Friday Reads

Posted: December 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

Good Morning!

It’s been an interesting few days.  I especially enjoyed watching Boehner cry “uncle” in front of the press yesterday about the payroll tax holiday. He didn’t look at all jolly.

House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.

The House made the move after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to appoint conferees to a committee to resolve differences between the Senate’s two-month, 2 percentage point, payroll-tax cut and the House’s one-year alternative.

The House will pass the two-month extension with a technical correction to the language designed to minimize difficulties businesses might experience implementing the short-term, two-month tax cut extension.

He kept muttering the usual memes like “job creators”, fighting good fights, and we really just want to stop the uncertainty.  He actually looked sober for a change.

So, let’s try to focus on some other things for awhile. There have been two rare white kiwis that have hatched recently in New Zealand.  This has made local zoologists giddy.

A second rare white kiwi has hatched at New Zealand’s national wildlife centre, conservation officials announced Friday, months after the world’s first hatched in captivity.

The chick is believed to have the same parents as Manukura, which arrived in May, and it has given its carers an extra treat in the festive period.

“We were gob-smacked really,” said Kathy Houkamau, the manager at the Pukaha sanctuary north of Wellington.

“To have a second white chick is a delightful gift, especially at this time of year. We thought Christmas had come early in May when Manukura arrived, but now it?s come twice.”

A small number of North Island brown kiwi carry a recessive white gene which both the male and female must have to produce a white chick.

Department of Conservation captive breeding ranger Darren Page said it was remarkable two birds with the rare white gene had paired up in the 940-hectare (2,323 acre) Pukaha forest to produce two white chicks over two seasons.

Isn’t it cute?

Gallup Polls indicate we’ve entered a period of malaise unlike any other since 1979.  Gosh, I hope it doesn’t lead to a repeat of the 1980s.  That was a miserable time  of high unemployment, even higher interest rates, and don’t even get me started on the music and fashion!  The bottom line is that we can’t get no satisfaction. We’ve been headed down hill since about the year 2000 with a slight upward blip in 2009.  Go check out the nifty graph.

Throughout 2011, an average of 17% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is the second-lowest annual average in the more than 30-year history of the question, after the 15% from 2008. Satisfaction has averaged as high as 60% in 1986, 1998, and 2000.

It’s easy to figure out the reason too.  It’s the economy!  Well, that and our lousy government.

Americans’ widespread dissatisfaction with national conditions may largely result from the country’s economic woes. Nearly two-thirds of Americans, 64%, currently mention some economic issue as the most important problem facing the country, and the top two specific issues — the economy in general and unemployment — are economic in nature. Dissatisfaction with government and elected officials, the federal budget deficit, and moral and ethical decline round out the top five.

Ultra-religious Jews were given warnings by the government about segregating and discriminating against women by the Israeli government.  It seems ultra-piety always involves denigrating women doesn’t it? I had no idea there were special buses in the country that cater to “pious” men that don’t want to be in the same part of the bus as women.

A woman’s refusal to sit at the back of a Jerusalem-bound bus as demanded by ultra-religious Jews moved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to warn about the dangers of gender segregation in Israel.

The Facebook-fuelled protest by 28-year-old Tanya Rosenblit aboard a public bus on Friday became front-page news in Israel, whose secular Jewish majority often frets at signs of the rising political power of the pious.

The episode followed widespread outrage at zealot settlers in the occupied West Bank who have vandalised Palestinian property and turned on Israel’s revered conscript military by rioting at one of its garrisons.

“Israeli society is a complex mosaic of Jews and Arabs, of secular and religious and ultra-Orthodox, and to this day we have agreed to peaceful coexistence,” Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks.

“Recently we have witnessed attempts to fray this coexistence,” he said, citing Rosenblit’s experience. “I totally oppose this. I think that we must not let fringe groups dismantle our common ground, and we must preserve public spaces as open and safe spaces for all the citizens of Israel.”

Several gender-segregated bus routes cross ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods in Jerusalem. Under Israeli law, women are not obliged to sit in the back of the vehicles but many do so out of deference to tradition or under scrutiny by male passengers.

Rosenblit, who describes herself as a producer for a Jewish news service, said she had been aware that the bus she had taken catered to the ultra-Orthodox and she had dressed conservatively so as not to cause offence.

But she sat up front and refused to move when the bus reached a religious neighbourhood, prompting one man to curse her and block the doorway, while several others watched until police came and removed him, Rosenblit said.

A statue was erected in South Korea in honor of its “comfort women” who were kidnapped to serve as sex slaves by the Japanese Military during World War 2.  Japan’s extremely embarassed by the statue but still refuses to compensate the victims who are mostly in their 80s although some are as young as their mid 70s.  The women have rallied in front of the Japanese embassy.

A group of the women and their supporters unveiled a statue of a girl in traditional costume there.

Demonstrators have rallied since 1992 outside the embassy to demand an apology and compensation from Japan.

Japan has repeatedly apologised and has offered lump-sum compensation, but many Koreans say this is not enough.

Japan also says the matter was settled in bilateral agreements with South Korea in the 1960s.

Up to 200,000 women are thought to have worked as sex slaves for the Japanese army in military camps before and during the war.

The vast majority of the women were Korean.

Japan has reportedly protested about the statue, but South Korean officials have said they cannot do anything about it.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Osamu Fujimura, called the statue “extremely regrettable”, the Associated Press reports.

The blinds at the Japanese embassy were drawn shut – as they usually are for this weekly protest, reports the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in Seoul.

“[South Korean] President Lee Myung-bak cannot say he doesn’t know that white-haired grannies come out here, rain or shine, week after week,” said 85-year-old Kim Bok-dong, one of the former “comfort women”.

“President Lee should call on Japan to correct the wrongs of the past, so that things which need apologies can receive them, and compensation can be given,” she added.

About 60,000 Filipino women served as “comfort women” during the war.  Only about 1000 survive today. You can read the story of one such woman from the Philippines at this site.

Felicidad was born on November 22, 1928 in Masbate, Philippines.

