Family Circus: Jeffy: There's a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, how come there's no Children's Day? Grandma: Because every day is Children's Day! Bread & Circus: Cheney: There's a Labor Day and an Earth Day, how come there's no Capital Day? American worker: Because every day is Capital Day! From the article: Since the end of the recession in 2001, the economy has strengthened, productivity is up, and companies are posting healthy profits. Yet low- and medium-wage workers …... Read more
The Carpetbagger Report brings us this story from the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal: "Pastor claims church voted to reject black membership, resigns." SALTILLO, Miss. — A pastor who says his congregation voted not to accept black membership has resigned. The church says it never made such a decision. The Rev. John Stevens says Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo voted not to approve blacks as members during a scheduled Sunday night business meeting Aug. 6. Because of the decision, Stevens stepped... Read more
Whew. Survived the month-o-daily-rehearsals. (Work, nap, rehearsal, nap, work, repeat — didn't I used to have a blog?) So I'll be playing catch-up for a bit (on both the sleeping and the blogging), probably with a bunch of sloppy multi-topic posts. Question: If, say, you were a Very Large national chain of newspapers and you had made the initial mistake, when switching all of your newspapers to a single database and a single server bank for their online editions, of... Read more
The Sept./Oct. print edition of Mother Jones' includes an impressive, dismaying timeline of the Iraq war, "Lie by Lie: How Our Leaders Used Fear and Falsehood to Dupe Us Into a Mideast Quagmire." It's not online yet, but Mojo has posted the following note: Coming soon: an interactive, searchable version with more than 800 entries and 2,000 links to original source documents. … Cool. Keept an eye on that space — this timeline deserves a good bit of attention and... Read more
I wanna be in fifth grade again I wanna worry about poison ivy I wanna worry 'bout getting beat up after school I want to send you a note "I Wanna Be Sedated," The Ramones "I Wanna Be Your Lover," Prince "I Wanna Buy You a Ring," Huffamoose "I Wanna Get Married," Nellie McKay "I Wanna Roo You," Van Morrison "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl," Nina Simone "I Want Everything," Cracker "I Want to Be a Clone,"... Read more
Scientists with Advanced Cell Technology yesterday announced a minor breakthrough in stem-cell collection. The White House immediately seized this opportunity to announce its own major breakthrough in IVF hypocrisy. The Seattle Times cobbles together a nice summary from reports by The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer: A biotech company has developed a way to generate human embryonic stem-cell colonies without intentionally destroying embryos in the process. … But opponents of embryonic stem-cell research said the new approach still... Read more
Like most people, I've never been to NORAD, but I can picture the place thanks to movies like War Games and Independence Day. In addition to that mental image, I also had another image of the North American Aerospace Defense Command — one that both those movies also referenced. NORAD was the omnicompetent, nearly invincible guarantor of American supremacy in the skies. For the last half of the 20th century, from Truman through Clinton, NORAD embodied the slogan the U.S.... Read more
"Protest roils Riverside (N.J.)" report Joel Bewley and Nancy Petersen of The Philadelphia Inquirer. This kind of story about the so-called "immigration debate" is becoming routine. Pro-immigrant groups organize a march, waving American flags. Counter-protesters heckle them, shouting that they don't belong in America. The pictures are worth 1,000 words. Be sure to check out Photo No. 8 in the slideshow, captioned: "Counterdemonstrators cheer a car passing by with a Confederate flag." The Inky reports that this was not an... Read more
The Good News: Current work & rehearsal schedule does allow for several hours of sleep every day. The Bad News: They're not in a row. So blogging may be light for a bit and you may notice a few careless errors due to sleep deprivation (instead of the usual careless errors due to laziness, apathy and distraction). * * * * * Anthrax Atrios and AmericaBlog wonder why the anthrax attacks have disappeared down the memory hole. This is a... Read more
(What would Don Johnson do?) Some 84 Hollywood stars have taken a controversial political stand: They're in favor of democracy and opposed to terrorism (article here). Well, good. Mighty white of them. (Julia and Steve M. chime in on the celebrity-political complex.) Here's what the celebrity signatories had to say: We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. If we... Read more
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