Mike's Blog Roundup

post from Crooks and Liars on 26 August 2010 08:00:00 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Runnin' Scared: It's Obama's fault that people think he's a Muslim, say the guys who keep telling people he's a Muslim

field negro: Dr. King, I don't think this guy shares your vision

Corrente: Peaches and local investing

Joe. My. God.: Florida Pastor: Hundreds of armed militia will guard us as we burn the Koran

Big Think: Month of Thinking Dangerously: Abolish Primary Elections

David E?s Fablog: David Frum wrestles with those Strange Twilight Urges

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When Is Fuel Efficiency A Security Issue

post from TheGreenMiles.com on 26 August 2010 07:54:00 AM. © TheGreenMiles.com

When every extra time you need to gas up means an extra trip outside the gate.

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Early Morning Swim: George Pataki Hilariously
Denies Anti-Islam Sentiment on Right on Hardball

post from Firedoglake on 26 August 2010 07:48:40 AM. © Firedoglake

Meanwhile, Pataki should listen to the Mayor of New York.[...]

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Cornucopia Thursday

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 26 August 2010 07:36:46 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

CRIME NOTES - here in New Hampshire, we present Paul Baldwin - no, not the guy that "Coffee Talk" host Linda I'm a little verklempt Richman replaced, who was suffering from "spilgus in his gezook-ticus" ....

... no, the Granite State's Paul Baldwin is in jail after his 154th arrest - this time, trying to pilfer 48 cans of beer from a store in Kittery, Maine. Hey, now wait a sec .....

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? .... doesn't it look like our local criminal (left) ...is descended from the late Merlin Olsen the NFL Hall-of-Famer? Wotta shame ...

Help keep this crazy train rolling: stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
ART NOTES - an exhbit entitled Underground Pop is at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York through October 3rd.

MUSIC NOTES - a legendary (yet seldom heard) collection of 1930's jazz concerts recorded by audio engineer William Savory ....

... has been acquired by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem - who have begun digitizing them.

LAST WEEK an essayist wrote, "I've come to the conclusion that a majority of us are rich, 50-year-old stalks of celery".

But that wasn't new: as the "Lost in Space" character Dr. Smith was turned into a stalk of celery .....

.... well, at least for one episode.

LEGAL NOTES - the hockey Hall of Fame standout for the Montreal Canadiens Guy Lafleur has been acquitted by the Qu?bec Court of Appeal of giving false testimony at the criminal trial of his son Mark.

TUESDAY's CHILD wants to remind you it's "Take Your Cat to the Vet Week".

A RECENT CARTOON by Tom Tomorrow explores the "Serious Democrat" theme.

LANGUAGE NOTES - Swedish has long been a second language in Finland - yet declining numbers of speakers leave it under pressure like never before.

FATHER-SON? - Libya's Moammar Gadhafi .....

.... and The Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya (as portrayed by Mandy Patinkin).

KITTEH NOTES - a shopkeeper in Manchester, England foiled a robbery attempt by three masked men (with a handgun) by ~~shouting~~, ~~telephoning~~ ...... throwing cans of cat food at them.

ART NOTES - a collection of Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the Netherlands are on display at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California through February 6th.

MUSIC NOTES - an essayist for The Guardian considers the 1962 bossa-nova recording by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd entitled Jazz Samba to be one of the last hurrahs before the rock and roll era took hold in 1964.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Jack Daniels the Cat - a blind San Francisco kitteh located (via his microchip) in ~~Oakland~~, ~~Fresno~~ ..... Harlem.

POLITICAL NOTES - the new administration of David Cameron has scrapped Britain's annual assessment of human rights abuses across the world.

HAIL and FAREWELL to former Ohio GOP senator William Saxbe who has died at the age of 94. For someone who later served as President Nixon's attorney general, he is known for this one quote about Nixon's claim that he knew nothing about Watergate:

That sounds like the guy at the bawdy house who says, "Hey, I just play the piano here; I don't know what's going on upstairs!"

SEPARATED at BIRTH - film star Uma Thurman and UK supermodel Lily Donaldson.

BOOK NOTES - Entertainment Weekly ponders "20 Classic Last Words in Books".

CRIME NOTES - the theft of a Vincent Van Gogh painting - worth about $50m - from a Cairo, Egypt museum was made possible because none of the alarms (and only seven out of 43 security cameras) had worked for some time.

ART NOTES - a printmaking exhibit of Painting in 17th Century China is at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri through February 6th.

SPURNING the EASY LIFE the Oscar-winning French actor Juliette Binoche is putting the spotlight on human rights injustices in Iran.

HISTORY NOTES - in Bulgaria a recently excavated box of ancient bone fragments is said to contain partial remains of St John the Baptist.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Lola the Cat - an English kitteh about to be placed in a dumpster by this woman (caught on a security camera) who has received threats over what she admits was a lack of judgment.

BUSINESS NOTES - accounting regulators have proposed that businesses must list operating leases - not just capital leases - on their balance sheets.