One day in 1943 three truckloads of Japanese soldiers from the garrison compound at the back of her school visited Felicidad’s class. Her Japanese teacher had organised the students to perform songs and dances for the visiting soldiers. The Japanese army often introduced Japanese civilian teachers into schools in its conquered territories.

Felicidad, then only 14, was made to sing. The following day her teacher told the class that the soldiers were so impressed with the students’ performance that they wanted to reward them. Felicidad was identified as one who was to be given an award and later that day two soldiers arrived to fetch her. They told her that she would be given the gift at the garrison. Thinking that there might be other students there, Felicidad went along. But when she got there, she did not see any of her school friends. Instead the only other women she saw were doing the soldiers’ cooking and laundry.

She became worried. She asked to leave. The two guards refused. Instead they took her to a small room in the compound and pushed her in. They told her that her gift was coming.

A few hours later five Japanese soldiers arrived. Three of them were in uniform and two in civilian clothes. One of them jumped onto her catching her by the arms and forcing her down onto the ground. When she struggled, another punched her in the face while another grabbed her legs and held them apart. Then they took it in turns to rape her.

Felicidad had no knowledge about sex. She did not even have her menstruation. So she did not understand what they were doing to her. She begged them to stop. But they just laughed and whenever she struggled or screamed, they would punch and kick her.

Confused and frightened and tired and in pain, she drifted in and out of consciousness. That night three more soldiers came and repeatedly raped her. For the next three days a succession of soldiers abused her.

The continual raping and beatings finally took their toll and on the third day she fell ill. Her body and mind could take it no more. But even though she was obviously sick, the abuse continued. Not even her fever drew pity from her rapists.

Finally on the morning of the fourth day, a Filipino interpreter working for the Japanese visited her. She told him she was very sick and wanted to go home to recover. Feeling sympathy for her, he let her out of the compound.

When she arrived home, her parents who had no idea where she was, cried after learning what had happened. Just the year before an older sister had been taken by the Japanese. She died in a comfort house.

Fearing the soldiers would come looking for her, her father hid her in a nearby village. She stayed there for about a year until the American army arrived.

After the War, Felicidad returned to her home town. But her experiences at the hands of the Japanese soldiers had left deep psychological scars. She found it hard to socialise and could not face going back to school. She felt dirty. She dared not tell anyone outside her parents. She was afraid of how others would view her if they knew the truth. So she buried it inside.

When she was 25 she moved to Manila where she met her husband. Before marrying, Felicidad decided she could not conceal her experiences from the man she was going to marry, so she told him.

They were married in 1956 and had six children and 15 grandchildren. But outside her husband, she told no one else for almost 37 years.

There have been some documentaries made about the women survivors.  One such documentary is “63 Years On” which came out last year on the Korean women.

The number of Korean victims was estimated at between 80,000 and 200,000. Japanese government denied that they ran any such system until 1991 when a brave woman named Kim Hak-Soon came out and revealed the Japanese atrocities to the world. Japanese Governor General’s Office in Seoul incinerated all related documents before the closing of WWII.

A 1994 report shows that there are still hundreds of former sex slaves alive. Most of the are women of Asian countries occupied by Japan before and during the Pacific War. Among them are 160 South Koreans, 131 North Koreans, 100 Filipinos, 50 Taiwanese, 8 Indonesians, and two Malays. These numbers are only for those who revealed their real name.

There are much more victims living out there who do not want to identify their tragic past. Even after Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945, many of the Korean victims chose to live in the Asian country where they were forced to serve sex to Japanese soldiers.

So, that gives you some things to think about.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Thursday Reads: the Winter Solstice, the Mayan Calendar, “the Kamikazes,” and More

Posted: December 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Teddy Roosevelt, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

Newsstand in Copley Square, Boston

Good Morning!!

I have a mix of news links for you this morning, but nothing too terribly depressing. As I told you Tuesday, I’ve got a bit of Christmas overload, plus I’ve had a flu bug for a few days. So lets’ start out on a positive note.

Today at 12:30AM ET was the Winter Solstice, and therefore today is the shortest day of the year. That means in a few weeks, it will get dark in the Boston area around 4:30PM instead of 4:00. Right now, twilight begins about 3:30PM. I am so looking forward to longer days. From the WaPo:

If you pay attention to these things, you’ll notice a lag of a few weeks between the time the sun begins to set later in the day and the time it rises earlier. But the 22nd is, nonetheless, in the northern hemisphere, our shortest day, and the one in which the sun hoists itself the most miserly distance above the horizon. To top it off, the daily rate at which the sun sinks lower in the sky has been slowing, until it stops. Hence the word solstice, which means that the sun “stands still.”

It’s only for a theoretical instant, of course, but it can often seem, during these days of dark and cold, as if life itself has ground to a halt. Gardening can take place in the jewel boxes of our cold frames and greenhouses, but with growth so slow that there is little for you to do. The hibernation practiced by some creatures starts to seem like a great idea, and the southern migration of others a possible plan.

Not surprisingly, the human celebrations held in this season are full of light, whether it’s from Hanukkah candles, bonfires or sparkly tinsel draped over trees. You can almost understand why people light up their lawns with electrified reindeer. The longer the nights and the greater the inactivity they foster, the more we need our spirits lifted.

The LA Times has a story about Wiccan celebrations of the Soltice.

“People are celebrating the solstice more than ever in recent memory,” said Selena Fox, who isn’t just any Wiccan priestess. She’s a psychotherapist and the founder of Wisconsin’s Circle Sanctuary, a nonprofit Wiccan church and, according to its website, a 200-acre nature preserve….

Solstice is “widely celebrated today by Wiccans, druids, heathens and other pagans; by indigenous peoples practicing traditional ways in Africa, Asia, Polynesia, Australia, Europe and the Americas; by environmentalists and astronomers; by secular humanists and Freethinkers; by eco-Christians and those of other religions and philosophies,” Fox told The Times in an interview Wednesday….

Humankind has been “observing solstices for thousands of years,” Fox said, but the celestial events have become even more of the moment. Why? Because this is an “age of climate change and a need to have sustainability on the planet,” she said, so it makes sense that a holiday that has “connecting with the cycles of nature” at its core would become popular.

