A reminder.
Ned Lamont will be coming to Southeast Connecticut. If you are interested in meeting Ned and hearing his views on state issues (he’s exploring, as they say), here’s your opportunity. He will be at the home of Camille and Nick Burlingham, 9 High Ridge Drive, in Pawcatuck on Dec [...]
Mike Huckabee personally pardoned a guy with a long and violent criminal history who, if police suspicions turn out to be true, just killed four cops. Mike Dukakis was governor of a state whose parole board released a man, a fact of which Dukakis was probably unaware, who then [...]
The citizens of Switzerland just voted to bar the erection of minarets in their country. The Muslim world is in a bit of an uproar about it.
I’ll grant you it’s a trifle xenophobic. Well, more than a trifle. Still, it’s hard to see how the Muslims can complain, when [...]
Or maybe it’s the price of deception.
According to a new Daily Kos poll, the Democrats are still ahead in generic polling. The problem is that very few of them intend to show up at the polls in November, as compared to Republicans and Independents, both of whom intend to [...]
A couple of minor stars in the 60s firmament. First, Lou Christie. Back in the 80s PBS ran an oldies special on which he appeared. He gave a great performance. Unfortunately, it’s not on youtube, so far as I could see. An interesting factoid I picked up looking through his [...]
There are few things more glaringly unfair in this country than the fact that hedge fund managers get taxed at a rate less than half of what most of the rest of us pay. According to this morning’s Globe, (Tax break on profits again in jeopardy) there’s a move [...]
I’m tempted to say that anyone who is reading blogs on Thanksgiving should be ashamed of him/herself. This is my favorite holiday, since it has resisted all attempts to commercialize it, unless you count the retailers opening on this sacred day to steal a March on Christmas.
This year we decided [...]
Cruising toward Thanksgiving, with visitors arriving today and tomorrow, there won’t be much time for blogging. I need some time off anyway. Who knows, maybe the quality of this stuff will improve.
Anyway, I noticed today that Alex Koppelman, at Salon, has endorsed Peter Beinart’s view, at the Daily [...]
There’s nothing new under the sun, as digby reminded us yesterday.
Yesterday was the anniversary of JFK’s assassination. Here, as she points out, is a leaflet passed around in Dallas the day he was killed.
Seems Obama wasn’t the first traitor we’ve had as a president. But check [...]
Rob Simmons apparently thinks that the road to the Senate lies through the teabaggers. He has sent a fundraising appeal pledging to be the guy who assures that the Democrats never get that 60th vote to advance their big government agenda. Here’s a snippet from his appeal:
The fight in the [...]
Seems that I’m mentioned in a front page article in the Courant today.
The reporter, Daniela Altimari, sent me an email asking to talk to me about an “open letter” to Chris Dodd that I posted a few weeks ago. In that letter I bemoaned Dodd’s statement to the effect that [...]
Always in the middle it seems. From this morning’s Times:
Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package[...]
A very young Van Morrison leads his then band mates in what I believe was their first state side hit. No doubt about this being a live performance. Sorry about the long intro.
An obviously communistic, fascist, socialist (and, by way of a bonus-godless) organization has invaded our fair state to try to impose its will on our citizenry. I speak of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, an organization whose very name tells you all you need to [...]
Ned Lamont is coming to our area in a few weeks. He’ll be at the home of Camille and Nick Burlingham (Camille happens to be his sister) 9 High Ridge Drive, Pawcatuck, on Monday, Dec 7, from 6-8. I hope we can get a good turnout for Ned. Right at [...]
Those Beltway types sure miss them some George Bush.
First it was David Broder:
The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose — and he has stretched the internal debate to [...]
I am sitting on my patio, in the dark, pecking away at my computer. The temperature is perfectly pleasant. It is November 15th. The only problem is the insects that are being attracted to my computer screen.
Here’s my question: What business do these insects have being alive and active on [...]
Via Firedoglake, the right has apparently found an academic prepared to give intellectual respectability to its opposition to the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a George Mason University professor named Todd Zywicki:
Zywicki and his fellow Randians think that the FCPA wouldn’t have made the slightest difference in the conditions [...]
Via Jesus General. Stay with it. It sounds like the teabagger crowd never realizes it’s been played.
