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Happy New Year! Roll Tide! Hit the Tip Jar!
Your quest to get re-tweeted by @Alyssa_Milano is the best non-porn thing about the internet.
-- Dave Weigel
She's the ultimate celebrity Tweep, with more than 500,000 followers but, as of noon today, was only following 499 people, whereas I've got about 2,700 followers and am following nearly 1,300 people.
This illustrates an enormous status disparity and ever since October, when Alyssa re-Tweeted a Slate column by Mickey Kaus -- who has about 1,700 followers -- I've been trying to reverse-engineer the Kaus magic: "Why Does Alyssa Milano Hate Me?"
Alyssa is to Twitter what Matt Drudge is to news, and what Professor Glenn Reynolds is to blogging. (On Twitter, Drudge has 46,000 followers and Instapundit has about 6,000 followers.) People tell me that my quest is hopeless, but as Vince Lombardi said, "A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits."
In addition to Lombardi's maxim, there's also the inspiration of my role model, Pepe Le Pew:
The wonderful thing about Pepe is that he cannot conceive that anyone would not love him.Guys often ask how a homely guy like me got such a beautiful wife like Mrs. Other McCain. It's not just the Speedo-worthy physique, my friends. It's also the Pepe Le Pew persistence, the irresistible ardor of the relentless suitor.
Hit the tip jar! ROLL TIDE! Re-Tweet me, Alyssa!
Whatever Limbaugh's faults, he has that one redeeming value: Courage to speak out, even when speaking out makes him the target of vicious personal smears.March was also notable for Smitty's debut as co-blogger here, including his first 'Lanche-worthy post, "Where Did the Pleasant Cthulhu Go?" Among other March highlights:
One of the basic principles of military strategy is to reinforce success. If you see a man who fights and wins, give him reinforcements, and bid others to emulate his success.
As Secretary of the Department of Unicorns and Rainbows, Dodd will face "daunting challenges in this time of crisis," the president said, referring to the distinguished silver-haired senator as "one of our nation's most visionary leaders."Other insightful political commentary from February:
February also saw the beginning of the Tea Party movement, which sparked the beginning of a long-running argument with Rick Moran:
Rick doesn't seem to believe that opposition to Obamanomics could ever become a decisive groundswell. And he is entitled to that opinion. But to say that such opposition is not now a groundswell does not mean it will never become one.Wow, did I call that one, or what? I followed up with a long post entitled "Tea Parties, Defeatism and Wolverines" -- the first of what became an informal series with a populist theme -- and quoted Jennifer Rubin: "The opposition party must oppose."
Just as the conservative intellectuals once projected their hopes onto Dubya, now they project their disappointments onto Sarah. But the fault is theirs, not hers.
It is a very long post, but I think it got to the nub of some very important issues that are fundamental to understanding how the GOP reached its ebb in 2008. Some other highlights and lowlights of the month:
It isn’t generosity when you give away the money of othersThe next step after this is to realize that the Gospels are equally a foreign policy tract, which is to say, not even slightly.
If you are doing full-time political blogging, something is motivating you. For most of us, that motivation was originally outrage at what the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress were doing. . . .OK, with a set-up like that, perhaps you're starting to get an inkling of what comes next:
What brought people together into progressive blogging communities and networks was related to policy (the invasion of Iraq, torture, illegal surveillance, regressive taxation, bad environmental policy) but also other things (a one-sided corporate media, incompetent government, and lack of meaningful and effective resistance by the Democrats). . . .
If we got into blogging and political activism to put the Democrats in power, should we not be focusing on helping them pass their agenda and stay in power? . . .Hmmmm. Wonder who that was aimed at? Jane Hamsher, perhaps? Three weeks after the 2008 election, I wrote about "Future Ex-Democrats." And it's important to keep in mind that the backlash against the Age of Obama won't be limited to moderates repulsed by the administration's radicalism. There will also be many sincere progressives repulsed by the cynicism and hypocrisy of Democrats in power.
