The GOP slate sings

Not really. But The Capital Steps do it for them. Friend Jane sent this:

These guys are basically a performance troupe. (The videos come from Herbunk, who makes lots of cool stuff.) By the way, I’ ve seen The Steps on stage; they’re a hoot and not a bit partisan – it’s equal opportunity mockery for them.

Movin’ on out

A bad weekend in Afghanistan even as our withdrawal picks up energy. On this blog, I’ve regularly counted our days and years in that war as they’ve added up – today is the 25th day of the tenth year.

And now comes at last time to count down as well. The end of our war in Afghanistan, if on schedule, is 62 days from now.

Halloween on steroids

Bored? Who, me?

I’ll play your stupid game if you’ll get my damn dinner going.

Suicidal Barbie or not

You may have noticed my mug has disappeared from this page and in its place is suicidal Barbie (who knew Ken was gay?).  She landed here (no pun intended) quite by accident, but  I’m kind of liking it. Thoughts?

 

Blog brag

I just noticed that sometime last week I put up my 2000th post at Whatever Works and comments topped 13,000.

Further, it seems that with just 170 more visits before Monday, October 2011 becomes my all time big time mostest bestest ever ever EVER month.

Friday oldie

This is really really early Dion – before the Belmonts, and before he was ‘spiffed’ up for the World of the Top Ten.

CORRECTION: I appear to have had it backwards. Dion worked with the Belmonts in the 50’s and mostly solo after that. So this vid may have followed his Belmont days. Aaggghhh, so be it. I still like it.

Bet they’ll have a b-i-g cake!

I recently discovered EarthCam, which trains a live eye on well known locations around the world (Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China etc). Tonight might be a great time to stop by for a birthday party, as the Statue of Liberty turns 125.  Festivities and fireworks over the harbor are planned. The cameras provide  multiple viewing perspectives. I won’t be home in real time – maybe they’ll provide a link back. Hope so. Happy Birthday, Lady.

Free Lego Man!

Here in SW Florida, a serious civil liberties issue is brewing.  Ego Leonard (left) was enjoying an innocent afternoon on Siesta Key when a paranoid citizen dialed 911. And the fellow was taken into custody.

Ego’s a big fella – 8 feet tall and, um, husky, but that wasn’t enough to save himself from the grasp of Sheriff’s deputies. They grabbed him, and excused their outrategous act by saying he’s ‘property’. That’s nonsense of course – one might as well say corporations are people which we know is ridiculous.

The Sheriff’s office, claiming they don’t know who owns’ this ‘property’ now has him confined, possibly in chains!  Oh, the indignity, the humiliation.

Lego Man wears a t-shirt with a mysterious message. Even now linguists at universities around the country (none in Florida; our Governor won’t permit it) are poring over the enigmatic words “No Real Than You Are” trying to  discern their meaning (it does sound a bit like something from Stephen Colbert, does it not?).

And meanwhile, as this innocent fellow is in the crude custody of government, good civil libertarians (as well as those artsy types) continue the good fight. Lego Man will not be abandoned. Lego Man will be free!

Rep. Cantor dances to my drummer

Serendipity!!

It’s mere hours since I posted Uncle Jay and his delightful video mocking the House Calendar (from 2010), and here comes Majority Leader Cantor, of the United States House of Representatives with the official 2012 House Calendar. Looks like our congress critters are going to be in session a full 109 days. This is sadly par for the course and we know there’s no reason to work a little overtime.

 

Oh well, at least that means more cool CSpan programming.

When did ‘impactful’ become a word?

And why am I hearing everywhere?

Actual. Good. News.

One down – far too many to go. Story here.

 

How could I have missed this guy?

Ever heard of Uncle Jay? I hadn’t till I found myself there yesterday while following some new links. Behold . . . Uncle Jay, citizen.

There’s lots more. He doesn’t seem to have a channel, just click around.

All things end, but then what?

The great Thailand flood just won’t stop. Over half the country is now underwater. Two million people are already displaced and the waters haven’t yet reached Bangkok, although that is imminent. (Dark blue indicates flooded areas.)