And of course that is why the mythic birth of Jesus was set on December 25, to symbolize rebirth and light coming back to the world. In pagan terms, the birth of the new sun. Here’s a video of the Solstice celebration at Stonehenge in 2009.

One year from now, the 2012 Winter Solstice will mark the end of the Mayan calendar, and we’ll probably have to deal with all kinds of apocalyptic prediction about what is going to happen next. NASA has a page debunking the idea that the end of the world is coming on December 22, 2012. Of course the maniacs in Washington DC might do something that would cause the end of the world as we know it. Let’s hope not.

Yesterday, Dakinikat had a post on John Boehner’s payroll tax fiasco. First Boehner said the House would agree to a 2-month extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits, as passed by the Senate. Then suddenly Boehner announced that Republicans wouldn’t vote for the compromise bill–now they wanted a year’s extension or nothing. WTF?!

At the Daily Beast, Patricia Murphy claims to provide the inside story on what happened.

What happened between Boehner’s agreement to follow the Senate’s lead and his tacit admission that his own caucus had overruled him? Aides and House members describe a now-infamous caucus conference call Saturday morning, when rank-and-file members blasted the Boehner-blessed deal, which they felt gave in on too many of their demands and delivered too little in return.

A closed door meeting Monday night revealed more doubts from conservatives over whether Boehner had pushed for the best deal they could have gotten and fueled Democratic frustration that Boehner, who they believe negotiated in good faith, simply cannot speak for his caucus anymore. The debacle capped a tumultuous year for the speaker, reigniting questions about how much longer he can lead the unwieldy GOP coalition, many of whose members clearly have no interest in following him where he wants to go.

Publicly, Boehner and House Republicans presented a united front this week, blaming President Obama for shortening a tax cut they say they have wanted to pass all along. But Democrats blamed a group of Republicans they’ve dubbed “the kamikazes,” the GOP freshmen who arrived in January on a wave of Tea Party anger and have shown time and again that they are willing to blow up their careers and everything around them in service to their cause.

The kamikazes’ casualty list this year is long. They blew up the debt-ceiling vote this summer, sparking a downgrade in the nation’s credit rating. They blew up the appropriations process so thoroughly that routine spending votes morphed into philosophical standoffs that nearly locked down the federal government three times and required seven temporary funding patches just to keep the lights on. And this week, they managed to blow up not just a tax cut that nearly everyone in Washington agrees is a good idea, but also their party’s hard-earned reputation for cutting taxes and, quite possibly, their chances at a long-term majority in the House and future control of the Senate.

Talk about self-immolation! In the meantime, questions are being asked about Boehner’s leadership.

At ABC’s The Note, Jonathan Karl is predicting the Republicans will fold. We’ll see. President Obama is really good at finding ways to give in to the Congressional terrorists. Maybe someone can distract him long enough to let this play out without his intervention.

Also at the the Daily Beast, there’s a creepy, yet semi-humorous story about local cops being militarized by the Department of Homeland Security, this time in my birthplace, the quiet little city of Fargo, North Dakota.

Nestled amid plains so flat the locals joke you can watch your dog run away for miles, Fargo treasures its placid lifestyle, seldom pierced by the mayhem and violence common in other urban communities. North Dakota’s largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there’s not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade.

But that hasn’t stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars.

Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation—if it ever occurs—officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it’s been parked near the children’s bounce house.

“Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here,” says Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. “There’s no terrorism here.”

Read it and weep. If Fargo has that much military hardware, imagine what they’ve got in NYC, Chicago, and LA! Police State Amerika is here.

At the NYT, Charlie Savage reports on the Justice Department settlement with Bank of America over discrimination in mortgage lending by Countrywide.

The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history, saying that Bank of America had agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom.

A department investigation concluded that Countrywide loan officers and brokers charged higher fees and rates to more than 200,000 minority borrowers across the country than to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk. Countrywide also steered more than 10,000 minority borrowers into costly subprime mortgages when white borrowers with similar credit profiles received regular loans, it found.

Now how about putting some banksters in jail for bringing down the economy? Not holding my breath, but at least BOA has to cough up some bucks.

Newt Gingrich has been accused of illegally profiting from his presidential campaign.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich became the target on Monday of a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint filed by the non-profit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which accused the Georgia Republican of illegally profiting off his campaign.

The complaint is based on a revelation by The Washington Post‘s Dan Eggen, who discovered that Gingrich had personally sold a mailing list to his campaign and profited to the tune of $47,005, then failed to report the transaction on a key FEC document. That’s count one, according to CREW.

That mailing list did not belong to Gingrich personally, CREW said. It instead belonged to Gingrich Productions, Inc., a private business that sells Gingrich’s books. Since he paid himself instead of Gingrich Productions, CREW alleged that a second count of using campaign money for personal expenses is called for as well. The treasurer who signed off on the deal is also accused of violating campaign finance laws.

CREW explained in their complaint (PDF) that Gingrich Productions often stages events at the same time as Newt 2012, Inc., his non-profit group and principal campaign committee, which could constitute improper corporate contributions to a political campaign in that the campaign directly benefits from Gingrich Productions’ events.

It goes on to note that the mailing list Gingrich moved from his book company to his campaign was actually a list of people who were waiting at Gingrich events to have their books signed, showing even further how Gingrich Productions and Newt 2012 work in tandem to help each other.

Whoopsie! Everybody’s out to get Newt these days. I’d love to see him end up in jail along with some banksters, but again–not holding my breath.

As you’ve all heard, Ron Paul stalked off the set of an interview at CNN yesterday after he was asked about some racist passages in newsletters he published years ago. But USA today has caught Paul in a serious contradiction about those writings.

Rep. Ron Paul has tried since 2001 to disavow racist and incendiary language published in Texas newsletters that bore his name, denying he wrote them and even walking out of an interview on CNN Wednesday. But he vouched for the accuracy of the writings and admitted writing at least some of the passages when first asked about them in an interview in 1996.