[I]f you are waking each morning to blog about what a bunch of corporate whores the Democrats and the president are, you haven't really adjusted your style to the new situation in Washington. . . . Is this first thing you do in the morning to look for ways to talk about how the president has disappointed you? How Congress sucks? Then you aren't interested in keeping the Republicans out of power any more. You are fighting a different battle. . . . No one is compelled to support the Democrats over the Republicans or to support policies they disagree with. But we should call this kind of blogging what it is, which is anti-Obama, and anti-Democratic Party . . . and anti-government, really.
Thus I became one of millions converted to the capitalist cause by Rand's radical classic. I'm constantly amazed at how common that experience is, just as I'm amazed to discover how many "cradle Republicans" have never bothered to read it, nor even to read Leonard Read's brilliant free-market essay, "I, Pencil." How can you defend entrepreneurism and free markets if you haven't read these classics?[A]s it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration. "The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we'd declassify it if necessary."Read the whole thing. Disgusting.
The White House, according to the source, is in full defensive spin mode. Other administration sources also say a flurry of memos were generated on December 26th, 27th, and 28th, which developed talking points about how Obama's decision to effectively shut down the Homeland Security Council (it was merged earlier this year into the National Security Council, run by National Security Adviser James Jones) had nothing to do with what Obama called a "catastrophic" failure on Christmas Day.
"This White House doesn't view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it's a political issue," says the White House source. "That's why Axelrod and Emanuel are driving the issue." . . .
[B]oth events prove once again that government alone cannot ensure security and freedom for Americans or citizens in other countries. Ultimately, it depends on ordinary people to rise to an occasion, even at the expense of their own lives.Read the whole thing. RiShawn is editor of the education site Dropout Nation.
No new updates yet from RushLimbaugh.com but we can expect to hear more at noon ET.Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh is resting comfortably in a Hawaii hospital after suffering chest pains while on vacation, his radio program says.
"Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes and will keep you updated via rushlimbaugh.com and on his radio program," the program said in a statement late Wednesday night.
Limbaugh was rushed for medical treatment earlier in the day. The statement said "Rush was admitted to and is resting comfortably in a Honolulu hospital today after suffering chest pains."
Kit Carson, Limbaugh's chief of staff, told The Associated Press that he had no further information on Limbaugh's condition.
He said the 58-year-old left for his usual Christmas vacation on Dec. 23 and is due to return to his show on Jan. 4.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian hospital ship torpedoed by the Japanese during World War Two with the loss of 268 lives has been located in waters off the coast of the northern state of Queensland, the government said on Sunday.As USNI notes:
The loss of the Centaur in 1943 while sailing to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea was one of Australia's great wartime disasters. Survivors and their relatives have long pressed for the wreck to be found, fearing salvagers would reach it first.
I-177’s captain was never tried for the sinking, but was convicted on other war crimes by the Allies. The attack has long been a sore subject for the Japanese, who only acknowledged in 1979 that I-177 did indeed sink the hospital ship, after denying involvement since 1943. Furthermore, Tokyo claims it never ordered the attack, a fact if false would likely lead to Australian pressure for additional war crime charges. In a statement on the search for AHS Centaur, Japan said it "made the greatest efforts for world peace and prosperity as a responsible member of the international community and has also developed a close relationship with Australia." To their credit, the Centaur Association, the RSL, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have all made statements that Japan does not need to apology[sic] for the sinking of AHS Centaur. Apparently 66 years of good relations is enough time for some countries to let history be history.Certainly, the Centaur pales in time, space, and body count to the Israeli/Palestinian situation.
The Juicebox Mafia is a bunch of young, liberal pundits so-named by Eli Lake of the Wash Times includingUncle Jimbo's inaugural bludgeoning is: "Kill the filibuster".I know a couple of them now and have proffered a challenge to debate a number of issues i.e. The Socialization of the America. I have received an acceptance of the gauntlet, and will advise as to a time and place for the inaugural debate between the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy & the Juicebox Mafia.
- Ezra Klein,
- Spencer Ackerman,
- Matthew Why-Glesias[sic] and
- today's target Tim Fernholz.
