Doppelgangers, doppelgangers ... but not a drop to drink:

FATHER-SON? - Thurston Howell III ...
                 
... and Mike Huckabee the GOP hopeful.

Zounds! Well, why not 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.....    

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor - not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

So, why do I care?

First... My cousin Heidi Ewing co-directed this documentary with her partner, Rachel Grady.

Second, it is a simply amazing film.
I saw it at the Traverse City Film Festival... it's entertaining, harrowing, hilarious, devastating... Just amazing. Kind of defies a BLURB, but: in a nutshell, it's about an abortion clinic that sees this "pregnancy counseling clinic" set ...up show right across the street -- kitty corner, if you will.

Should I say "Hijinks ensue?"

"Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must."

"the only thing that has actually remotely slowed down the relentless rise of carbon emissions over the last two to three decades is recession."

-- Tim Jackson

British Economist Tim Jackson studies the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment to question the primacy of economic growth.

He currently serves as the economics commissioner on the UK government's Sustainable Development Commission and is director of RESOLVE - a Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment. After five years as Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, Jackson became Professor of Sustainable Development at University of Surrey, and was the first person to hold that title at a UK university.

He founded RESOLVE in May 2006 as an inter-disciplinary collaboration across four areas - CES, psychology, sociology and economics - aiming to develop an understanding of the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment.

In 2009 Jackson published "Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet", a substantially revised and updated version of Jackson's controversial study (.PDF, 136 pp.) for the Sustainable Development Commission, an advisory body to the UK Government. The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission's nine year history when it was launched in 2009.

Filmed in July at TEDGlobal 2010, here is Tim Jackson's economic reality check, a 20 minute talk he gave for the TEDGlobal audience...

I want you to imagine a world, in 2050, of around nine billion people, all aspiring to Western incomes, Western lifestyles. And I want to ask the question -- and we'll give them that two percent hike in income, in salary each years as well, because we believe in growth. And I want to ask the question: how far and how fast would be have to move? How clever would we have to be? How much technology would we need in this world to deliver our carbon targets? And here in my chart. On the left-hand side is where we are now. This is the carbon intensity of economic growth in the economy at the moment. It's around about 770 grams of carbon. In the world I describe to you, we have to be right over here at the right-hand side at six grams of carbon. It's a 130-fold improvement, and that is 10 times further and faster than anything we've ever achieved in industrial history. Maybe we can do it, maybe it's possible -- who knows? Maybe we can even go further and get an economy that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, which is what we're going to need to be doing by the end of the century. But shouldn't we just check first that the economic system that we have is remotely capable of delivering this kind of improvement?

..transcript below..

When J Street first arrived on the scene I was hopeful that the organization would represent a liberal pro-Israel alternative to AIPAC.  At this point, however, it simply boggles the mind that some people who consider themselves pro-Israel continue to support this organization.  J Street refused to condemn Caryl Churchill's anti-Semitic play, Seven Jewish Children.  J Street does not condemn the insidious Goldstone Report that would rob the Jewish state, and thus the Jewish people, of the means of self-defense.  J Street lied to the American people about their sources of funding and it has come to light that anti-Israel billionaire George Soros is a major contributor.

And now, on top of everything else, we have Daniel Levy, one of the principal figures in the organization, claiming that the creation of Israel was "wrong."

{More below.}

Even on public TV, one sees some signs of the zeitgeist ....

SEPARATED at BIRTH - two TV hosts: Dean Johnson - from PBS's "Hometime" ....
             

.... and Glenn Beck our pal.

No, anything but that .... well, there's some less of da crazy inside; 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.....  

See, what happened was this:  

A few weeks ago I had a routine teeth cleaning appointment.  After I was done with the hygienist (or she was done with me) the dentist wanted to give my mouth and teeth a look-see.  Dr. Lim went into my mouth, poked around for a little while, and then told me that I needed a crown on an upper right molar.  He showed me a little crack in the tooth which he claimed was probably caused by the expansion of a silver filling over time in that tooth.  He told me that I should come back in a month, or so, to have that procedure.

"Okey-doke," says I.

And then he dropped a little bomb on me.  

{More below.}

This is the line that kept running through my head when I read of the latest assault on the middle class.

From the Strib:

It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.

Not every warrant results in an arrest, but in Minnesota many debtors spend up to 48 hours in cells with criminals. Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington, driven by a bad economy, high consumer debt and a growing industry that buys bad debts and employs every means available to collect.

This is a video interpretation of the recent Pallywood movie involving two young Palestinians who got hit by an Israeli car.

{More below.}

It is about a week before early voting begins for a bunch of us around the country, and that means this may be one of the last times I have to convince you that, frustrated progressive or not, you better get your butt to a ballot box or a mail-in envelope this November, because it really does matter.

Now I could give you a bunch of "what ifs" to make my point, or I could remind you how we spent all summer watching oil gush into the Gulf, and how that came to be...but, instead, it's "Even More Current Event Day", and we're going to visit Hungary for a extremely real-world reminder of what can go wrong when the environmental cops are considered just too much of a burden by the environmental robbers-and if today's story doesn't scare you to death, I don't know what will.

