Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: Curbing Medicare Costs Without Vouchers (Creators Syndicate)
What the 80 percent of Americans who oppose spending cuts on the government health plans really want is the assurance that they can get state-of-the-art medical care when they need it. Responsible leaders must impress upon them that enormous savings can be found in Medicare without reducing quality one iota. Furthermore, the perverse incentives in our reimbursement system encourage too much care, which itself can hurt patients.
Timothy Noah: The United States of Inequality (Slate)
Trying to understand income inequality, the most profound change in American society in your lifetime.
Jim Hightower: SHRINKING GOVERNMENT TO SERVE CORPORATIONS
Emboldened by demands from Tea Party Republicans that Congress reduce "Big Government," toy industry lobbyists are crying that the safety commission's new rules are too intrusive, too costly, too onerous... too much. In particular, the industry wants to kill a public database that CPSC set up so consumers themselves can report any product hazards they find and can search for injury reports on a particular product before buying it.
Paul Krugman's Blog: On Not Doing Your Homework (New York Times)
Jonathan Chait is annoyed with Jacob Weisberg [of Slate], who wrote a ludicrously adulatory column about Paul Ryan, then admitted that he was wrong - and in the process once again gave Ryan credit that isn't due.
Paul Krugman's Column: Patients Are Not Consumers (New York Times)
The idea that all this can be reduced to money - that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care - is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with our society's values.
Paul Krugman's Blog: Choices Must Be Made (New York Times)
The thing is, we're going to make choices eventually, one way or another. Should the choices be made by medical professionals, or should we rely on the kindness of corporations?
Andrew Tobias: MANSIONS AND BRIDGES
Which is better: (a) Build a $40 million mansion - which is a very nice thing for a rich person to have. (b) Build a $30 million mansion - still nice - and put $10 million into repairing a bridge that thousands of people use every day? That's essentially the choice we make when we decide what the top tax bracket should be on income, dividends, and capital gains for the very wealthy. The Republican Party answers (a) while the Democratic Party answers (b).
HEATHER MAC DONALD: Radical Graffiti Chic (City Journal)
Graffiti, it turns out, is something that MOCA celebrates only on other people's property, not on its own.
Naomi Alderman: In praise of Elisabeth Sladen (Guardian)
Sarah Jane was a wonderful Doctor Who companion - strong, funny and brave.
Dan Martin: Elisabeth Sladen dies aged 63 (Guardian)
Actor who starred in 'Doctor Who' and spin-off series 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' has died of cancer.
David Bruce has 41 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $41 you can buy 10,250 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
wrote:
answered:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Comment
Parents paying off sons mistress
"The 52-year-old acknowledged in June 2009 that he had an extramarital affair with Cynthia Hampton, a former member of his campaign staff, and that he had helped her husband, Doug Hampton, a member of his congressional staff, obtain lobbying work with two Nevada companies.
Source
Ensign's admission that he cheated on his wife seemingly foreshadowed his political downfall. Amid the scandal, his parents provided the Hamptons with $96,000 described as a gift, and Ensign helped find Doug Hampton a lobbying job."
This has got to be in the file titled, Just when you thought you have heard it all. Hush money for your mistress, from your PARENTS! " Here son, take the 96 thousand to keep her quiet, and next time think with the head on your shoulders, not with the one below your waist."
Uncle Sky
Thanks, Uncle Sky!
Gotta love those conservative family values.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast til mid-afternoon.
Suggests War Crimes Probe Of Bush Team
Mohamed ElBaradei
Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.
Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of "grotesque distortion" in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country.
The Iraq war taught him that "deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators," ElBaradei writes in "The Age of Deception," being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.
The 68-year-old legal scholar, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009 and recently a rallying figure in Egypt's revolution, concludes his 321-page account of two decades of "tedious, wrenching" nuclear diplomacy with a plea for more of it, particularly in the efforts to rein in North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Mohamed ElBaradei
Embraces Rave Shunned By Los Angeles
Las Vegas
The Electric Daisy Carnival - with its towering Ferris wheel, celebrity disc jockeys and pulsating lights - is the largest electronic music party in the United States.
The wildly popular multi-day festival is relocating this year from Los Angeles to a desert site 14 miles from the Las Vegas strip, a move that heartened officials in both cities. Sin City leaders are heralding an even bigger party, while those in L.A. are still sensitive to the drug problems and arrests the Carnival sustained a year ago.
"Every time we have a new venue come here that brings thousands of people, it is good for the city," said Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, chairman of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. "The word gets out that Vegas is a good place to party."
Promoter Insomniac Inc. of Los Angeles, meanwhile, announced this month that the annual event will add a third day of thumping beats to showcase more than 200 performers on six stages at the Las Vegas site, another testament to the city's reputation for anything-goes revelry.