National Journal also features video stories including interviews with SBA List Chairwoman Marjorie Dannenfelser:What's disgusting about the TPM Muckracker hit on us is that it's a totally bogus story - and the author knows it.Read the rest at The American Spectator.
The $800,000 they cite was NOT paid to Russo Marsh + Associates. The vast majority of that money was to reimburse Russo Marsh + Associates for the efforts where we fronted the money in our capacity as the organizers of the Tea Party Express. . . .
And then Rachel Maddow of MSNBC last night (and the CBS blog, and dozens of other liberal blogs) have run with the story. I'm not sure how much these people in the secondary chain of this viral promotion understand that their advancing a bogus story. Maybe some of them do and they don't care.
What seems obvious is that the only reason someone would advance a bogus story like this if they knew it to be bogus, would solely be to try to take a shot at the tea party movement in general, and smear the Tea Party Express in particular. . . .
No sooner had I used a homecoming queen's friendly C-cup smile as a political metaphor than the bodaciously curvaceous Samantha of Day-by-Day makes a not-entirely-unrelated point. And at the same time we behold Shelby Steele touching, as it were, the hem of a garment that is not there: America's primary race problem today is our new "sophistication" around racial matters. Political correctness is a compendium of sophistications in which we join ourselves to obvious falsehoods ("diversity") and refuse to see obvious realities (the irrelevance of diversity to minority development). I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there—all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.You should read the whole thing and also visit Day by Day, where Samantha has been known occasionally to appear as naked as the emperor in his new clothes. (Don't hate Samantha. It's not her fault she's as melanin-deficient as Molly Ringwald. Or, uh, Lindsay Lohan.)
Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. . . .
My 7yo daughter now watching "Parent Trap" starring young Lindsay Lohan. Considering how Lindsay turned out, should I be worried?
To which question the only answer is, "Of course, you should be worried." Every halfway decent parent perpetually worries about how their kids will turn out. Even though I know my eldest daughter -- recently engaged to the Argentine Romeo -- watched and re-watched her VHS of The Parent Trap when she was about 10 without succumbing to moral corruption, I still worry about her baby sister.
My wife is worried about how we'll pay for the eldest's wedding, while I'm worried about whether the Pasadena trip will result in financial disaster. So, despite accusations of "whining," I'm still rattling the tip jar -- $5 or $10 might help soothe the parental jitters. Being a Dad is scary, when you consider that tabloid-trashy Lindsay Lohan (who has apparently rejoined the hetero squad and is on Twitter, BTW) was once so sweet and innocent:
Ask a Casting Director: What advice do you have for parents of child actors?My answer: Don't let them become child actors! Your kid might turn out to be the next Lindsay Lohan or -- Heaven forbid -- Danny Bonaduce. (My 11-year-old redheaded son plays drums. That's got to be worth $20 in worry.)
The nature of the Tea Party movement was unusual at the outset. Regardless of what the half-wits on the extreme left said about them — whackjobs like your Keith Olbermanns or Rachel Maddows — the Tea Party movement was not orchestrated behind the scenes by some grand, right-wing conspiracy. They happened spontaneously spearheaded by all sorts of different groups, hundreds of them in fact. And to use the hackneyed old expression, trying to organize them into a single, national power will be like herding cats.Considering history, I'd offer two things:
And therein lies the soon to be revealed mistake. Unless we are able to foresee this limitation of the Tea Party movement and take concrete measures to prevent it we will see the passion and engagement of these millions of Americans frittered away until just cynicism is left.
Passion about politics is great and likely the fervor of Tea Party participants will help fuel a 2010 resurgence of Republicans in the midterm elections. But what after that? In fact, what during it?
Here’s the problem and, as I see it, it’s a problem that is actually sort of built right into the Tea Party movement from its inception. That would be its essentially leaderless nature. Certainly this leaderless nature has suited the tastes of those suspicious of government, tired of failed party machinations, and the preternaturally aloof folks that populated them. Perhaps the gatherings could have occurred no other way and are born of this peculiar instant of political sensibility. Nonetheless Tea Parties have been disparate, unfocused, leaderless, and might prove to be pointless in the end.
