This stream is coming from Ramattan and NanaLive, it’s a Gaza news camera contractor and a Israeli news organization respectively. There are large blocks of live stream of the war zone, but you’ll also see commercials and news commentary like any news organization:

Live video by Ustream

Is there any excitement, enthusiasm or even perceptable interest out there at all surrounding George Bush’s farewell address tonight? I mean, other than the joy that, at last, we have reached the end of a long and shitty road, that the national global nightmare is almost over?

(I realize that “global nightmare” lacks the satisfying alliteration of “national nightmare,” but it is more accurate.)

I stopped watching Bush’s prepared speeches years ago because I was certain that he was lying every time he gave one. The SOTU addresses were particularly unbearable.

Eventually, I stopped listening every time Bush spoke, which is remarkable because, until recently, even a president who was full of shit was still the leader of the most powerful nation on earth and for that reason was still influential. He might not have known what he was talking about and might have been lying through his teeth, but when such a leader spoke, it still had consequences. It still mattered.

It used to be that when a president planned to address the nation in prime time, there was a buzz, and people made sure they didn’t miss it. But tonight, as Bush prepares to give his final address to the nation, nobody seems to care. That could be because Bush’s speeches have been devoid of substance and adhered predictably to conservative talking points for so long that it’s unreasonable to expect anything significant or surprising to come out of this. Or it could be that everyone knows this is going to be nothing more than the last stop of the Legacy Tour, and nobody wants to watch Bush polish his figurative turd on prime-time TV. There are so many more constructive ways to spend your time – like polishing literal turds, for instance.

So, is anyone interested in what history’s lamest duck has to say? Does anyone even care?

What are you going to do instead?

Shareholders want to sue Apple for “hiding the truth” about Steve Jobs’ health?

He had pancreatic cancer. He had a Whipple procedure. BUY A CLUE.

They say genius isn’t about knowing the answers to the questions, but about knowing which is the right question.

I see in the news that our new mayor is looking for ways to come up with revenue. Hmm.

Back when I was working in mayoral primary, I had this bright idea. While flipping around the dial, I came across this story about weddings at Disney World, and they had this really nifty wedding pavilion that even I (a person who goes into anaphylactic shock at the very thought of going to Disney World) liked.

And that’s when it hit me.

Philadelphia has an absolute jewel of a park system, Fairmount Park. People go there all the time for wedding pictures; some people even rent the historic mansions in the park for their weddings. But those historic mansions are small, and not well insulated, and really not the kind of place where you’d be comfortable kicking up your heels. (Because, you know, they’re historic!)

Why not take an acre or two and build a wedding pavilion in the Park? I pictured an architectural competition to come up with a LEEDS-certified design, but in the meantime (because we need money NOW), throw up a bunch of yurts. (They’re really cheap and come in an assortment of sizes.) Ask local interior design firms to donate the decor in exchange for their name on them.

And instead of taking parkland for parking, run shuttle buses from another site to the pavilion. Make money for the park (Fairmount Park often comes up short in the city budget because it doesn’t have a dedicated funding stream) and add a really nice perk for city residents. (Add a surcharge for out-of-town weddings.)

So Mayor Nutter, even though we didn’t win, I’m giving you my best idea - free! Good luck!

Of course, only anti-Semites would have a problem with this necessary activity. And so it goes:

As the Gaza death toll passed an estimated 1,000 people and concerns about the humanitarian situation inside Gaza grew, Egypt announced on Wednesday that it was making progress toward an interim cease-fire, with some officials predicting that one could be five to six days away. A senior Israeli defense official, Amos Gilad, arrived in Cairo on Thursday to continue the talks.

Also on Wednesday, nine Israeli human rights groups called for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza. The groups say that tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza have nowhere to flee, the Gaza health system has collapsed, many people are without electricity and running water, and some are beyond the reach of rescue teams.

“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare and raises the suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of the commission of war crimes,” the groups said in a news conference on the 19th day of the war.

The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, who spent Tuesday in Gaza City, agreed that the situation with civilians was dire but said that the principal hospital was making do with medical supplies, and that doctors, working around the clock, were mostly coping with the flow of the wounded.

“In general, they did not complain about the lack of equipment or material,” he said at a news conference in Jerusalem.

This is the kind of thing people consider war crimes:

Claims have been received by the BBC and an Israeli human rights group that Israeli troops have fired on Gaza residents trying to escape the conflict area. Israel has strongly denied the allegations.

BBC journalists in Gaza and Israel have compiled detailed accounts of the claims.

Some Palestinian civilians in Gaza say Israeli forces shot at them as they tried to leave their homes - in some cases bearing white flags.