Some issues of the newsletters included racist, anti-Israel or anti-gay comments, including a 1992 newsletter in which he said 95% of black men in Washington “are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”

Paul told TheDallas Morning News in 1996 that the contents of his newsletters were accurate but needed to be taken in context. Wednesday, he told CNN he didn’t write the newsletters and didn’t know what was in them.

Hmmmm…. I guess Mitt Romney isn’t the only flip-flopper in the Republican presidential race.

Speaking of Romney, that guy has really gone off the deep end in his efforts to court Iowa Tea Party voters. Steve Benen suggests that Romney has “lost his mind.”

Mitt Romney unveiled a brand-new stump speech in New Hampshire last night, reading a carefully-crafted, poll-tested text from two teleprompters. Confident that his Republican primarily rivals simply won’t (or can’t) catch him, the former one-term governor ignored the other GOP candidates in his speech, and focused exclusively on attacking President Obama.

Wow! Two telepromters? Now why does that sound familiar? Anyway, the point is that Romney has been reduced to following the Tea Party meme that Obama is a commie socialist. From the speech:

“Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

“In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.

“The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off.”

ROFLOL! Benen writes:

It stands to reason that Romney, who’s completed the transition from “progressive” views to far-right hysterics, would present a worldview different from the center-left president’s. But this speech was written in a twisted fantasy land, and it ascribes views to Obama that are simply made up. It’s just madness.

And get this: Romney wants Obama’s uncle deported!

ABC News’ Michael Falcone reports:

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a Boston talk radio host on Wednesday that he supports the deportation of President Obama’s Kenyan-born uncle who was arrested this fall on drunken driving charges in Massachusetts.

When asked by Boston radio personality Howie Carr whether the president’s relative, Onyango Obama, should be deported, Romney said, “the answer is ‘yes.’”

“Well, if the laws of the United States say he should be deported, and I presume they do, then of course we should follow those laws,” Romney said. “And the answer is ‘yes.’”

And last week, Romney told Sean Hannity that Obama is deliberately and knowingly hurting America for political reasons.

Hannity: The president has been using class warfare as we know. He says Republicans want dirty air, dirty water. Says Republicans want old people, kids with autism and Down’s syndrome to fend for themselves. Pretty outrageous charges.

Romney: Shameful. It’s really shameful.

Hannity: Explain, and how do you counter that if you get this nomination?

Romney: You know, I think the president has gone from being a failed presidency, a guy over his head, to someone who is now so desperate to get re-election that he’s doing things that are very much counter to the interest of the country and he knows it. In the past I think he was just misguided. Now I think he really knows that his decision in Afghanistan to pull the troops out a couple of months earlier than commanders suggested. That was not a wise, not a wise thing for the country. The Keystone pipeline, he knows we need that oil, he knows the consequences.

If Romney is this nuts now, imagine what he’ll be like in the thick of the primaries. Folks, Romney is not the “reasonable” candidate. There is no reasonable candidate on the Republican side. It’s going to be a completely insane candidate vs. a fascist pretending to be a Democrat. Followed by the end of the Mayan calendar. If we’re lucky, the world will end before the next president is inaugurated. Just kidding, I think.

I’ll end with this embarrassing for him, amusing for us, bit of gossip about Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), known for his cantankerous ways and for not speaking to media unless it’s his idea, was overheard at the Delta Crown lounge at Reagan National Airport today talking on his cellphone about an incident he said occurred three weeks ago while at an Episcopal church auction. Please note, a church auction.

Our source, a Democratic operative who heard the whole thing, said he was “very loud”. Sensenbrenner was overheard saying that after buying all their “crap” (his word) a woman approached him and praised first lady Michelle Obama. He told the woman that Michelle should practice what she preaches — “she lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.”

The operative said it sounded like he was on the phone with a staffer who was telling him that someone in the media would likely write about his comments (concerning something) to which he said it was heresy and just liberal media bias to print gossip. But “he stands by his remarks.”

Sensenbrenner is on the pudgy side. Someone should tell him that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: December 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, unemployment | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 31 Comments

Out of Town News, Harvard Square

Good Morning!!

Frankly, I’ll be very glad when this holiday season is over. It goes on way too long. This year I saw Christmas stuff at Halloween! At least I don’t get depressed at this time of year anymore, and I’m very happy for people who enjoy the celebration. I’ll probably have a nice time at Christmas dinner, but why do we need a two month build-up? Please forgive my grumbling…. I’ll get to the news, such as it is.

MSNBC’s First Read reports that Boehner and his merry men in the House “punted” on the payroll tax cut bill last night; supposedly they’ll vote on it today.

House Republican leaders emerged following a meeting with rank-and-file members to say that the House would take up their votes on Tuesday. Lawmakers had planned to vote around 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday evening, but the 6 p.m. meeting of GOP lawmakers lasted longer than expected, over two hours.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said that the House Rules Committee, which sets the parameters for votes in the House, would meet tonight to set the stage for tomorrow’s series of votes. Those Tuesday votes would include a measure to reject the Senate’s two month extension, and instead instruct lawmakers to meet in a conference — the formal process of resolving differences with legislation in the Senate.

“Our members do not want to just punt and do a two-month, short-term fix where we have to come back and do this again,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters at the Capitol.

House Republicans prefer legislation to extend the expiring tax cut by a whole year, and produced legislation to that effect. But Democrats in the Senate rejected that proposal because of some of the cuts used to offset the cost of the bill, which also includes an extension of unemployment insurance.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper is reporting that the two month extension passed by the Senate and backed by President Obama cannot be implemented in it’s current form.

Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by President Obama cannot be implemented properly.

Pete Isberg, president of the NPRC today wrote to the key leaders of the relevant committees of the House and Senate, telling them that “insufficient lead time” to implement the complicated change mandated by the legislation means the two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees.”

ABC News obtained a copy of the letter, which can be read HERE. Isberg agreed that it would be fair to characterize his letter as saying that the two-month payroll tax holiday cannot be implemented properly.

