Sarah Palin: “Known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah commemorates the eight-day miracle that took place when the Temple in Jerusalem was rededicated. Though there was only enough consecrated oil for one day, the flame miraculously burned for eight — just long enough to prepare more. This beautiful story is rich with life lessons for members of all faiths. With hope and dedication nothing is impossible, and the Almighty never abandons those who seek the light.”

David Brooks: “They retook Jerusalem in 164 B.C. and rededicated the temple. Their regime quickly became corrupt, brutal and reactionary. The concept of reform had been discredited by the Hellenizing extremists. Practice stagnated. Scholarship withered. The Maccabees became religious oppressors themselves, fatefully inviting the Romans into Jerusalem…. The lesson of Hanukkah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices.”

In 1987 evangelist Oral Roberts told the faithful that unless he was able to raise $8 million in donations, the Lord would “call me home.” God got His money, but you can’t hold Him off forever: Today the call finally came.

The Annotated White House Flickr Feed, with Ana Marie Cox and Jason Linkins: A Message To You, Salahi

by Ana Marie Cox And Jason Linkins

Our President: so busy! So photographed! And here are Air America’s Ana Marie Cox and the Huffington Post’s Eat the Press editor Jason Linkins to trawl the documentary evidence of our White House in action.

Like much of daily life there, [the Salahi’s] visit was recorded and uploaded on the White House Flickr feed, the always-on streaming window into “the people’s house,” a nickname that has never been more apt than under the current residents. Considering the White House’s hulking, media-rich Web site, its Facebook page, photo galleries and podcasts on iTunes, the presidency seems less threatened by the incursion of a reality show than running an administration that is in danger of becoming one. –David Carr in the New York Times.

Um, hey… we think that this notion that the pictures of Pete Souza and friends create some form of transparency, for “the people” is a little mangled. These are staged shots, taken by photographers who hump around the White House grounds, hiding in trees and shooting fruit bowls. This is arty, nature photography-just focused on the White House. Reality is a made thing, and Pete Souza will frame it in a doorway, or the window of an automobile.

Also, we sort of think maybe Carr doesn’t know what “streaming” means.

The evil genius of the Obama family is that they look SO NORMAL.

Fuck! Los Lobos? LOU DOBBS WARNED US THIS WOULD HAPPEN!

There’s your economic recovery, people! The bridge to… well, it’s hard say.

Go ahead, admit it, America: You’re thinking about his cock.

Lovemaking was much better in the days before the Stupak amendment.

“You throw me the whip, I give you the idol!”

Ana Marie: Stalking AND framing? This has got to be Pete Souza.
Jason: I feel sorry for Pete Souza.
Ana Marie: Why? Because we make fun of him? Who else knows he EXISTS?
Jason: Because to get this shot, he had to run ahead of them on the lawn, and hide in the trees. Maybe he wore adult diapers in case he needed to pee BUT COULD NOT LEAVE HIS POST? He’s like the serial killer in Manhunter. There is no dignity in that.
Ana Marie: Oh, I don’t think there’s intended to be.

It doesn’t matter who you are, if you are framed (in an aesthetic sense!) Pete Souza will find you. And photograph you!

Is that the White House man cave? A refrigerator filled with “Steel Reserve”?

In the event of an earthquake, everyone please assemble quietly at Treasury, and, by all means, STAND UNDER LARGE CHANDELIERS. Especially you, Tim.

Wow, the first draft of the House health care bill WAS really long.

Ana Marie: People tell you there’s a photograph out there of Michelle hula-hooping, and you think, no, that’s not possible.
Jason: But there is.
Ana Marie: That is the age in which we live.

“Mine. All mine.”

Jason: Wait. THAT’S how they display the previous winners of the Nobel Prize? Seriously?
Ana Marie: It sort of looks like the wall of fame at a Rotary Club.
Jason: Totally.
Ana Marie: Right down to the lack of black people.

Ana: GEEKGASM.
Jason: That photo is like a trip inside Jonah Goldberg’s brain!!
Ana: Except in that vision, Obama is on the side of the Empire. Fascist.

CODE RED! OBAMA IS ADJACENT TO AN IMAGE OF LINCOLN.

Pete Souza, framing a giant spider. You only get so many chances.

One of the Salahi’s earlier, less successful attempts.

Jason: One of Politico’s Mike Allen’s earlier, less successful attempts.
Ana: Also a very literal interpretation of what it’s like to be a Congressional Republican.

Ana Marie: Now that is fucking HEARTWARMING. Just try to make fun of that shit.
Jason: If you say so. The American Enterprise Institute had a whole conference on Obama ceding cultural hegemony to Maeve Beliveau, daughter of Director of Advance Emmett Beliveau.

Ana Marie: I just want to note that someone in that picture is drinking Diet Pepsi. HERETIC.
Also that someone is either Peter Orszag or Jim Jones. I’m guessing Jones. Fucking Republican.