There was no unifying single goal of the Tea Partiers and no agency or party directing them. This means that the raw power behind them just might go untapped because there will be no way to translate the passion to power. Every transformative movement has been led by a single man and his small group of powerful adherents but the Tea Party movement has no such leader and might just find that its passion will dissipate until there is nothing left but disgruntled followers.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the passion and was thrilled by the hundreds of Tea Parties with their millions of participants as it happened across this land in 2009. I was heartened that so many Americans were standing up to the anti-American left like that. But how do we channel that passion into something that can lead to positive change?
Without question powerful change needs a leader. Unfortunately, unless a leader steps forward that can gather all those many Tea Party strings into a single strong rope, it is likely that the whole thing will just pass away and be left a footnote in history. And what will this do to those yearning for change? What else could it do but cause them to become even more cynical going out than when they came in, leaving them thinking that nothing can be done and that we are doomed? This could lead to even worse societal strife down the road as frustrations build.
If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch? . . .Once Modo starts eyeing the exit of the Obama bandwagon, what next? Will David Brooks espy an un-meritocratic wrinkle in the president's pants?
Before he left for vacation, Obama tried to shed his Spock mien and juice up the empathy quotient on jobs. But in his usual inspiring/listless cycle, he once more appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253, issuing bulletins through his press secretary and hitting the links. At least you have to seem concerned. . . .
Liberty. Some love it because it provides wealth, opportunity, and other good things. Others declare that any denial of liberty is unacceptably evil, that liberty is a fundamental right of man. Both call themselves libertarians, and so they gather together at political conventions, seminars, and blog forums -- to call each other nasty names and do battle over the meaning of a word.Read the rest, which is from the December issue of Liberty, which has been advertising on the sidebar for a couple of weeks.
At the time I was leading a major effort to reform the LP (the Libertarian Reform Caucus) to widen the LP's definition of "libertarian" so as to include a large fraction of voters who say they support both personal liberties and economic liberties, and to soften the party's platform away from its call for anarchy next Wednesday.If you've ever attended a Libertarian Party gathering, you either smile at that description or become enraged by it. There are some Libertarians who oppose even the mildest concesion to pragmatism. They want an LP that is fanatically pure and, as an inevitable result, politically impotent.
LGF -- which lately has been trying to purge Pam Geller as a Nazi (!) sympathizer -- doesn't mind saying "we blew it." And I agree: You blew it. And in fact, you still blow. Purge-happy partisan fanatics! Purge the Buchananites! Purge the libertarians! Purge the creationists! Purge the pro-lifers! Bobby Jindal is "political suicide!"In the end, of course, CJ purged himself, but the fundamental point remains. It's this "club" mentality, the desire to act as membership chairmans of an exclusive sect composed entirely of one's fellow True Believers, that makes the fanatical quest for purity such a disastrous impulse in politics.
Purge, purge, purge, until the Republican Party is only you, and then maybe people will understand that this was your objective from the very beginning, you intolerant assholes. I am reminded of Bob Barr's description of the more fanatical Libertarian purists -- they don't want to belong to the Libertarian Party, they want to belong to the Libertarian Club.
Let these purging purists have their way, and you can plan to hold the 2012 Republican convention in Charles Johnson's living room. And I'll vote Libertarian again.
So one day a couple weeks before homecoming, I was walking down the hall and encountered Sheila, who flashed a friendly smile and said, "Hi, Stacy." Maybe that wasn't the first time Sheila had ever spoken to me, but it was certainly the friendliest she'd ever been, and it made an impression.
Never renouncing his firm belief that liberalism was wrong -- a sound fundamental principle -- Reagan could nonetheless work with liberals and solicit their support for his agenda (rather than cooperating in a "kinder gentler" pursuit of the liberal agenda) because he had the same kind of winning self-confidence that permitted Sheila Moseley to smile and say "hi" to a hoodlum stoner.Read the whole thing and make up your own mind. The point which strikes me most strongly is SusanAnne's emphasis on the courage to fight, which requires the willingness to become a target. Americans love a fighter.The GOP should have called out the media, rather than retreating into a corner so as not to be branded as racists, obstructionists, the party of no, or worse, conservatives.