Las Vegas
Masks Flying Off The Shelves
Britain's Royals
Costume masks of Britain's royal family are flying off the shelves nationwide ahead of Prince William's April 29 wedding to Kate Middleton. And with Britons taking no pains to, well, mask their excitement about the wedding, the bride-to-be's face has been popping up in the most unlikely places.
More than 120,000 royal masks have shipped already and Mask-arade, the company behind the phenomenon, is taking orders for 20,000 more each day, according to Ray Duffy, one of its founders.
Wills and Kate are the best-sellers of course, but the other royals on offer - Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla - are not far behind.
And it's not just enthusiastic locals. Mask-arade is shipping British royal faces all over the world - to the United States, Australia, Scotland, even Vietnam.
Britain's Royals
Buried Treasure
Austria
A man turning dirt in his back yard stumbled onto buried treasure - hundreds of pieces of centuries-old jewelry and other precious objects that Austrian authorities described Friday as a fairy-tale find.
Austria's department in charge of national antiquities said the trove consists of more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other pieces or fragments, many encrusted with pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments. It says the objects are about 650 years old and are being evaluated for their provenance and worth.
While not assigning a monetary value to the buried bling, the enthusiastic language from the normally staid Federal Office for Memorials reflected the significance it attached to the discovery.
It described the ornaments as "one of the qualitatively most significant discoveries of medieval treasure in Austria."
Austria
Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan was led from a Los Angeles courtroom by several bailiffs after a judge who heard evidence against the actress in a theft case Friday sentenced her to 120 days in jail for a probation violation
Lohan's attorney, Shawn Holley, said she will appeal the ruling, which will allow the actress to post bail, which was set at $75,000.
The "Mean Girls" star also was ordered to serve more than 400 hours of community service, including 300 hours at a women's center.
The ruling came after Sautner reduced Lohan's grand theft case down to a misdemeanor and after prosecutors gave their case against the actress. Sautner ruled that prosecutors had shown that Lohan violated her probation on a 2007 drunken driving case. The judge refused to dismiss the theft case against Lohan.
Lindsay Lohan
Philanderer Breaks Silence
Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson
Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson has broken his silence on his damaging domestic violence scandal, calling the leak of angry personal phone calls with his then-girlfriend last year a "personal betrayal."
The Oscar-winning director of "Braveheart" described the leaked tapes, in which Gibson was heard ranting, swearing and threatening Russian girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, "terribly humiliating and painful for my family."
"I've never treated anyone badly or in a discriminatory way based on their gender, race, religion or sexuality -- period," Gibson told Hollywood journalist Allison Hope Weiner in a lengthy interview for website Deadline Hollywood on Friday.
Gibson last month pleaded no contest to a charge of hitting Grigorieva, the mother of his baby daughter, as their relationship broke down in early 2010.
Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson
Actress Sued
Paz de la Huerta
First she was arrested. Now actress Paz de la Huerta has been sued by a former reality TV figure she's accused of attacking in a swanky New York City bar.
Samantha Swetra's lawsuit says she was "maliciously assaulted, beaten and battered" by the "Boardwalk Empire" actress March 20. The suit was filed Friday.
De la Huerta has been charged with assault. Authorities say she punched Swetra in the face and hurled a glass that left cuts in Swetra's leg. They were at a bar at the trendy Standard Hotel.
De la Huerta plays a lead character's girlfriend in the HBO series. Swetra appeared on the MTV reality series "The City."
Paz de la Huerta
Police Escort Investigated
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen is fond of boasting about his "winning" ways, but D.C. authorities are now investigating how he won a high-speed police escort on his way to a show in downtown Washington this week.
Sheen posted a photo on his Twitter account Tuesday night showing a police car ahead of him with emergency lights flashing as he was escorted at least part of the way from Dulles International Airport to his stage show, "Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat is Not an Option." Sheen included a picture of a speedometer reaching about 80 mph and a message that read: "In car with Police escort in front and rear! Driving like someone's about to deliver a baby! Cop car lights (hash)Spinning!"
At the time, the former "Two and a Half Men" star was running nearly an hour late for the show after having spent the early part of his day in divorce court in Los Angeles for a custody hearing over the twin sons he shares with his estranged wife, Brooke Mueller.
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said in a statement Friday that the escort, conducted by the department's Special Operations Division, appeared to violate police protocol in multiple ways and was being investigated by the internal affairs division.
Charlie Sheen
Forced To Take A Stand
GOP Leaders
It's the conspiracy theory that won't go away. And it's forcing Republican officials and presidential contenders to pick sides: Do they think Barack Obama was born outside the United States and disqualified to be president?
As the Republican candidates tiptoe through the mine field, Democrats are watching. They hope the debate will fire up their liberal base and perhaps tie the eventual GOP nominee to fringe beliefs that swing voters will reject.
