memeorandum: PARSING NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIALS IS HARD: “So, weakness … (Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit)

11:25 PM ET, January 3, 2010

Top Items:

Glenn Reynolds / Instapundit:

OBAMA AND BIDEN: Analyze the body language. From the White House Flickr page. — UPDATE: No, I don't think Obama's facial expression is just a fluke of when the shutter went off. His eyes aren't closed, as some with poor displays seem to think. Here's a detail from the frame:

Discussion: The Lonely Conservative, The Reaction, Pajamas Media, Nice Deb, pandagon.net, PoliBlog, snooperreport.com, Another Black Conservative, Riehl World View, alicublog, American Power and Political Byline

Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:

Picture of the Day — Via Glenn Reynolds, the White House actually published this on their Flickr page: — A close-up of Barack Obama's face suggests that the stern body language of the President towards his VP isn't a fluke: — I'm sure that all is well between the two, and that this is just a fluke of photography.

Discussion: Little Green Footballs and The Daily Dish

alicublog:

QUOTOMATIC SELECTOR SAY: “There are some occupations that are stereotypically gay, but mechanical engineering isn't one of them.” — I MEAN, DID YOU EVER LOOK AT A DOLLAR BILL, MAN? THERE'S SOME SPOOKY STUFF GOING ON IN A DOLLAR BILL, MAN. Holy moley, they're still doing heavy photo analysis on Obama.

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns and Money and TBogg

Glenn Reynolds / Instapundit:

PARSING NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIALS IS HARD: “So, weakness on national security: too absurd to mention or something Obama knows all too well?” — Plus, this: “I used to subscribe to the NYT and read it for at least an hour a day, paging through the whole thing.

Discussion: Althouse and Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!

Ann Althouse / Althouse:

“Damn, Obama looks like James Bond in this picture.” — Says a commenter at the White House Flickr site. Is that what you see? Keep in mind that this is a picture the WH selected and had to have thought flattered the President and furthered his interests: — People who like Obama are blinded to the way other people see him.

Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish: Photo-Smearing Obama — Glenn Reynolds finds a photo …

CNN:

Brennan: Some Guantanamo detainees will go to Yemen — Washington (CNN) - The United States still intends to send some Yemeni detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility back to Yemen despite a terrorist threat there, President Barack Obama's terrorism czar said Sunday.

Discussion: snooperreport.com, Pajamas Media, Gateway Pundit, TalkLeft, The Swamp, Sister Toldjah, Foreign Policy, American Power, Hot Air, BBC, Weekly Standard, Guardian, Fausta's Blog, RBO, Scared Monkeys, The Lonely Conservative, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS and And So it Goes in Shreveport

Josh Gerstein / Politico Live's Blog:

Brennan: Deal ‘on the table’ for terror suspect — The U.S. Government is offering the suspect charged with attempting to bomb an aircraft on Christmas Day, Omar Abdulmutallab, some kind of incentives to share what he knows about Al Qaeda, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said Sunday.

Discussion: Hot Air, And So it Goes in Shreveport and Weasel Zippers

Bruce Drake / Politics Daily:
Top Obama Aide Defends Use of Criminal Trial for Would-Be Plane Bomber

Discussion: Townhall.com

Byron York / Washington Examiner:
White House: Justice Dept. made decision to hold Detroit bomber …

Discussion: Power Line, The Strata-Sphere and YID With LID

Associated Press:
US, UK close Yemen embassies over al-Qaida threats

Discussion: New York Times, Politics Daily, CNN, Prairie Weather, Riehl World View, Washington Post, Online NewsHour, msnbc.com and Associated Press

Raw Story:

Brit Hume: Tiger Woods must become Christian to be forgiven — Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

Discussion: The Confluence, The Moderate Voice, USA Today, The Reaction, Stinque, Mad Kane's Political Madness and The Political Carnival

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:

BRIT HUME SAID WHAT?.... As regular readers know, I've made no mention of Tiger Woods on this blog. I don't care about golf; I don't care about golfers' private lives; I don't care about any aspect of this “story” at any level. — But I was taken aback when I saw that Fox News' Brit Hume …

Discussion: Media Matters for America and Pharyngula

Mike Allen / The Politico:

U.S. tightens international air security — All travelers flying into the U.S. from foreign countries will receive tightened random screening, and 100 percent of passengers from 14 terrorism-prone countries will be patted down and have their carry-ons searched, the Obama administration was notifying airlines on Sunday.

Discussion: Hot Air, Political Punch, TalkLeft, Israel Matzav and AMERICAblog News

Mark Steyn / National Review:
The Joke's on Us

Discussion: theblogprof and GINA COBB

Associated Press: Schumer Releases Plan To Boost Airport Security

Tony Romm / The Hill: Schumer: Penalize foreign airports that have lax security

Bridget Johnson / The Hill:

Iran denies entry to Sen. Kerry — Iranian legislators on Sunday decided to not allow a visit from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), according to Iranian media. — “Members of the Iranian parliament's Foreign Relations Committee (a subcommittee …

Discussion: Mere Rhetoric, Wolf Howling, Scared Monkeys, Gateway Pundit, Laura Rozen's Blog, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS and Fars News Agency

Fars News Agency:
Lawmakers Reject John Kerry's Request for Visiting Iran

Discussion: YID With LID

Rasmussen Reports:

Partisan Trends — Number of Democrats Falls to New Low, Down Six Points Since Election 2008 — In December, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports.

Discussion: FiveThirtyEight, Power Line, YID With LID, The Lonely Conservative, Hot Air, Don Surber, The Moderate Voice and Jules Crittenden

Rasmussen Reports: 53% Favor Abortion Ban in Health Plan

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System:

Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble — The financial crisis that began in August 2007 has been the most severe of the post-World War II era and, very possibly—once one takes into account the global scope of the crisis, its broad effects on a range of markets and institutions …

Discussion: Calculated Risk, New York Times, The Baseline Scenario, Economist's View, EconLog and Angry Bear

Rex Murphy / Globe and Mail:

Why Time passed Obama by — The magazine's choice for Person of the Year says it all — Time magazine picked Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, as its Person of the Year. He gets the accolade for presiding over a “weak economy” that could have been “much, much weaker.”

Discussion: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS

Guardian:

Peru's mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter — For alpaca farmer Ignacio Beneto Huamani and his young family, life in the Peruvian Andes, at almost 4,700m above sea level, has always been a struggle against the elements. His village of Pichccahuasi, in Peru's Huancavelica region …

Discussion: Don Surber

Dick Cheney / New York Post:

Unwelcome truths — It speaks eloquently to the Obama administration's priorities that it took the White House four days to acknowledge the “catastrophic breach of security” that led to the failed bombing of a US-bound jet on Christmas Day — but a scant four hours to accuse Dick Cheney of coddling terrorists.

Discussion: Cold Fury