Author: PJ
Best News Yet: Sanders appointed to Budget Conference Committee
Reid appointed Senator Bernie Sanders to the upcoming Budget Conference Committee. And incidentally, it looks as if Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson will also be on the Committee… A compendium of reports: Huffington Post The Hill Daily Kos Politics USA Sanders …
Federalism and Saboteurs
INET economist Simon Johnson with one of the more salient post-shutdown takes yet, for its defense of federalism and its indictment of anti-government creep: The Long March of the American Right – NYTimes.com With a last-minute agreement on lifting the debt ceiling, the immediate threat of legal and financial…
Puppets and Puppeteers: A Moyers Interactive
Who’s Pulling the Strings Some gristle to gnaw upon: Ginni Thomas Virginia “Ginni” Thomas is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Critics have called out her activism as a potential conflict of interest with her husband’s judicial duties since 2000 – while working for the Heritage Foundation, she…
Space: Einstein Ring, Jellyfish
Hubble Detects Einstein Ring Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope report an incredibly lucky sighting of a young star-forming galaxy. The alignment of the normal galaxy and the distant galaxy had to be nearly perfect in order to create the gravitational lensing observed by the astronomers. Gravitational lensing, first predicted by…
Exhibits A – F: Wackiness in Relief
Exhibit A: Enrollees in ACA exchanges are an urban legend. Um, yeah. CBS This Morning’s Research-Free Health Care Report | Blog | Media Matters for America Exhibit B: Mc Cain and Gohmert exchange bizarre vitriol. Oh, yeah? McCain: Louie Gohmert Has ‘No Intelligence’ The Post-Shutdown GOP Civil War…
Kaleka Launches Exploratory Web Page
Amar Kaleka’s launch site: Petition to support Amar Kaleka’s candidacy Son of Slain Sikh Temple Leader Mulling Congressional Bid – New American Media/South Asian In an interview this week, a day before he filed papers with the FEC, Kaleka told India-West he believes gun violence can be controlled…
Thursday Music: Ella and Oscar
In this video Ella Fitzgerald is glorious as ever; the Oscar Peterson Trio accompaniment is wonderful too. Well worth a couple of “rewinds” to tune into them as well. Bonus Track: Canadian Oscar Peterson’s original composition, Hymn to Freedom, inspired by the U.S. Civil Rights movement:
Happy 159th to the Man in the Velvet Pants
Happy Birthday, Oscar Wilde! Oscar Wilde Biography “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.” “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” “I am not young enough to know everything.” “Every saint…
Idle Distractions
A little randomness for Idle musings: The Hall of Bright Carvings “Gormenghast, that is the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an…
On GOP Rigging
The House GOP’s Little Rule Change That Guaranteed A Shutdown Late on the night of Sept. 30, with the federal government just hours away from shutting down, House Republicans quietly made a small change to the House rules that blocked a potential avenue for ending the shutdown. It went largely…
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