As he contemplates trudging off into the Big Muddy, Afghanistan style, Obama might profit from perusing this article in today’s Times:
If a business school professor is running short on cash, there is a sure-fire solution: run a dollar auction game in class.
To start, the professor offers to sell [...]
On November 15, 1969 half a million people descended on Washington D.C. to protest the Vietnam War, not a single one of them directly or indirectly subsidized by a TV network or an astroturfing group of lobbyists.
I made the trip to DC with some college friends. There were [...]
Fairly sure I haven’t done James Brown yet.
I’m starting with this clip as much in tribute to Ed Sullivan as James Brown. Everyone loved making fun of Ed Sullivan, but the truth was that he was great at spotting talent. Even more important, he was an equal opportunity employer before [...]
The Catholic Church would have us believe that it simply cannot support any health care bill that might result in a single person getting an abortion, no matter how removed the cause might be from the effect. It’s a matter of principle, don’t you see. Just as millions of Africans [...]
Via Think Progress:
Business groups are worried by the potential effects of provisions banning the import of all goods made with convict labor, forced labor, or forced or indentured child labor that were included in a customs bill sponsored by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Charles [...]
Antonin Scalia has a problem. His intellectual dishonesty is showing:
If there is a topic Justice Antonin Scalia does not relish discussing, it is how he would have voted in Brown v. Board of Education had he been on the [...]
I get very few comments, and my basic philosophy has been to approve any comment I get, provided it’s not spam. I believe in free speech and I also think that I should be able to take my lumps if the comments are critical.
Today, for the first time, I got [...]
Some time ago Jim Amann stopped by our Town Committee. He received a lukewarm to frosty reception. In the course of his presentation he opined that Jodi Rell would not run again, and that the Republicans will nominate Lieutenant Governor Mike (who?) Fedele. Well, Jodi has dropped out and Fedele [...]
Via Pharyngula. A debate on the BBC, the motion being: The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.
You can watch it here. It’s long, consisting of 5 you tube videos which, at least when viewed in full screen, will play one after the other.
The fascinating [...]
Could this happen anywhere else, even in the context of a Democratic primary:
US Representative Michael E. Capuano yesterday blasted Attorney General Martha Coakley’s decision to get involved in an Alabama death penalty case, saying the man they are vying to succeed in the Senate, Edward M. Kennedy, “would have [...]
This got my lawyer’s hackles raised.
In Today’s New London Day I noticed an article titled as follows:
Bankruptcy court: Lighthouse Inn filing invalid
The clear implication–nay, not implication, but the explicit statement- is that the Bankruptcy Court has ruled that the Lighthouse Inn’s bankruptcy filing was invalid. It’s made [...]
Primarily, I wanted to do a girl group this week. I actually found a good live version of the Shirelles (one of the best of breed-girl group wise) singing Will You Still Love Me, Tomorrow? I have no idea why the sides of the video are squoshed together (and yes, [...]
Last night at Drinking Liberally (back to great attendance, as various attendees licked their election day wounds), so no posts, and tonight off to see Atul Shah (one of the wound lickers) and his band at Burke’s Tavern, so not much free time.
Other than putting up some music (post pending) [...]
If there was a common theme locally yesterday, it was the victory of the crazies over-not necessarily the rational, but at least the less crazy. In New London the Democratic clowns that have run the town for some 20 odd years were replaced by a mixture of Republican and “green” [...]
C’mon people, attendance was dismal at last months Drinking Liberally. Let’s not let that happen again.
Thursday we’ll have the chance to celebrate or commiserate, depending on the outcome of today’s elections. Several of our members are running for office, and we’ll be there for all, winners and losers.
Here’s hoping for [...]
Al Gore is being criticized for investing in green technology by the very people who tell the rest of us that conservation will lead us to economic ruin.
In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities [...]
Fading fast, but not quite gone.
These are from our backyard, a Japanese Maple, with bright red leaves, and a Redbud with a variety of more muted colors.
This morning, Gregory Mankiw, one of the economists who got us into this mess and a shill for conservative economic theories, pens a New York Times op-ed piece in which he laments the tax disincetives to work supposedly embedded in the Obama Health Plan. (We are supposed to ignore [...]