POLITICAL NOTES - an official for the conservative Partido Popular in Spain has come under fire for his criticism of Trinidad Jim?nez (the Minister for Health) for her ~~politics~~, ~~experience~~ .... accent.

ELECTION NOTES - with President Lula unable to seek another re-election: the candidate of his party (Dilma Rousseff) is poised to win October's presidential election in Brazil in the first round of voting, according to opinion polls.

FRIDAY's CHILD is a resident at a new shelter in Indiana, nicknamed Cat Central Station by its staff.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... when Tim Meadows was a cast member on "Saturday Night Live", I always got a chuckle out of his recurring skit as a DJ on a show called The Quiet Storm - who would then press a 'thunder' sound effects button ...

... all the while, unaware it was a trademarked radio format featuring mellow, late-night R&B.

Had I known, I would have immediately associated this with the sound of Anita Baker whose career has been on-again-off-again (often by choice due to family reasons) and in recent years has had some turmoil. Still, she practically defines the genre and whose voice still enchants whenever I hear it.

The native of Toledo, Ohio came of age in Detroit and listened to jazz singers such as Sarah Vaughn and Nancy Wilson.In her teens she sang in a Gospel choir and local bands before winning an audition to join the Detroit band Chapter 8 at age seventeen. They released an album in 1979 but when their label was acquired by Arista Records they were dropped.

She worked as a legal secretary before being contacted by a Chapter 8 manager about joining his new label. After the debacle with Arista she was hesitant to give up a steady job but relented. The result was The Songstress which - while not a hit - got enough airplay and word-of-mouth to interest Elektra into signing her in 1985.

With producer Michael Powell (an old Chapter 8 bandmate) she released the 1986 Grammy-winning album Rapture ...

... with hits such as the title track and the song she co-wrote Sweet Love reaching #8 on the US charts (and #13 in Britain). I recall seeing her perform on "Saturday Night Live" and it launched a world-wide tour (with a DVD release) leading to another Grammy the following year for her back-up singing on "Ain't Got No Need to Worry" by The Winans.

This was such a great start, her minor-label debut album was subsequently acquired (and re-released) by Elektra.

She broke the sophomore jinx by following-up in 1988 with the album Giving You the Best That I Got - with tunes like "Just Because" and the title track (her highest-charting hit reaching #3) leading to two more Grammys.

While she had a hand in writing some of her songs up to this point, she pursued this even more in 1990 with the aptly-named Compositions that included singles such as "Talk to Me" and "Whatever it Takes". While not as big a seller, after awhile she had earned her seventh Grammy, performed to sold-out audiences near and wide and was on a fast highway.

And then, she took the off-ramp to start a family. She participated in Frank Sinatra's 1993 Duets album ....

... co-singing the standard Witchcraft .....

.... and after the birth of her first child self-produced her 1994 release Rhythm of Love (recorded at her home) and with hits such as "I Apologize" which earned her the eighth Grammy of her career.

But she then went on a extended hiatus, to raise her family and also to resolve disputes with Elektra. This led her to sign with Atlantic Records in 200, but had to scrap a project due to defective recording equipment.

Finally in 2004 she sought out Bruce Lundvall, the new president of the venerable jazz label Blue Note who was seeking to branch the label out into related fields. And for someone who obviously had jazz influences, this move seemed like a match-made-in-heaven.

Thus in 2004 she released My Everything which featured "You're My Everything" and signified her return to the music scene.

The next year she followed-up with Christmas Fantasy - a mix of traditional and non-traditional Yuletide songs.

The past few years have been most eventful for her. On the down-side, she went through an acrimonious divorce in which she was threatened with jail time over the split of royalties ....

.... had to settle with the state of Michigan over tax disputes ....

.... and joined the club of singers having a rough go over singing the national anthem at the NBA Finals just a few weeks ago.

But she has her first new album in years due out this November called 21st Century Love and appears in concert twice in the next few days:

--> Virginia's Wolf Trap this evening (Thursday) ....

....and then in suburban Detroit this Saturday.

With eight Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame .... she seems to have reached the heights on her own terms.

Of all of her songs, it's a 1986 tune called "Same Ole Love" (fair-use extract below) that is my favorite. And at this link you can listen to it.

Flashbacks of the times we've had
Some made us laugh, some made us sad
We used to break up to make up
All the fun that came from those love games
I think I need someone new
Oh, it just won't do,
because I think about you baby
There's a reason I feel this way
All the things you do
Well, it might be the things that you say
Your love never changes
It's like a picture in a frame
and it remains the same
From beginning to end
365 days of the year
I want your same ole love
All I want to do
is keep on loving you
I want your same ole love

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Docudharma Times Thursday August 26

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 26 August 2010 07:30:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Thursday's Headlines: US new house sales hit record low Satoshi Kon dies at 47; Japanese anime director USA As economy slows and Fed voices conflict, markets look to Bernanke for guidance Oil industry's answers frustrate federal panel Europe EU[...]