Again, it was at this time that the MSM started its ground assault of the Bush administration and mauling of the GOP. And the GOP never fought back. Bush never fought back.
With this defeatist attitude, the MSM reshaped conservative thought to hate Bush, creating apathy and division in the Republican party, and ultimately causing Republicans to vote Democrat or stay home on election day in 2008.
In reality, the American people crave a party to take on the media, Democrats, and corruption. Just look at Joe Wilson, Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Andrew Breitbart, Rush, Hannity, Beck, Tea Partiers, and our own Erick Erickson. Look at Fox's sky-high ratings. All signs of the American people's thirst for knowledge and someone --anyone -- to stand up against Obama, Congress, the media, and the left. And those who do get major support from the GOP base.
But other than some scolding for what has long been known and already widely discussed, I'm not sure York's item says much at all. Net net, the GOP has to find a way to bond with the base and the American people as a whole. They shouldn't think they're going to win any election prizes simply for not being Democrats.I'm not sure, Dan. Didn't BHO win by saying he would not be Bush? You know Progressivism is killing the country. The real danger would seem to be fragmentation, as voting for 20 different "not being Democrats" effectively elects the Democrat. So the principles should always trump the personality, in a thinking electorate. Oops.
All through the spring and summer of 2009, Tea Party media hands portrayed their anti-government - and anti-Obama - protests as the voice of a genuine grass roots movement. Now it's clear that any retelling of that story also must include a discussion of the Republican operatives who were whispering play calls behind the scenes. What with so many folks out and about for the holidays, this TPM Muckraker piece failed to garner wider attention.That would be the same TPM article I linked earlier, the one which asserted that because the Tea Party Express PAC paid $800,000 to the public relations firm which organized the tour, something foul was afoot. Anyway, Cooper linked my post, and it wasn't hard to discover that he was also the author of this August headline:
Teabaggers Shout Down Tampa Bay Town HallOK, it's free country, and Cooper is free to seek readers from the HuffPo/MSNBC axis. But I've covered the Tea Party movement pretty extensively and actually met Sal Russo, the former Reagan campaign aide who is accused by Cooper of "whispering play calls," whatever that means.
Having just gotten off a blogger conference call with Mr. Brown, I can categorically state that Brown denies any lack of support for his campaign by the RNC. . . .Pusateri says give directly to Scott Brown's campaign, and who can argue with that?
It would appear that the story from the Boston Herald was designed not to report on the status of, but rather to outright sabotage the momentum of Brown’s Senate campaign.
The political action committee behind the Tea Party Express (TPE) -- which already has been slammed as inauthentic and corporate-controlled by rival factions in the Tea Party movement -- directed almost two thirds of its spending during a recent reporting period back to the Republican consulting firm that created the PAC in the first place.Well, duh. All this means is that the consulting firm used its own personnel, and paid the bills, to organize the Tea Party Express tour -- which, BTW, was a huge success. The people who worked on the tour got a paycheck from Russo Marsh, which functioned somewhat in the same role that the promoter of a rock-music concert tour would do.
Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB) spent around $1.33 million from July through November, according to FEC filings examined by TPMmuckraker. Of that sum, a total of $857,122 went to Sacramento-based GOP political consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates, or people associated with it. . . .
My request for media credentials is still being processed, but I'm sure Gina and Stephanie in the Rose Bowl press relations office will understand the publicity value of my presence at this event, providing neutral objective coverage of the Tide's glorious triumph.I am, in fact, ethically ineligible to write about innovation for the NYT.Read the whole thing. This goes back to my basic beef with the Grand Poobahs of Journalism Ethics. Their standards -- including their hostility to press junkets, free food and other "conflicts of interest" -- always favored the big media outlets, which can afford to pay expenses for travel, meals, etc., that smaller operations can't afford.