It’s weird they decided to do the “Thriller” dance.

Ana Marie: ROBOTS! ROBOTS IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
Jason: Calm down, Matthew Yglesias. Maybe they are just prepping for a debate, Rove-style! That’s how they beat John Kerry, you know.

Ana Marie: I think it’s funny when a picture of people laughing is captioned as them “sharing a laugh.” Because otherwise…?
Jason: It would read: “President Obama awkwardly pretends to get the joke”?
Ana Marie: “Biden pretends not to notice the joke is about him”?
Jason: Oh, I think he knows the joke is about him. He has all those long train trips to figure that out.

And now, this week, in “I FRAMED THIS” by Pete Souza:

DOOR FRAME!

OVAL WINDOW FRAME!

OBAMA: “OH HAI, are you my new call center staff?”
DOODZ: “Not since Tim Geithner’s been in charge of the economy!”

Just want to point out that only Katie Johnson is actually working.

I just want to point out that Pete Souza and his fellow photographers have been slaving at this Official White House Photographer beat every day. And it’s sad that this is the image they’ll be best known for shooting. I mean. What makes a man start fires? THIS KIND OF SHIT.

Seriously. When this idea was conceived, I bet everyone involved thought, “Man! We’ll be getting all these iconic shots of Barack Obama, pensive at the Great Wall of China, and it will be awesome. Every day: a little more awesome.” And instead, this little Flickr Feed will achieve immortality because it snapped a picture of these fucking gatecrashing wannabe celebutard dipshits. And, Salahis, we live in the same town, so hopefully I’ll one day get to say this to your faces. But this Christmastime, you two can just go and eat a massive bag of envenomed dicks. Really. That’s from the heart.

The Noodle making demonstration. It’s why Nixon went to China in the first place.

“Baby… delicious, delicious Japanese baby.”

“Obama wonders if the West Point superintendents’ office might look better with a LINCOLN portrait… A Lincoln portrait… yeah….”

“Jeez, Japan…. I haven’t felt this awkward since I appointed Hillary.”

This looks like a deleted scene from COUPLES RETREAT.

That’s what Pete Souza looks like in the anime version of the White House.

And, Mr. President, we thought the one you call “Pete Souza” would enjoy our nation’s famous Tiny Corridor of Odd-Shaped Windows.

Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ratify the North American “Bros Before Hos” treaty at Singapore’s most famous disco.

Merry Christmas from your Awl White House Flickr Annotators!

Previously: Obama’s Top Secret Message To Fox News

Got $225k going spare? Why not get yourself a robotic doppelganger? Kokoro, a Japanese robotics firm,

will create the sitting robot out of silicone with the same face, body shape, hair and eyes of the recipient. Their speech will be based on recordings of the owner’s voice.

The android’s facial expressions and upper body will be modeled on the movements of the buyer.

Unfortunately it won’t be able to walk so you couldn’t take your double with you to the shops, nor will it be sophisticated enough to sit in for you at the office.

But you can probably still have sex with it. And, really, isn’t that the point?

Great. Now even the trees are going to destroy the planet. A major bummer of an article in Nature explains that, due to global warming, trees are growing farther north than they have before. And how, because tree-tops are darker than barren land, they have less “albedo” (that’s a cool word!) or “reflectiveness,” and so the earth with absorb more heat from the sun. “When the vegetation moves in, there will be an amplification of the warming,” says Inez Fung, an atmospheric physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. If you’re now wondering whether we’re supposed to do with trees-chop them down or not-it doesn’t matter, apparently. The article goes on to say that the Arctic is changing faster and more dramatically than scientists thought it would, and, that, basically, we’re fucked. “Asked what her team’s findings might mean for the international climate negotiations going on in Copenhagen, Fung says she is impatient to see progress. But she also sounds somewhat fatalistic. ‘Whatever they agree to,” she says, “is not fast enough to stop the changes that we are seeing.’”

“THE world of competitive PIE-EATING was stunned today when a rank outsider scooped the champion’s title. First-time entrant Barry Rigby, 36, amazed judges by polishing off his meat and potato pie in just 43 SECONDS.” Oh yes, there is more.

In case you forgot: “The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush’s presidency.”

Michael Polakovs, the clown who in 1966 created and was the first person to portray* Ronald McDonald, died last week at the age of 86. Himself the son of a clown, Polakovs is survived by six children, one of whom is also a clown. That had to be one wacky hearse.

*Disputed. See comments.

Gay Marriage. In D.C. Officially approved by the City Council, to be approved by the (hot) mayor and then be subjected to a torturous “congressional review period.”

“Am I still cool? Or is that over now?”
-Iggy Pop, to Rolling Stone, on the occasion of his being inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. It’s a good question. (But, really. Come on. Forever forever forever forever…)