Why on earth can’t those morons on Capital Hill just extend the unemployment insurance for Pete’s sake? The Congressional Republicans make Scrooge look like a piker when it comes to mean-spiritedness. Aren’t most of them supposed to be “Christians?” Good grief!

Please, can’t someone force Boehner and Cantor to visit some homeless shelters and perhaps some parks and street corners in Washington D.C., where no doubt some of the 1.6 million homeless children in the U.S. reside? One out of every 45 kids in this country were homeless last year! And these evil bastards are trying to make this horrendous situation worse!

A huge winter storm was pounding the Southwest and the lower Great Plains States last night.

Interstates and highways were shut down Monday night as a large winter weather system brought heavy snow, fierce winds and ice to at least five states in the West and Midwest.

There were blizzard conditions in parts of western Kansas and southeast Colorado, with visibility of less than a quarter-mile, said Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

A blizzard warning was in effect for those areas along with northeastern New Mexico, the northwest Texas panhandle and the Oklahoma panhandle, he said. The severe weather was starting to affect Missouri late Monday, with a winter weather advisory in effect for the northwest corner of the state.

Roads were closed in Texas and New Mexico because of blizzard conditions. Wow, some of those people rarely see snow. If you live in the storm area, please stay inside and don’t drive!

The New York Times calls handling of Kim Jong Il’s death “an extensive intelligence failure.”

Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.

For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.

Asian and American intelligence services have failed before to pick up significant developments in North Korea. Pyongyang built a sprawling plant to enrich uranium that went undetected for about a year and a half until North Korean officials showed it off in late 2010 to an American nuclear scientist. The North also helped build a complete nuclear reactor in Syria without tipping off Western intelligence.

As the United States and its allies confront a perilous leadership transition in North Korea — a failed state with nuclear weapons — the closed nature of the country will greatly complicate their calculations. With little information about Mr. Kim’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, and even less insight into the palace intrigue in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, much of their response will necessarily be guesswork.

Not good. Maybe the CIA and NSA should concentrate on actual intelligence gathering rather than bugging Americans phone calls and reading their e-mails and tweets and Facebook postings.

Did you notice that Jeb Bush had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday? With Gingrich tanking and Ron Paul rising in Iowa, are the Republicans getting ready to push another Bush for president? Charlie Pierce of Esquire thinks it looks that way:

He was supposed to be the savvy one, the presidential one, not that dolt of a brother who ducked his National Guard duty, ran several businesses into the dust of west Texas, got drunk and challenged the Auld Fella to a fistfight, and kept driving his car into the bushes. But the dolt got Daddy’s money and Daddy’s lawyers behind him and got installed as president, where he did his utmost to lodge the family brand somewhere between those enjoyed by Corvair and leprosy. Meanwhile, the golden child got to be governor of Florida for a while longer.

And now, in the widening gyre, slouching toward Manchester to be born, our moment of… Jeb (!)

Make no mistake. You don’t write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal at this point in the Republican primary process unless somebody, somewhere wants to make people think you’re an legitimate option. You certainly don’t write one as stuffed full of free-market banana-oil as this one unless somebody, somewhere wants to raise enough money to make the world think you’re a legitimate option. There was enough Jeb (!) buzz over the weekend that it’s becoming plain that some very important someone’s have looked over the current Republican field and decided that, by god, it’s just bad enough that there’s room in there to bring back the most discredited surname in American politics. The slogan writes itself:

“Jeb! This time, let’s try the smart one.”

I don’t know. I don’t think any of the Bushes are all that bright. They’re way too inbred. Maybe another Bush presidency is what the Mayans predicted as the world-ending event?

I’ll end with an upbeat story. Remember Jessica Lynch? She just graduated from college.

I don’t really like to talk about what it took to get here. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, or to think I don’t know how fortunate I am. Everyone else in my vehicle in Iraq was killed. My best friend, Lori Piestewa, died as a prisoner of war. I’m still here.

I’m also incredibly proud of this moment. I always dreamed of becoming a teacher, ever since my own kindergarten teacher took me under her wing when I was frightened on the first day of school. We are still in touch today. That’s the kind of teacher I want to be.

In the eight years since my captivity, I’ve had 21 surgeries. I have metal parts in my spine, a rod in my right arm, and metal in my left femur and fibula. My right foot is held together by screws, plates, rods, and pins. I have no feeling in my left leg from the knee down, and I wear a brace every day. Sometimes I’ll get a flash of pain, or feel upset because I can’t run, and then I’ll remind myself: I’m alive. I’m here. Take some ibuprofen.

Go read the whole thing. It’s not very long, and it’s a nice, inspirational story.

Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

Monday Reads

Posted: December 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , | 24 Comments

Good Morning!

More news on the assault on the rights of US women and a case that may put Roe v. Wade back on the SCOTUS  Docket.  We’ve written of this one before; however, Newsweek has some extra analysis.  Jennie McCormick was arrested for using RU-486 to terminate a pregnancy in her home state of Idaho.  She got the pills from her sister and was reported to police by a friend.  So, what exactly is her crime?  Her pregnancy was a few weeks farther along than the one trimester.

McCormack, who thought she was about 12 weeks along, took the pills (the protocol involves two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol) the afternoon they arrived. The drugs are FDA-approved only for ending early-stage pregnancies; McCormack had no complications, but the pregnancy turned out to be more advanced than she thought—perhaps between 18 and 21 weeks, experts later speculated—and the size of the fetus scared her. She didn’t know what to do—“I was paralyzed,” she says—so she put it in a box on her porch, and, terrified, called a friend. That friend then called his sister, who reported McCormack to the police.

Although RU-486 is legal and the fetus was not yet “viable” (that is, old enough to live outside the uterus), Idaho has a 1972 law—never before enforced—making it a crime punishable by five years in prison for a woman to induce her own abortion. The day after police arrested McCormack, her mug shot appeared above the fold in the local newspaper. “It’s hard to imagine the humiliation and fear,” says her lawyer, Richard Hearn, who is also a physician.

