Hell has officially frozen over.

Well not really. O’Reilly sort of apologized, and then blamed George Tenet for crappy intelligence on Iraq WMD. So maybe some Hell households just need space heaters. (thanks to Miss A for the link)

Peggy Noonan has a Wall Street Journal column out where she argues that Democrats do well with talking points (i.e. with extemporaneous talking, discussing issues), while Republicans do well with speeches.

That’s probably true. But all that proves is that Republicans have better speechwriters. Noonan herself wrote for famously bad-with-talking-points Ronald Reagan.

As for me, I don’t think it’s too high a bar for the President of the United States to be able to think on his feet. Or think. People can be taught speechcraft. Thinking is harder.

UPDATE: In related news, I’m fully intending to write a post about Bush’s performance on “Meet the Press” over the weekend, as soon as I can bring myself to watch it again, more critically.
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The Dean campaign, hanging by a thread, is asking people to vote on which ad to run in Wisconsin before the Feb. 17 “do or die” primary.

I personally like the “Max” ad the most, by an order of magnitude. It’s more positive than the other two, it’s a lot more about Dean than it is Bush or Kerry, and it’s also looser and more personal, I think. What do you think?

For some reason I’m continually confronted with the color orange lately. Crate and Barrel sent me a catalog the other day featuring orange things (a juicer, dishtowels, colander, etc.). I turned on “Debbie Travis’ Facelift” and she was painting someone’s kitchen orange. In fact, orange is all over TV ads now. Then this morning, a college student walked across the intersection in front of me wearing a bright orange cap.

Is orange the new something?

It does give me an idea, though. In the unlikely event that I redo my own kitchen, I’d like to have light wood cabinets, dark grey countertops and floor, and coppery glass tile for the backsplash (which is really the only wall space in the kitchen, because it’s so tiny). I would also like to have some of the cabinets with glass fronts, to make the kitchen look bigger. And I was thinking it might be cool to paint the back of those cabinets orange. It would be cheerful and not overpowering, since the room is so small.

Not that this is probably ever going to happen, but I can dream.

Watching Martha Stewart, hosting “From Martha’s Kitchen” from a resort in Jamaica, repeatedly say, “It’s a good ting.”

Caught the last 15 minutes of “Survivor All Stars” tonight, just in time for several lingering shots of Ethan’s torso. If they made every episode a full hour of Ethan running around the island in shorts, I’d watch every minute of the whole series – and buy the DVD. Clearly I’ve got it bad.

Plus, in a burst of good news for Ethan pervs like me, although his tribe lost the immunity challenge for the second week in a row, they decided to kick off 75-year-old Rudy and keep Ethan around for another week. This is a good thing.

I know money is not votes. I know the Dean campaign still has a huge mountain to climb, and right now they’re at the bottom. But in a single day, they raised more than $700,000 to air ads in Wisconsin. That’s spectacular.

If Dean doesn’t win Wisconsin, he himself said he would be out of the race. Considering how badly things are going for Bush these days, I think any of the remaining Dems could beat Bush. So I think it’s time for us to vote for who we think would make the best president. And for me, that’s Dean hands-down.

Go Dean.

When your biggest endorsement comes from Bob Dole, on The Daily Show, after you’ve already dropped out of the race, it kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

I wasn’t even going to go last night. The invitation said it was a reception at Club Majestic downtown for the Dean campaign, but they made it clear that the candidate himself would not be there. I was feeling antisocial overall, and I’d forwarded the invitation to a bunch of people and didn’t get much of a response.

But then my friend Wayne called me and said he wanted to go to hear Dean speak. So I broke the news to Wayne – Dean won’t be there. Yes he will, Wayne said, I read it in the paper.

And I looked on some local news sites, and there it was – Howard Dean would be appearing just a few blocks from my house.

So we went, and stood on the balcony at the last two open spots, where you could pretty much see the stage if you craned your neck way out over the railing.

It was so worth it.

Just to see and hear him in person was a rush, honestly. And as disheartened as I’ve been lately with the political process, Dean’s drive, his focus, his enthusiasm were just the shot in the arm I needed. (The roar of the crowd didn’t hurt either.) And I began to think again that maybe, just maybe, there’s some life left in his candidacy. And in this country.

After the (all too short) speech, Wayne and I sprinted downstairs to try to shake the governor’s hand. But we couldn’t break through the five-deep crowd that surrounded Dean. So we left, me clutching the yard sign that my condo rules say I can’t put in my window.

And it felt good.