It ain't Texas, but we will surely visit a Red River Valley...and you surely won't like what you're gonna see.

Continuity is something you might not expect in rock music ... but then again ....

GRANDFATHER-FATHER-SON? - a troika of bespectacled guitarists: Buddy Holly, Marshall Crenshaw and Rivers Cuomo ("Weezer").
                 

Hmmmm .... say, why not 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.....    

Dover, Delaware (FNS)-Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell shocked the crowd at a Delaware political breakfast meeting when she announced that she has changed her thinking about masturbation following a weekend bathtub "incident".

Spike Fromula, O'Donnell's press secretary, explained to the press gaggle today that O'Donnell now realizes that it is possible to "masturbate without lust in your heart" after Saturday night's revelatory event, which Fromula described as a "slip and fall episode".

"It wasn't exactly 'The Passion of the Showerhead'" said Fromula, in a reference to her former work as a marketing consultant to the Mel Gibson movie of a similar name, "but there is no doubt that her thinking on the issue has evolved".

The Palestinians have pulled out of direct negotiations because, or so they say, the Israeli settlement construction freeze in the West Bank has concluded.  

"Both the governments of Israel and the Palestinian Authority have asked us to continue these discussions in an effort to establish the conditions under which they can continue direct negotiations," Mitchell wrote in a statement posted on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo's website. "They do not want to stop the talks."

How blinkered must one be not to recognize this gibberish as gibberish?  For ten months Israel maintained a moratorium on building in the West Bank, yet until the very last moment the Palestinians refused to negotiate.  Now that the moratorium has ended they again refuse to negotiate.  And we're supposed to believe that the Palestinians are desperate for a negotiated peace and for a state of their own next to Israel?  And George Mitchell tells us that both governments want to continue negotiations?

{More below.}

It's 2010.  How much longer will we continue to treat GLBT people as second-class citizens?

I continue to be flabbergasted at how easily so many liberal Jewish supporters of Israel have allowed themselves to be suckered by the Israeli settlement issue. These so-called "settlers," a word which itself has become a pejorative, are merely Jews living in the place that Jews originally came from. They have set up communities in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as they would say, for various reasons. Some do so out of a religious commitment to the land of ancient Israel... Eretz Israel. Others live there because housing is less expensive than in Israel proper. And now we are told that the mere presence of Jews living in the West Bank undermines the peace process.

Ridiculous.

{More below.}

Different branches of the arts have a way of cross-pollinating, huh? ....

SEPARATED at BIRTH - composer Philip Glass and Admiral Piett ("Star Wars").
                         

Hmmm .... well, for now: why not 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.....    

Why Teach For America Works - Michelle Rhee

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

In the Fall, this year and every year, in this nation talk turns to Education.  The President of the United States delivers a speech to students.  Articles appear in the news.  Television broadcasts beckon us to think about our Education Nation.  In 2010, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, did what many thought novel.  He donated $100 million dollars to Newark City Schools.  Some were skeptical of his motives.  More rejoiced.  Certainly with abundant cash in the coffers, change would come to the nations schools, or at least to the chosen educational institutions.  However,  it might not.

On Thursday morning, California time, my youngest daughter and I are boarding a plane.  We are leaving what are supposed to be the highly sunny, highly warm shores of California (warm for one of the few times ever this year - I know that global warming folks always focus on extreme weather events and overall heating trends but they have ignored that it has been bloody FREEZING in California this year and I am convinced it is related!).  We are coming to Washington, D.C.  A place where I have lots of relatives and friends, even as I won't have time to see them since we'll be there for just over 45 hours.  

We - my baby that is ½ foot taller than I and likes to lay her elbow on my head as a way of trying to equalize our status, and I -- are coming to march.  

On the appointed day, 10.2.10 (which I hope is not rainy or too cold, but I'll be there either way), my baby and I will be marching along with I'm not sure how many others.  Who knows? To hear the media tell it, there isn't anything special going on in Washington on 10.2.10.

But I know better.  

Barry Rubin has an interesting piece up at his blog RubinReports, entitled, "The Difference Between Politics and Analysis."

Rubin divides Israeli public opinion concerning the possibilities of peace with the Palestinians into four groups:

From what we've said so far we can construct a simple series of four alternative combinations of political stances and analyses:

1. Pessimistic Hawk: Opposes yielding territory and making a deal, thinks that would be disastrous. But believes that a deal will be made.

2. Optimistic Hawk: Opposes yielding territory and making a deal, thinks that would be disastrous. But believes that a deal will not be made.

3. Pessimistic Dove: Favors yielding territory for a deal that he believes will bring peace. But believes a deal will not be made.

4. Optimistic Dove: Favors yielding territory for a deal that he believes will bring peace. But believes a deal will be made.

{More Underneath.}

I have nothing to add to this marvelous jeremiad by William Rivers Pitt except what I said on my Facebook page:

Hey, Republicans and conservatives who think people with pre-existing conditions, in the words of Mike Huckabee, are just like "burned down houses" in the case of HOME insurance, and therefore SHOULDN'T be covered by health insurance:

FUCK you. No, really. Just... FUCK you.

Excerpts below.