How do peoples and nations deal with disasters on such a monumental scale?  The waters will doubtless recede. Or mostly recede. But this is still just stunning in its reach and, I assume, its consequences.

Wish I’d been in Michigan Monday night

They had a rare treat in some areas of the upper mid-west the other night – the aurora borealis came to visit. Lucky Michigan. Lots more pix here.

How is this healthy for a nation? It isn’t. It’s destructive.

We need to fix this or it’ll ruin us.

WASHINGTON — The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday . . .

In this report, the budget office found that from 1979 to 2007, average inflation-adjusted after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income. For others in the top 20 percent of the population, average real after-tax household income grew by 65 percent.

By contrast, the budget office said, for the poorest fifth of the population, average real after-tax household income rose 18 percent.

And for the three-fifths of people in the middle of the income scale, the growth in such household income was just under 40 percent.

American television news is so over, we have to go to Al-Jazeera and El Arabia for news of our own wars

American broadcast and cable news operations don’t even bother anymore, not even in the traditional 6:30 pm network news slot, once the ‘big boy’. The final word. The program elevated by Walter Cronkite (CBS) and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (ABC NBC – thanks Don) and someone on ABC (who was it before Birnkley moved over?).

Those shows now run perhaps 19 or 22 minutes, of which they devote a precious few to reminding us who they are and how great they are and thank each other for doing such a great job while letting us know, breathlessly, that every interview is ‘exclusive’. I even heard Brian Williams recently refer to their reporter in Libya as ‘the only network broadcast reporter in the square right now”. which meant that maybe ABC and CBS were taking a bathroom break. But no matter, heady stuff anyway – for them.

After all the chest thumping, they spend perhaps 6 or 7 minutes on the ‘news’ of the day (which this week includes updates on the trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor.) And finally, there is a ‘report’ on some new weapon or medical breakthrough or cute animal – most of these appear to be video press releases.

The cables do a little real news, but mostly they opt for that cheap-to-produce stuff featuring poorly informed – but insistent – gasbags, opining on the political matters of the day.

Today, that is what passes for the news on American television. (There are exceptions of course – PBS News Hour,  Fareed Zacharia on CNN and – only occasionally anymore – 60 Minutes. I’ll add my own local news – they often do a very decent job.)

And then there’s the BBC. The venerable British Broadcasting Company is serious about reporting and committed to informing their viewers, listeners and readers. Look at this from their website. Now that’s committment – one click brings the world to the world.

This is why [fill in your favorite gripe here] isn’t working.

Thanks Earl and Gene

Okay

Terrorists and dictators, lacking the filibuster, have no effective defense against Barack Obama.                                    Rebecca Kirzsner, Democratic strategist

Busy. Unbloggy. Later.

Chop-chop! Weekend’s over.

Good morning

David went to Occupy Edinburgh

He strolled around and took some pix to give us the flavor of it and now St. Andrews’ Square is where I want to be strolling!  A very civilized gathering, nearly genteel – see how tidy the tents are?

Sarah Palin has tweeted only six times in October

Three of them were cross promotions for her movie/book deal at WalMart.  Not too long ago her every tweet was breaking news – and there were oh, so many.

Now it’s time ro join the ‘What Ever Happened To . . . ‘ gang.

‘splains a lot now, doesn’t it

from chrispiasck

The next Friedman Unit in Iraq should be interesting

I posted this morning about Turkey’s military movement into Northern Iraq which was followed today by Obama’s abrupt announcement that all US troops (not just combat troops) would be out of Iraq by the end of this year (although this is always a bit confusing since the Embassy will have 16,000 personnel).

And now, it seems that we closed the last US norther base in Iraq yesterday.

U.S. shutters northern HQ in Iraq

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military closed the second of its three regional headquarters in Iraq on Thursday, redeploying 750 soldiers, consolidating command of nationwide operations under a single Army unit and maintaining a rapid pace of withdrawal 10 weeks before the expiration of its security agreement with Baghdad.