One testimony heard by the BBC and human rights group B’tselem describes Israeli forces shooting a woman in the head after she stepped out of her house carrying a piece of white cloth, in response to an Israeli loudhailer announcement.

The Israeli military has dismissed the report as “without foundation”.

The BBC has spoken to members of another family who say they are trapped in their home by fighting and have been shot at when they tried to leave to replenish dwindling water and food supplies, even during the three-hour humanitarian lull.

Israel is denying access to Gaza for international journalists and human rights monitors, so it is not possible to verify the accounts.

B’tselem said it had been unable to corroborate the testimony it had received, but felt it should be made public.

Munir Shafik al-Najar, of Khouza village in the south-east of the Gaza Strip, told B’tselem and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of a series of events on Monday which he said left four members of his extended family dead.

He told the BBC that some 75 members of his extended family had ended up huddled in a house, surrounded by Israeli forces, after troops shelled the area and destroyed his brother’s home on Sunday night.

On Monday morning, he said the family heard an announcement over a loudspeaker.

“The Israeli army was saying: ‘This is the Israeli Defence Forces, we are asking all the people to leave their homes and go to the school. Ladies first, then men.’

“We decided to send the women first, two by two,” he said.

First to step outside was the wife of his cousin, Rawhiya al-Najar, 48.

“The army was about 15 metres (50 feet) away from the house or less. They shot her in the head,” he said.

The woman’s daughter was shot in the thigh but crawled back inside the house, he said.

I’m struck by how much these accounts (and the rest in this story) sound like the Nazis. The victims have become the predators.

The amazing Susan Tedeschi:

Janis Joplin, live on Dick Cavett:

Otis Redding at Monterey Pop:

A new weapon, developed by the US in 2006, called DIME. Apparently this is what
s causing the amputations we’re seeing in Gaza:

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Dr. Mads Gilbert, who has just returned from Gaza, the Shifa Hospital. He’s back in Norway right now. What did you see, in terms of the casualties, both when it comes to white phosphorus and also with this new weapon that you have been talking about called DIME?

DR. MADS GILBERT: I will answer that, but I think it’s important to understand that the most devastating weapon they are currently using is actually the siege of Gaza, which has been on for eighteen months, which means a lot of starvation, lack of food, water, power supplies, medicines, napkins, anything that people need to live. So it’s one-and-a-half million people who basically is now without their absolutely necessary means for living their lives, and that is, of course, illegal.

When it comes to the weaponry, we did not see clear evidence in patients that we received that they had been hit by white phosphorous, but we were told by the doctors and colleagues in Shifa that during the first days of the invasion, the ground invasion, they had seen this affecting as a side effect of the smokescreen use of the white phosphorus. And that was inhalation injuries, meaning that people have been breathing the phosphorus damp into their lungs, and burns. Also, by the end of our mission, when we left, there were fierce attacks in the south, and again the doctors in the European Hospital in South Gaza reported the same thing: burns and inhalation injuries. So it seems like my expert on the [inaudible] is right, that using such chemical means in so densely populated areas, as Gaza is, you will evidently have to affect also the civilians.

When it comes to the DIME weapons, we have seen a substantial number of amputations, where the amputees do not have shrapnel injuries. On the contrary, they have torn apart their legs, often one or two or even three limbs, their arm also. Some of them are beyond salvage, because the amputations are so high and so fierce that it also affects the lower part of the body. Some are survivable. But typical for these amputations is that there is no sign of metal fragments or shrapnel. It is only this very brutal amputations caused by some extreme power and small rice grain, rice, corn, pieces of some kind of substance, not metal, but—you know, the DIME weapon is a mixture of metals, nickel and cobalt, in a composite cast, not in a metal cast. And that’s explaining why you don’t see shrapnel.

The additional effect in animal studies on the DIME weapon is that the residuals in the muscle in mice will cause a very severe form of muscle cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, which easily spreads to the lungs. This remains to be shown.

I underline we don’t have proof, but we have strong evidence that these amputations we’ve been seeing in Gaza for the last eleven days must come from some type of weapon that we don’t know of.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain more fully these kinds of amputations, Dr. Gilbert?

DR. MADS GILBERT: You know, often, if you have a grenade amputation or an amputation from any kind of metal fragment, it will be more like you had a hatch or an ax or a huge knife that cut through your bone and the muscle. What we see in these suspected DIME amputations is that the whole limb is crushed in a way that must suggest some sort of immense power that has hit the lower part of the body. And we know that these small bombs, which the DIME bombs are, explodes in a way so that it will mainly affect the lower limbs. The limbs are—you will have multiple very severe fractures. The muscles are sort of split from the bones, hanging loose. And you also have quite severe burns where this energy wave has hit.

