Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: When Prophecy Fails (New York Times)
… we cannot and will not persuade these people to reconsider their views in the light of the evidence. All we can do is stop paying attention. It's going to be difficult, because many members of the deficit cult seem highly respectable. But they've been hugely, absurdly wrong for years on end, and it's time to stop taking them seriously.
Janet Mackenzie Smith: Christmas With My Homeless Aunt (Slate)
She spoke fluent French. She came with mice in her suitcase.
Karina Bland: Overwhelming public response to Bikers Against Child Abuse (Arizona Republic)
The bikers make a big show of roaring up the children's streets, gunning their engines, and standing, big and scary, in their driveways. But they're really there to make a promise. No matter what, if the children feel threatened, or even just scared, the bikers will ride over and stand guard. All night if they have to.
J.F. Sargent and Dustin Koski: The 6 Most Aggressively Badass Things Done by Pacifists (Cracked)
From his 1942 enlistment in the U.S. Army, Desmond Doss was a living contradiction. He was a Seventh Day Adventist pacifist there voluntarily, but even under direct orders, he refused to so much as hold a rifle. He did have the excuse that he was going to be serving as a field medic, but his commanding officer still tried unsuccessfully to get rid of him through Section 8. Doss also refused to work on Sunday, so he had to make up for it throughout the rest of the week.
Lucas Kavner: Bobcat Goldthwait Talks 'God Bless America,' Explains Why He Avoids Reality Shows And Big Studio Comedies (Huffington Post)
… there's very little reason for you to not be expressing yourself if you have a burning desire to express yourself. Go ahead, get out of your own way and do it. Of course at the bottom of Vice thing someone's already written like "Of course it's easy for you to say, you're in show business." But I made a movie for 20 grand with a crew I found on Craigslist. I could do it for a lot less if I wanted.
Gabriel Winslow-Yost: A Triumph of the Comic-Book Novel (New York Review of Books)
Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-winning Holocaust comic Maus was nearing completion even as Vidal wrote, and there has been no shortage of successors, from the politically minded reportage and memoirs of Joe Sacco and Marjane Satrapi to the acid, unnerving fictions of Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns-to, above all, the intricately bleak work of Chris Ware.
Mother Ginger and Isabella (Neatorama)
"This scene is always my favorite of The Nutcracker Ballet. In the version our regional ballet does, Mother Ginger is a man atop a wooden scaffolding that gets rolled out on stage. In this version, the lemon drop dancers underneath are so tiny that such shenanigans aren't necessary. Keep your eye on little Isabella, who is so full of the joy of dancing that she dumps the practiced routine and steals the entire number!" - Miss Cellania
David Bruce: Wise Up! Christmas (Athens News)
Eric Sean Nall is the frontman for the music group Foxy Shazam, which recorded the album "Introducing." One of the songs on the album, "A Black Man's Breakfast," is about Karen, Mr. Nall's girlfriend, a Proctor and Gamble scientist who develops shampoos. When the album came out, Mr. Nall's girlfriend wrote down the lyrics for most of the songs so they could appear in the CD booklet, but when Mr. Nall took the lyrics to a printer, he added a couple of lines to "A Black Man's Breakfast": "Karen, I love you so much. Will you marry me?" He gave her a copy of the CD and booklet on Christmas Eve, and when she read the lyrics, she cried - and she said yes.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Dueling Jingle Bells
Just a little last minute Christmas cheer to put in your stocking, er speakers.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Rainy morning, overcast afternoon, and a clear, cold night.
Treated Like a Terrorist Group
Occupy
Now that it's been over a year since the Occupy movement swept across the country, FOIA requests are being fulfilled, revealing uncomfortable details about how authorities viewed the protestors. One such request by the Partnership for Civil Justice came through this weekend, and the 112 heavily redacted pages reveal that the FBI approached the Occupy Wall Street protests as "criminal activity" -- which is not terribly surprising -- and investigated the groups as perpetrators of "domestic terrorism" -- which is fairly unsettling. More specifically, the Feds enlisted its own as well as local terrorism task forces in nine different cities across the country to investigate Occupy. In Memphis, the group was lumped together with Anonymous and the Aryan Nation in discussing the threat of "domestic terrorism." White supremacists and 99 Percenters aren't really two groups that we think about hand-in-hand but whatever.
This isn't the first time that a FOIA request has shown the FBI to have engaged in some suspicious activity around the Occupy movement. In September, a FOIA request from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) showed extensive surveillance of the movement's prominent players, leading ACLU attorney Linda Lye to ask, "Why does a political protest amount to a national security threat?" The FBI denied the surveillance accusations by saying that its investigation did not include "unnecessary intrusions into the lives of law-abiding people" and that its prohibited from investigating Americans "solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of other rights." Of course, if you classify the actions as "domestic terrorism," other rules apply.
That in mind, we still don't really have any idea how far the FBI went in chasing the Occupiers. At the time of this latest disclosure over two-thirds of the bureau's records on the movement have been made public. As the Partnership for Civil Justice said in a press release, this latest batch of documents is only "the tip of the iceberg."