The case was dropped weeks later due to lack of evidence. Without solid proof, such as the envelope in which the pills came, her confession wasn’t enough to sustain the case. But prosecutors retained the right to re-file charges. In response, Hearn got a federal injunction to prevent any woman from being prosecuted under the state’s anti-abortion statute by the district attorney. He also filed a class-action suit against the state, claiming the statute is unconstitutional. But all that took nine months to play out, and McCormack lurched into depression and became a virtual shut-in.

“You’d have to know the climate here,” says Hearn, “to fully imagine the amount of pressure Jennie is under, how hostile people can be, how isolated she is.” Next week, motions will be heard in federal court to certify the suit as a class action. Last week, the prosecutor filed a motion to have Hearn’s injunction lifted.

This is basically the new frontier of the back alley abortion.  Approximately 20 percent of abortions now involve pills abortion drugs.  They are 95% effective and many can be mail ordered over the internet.  Restrictions on abortion providers and funding all over the country may increase the necessity of using abortion drugs.  This could be a central case in the fight for women’s reproductive rights and our constitutional rights.

Last night North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died.  His third son will replace him.  Frontline has an interesting series of programs  on Kim that you may want to watch.

Speaking of Tin Pot dictators, John Boehner and his house republicans have blocked the payroll tax cuts.  Only tax cuts for billionaires seem to be acceptable to the minions of Grover Norquist.

In an interview on “Meet The Press” on NBC, John A. Boehner, the House speaker, said his members broadly opposed the two-month extension that passed the Senate 89 to 10 on Saturday, believing that it would be “just kicking the can down the road.”

“It’s time to just stop, do our work, resolve the differences, and extend this for one year,” Mr. Boehner said. “How can you have tax policy for two months?”

The surprising setback threatened the holiday plans of lawmakers and President Obama, deeply embarrassed Republican leaders in both chambers and raised the specter of a year-end tax increase that economists have warned could set back the already fragile economic recovery

The House is to take up the Senate bill — passed in a rare Saturday session — when members return to Capitol Hill on Monday night. House leaders expect the bill to fail and their members to then consider and perhaps vote on an amended version that same night.

Horrifying violence in Egypt extends to women protestors.  Two women were photographed being brutally beaten and molested by Egyptian Security forces.

In a video broadcast on the internet, security forces dressed in riot gear are seen chasing a woman and beating her to the ground with metal bars before stripping her and kicking her repeatedly. One soldier stamps his foot hard on her chest.

Other images showed women beaten unconscious.

After being viciously beaten by the ten-strong mob, the woman lies helplessly on the ground as her shirt is ripped from her body and a man kicks her with full force in her exposed chest.

Moments earlier she had been struck countless times in the head and body with metal batons, not content with the brutal beating delivered by his fellow soldier, one man stamped on her head repeatedly.

She feebly tried to shield her head from the relentless blows with her hands.

But she was knocked unconscious in the shameful attack and left lying motionless as the military men mindlessly continued to beat her limp and half-naked body.

Before she was set upon by the guards, three men appeared to carry her as they tried to flee the approaching military.

But they were too slow and the soldiers caught up with them, capturing the women and knocking one of the men to the ground.

I’m just glad we didn’t share our armed drone technology with Mubarak.

William D. Cohen has a killer essay up at Bloomberg called: Corzine Another Victim of the Alpha-Male Curse.

For years, I have wondered why, for some people, enough is never enough. For example, what could have possibly motivated Jon Corzine — a respected former senator, governor and Wall Street big shot with hundreds of millions in the bank — to take the top job at MF Global Holdings Ltd (MF) in the first place?

He was 63 years old, six months away from getting remarried. He was one of the few remaining high-profile Wall Street Democrats around, and an avid supporter of President Barack Obama. He was routinely mentioned as a possible successor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, if Obama were to win a second term.

Why couldn’t Corzine just enjoy his fortune, perhaps set up an eponymous foundation to do good works, bide his time and then use his connections to become Treasury secretary? He already had a cushy perch at Princeton University, where he invited any number of finance types to teach his class while he basked in their reflective glory. Life was good. (Disclosure: I once taught the class, although the amount of glory reflected is debatable.)

There’s a fascinating set of articles on the CERN particle collider and the hunt for The Higgs boson particle at The Economist.

The announcement, by Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli—the heads, respectively, of two experiments at CERN known as ATLAS and CMS—was that both of their machines have seen phenomena which look like traces of the Higgs. They are traces, rather than actual bosons, because no Higgs will ever be seen directly. The best that can be hoped for are patterns of breakdown particles from Higgses that are, themselves, the results of head-on collisions between protons travelling in opposite directions around CERN’s giant accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Heavy objects like Higgs bosons can break down in several different ways, but each of these ways is predictable. Both ATLAS and CMS have seen a number of these predicted patterns often enough to pique interest, but not (yet) often enough to constitute proof that they came from Higgses, rather than being random fluctuations in the background of non-Higgs decays.

The crucial point, and the reason for the excitement, is that both ATLAS and CMS (which are located in different parts of the ring-shaped accelerator tunnel of the LHC) have come up with the same results. Both indicate that, if what they have seen really are Higgses, then the boson has a mass of about 125 giga-electron-volts (GeV), in the esoteric units which are used to measure how heavy subatomic particles are. That coincidence bolsters the suggestion that this is the real thing, rather than a few chance fluctuations.

Bradley Manning begins his 4th day of his preliminary hearing.  The third day brought some interesting testimony on the atmosphere surrounding the sort of intelligence Manning saw.

However, the witnesses also said soldiers at the intelligence analysis center Manning worked at in Iraq routinely flouted the Army’s safeguards for classified information by playing music, movies and video games on computers that were part of the military’s secure network for classified information.

Some in the brigade even used a “password-crack program” to break into the administrator account and add software, a civilian computer contractor who handled Manning’s unit, Jason Milliman, testified.

“They thought they had full rights and were able to whatever they wanted to do,” said Milliman, who said he couldn’t stop the unauthorized practices because he had no authority over the soldiers.

Capt. Thomas Cherepko, who was in charge of the computer network at Manning’s base in eastern Iraq, said the presence of unauthorized programs on the classified computers was routine

Asked if the rules were “violated on a daily basis,” Cherepko said: “More or less, yes sir.”