I occasionally do paid speaking for companies that might conceivably be sources for a column on innovation. (Those speaking engagements generally pay quite a bit better than writing for the Times.) As an old journalism pro, I naturally know enough not to take a speaking gig and then turn it into an article, at least not without getting my editor's OK and disclosing any potential conflict to readers. But that's no longer enough for the Times. Its ethics guidelines now prohibit freelancers from taking honoraria or even travel expenses from anyone who might, in some theoretical future state of the world, be a source.
Meanwhile, it's about time for me to book my flight to Pasadena for the BCS Championship Game -- Roll Tide! -- so please hit the tip jar. While Mrs. Other McCain doesn't worry too much about Journalism Ethics, she is kind of worried about certain neutral objective facts we can't avoid, including the heating bill.Hey, Bristol, look on the bright side: At least Levi didn't put a knife to your throat. Yet. In a related development, Andrew Sullivan is reportedly seeking custody of Sarah Palin's uterus.Relations between the Palins and Johnston and his family have frequently been strained since the couple broke off their engagement after their son was born in late December 2008.
Johnston denies in court documents that he has avoided his responsibilities. He is seeking shared custody. . . .
Bristol Palin's custody petition calls Johnston's recent nude photo shoot with Playgirl magazine "risque."
The document also notes that Levi's mother, Sherry Johnston, should not be allowed unsupervised visits with the baby following her drug arrest. Sherry Johnston, who is serving out most of her three-year sentence under home confinement, was sentenced last month on a guilty plea to one count of possession with intent to deliver the painkiller OxyContin.
Palin's custody petition also suggested Levi Johnston may have his own issues with substance abuse, saying he made statements about seeking "weed" on Twitter.
Johnston denies making such a statement, saying the Twitter account "is a fraud" and that he doesn't have an account on the popular online social networking site.
I'm thinking this bit of news might put a kibosh on Charlie's plans to meet with Obama and discuss his 9/11 Truther theories, eh?Charlie Sheen's wife told police the actor pinned her on a bed, put a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her in a Christmas Day fight in Aspen that began when she said she wanted a divorce.
An arrest warrant affidavit released yesterday quotes Brooke Mueller Sheen as saying that the actor straddled her on the bed with one hand grasping her neck and the other holding the knife. She said Sheen told her, "You better be in fear. If you tell anybody, I'll kill you."
He also warned, "Your mother's money means nothing. I have ex-police I can hire who know how to get the job done and they won't leave any trace," according to the affidavit. . . .
Why is an American diplomat criticizing a foreign ambassador for his choice of speaking engagements in America? I asked three people who currently work in the State Department if they could recall an instance in which an official of their department ever criticized a foreign ambassador for such a thing -- or for anything -- and they said no. In fact, the State Department is fairly upset at Rosenthal for speaking at all about the alleged political proclivities of a foreign ambassador, not about her specific criticism.What this is about: Barely a month after being appointed to a State Department post, Rosenthal slammed Israeli ambassador Michael Oren for turning down an invitation to speak to the liberal Jewish group J Street.
Nothing like this has ever happened before with Israel . . . Sure, they called home an ambassador or two for odd expense accounting, a chief of mission for offending some peace-lover via a newspaper quote and maybe even had real problems with a few of the folks they thought were on the side of their own homeland . . . They even had all European ambassadors back a few times for conferences on the Lisbon thing. Every nation holds "home field" events with their foreign staff members.He's talking about a conference now in progress where "Israel's ambassadors and consuls general serving throughout the world will discuss broad diplomatic and strategic issues." Every top Israeli diplomat -- all of them.
But nothing like this meeting that started today . . .
Among other things, they'll have "favorite redheaded celebrity" contest. I'd probably vote for Molly Ringwald, which is not to take anything away from Ann Margaret.
UPDATE II: Aleister at American Glob calls my attention to a site about Roodharigen, "Redhead Day" in the Dutch city of Breda: 
Roodharigen: It's like Mardi Gras for the melanin-deficient!