In recent days several prominent Republicans have distanced themselves, with varying degrees of emphasis, from the false claim that Obama was born in a foreign country. But with a new poll showing that two-thirds of adult Republicans either embrace the claim or are open to it, nearly all these GOP leaders are not calling for a broader effort to stamp out the allegations.
"It's a real challenge for the Republican Party and virtually every Republican candidate for president," contends Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. If it's not handled well, he said, all-important independent voters might see Republicans as extreme or irrelevant.
GOP Leaders
In Memory
Hazel Dickens
Hazel Dickens, a clarion-voiced advocate for coal miners and working people and a pioneer among women in bluegrass music, died on Friday in Washington. She was 75.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Ken Irwin, her longtime friend and the founder of Rounder Records, her label for more than four decades.
Ms. Dickens's initial impact came as a member of Hazel and Alice, a vocal and instrumental duo with Alice Gerrard, a classically trained singer with a passion for the American vernacular music on which Ms. Dickens was raised. Featuring Ms. Dickens on upright bass and Ms. Gerrard on acoustic guitar, Hazel and Alice toured widely on the folk and bluegrass circuits during the 1960s and '70s, captivating audiences with their bold, forceful harmonies and their empathetic approach to songs of struggle and heartbreak.
They recorded four albums during this period, the first of which, "Who's That Knocking," for Folkways in 1965, is considered one of the earliest bluegrass records made by women. All-female string bands like the Coon Creek Girls had been popular before the emergence of bluegrass in the 1940s and '50s, and female country singers like Rose Maddox and Jean Shepard occasionally released bluegrass-themed projects. But Hazel and Alice were expressly a bluegrass act, using the same tenor- and lead-vocal arrangements as many of their male counterparts.
The influence of the staunchly traditional duo extended beyond bluegrass to commercial country music. Hazel and Alice's arrangement of the Carter Family's "Hello Stranger" became the blueprint for Emmylou Harris's version of the song, and their adaption of "The Sweetest Gift (A Mother's Smile)" inspired Naomi Judd, then a single mother in rural Kentucky, to start singing with her daughter Wynonna.
Long revered by feminists, Ms. Dickens's music, and especially her songwriting, assumed an even more political cast almost as soon as she began pursuing a solo career in the wake of the duo's breakup in 1976. Several of her songs, including "Coal Tattoo" and the rousing organizer's anthem "They Never Keep Us Down," served as the musical voice of conscience for Barbara Kopple's Oscar-winning 1976 documentary, "Harlan County, U.S.A."
Whether she performed solo or with a country-style band, Ms. Dickens's atavistic mountain inflection and delivery were inimitable, and never so much as when she sang a cappella on "Black Lung," a harrowing dirge she wrote for her oldest brother, who died of that disease. In 1987 she sang another a cappella ballad, "Hills of Galilee," during a funeral scene in "Matewan," John Sayles's movie about coal mining in Appalachia.
Hazel Jane Dickens was born June 1, 1935, in Mercer County, W.Va. One of 11 children, she grew up in a family whose survival depended on the coal industry. Her father, a Primitive Baptist preacher and a forceful singer, hauled timber to feed the household. Her brothers were miners and one of her sisters cleaned house for a supervisor at the mines. The music they sang in church and heard on the radio, particularly the music of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, offered one of their few diversions.
She moved to Baltimore in the early 1950s and worked in factories there. City living was hardly more prosperous than the life she'd known in the coal fields of Mercer County, but it did afford her exposure to the larger social and political world. She met and started playing music with the singer and folklorist Mike Seeger, who eventually introduced her to Ms. Gerrard.
In 1994 Ms. Dickens became the first woman to receive the International Bluegrass Music Association's Merit Award for contributions to the idiom. She was later inducted into the organization's Hall of Honor. Ms. Dickens received many other awards, including a National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2008. She also collaborated with Bill Malone on a book about her life and music, "Working Girl Blues," published by the University of Illinois Press the same year.
No immediate family members survive.
Hazel Dickens
In Memory
Kevin Jarre
Kevin Jarre, who wrote the screenplays for the movies "Glory" and "Tombstone," has died. He was 56.
His aunt, Patty Briley Bean, tells the Los Angeles Times that Jarre died unexpectedly of heart failure on April 3 at his Santa Monica home.
Jarre was a history buff who was entranced by the Civil War since childhood, when he'd received toy soldiers for Christmas. His research on a black regiment led him to write the 1989 movie "Glory," which won three Academy Awards, including one for actor Denzel Washington.
His 1993 "Tombstone," about the shootout at the OK Corral, got mixed reviews but was a hit.
Jarre also co-wrote "Rambo: First Blood Part II," "The Devil's Own" and "The Mummy."
He was the adopted son of Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre.
Kevin Jarre
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