Well, that should start things off today.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Saturday in Sisterland

Posted: December 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton, morning reads, Women's Rights | 52 Comments
Secretary Clinton Delivers the Keynote Address at Inaugural Women in Public Service Colloquium

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers the keynote address at the Inaugural Women In Public Service Colloquium, at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on December 15, 2011. (State Department photo/ Public Domain

Morning, news junkies!

Don’t you just love the photo of Hillary to the right? Hillary looks so glamorous and elegant in black, with her hair flipped out, and please note the sign on her podium. It’s the name of an initiative she has just launched. An iconic shot, if you ask me.

Bloomberg has the scoop:

Clinton Seeks Women Leaders to ‘Tackle Our Biggest Problems’

By Nicole Gaouette – Dec 15, 2011 11:01 PM CT

Hillary Clinton would like to see more women in government around the world.

She said she knows “how daunting it is” for women to consider a public-service career, yet “we need women at every level of government from executive mansions and foreign ministries to municipal halls and planning commissions, from negotiation international disarmament treaties to debating town ordinances.”

To that end, Clinton yesterday initiated the Women in Public Service Project, a program intended to increase the number of women in leadership. This summer, for instance, 40 women from the Middle East and North Africa will go to her alma mater, Wellesley College, to gain skills in public speaking, coalition building, networking and mentorship.

The initiative reflects an idea that Clinton has returned to throughout her tenure as the top U.S. diplomat — that people, their communities and countries do better when women are active participants in public life.

The issue isn’t just about fairness, the top U.S. diplomat said. “It’s about expanding the pool of talented people to help tackle our biggest problems.”

That’s our Hillary, and this is her life’s work–tirelessly framing the principle of fairness in terms of solving problems and dilligently doing the legwork to bring both objectives together in the form of concrete actions. She’s our modern-day Franklin and Eleanor, all in the same person.

Hillary’s partner in campaining for women and girls–Melanne Verveer–says the Women in Public Service project is “going to grow exponentially.”

Even as the hunger for the ordinary man’s right to self-goverance continues to grow around the world, the political participation of women still remains a taboo, as the Arab Spring has brought into focus.

‘Dirty Word’

Private sector help for the program will be crucial, Clinton said. Computer maker Dell Inc. (DELL), based in Round Rock, Texas, will provide hardware, training and other support for the program. Ogilvy Worldwide is helping with public relations and information support, she said.

While women in North Africa and the Middle East have played a pivotal role in the Arab Spring, “for many of them, politics was still kind of a dirty word” and there may be some reluctance to stay engaged in the process of reform.

Clinton said she made the point that if these women don’t make their own transition from taking part in “this extraordinary historic revolution to actually doing the hard, and yes, sometimes boring difficult work of politics, you may not realize the gains and the hopes that you had demonstrated for.”

Hillary’s words are very salient there. Women are their own best advocates. If half this world’s population doesn’t stand up for themselves in every nook and cranny of this planet, then all the protest fever in the world will be limited in what it can achieve.

Women have to be equal and respected participants of protests for protests to matter.

Secretary Clinton Meets With IMF Managing Director Lagarde

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde, at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on December 15, 2011. (State Department photo/public domain)

Here’s one last excerpt from the Bloomberg piece, but I urge you to click over to the article and give the rest of it a read:

‘Grit Your Teeth’

Clinton and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and one of the speakers, spoke about the hurdles to women that remain.

“It’s not as though there’s been this huge, cosmic change” in attitudes, Clinton said. “It still is hard.”

Clinton mentioned a radio interview she heard while getting dressed for work this week. A woman interviewed about Republican presidential nominee Michele Bachmann said she wasn’t comfortable supporting a woman for president.

“Imagine my reaction,” said Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2008 election. “So it’s not only in other countries that attitudes need to be addressed. It is even in a country like my own.”

Lagarde gave the women in the crowded auditorium two pieces of advice. The first was to build a list of talented, skilled women so that the next time a male employer said they were unable to find a qualified woman for a job, they could whip out their list. She recalled the struggle she had as French finance minister with state-owned firms reluctant to hire women, despite laws requiring it.

“Start building your list,” she said to applause. “Do it, do it, do it and use it.”

Lagarde’s second tip focused on the hostility toward women that remains in too many workplaces, however subtle: “Take the bashing, grit your teeth and smile, because there will be others after you,” she said.

Speaking of hostility toward working women, particularly single working mothers, Bryce Covert over at New Deal 2.0 discusses the consequences of state cutbacks in childcare services — Cutting Back on Childcare Assistance Puts Single Mothers in the Hole:

Single mothers aren’t faring very well in the recovery. Their unemployment rate was 12.4 percent in November, up from 11.7 percent in June 2009. An unemployed single mother will clearly need help with at least one thing to go out and get another job: childcare. And those who have jobs are still trying to make ends meet, potentially working longer hours and in need of someone to care for their children. But just as the need for childcare assistance is surely rising, states are cutting back. A new report from the National Women’s Law Center shows that those in need of assistance were worse off this year compared to last year in 37 states when it came to income eligibility limits to qualify, waiting lists, copayments, reimbursement rates, and eligibility for assistance to parents looking for a job.

Denying women support for childcare will directly impact their ability to save and their need to take on debt. As a report from NYU Wagner, “At Rope’s End,” says, “The hefty costs associated with single parenthood, which include childcare, housing, food, health insurance, among others, decrease the likelihood that, even with a stable income, these mothers will be able to accrue wealth.” And paying for childcare is no small cost. The average price of full-time care can range from $3,600 to $18,200 annually, according to the NWLC report, and At Rope’s End estimates that this cost accounts for over three-quarters of single mothers’ monthly expenditures.

Here’s a related graph, via Economix, from earlier this month:

In the month of November, the number of men in the labor force (working or actively looking) rose by about 23,000. By contrast, the number of women in the labor force fell by 339,000. (The numbers do not add to a 315,000 net loss because of rounding.)Even more peculiar is what these lost female workers did before they dropped out.