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Regulation never works, except when it does

post from AMERICAblog News on 26 August 2010 07:00:36 AM. © AMERICAblog News

Once again, the Republican myth of self-regulation is a key part of the problem. Whether it's food safety, insurance, banking, you name it, the fantasy world that has been a key component of GOP policy since the Reagan years has repeatedly been proven to be a joke. Unfortunately consumers keep having to pay the price for bad policy. In theory the Democrats could and should start running harder against self-regulation but their cooperation over the years was critical for any of this legislation to succeed. NY Times:

Faced with a crisis more than a decade ago in which thousands of people were sickened from salmonella in infected eggs, farmers in Britain began vaccinating their hens against the bacteria. That simple but decisive step virtually wiped out the health threat.

But when American regulators created new egg safety rules that went into effect last month, they declared that there was not enough evidence to conclude that vaccinating hens against salmonella would prevent people from getting sick. The Food and Drug Administration decided not to mandate vaccination of hens ? a precaution that would cost less than a penny per a dozen eggs.

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Thursday Open Thread

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels.
Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising
remain the true duty of patriots.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Born August 26, 1941
How could I choose just one quote? Oh, and here's a link to a talk she gave on optimism.

America is addicted to wars of distraction.
At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another generosity and love. But it is also, all too often, where we learn nasty things like hate, rage and shame.
Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
Marriage is socialism among two people.

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Abbreviated pundit round-up

Your one stop pundit shop.

Gail Collins wants a Voters Bill of Rights:

Article One: Freedom from being forced to choose between two dreadful candidates when the temperature is higher than 90 degrees.

Article Two: Candidates cannot talk about their childhood beyond attesting that they had one.

Article Three: Candidates are required to list all the really serious issue disagreements they have with their party. If they reach six, they should find a different ticket.

Article Four: Less talking about mosques.

Article Five: More cat stories.

Timothy Egan:

It’s not just that 47 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie.

E.J. Dionne:

In the short run, the Republican lurch right has unleashed new energy in the party and helps explain why most polls show its supporters more enthusiastic than Democrats about this year's elections. The Democrats' chances of holding down their losses in November depend heavily on whether they can generate a backlash against an increasingly immoderate GOP. [...]

The paradox is that a Republican Party in the grips of ideology needs to shift the campaign in a less ideological direction, hoping that voters simply cast protest ballots against hard economic times. Democrats, who are more doctrinally diverse, have every interest in turning the election into a philosophical contest, arguing that even unhappy voters cannot trust their fate to a party in the grips of a right-wing revolt. Once again on Tuesday, Republican primary participants seemed determined to give Democrats that opportunity.

David Broder has lost his mind:

Now that John McCain has taken care of his political business in Arizona, it is time for him to return to Washington and the responsibilities he bears as a leader of the Republican Party and the nation.

I'm not sure how long a failed presidential candidate is the leader of his party, but McCain sure as hell has no responsibility to lead the nation (see "failed," "presidential," and, "candidate"). Beyond that, it's a bizarre collection of Broder contradicting Broder as he waxes poetic about his hero.

Ellen Goodman:

What would Susan B. Anthony make of Sarah Palin as the most outspoken female politician in the land, or of Palin’s menagerie of groupies? The former leader of “pit bulls with lipstick” is now a “Mama Grizzly” intent on escorting a “stampede of pink elephants” — a.k.a. ultra-conservative female Republicans — to Washington.

The Year of the Pink Elephant Women was enough to force our one-woman jury back to its annual task. Once more we celebrate suffrage by giving out the Equal Rites Awards to those who done their best over the past 12 months to set back the cause of women.

Joan Vennochi:

In what looks like a subtle gesture of support from one administration to another, former First Lady Laura Bush is joining First Lady Michelle Obama at a ceremony in Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11 to commemorate the victims of the terrorist hijacking of United Flight 93 nine years ago.

That’s nice. But imagine if their husbands stood together at the site of the World Trade Center, and spoke to the need for the country to stop the ugly argument over the so-called “Ground Zero mosque.’’ That would send an important message to a nation that badly needs to remember the value of unity in the face of crisis.

The Washington Times has a moronic take on a report on human rights in the United States that has acknowledging that bigotry, discrimination and racism exist is akin to declaring us a terrorist state.

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Muse in the Morning

Muse in the MorningAn Opened Mind XIA weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.- G. K. ChestertonEye #2Aliens Among Us?Even if there is"someone out there,"in the cosmic vastness,why in the hell[...]

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Preparing for Americas Fiscal Disaster

On this week’s episode of Turning Hard Times Into Good Times we continued a discussion with Professor Kotlikoff that started last week in which he tells the real truth of how bad our U.S. national debt. He detailed the kind of non-political strategies that need to be put in to place to keep from a total collapse of life as we know it.

Boston University Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff doesn’t pull any punches. He recently told a Bloomberg TV audience that both the Clinton and Bush administrations suppressed evidence of our country’s dire financial condition. Actually, how bad off are we? What can be done from a policy perspective? What about doubling your taxes or some combination of that and government spending cuts? What are the chances of the

…

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