If you look at pictures from sites where these patients have come, you don’t see fragments in the walls in the house around, maybe fifteen, twenty meters apart from the explosions. And you see only some stripes of power in the sand on the ground, and these actually are the examples that the power dissipates very quickly, maybe within five or ten meters of the explosion, so that you will not have this kind of collateral damage, as it’s called. But in Gaza, again, so densely populated, that these DIME weapons will have a devastating effect. Also, they are, by some, classified as nuclear weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: Nuclear weapons?

DR. MADS GILBERT: Well, the EU Commission on nuclear matters have stated clearly that these weapons, since they are based on a fission process, you need to investigate more the residuals, if that is radioactive. That has not been done. It was not done in Lebanon in 2006, when these weapons were first described. And it has not been done in Gaza in 2006 and now this—I saw the similar injuries in Gaza around Easter 2006—excuse me, 2008, that is, during the incursions in Jabalya, exactly the same types. And I believe there are some sixty-six cases described at Shifa Hospital before this war.

Is this what you had in mind when you pulled the lever for a Democrat?

Nah, me neither.

Do you suppose he’s waiting to have dinner with left-wing bloggers? Yeah, that must be it.

Looks like I’ll have to drink coffee to get them.

Via Avedon, something I didn’t know:

Johann Hari says “You are being lied to about pirates: “In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas. Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. [...] At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. [...] This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent ’strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence’.”

Go read Digby so I don’t have to spell it all out for you.

Honestly, between the Gaza massacre, the fact that Bush will walk away without consequences, the economy and the continuing compliance of the media in attacking the interests of working people, my brain’s kind of frozen. I figure readers already know what’s going on, why do they need me to spell it out for them? (And if they don’t, doesn’t my trying to pound it into their heads put it right up there with banging my own head into a brick wall?)

What I want more than anything in the world is to live my own life again - a life where I have affordable health care and enough money to pay the bills, the freedom to pursue my own interests instead of documenting crimes against humanity, and a comfortable reading chair instead of a computer and desk in the corner of my living room.

Oh, and no vermin.

How Israel stopped us from supporting our own ceasefire resolution.

Damn.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying the fact that I’ve apparently vanquished the flour mites that were leaving little black shells everywhere.

This morning, I noticed what I thought were a few coffee grounds on the counter. WTF??

MOUSE TURDS. Big ones.

ARGHHHHH……..

You might be interested in this!

This story is even sadder when you think of how many girls are dropping out of school across America:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”

The Innocence Mission:

Janis:

Jill Sobule in “Grace of My Heart,” the movie loosely based on the life of Carole King:

L.A. musician Julian Coryell, son of jazz great Larry Coryell, with one of my favorite tunes:

Heart:

With the help of Tennessee’s Democratic legislators, a moderate Republican state rep pulled off a coup and took control as speaker. (The Republicans just took control of the state house for the first time in decades and were promising all kinds of extreme legislation.)

Right wing heads are exploding! Go read more.

UPDATE: Here’s some more.

Ani DiFranco:

Do you suppose she’s majoring in abnormal psych?

Leinheiser came to the apartment at about 11 p.m. Nov. 28, and shot Marc Rubin in the back of the head while he slept, police said. The couple then fled and stayed in hotels for a week, having no plan to dispose of the body, police said.

They returned Dec. 5 after purchasing a chainsaw and planned to chop up the body and dispose of it in trash bags, police said.

But Leinheiser’s dismemberment attempt failed when Marc Rubin’s shorts got caught in the chainsaw, according to Christina Rubin’s account to police. Leinheiser asked Dougherty to help get rid of the body, police said.

After wrapping it in trash bags and an area rug, the crew dragged the body down nine flights of steps, put it in Christina Rubin’s car, and dumped it in Hamilton Township.

Before her arrest, Christina Rubin was enrolled in graduate courses at Chestnut Hill College, where she was studying clinical psychology, police said.

Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.

- Barbara Tober

Good idea for families with kids! Check it out.

One of the reasons I don’t mind the outrageous sums paid to football players is that they’re going to need a lot more care as they age.

Hmm:

Subaru’s customers are, the company admits, a little oddball. How else do you explain the fact that Subaru of America was the only car company to increase unit sales last year? Subaru buyers tend to be overeducated; they buy less car than they can afford and hang on to it forever. “They pay cash, and then you never see them again,” says Tim Mahoney, Subaru of America’s chief marketing officer. At least not for an average 7.3 years, when they return like migrating carbirds to buy another one. Recession or not.

It seems to me that the military should acknowledge all the reasons why a combat veteran will not ask for help and make counseling mandatory for all of them. It’s the least they could do.