Typically when we think of workers dropping out of the labor market these days, we think of workers who have been unemployed for a while and have simply given up looking for a job. But last month, almost all of the net loss of women from the labor force was accounted for by women who had jobs right before they dropped out.

DESCRIPTION

Here is a pie chart for the 3,893,000 women who left the labor force in November — the gross number, so not subtracting those who newly entered the job market — sorted by how those women were categorized the month before:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Now the numbers are volatile, so take this with a grain of salt. We also do not know why so many women left their jobs to drop out of the labor force. Probably some of them were going on maternity leave, and some quit their jobs for other reasons.

I would guess that most of them, though, were laid-off workers who had not yet started looking for a new job. After all, state and local governments are shedding workers in large numbers, and most state and local workers are women.

Couple that last statement with the fact that states are cutting back on childcare, and you can see that women are hurting in this economy–one for which President Obama recently offered these oh-so-inspiring, Condi-esque words…“we didn’t know how bad it was.”

Sheesh, well if the brilliant and immaculately conceived Barack Obama could not tell how bad it was, then who could have? Certainly not Dr. Dakinikat, nor that ‘stupid bitch’ who wouldn’t quit in 2008, and definitely not any of those silly wimminz who voted for her.

I guess only the ubiquituous ‘Nobody’ could have forseen…

(By the way it was the original ‘Nobody’s’ 181st birthday last Saturday!)

Shifting gears a bit… once again, Ukraian feminists have gone wild, making some waves… FEMEN, Ukrainian Women’s Rights Group, Protests Russian Elections (warning: Huffpo link contains NSFW photos):

Security guards detain activists from Femen in front of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow

Security guards detain activists from women's rights group Femen for staging a performance to support Russian opposition groups and to protest against violations at the parliamentary elections in front of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow December 9, 2011. REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov

Russians aren’t the only people protesting the allegedly rigged parliamentarian elections held earlier this month.

Turns out FEMEN, a Ukrainian feminist group, is also up in arms about the win of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in the Dec. 4 elections.

To show their disapproval, FEMEN protesters stripped down in front of The Cathedral Of Christ The Savior in Moscow on Friday, holding signs that said, “God Get Rid Of The Czar,’ AGI reports.

The women were detained by security guards and taken into police custody, Reuters reports. The women were released shortly after being detained.

In an effort to explain their stance, the the FEMEN protesters wrote about the Moscow demonstrations today on their website. They noted that during the protests, one of their activists dislocated her arm as a result of a scuffle with the guards.

This reminds me of *last December* around pretty much the same time, when the same group of Ukranian feminists ‘urinated in protest’ of the country’s all-male cabinet (scroll to the middle of the linked post for details).

These gals know how to do holiday sacrilege in the month of December!

That Reuters pic of the security guards detaining the protesters is disturbing, though.

Which brings me to this next bizarro world link… via Jezebel:

Heathen Pink Bibles Pulled From Shelves Due To Nefarious Planned Parenthood Connection

Scary pink bibles talking about girly parts!

Nearly every product imaginable, from Band-Aids to KitchenAid mixers, is now available in pink, and Americans are constantly encouraged to buy these items to support the fight against breast cancer. So why is a Christian bookstore furiously pulling pink Bibles from its shelves? Because they raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which in turn funds Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer programs. CNN reports that in recent weeks conservative Christian groups were put in the strange position of rallying against a Bible after people complained that $1 from the sale of each “Here’s Hope Breast Cancer Bible” goes to the Komen foundation.

A dollar from the sale of each bible went to breast cancer awareness and screening, oh noes! It’s a war on the baby jesus!

Moving along from the religiously challenged to the politically bankrupt…

Wonk’s $0.02 on 2012

So far next year’s election cycle doesn’t look like much to write about politically. I’ve dubbed it ESOTUS 2012–i.e. Empty Suit of the United States 2012. (Please refer to my primer on the tortured logic of trying to choose between Romney and Obama.)

So I’m going to skip right to about the only bit of human interest that I’ve come across yet:

Why would any self-respecting woman endorse an empty suit? (To get her foot in the door of his Administration, methinks.)

Is Nikki Haley going to get the VP nod? Double X’s Jessica Grose says she buys Haley’s insistence that she’s not looking for a spot on Mittens’ ticket, but I don’t know what to think. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised to see Haley somewhere in a Romney Administration, should the “perfectly lubricated weather wane” (thank you, Jon Huntsman) win.

Ok, next up…I was bored to tears by Huffpo’s stuffy “9 Books to Get Your Sister” list, so I’ve made up my own wishlist called “7 books you can buy me, sister-friend:”

And now for… Today in Women’s History

Deborah Sampson - For the Good of the Country, artwork by Pamela Patrick White

Deborah Sampson was born, December 17, 1760… I loved this blurb on Sampson, from artist Pamela Patrick White, via Old Glory Prints:

A tall girl, Deborah enlisted in the 4th Mass. Regiment of the Continental Army, as Robert Shertliffe. Wounded twice during the war – by bullet and saber slash, she was honorably discharged by Henry Knox at West Point. Good enough for her country, but not good enough for the Baptists, who excommunicated her.

Phyllis Schlafly is even now uncertain if she could cook and thus be worthy of Citizenship.

Learn more at:

http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvets.html

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/sampson.html

http://www.americanrevwar.homestead.com/files/SAMPSON.HTM.

Before I go, a few pick-me-ups…

This first one is a h/t to quixote who sent me the link to the BBC story: Oil spill penguins released into sea off New Zealand.

I’m just going to put the youtube up here for your convenience:

And, this second one is a h/t to Minkoff Minx… via EarthSky: Who knew baby rhinos sounded like this?

Again, I’m just going to embed the video here so you don’t have to click over:

And, one more… this one is a link to a tumblr of baby animal photos and you’ll have to click over to see all the warm fuzziness (via the Design Inspiration):

70 Cutie Baby Animals Bring You a Good Mood

It’s really hard for me to choose just one, but this was the first one I happened to see:

Ok, well that’s it for me. I hope you keep warm and happy and drop in with what’s on your reading list this weekend!

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