative columns.

Andrew Sullivan asks:

And why were they so trusting of Bush and unable to see his flaws, Daniel? You have to see the link between the fundamentalist psyche and the suspension of critical judgment in the Republican party for the past eight years. A non-born-again president would never have been allowed to get away with it.

Larison is right that they’re reliable and not influential. That’s what happens to political groups who join coalitions for negative reasons rather than any positive support for their platform or ideology. They don’t vote for Republicans; they vote against Democrats. Republicans only attract the religoius conservative vote to the extent that Democrats are portrayed as—and, more important, to the extent that they actually willingly play the part of—the Boogeyman on the Left in the culture wars (e.g. the “Party of Death” who will sacrifice your First Amendment religious liberties on the altar of enforced acceptance of gay marriage). There’s a reason that white, married, Christian support for the Republicans began to surge in the late ’60s and ’70s, after all. That era saw the heating up, especially with Roe v. Wade, of the culture wars. (H/T Andrew for the study that shows this).

In other words, Evangelicals clung to Bush more out of fear that the other side wanted to make war with their most cherished beliefs. Obama got this, and so he and the Democratic Party put on a less threatening face to these voters, which was why they chipped away at Evangelical support for the GOP in November (aside from the fact that Evangelical support for Bush had been declining even before 2006; so much for “blindness”).

Part of what may be misdirecting Andrew’s ire in this case is that he’s overestimating Evangelical support for the specifically foreign policy elements of the Bush era. “Blame the Evangelicals” was a game many engaged in once the war began to turn sour, yet Evangelical support before the war (I remember it being at about 77 percent) wasn’t all that much greater than overall support for the war. I remember this prediction James Kurth made all the way back in 2005 ($ubscription required for full article, sadly):

The Evangelicals supported the Bush democratization project because it was a Bush project, and they were already committed to his policy (or more accurately his rhetoric) on cultural and social issues. Conversely, some human rights proponents supported the Bush democratization project because it was a democratization project. They opposed Bush on just about every other policy, especially those involving cultural and social issues. Indeed, the human rights proponents have despised the Evangelicals, and the result has been an unstable coalition of support for the Bush foreign policy.

For the most part, Evangelical Protestants have not considered American foreign policy to be one of their priority political issues. They were utterly indifferent to U.S. democratization efforts under the Clinton Administration. If democratization should come about in a foreign country, Evangelicals will be pleased, all the more so because it might open up the country to missionary activity. (In this respect, China now appears to be an especially promising field for evangelization.) But Evangelicals think that such openings will come about through God’s work and not through their own political actions. Certainly, Evangelical Protestants who take their Bible seriously know that Jesus Christ is the light of the world and that to see America as this light is a form of idolatry and heresy.

Still, as the foreign policy of the Bush Administration draws closer to a debacle, someone will have to take the blame. This will particularly be the case in the election campaigns of 2006 and 2008. Democrats and liberals will attack Republicans and conservatives. The latter two groups, in turn, will have a strong incentive to distance themselves from the Bush presidency and from the Evangelical Protestants, “the religious Right” who so strongly and so carelessly supported Bush when he led America into a reckless adventure in the Middle East. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and secular conservatives will agree that the Evangelicals are to blame. The real architects of the Bush foreign policy will go on to other things and will be forgotten, if not forgiven, because they do not threaten Democrats and liberals on the cultural and social issues that mean so much to them. The Evangelicals do threaten the liberals on domestic issues, however, and the opportunity to marginalize them by blaming them for a foreign policy debacle will be irresistible.

Which is kinda what’s going on in this case, no? So there’s really no need to engage in any psychoanalytic talk about some sort of “fundamentalist psyche.”

As for the GOP’s Evangelical problem, which Larison and Sullivan (quoting another poster) call the “oogedy boogedy” problem, I submit to you that it’s just that: a pre-rational, “ick factor” distaste of Bible thumpers by Republican faux-elitists. Republicans can indulge in that “ick factor” animus only at the peril of becoming the permanent minority party.

GM has a CEO who, in 2007, made $15.7 million. I noted previously that GM’s pension liability in 2004 was $89 billion, and that the health benefits for those same retirees was $64 billion. When broken down by year, these numbers add up to a $1,600 legacy cost per car. What is the cost of the CEO’s salary, per car? Well, they expect to sell 11.7 million cars in 2009, which would put the CEO liability at right around $1.50 per car. So yeah, I’d say the cumulative effect of those legacy costs is a bigger deal than the (ridiculously overpaid) CEO.

Leaving all that aside, though, I defy Matt to provide one example of a bailout opponent who says that the Big 3’s management deserves to keep their jobs. For example, here’s Mitt Romney calling for a restructuring in which legacy costs are pared down and management gets the boot. I don’t think there’s a single serious person who says “Yeah, get rid of the pensions for those middle class shlubs, but give the executives raises!” That’s asinine. Nobody thinks that. But simple math states that the pension costs are a far, far bigger problem for GM and the rest than what one idiot CEO makes.