There were considerable signs that the proposal was put together quickly ...

Lisa: Look at all these great ideas for preventing crime! I know they're oversimplified and can't possibly work, but wow!
Marge: Hmmm, if only we didn't already have a precrime solution.
Bart: Speaking of precrime, I don't care about precrime. I'll meet you ladies back here in half an hour.

(Poster on wall of Nelson's bedroom: "Nuke the whales.")

Lisa [to Nelson]: "Nuke the whales?"
Nelson: "Gotta nuke somethin'."
Lisa: "Touchè."

Also:

"Soylent Green is people!"

From last weekend:

He has to start deciding whom to disappoint.

From yesterday:

That bit of bald faced authoritarianism made a lot of people absolutely furious, myself included.

From last month, and long ago:

The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

Great expectations

Jeff Jarvis:

Looking for Dubai, I’d made the mistake of going to the Mall of the Emirates with its hundreds of stores and infamous indoor ski slope, just because it was so over the top. But I came away depressed because it was only an extreme extension of the malling of the world that I lament ... All our stuff is now the same.

I suppose we should be flattered and relieved that a nation - especially an Arab nation, no? - chose to copy so much of America. But why did they chose as their inspiration Vegas (sans sins), malls, grossly conspicuous consumption, and Hollywood pap? I wasn’t sure whether I was sadder for them or us.

Dubai is either an act of fiction or of the future. I arrived thinking the former; I leave wondering whether it could be the latter.

From the archive:

Driving is the cultural anomaly of our moment. Someone from the past, I think, would marvel at how much time we spend in cars and how our geographic consciousness is defined by how far we can get in a few hours’ drive and still feel as if we’re close to home. Someone from the future, I’m sure, will marvel at our blindness and at the hole we have driven ourselves into, for we are completely committed to an unsustainable technology.

Where is Dubai?

!

Update: Shortly after 11:00 PM ET, NBC reports that McCain has conceded in a phone call to Obama. McCain was expected to speak publicly in 11:00 hour, with Obama to follow in Chicago. PBS reports that the crowd has assembled in Phoenix to hear McCain.

Obama to Become Next President

Its subject, she said, was considered “too raw, too hot.”

“Sun is a problem child, and the problem child has to change.”

You can’t bomb climate change.

The presidency could be won with just 22 percent of the electorate’s support, only 16 percent of the entire population’s.

Even at McDonald’s, you’re interviewed three times before you get a job.

Other differences are more subtle.

The list of mistaken prognostications that grew from these flawed premises is long.

“The Iraq thing?” I recall him saying. “That’ll be over in no time. Let’s take a look at some of the great educational benefits.”

Mike Lalumera deemed the cause worthy, though not quite as compelling as goth itself.

"Quite frankly," she added, "everything from pizza to prostitutes."

"I moved mine, too," he said, as if it were a somber rite of passage we all must face one day.

Together, they got all the squeals and singalongs they needed.

This election year is about what unites us, not what divides us.

It's not all doom and gloom, either.

But so far, that knowledge has probably not been entirely comforting to McCain supporters.

"I have my ways," was the evasive answer.

We all want to associate ourselves with dignified people and dignified ideas.

It is a wealth transfer from the future to the present.