I doubt very much that these are unrelated events. I just had the news on and it’s all chitterjaberchatter about the troop withdrawal announcement. But I haven’t heard anything about the Turkish troops.  But the story in the Washington Post notes that:

As the U.S. military carried out its deactivation ceremony, 10,000 Turkish soldiers engaged in a ground offensive against Kurdish rebels who had attacked border towns Wednesday, the Turkish military said.

You gotta have a lot of prisoners to save money this way

A special state indeed. Texas is going to cut costs in its prison system by:

• Texas ended the decades-old practice of serving last meals to inmates about to be executed after one man ordered an elaborate feast of hamburgers, pizza and chicken-fried steaks that he did not eat. (Well, that alone must have saved hundreds of dollars!)
• Most states serve their inmates milk in cartons, but Texas prison officials said switching to powdered milk would save them an estimated $3.5 million annually.
• Thousands of other inmates in the Texas prison system have been eating fewer meals since April after officials stopped serving lunch on the weekends in some prisons as a way to cut food-service costs.

In the US, two million people are in state prisons alone. In 2010, 225,000 of them were in Texas, or 1 in 100 residents. They built 174 new state prisons between 1979 and 2000, a 706% increase. (Texas has cut its prisoner growth rate in the last few years, but still holds the lead.)

Wonder how many of those prisons are private for-profit?

Friday oldie

I can’t believe I never posted this before. (There are 24 million hits on youtube. Guess the guy is still popular.)

Cafferty mirrors Santorum? Santorum mirrors Cafferty?

I enjoy Jack Cafferty’s rants on CNN, but see them only on youtube these days as one needs to pass through the Blitzer to get to Cafferty. Listen to what he said this week:

If you refuse to believe your car is leaking oil, the car will break. And the cost will be high.

Iraq, part deux?

Remember “Kurdistan:, that region spanning northern Iraq and eastern Turkey that has. for decades, sought independence? Iraq might have allowed it to happen were it not for a dispute over Tikrit, an important oil city. But Turkey was never going to allow it to happen.

I was just visiting my friend Mac at Talk and Politics, and guess what?

After the Kurdish PKK killed 26 Turkish security forces this week – Turkey has now launched a big military operation into Northern Iraq with 22 battalions with air support.

For the U.S., I think this is going to be ‘rock and hard place’. Our presence there, despite the drawdown of combat troops, remains murky. From wikipedia:

In a speech at the Oval Office on 31 August 2010 Obama declared “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.”^[87][88][89] Beginning September 1, 2010, the American operational name for its involvement in Iraq changed from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New Dawn.” The remaining 50,000 U.S. troops are now designated as “advise and assist brigades” assigned to non-combat operations while retaining the ability to revert to combat operations as necessary.

UPDATE: Obama just announced that all US troops, not just combat troops, will be out of Iraq by the end of this year. That’s really interesting.

I can’t keep my socks up

Honest. I can’t. At least I can’t keep those little ankle socks up. No matter the brand, no matter the material, they slip down my heel, work their way under my foot and in no time at all are bunched up under my arches.

I thought everyone should know this.

Here’s me, giving Santorum his due (well, David Frum actually).

I heard this the other night. It was otherworldly. But I heard it indeed. From Frum Forum today:

Rick Santorum is not exactly an odds-on favorite in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. And perhaps that’s why it was Santorum who felt free to articulate an important truth in the GOP candidates’ debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday night.

“Believe it or not, studies have been done that show that in Western Europe, people at the lower parts of the income scale actually have a better mobility going up the ladder now than in America. “ . . .

The American dream is still alive. It’s just more likely to come true in Denmark than in the USA. In fact, the American dream is less likely to come true in the USA than in any other major economy except the United Kingdom’s.

The freezing of income mobility is distinct from, but probably related to, two other important trends in American life: The stagnation of middle-class incomes and the widening of the gap between rich and poor.

It’s mostly been ignored of course, because Romney touched Perry, which was very important news indeed.