November 2010 Blog Posts (18)

Wikileaks has caused quite a stir lately, with the release of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables. This comes on the heels of Wikileaks? previous release of a decrypted US Apache gunship video of an attack on suspected…

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Well, it's that TIME of year again (sorry for the pun). Yes, the most venerated living news magazine in America rolls out polling for its annual "Person of the Year" issue once again. Check for yourself if you're into that sort of thing. Every year, I can't help but be morbidly interested in it, at least enough to check…

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“You guys! Santa’s not real!” She was recently five but had already adopted the mannerisms of an older, hipper kid – her big brother, maybe, or her shaggy indie-rock dad – wide-eyed and waving her arms at her fellow preschoolers at the snack table to make her point. “It’s just a guy in a costume. He’s not! real!”



“I have a DIFFERENT theory,” roared The Boy, age four at the time. “Santa is…

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It doesn’t usually snow here until January or even February, some years, so this evening you are surprised to see it is snowing, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the gray dusk cascading down like your old knit scarf, the one your great-aunt knit you so many years ago, now fraying at the ends.



Yet even in the face of your son’s excitement, of his insistence on snowball fights and sledding down the little backyard hill, even in the face of tumbling and squealing and catching snowflakes on… Continue

Yep, if you thought the right-wing’s recently-founded tradition of wailing about how the 78% of Americans who consider themselves Christian are…

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This is an issue that many of us will face. I found this PSA both informative and supportive and feel it's my duty as a movie geek to share it with… Continue

Heavens! Are they, in fact, perhaps growing both at the same time? I've seen it not pan out too many times in the past to be suckered in by good news now...but it's unquestionable that this looks promising:…

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...on the Maryland shore. Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly reads a POLITICO scoop, then exquisitely lays out everything that is wrong with newly-minted GOTea representative (MD-01) Andy Harris's indignance that his government-run health care… Continue

If the definition of insanity is doing something the same way yet expecting different results, then I suppose the definition of sanity (or at least non-insanity, LOL) would be summed up as a willingness to learn from one's experiences. That means the good or positive experiences, of course, but obviously the focus would be on learning from one's bad experiences/defeats/missteps. With that in mind, here's a snapshot of what seems to be going on - or what could be going on - right now up… Continue

Multiple passages of George Bush's recently-released memoirs are plagiarized.

This isn't a holiday that gets as much play as some others, but it's worth celebrating nevertheless. And that goes double when we're still embroiled in one war which recently achieved the dubious honor of becoming our chronologically longest-running war (Afghanistan), and we've just "finished" perhaps the least-necessary and most ill-considered war in our nation's history: Iraq. Oh, and by "finished," of course I mean "we still have 50,000 troops there, and many more contractors, adding up to… Continue

I can admit it, I'm a journal junkie. I love to buy them, especially ones that are out of the ordinary or something non-basic, pretty much any kind with character.



While going through a front closet in our house digging out art supplies to take up to the shop, I came across my boxes of books. The sun was coming through the front window and lit up this one box and when I opened it I found that it was the box I had set out looking for while "nesting" during my pregnancy; It's a box full… Continue

(cross-posted at PTL)



I was going to title this post “Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss.” But in truth, although the House of Representatives changed hands dramatically last Tuesday, that doesn’t make John Boehner or the GOP “the new boss.” In reality, Obama is still “boss” - if anyone is in our checks-and-balances…

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I received a copy of Reform Judaism Magazine today. I don't know why -- I mean, I'm Jewish and stuff, but I didn't sign up for more paper waste. It's possible I got subscribed through our temple, but since we pay almost nothing due to financial hardship, I don't know why they'd spring for the extras.

Anyway, the cover topic was "bullying," and since I…

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Every once in a while it seems that there is something in the air that causes two movies with similar concepts to come out during the same year. There was Antz and A Bug’s Life. Volcano and Dante’s Peak. Deep Impact and Armageddon.… Continue

I may try to do a fuller run-down of yesterday's election results, but for now, I wanted to open this up to any conversation/venting on the topic. My own thoughts are: bad, but not that bad. Why? Consider: the average loss by a party in this situation in the first midterm after a Presidential victory is 25 seats in the house. Average. Democrats lost more than twice that number yesterday. Looked at by that metric, it… Continue

In Montana, where I grew up, it is considered quite normal to be a hunting and fishing type of family. Most of my classmates, even the girls, had shot at or killed a deer by the time they were 15. Skiing is the other big thing. There's so much snow, you're just expected to be out their flinging yourself down it.



My family was never much into this stuff. We tried skiing but it turned out I am afraid of heights. None of us had any inclination to shoot at any wild animals. Fishing was… Continue

Well, I don’t have any truly good news (or bad news either, for that matter) - not yet. It’s still too early. But if you’re feeling a bit bummed out already, anticipating what most pollsters say is to come today, then get a load of this (via…

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