Occupy
Newspaper Publishes Gun Owners' Names
The Journal News
A newspaper in New York has received a wave of criticism from its readers after publishing the names and addresses of all of the individuals with handgun or pistol permits in its coverage area.
Hundreds of residents in New York's Westchester and Rockland counties were surprised to find their names and addresses listed on a map posted by The Journal News on Sunday. Users can click any dot on the map to see which of their neighbors has a permit for a gun.
The map sparked more than 500 comments from readers within a day of its appearance on the website, many of them voicing outrage at the paper's decision to make the information public.
All of the names and addresses were compiled through public records. The paper also requested the information from Putnam County, which is still compiling the records for publication, according to The Journal News' website.
The Journal News
Christmas Cards Collection
Robert Frost
Take heart, holiday procrastinators: Famed poet Robert Frost once waited until July to get his Christmas cards in the mail.
Unlike the flimsy, forgettable cards of today, however, Frost's cards arguably were worth the wait. For the past 28 years of his life, he teamed up with a boutique printer to send beautifully illustrated booklets featuring a different poem for each year.
Dartmouth College, which Frost briefly attended as a student and later returned as a lecturer, has collected more than 500 of the cards, including the first installment, which was sent without Frost's knowledge.
In 1929, Joseph Blumenthal of the New York-based Spiral Press, who was setting type for one of Frost's poetry collections, decided the poem "Christmas Trees" would make an attractive greeting card. With permission from Frost's publisher, he printed 275 copies, one of which eventually made its way to Frost. The poet liked it so much, he decided to collaborate with Blumenthal on cards starting in 1934. The resulting series lasted until 1962, the year before his death.
Many of Frost's cards feature woodcut illustrations evoking the New England landscape with which he was so deeply associated. Printed on heavy cardstock, some run to 10 or 15 pages. The 1942 card included a hand-colored illustration of a country village and the poem "The Gift Outright," which Frost, who won four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, later recited from memory at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.
Robert Frost
Caroling Tradition Is Cancelled
Irving Berlin
A caroling group that for 35 years has performed the Irving Berlin classic "White Christmas" on Christmas Eve outside the New York City home where the composer lived has cancelled the tradition.
A group spokesman says the plans were abruptly cancelled last week for lack of space at the Manhattan home, which now serves as the Luxembourg consulate.
The tradition started in the late 1970s with one cabaret singer outside the home. In 1983, Berlin invited the singers inside for cocoa and cookies.
Luxembourg Consul-General Jean-Claude Knebeler tells the New York Post the ballroom where the group performed is filled with office equipment because the consulate expanded. He says he hopes the tradition resumes in another year in the consulate's library.
Irving Berlin
Knee-Jerk Conservatives Target
Piers Morgan
Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported from the U.S. over his gun control views.
Morgan has taken an aggressive stand for tighter U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting. Last week, he called a gun advocate appearing on his "Piers Morgan Tonight" show an "unbelievably stupid man."
Now, gun rights activists are fighting back. A petition created Dec. 21 on the White House e-petition website by a user in Texas accuses Morgan of engaging in a "hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution" by targeting the Second Amendment. It demands he be deported immediately for "exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens."
The petition has already hit the 25,000 signature threshold to get a White House response. By Monday, it had 31,813 signatures.
Morgan seemed unfazed - and even amused - by the movement.
Piers Morgan
The Fallout
Sen. Mike Crapo
The formerly alcohol-abstaining Idaho Republican could face some blowback from his party - and his conservative constituents
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Hypocrite) has represented Idaho in the Senate since 1999, and he's slated to take the top GOP spot on the Senate Banking Committee when the 113th Congress convenes on Jan. 3. The next day, Jan. 4, he has a court date in Alexandria, Va., to face charges relating to his arrest early Sunday for driving under the influence of alcohol. Police says that Crapo - a 61-year-old Mormon who has said previously that he doesn't drink alcohol - ran a red light, failed field sobriety tests, was arrested at 12:45 a.m., and released on a $1,000 bond at about 5 a.m. He was alone in his vehicle, and his blood-alcohol level was 0.11, easily above Virginia's 0.08 limit.
Of course, there could be some serious fallout for the three-term senator. The only thing that sticks to your political career more than getting caught flouting the law is doing it in a way that appears to violate your convictions. With Craig, who publicly opposed gay rights but was arrested on suspicions of soliciting gay sex in an airport lavatory, the arrest effectively ended his Senate career. Other politicians, like Sen. David Vitter (R-Diapers) - a social conservative implicated as a client of a D.C. prostitution ring in 2007 - have weathered their scandals with minimal disruption to their public-service jobs. For Crapo, the big test will be how his constituents react. "Crapo graudated from Brigham Young University, and served earlier in his life as a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," a religion that forbids drinking, says BuzzFeed. And a DUI arrest could spell special trouble in Idaho, "where about a quarter of the population - and a considerable portion of the donor class - consists of Latter-day Saints."
On the other hand, Crapo doesn't face the voters again until 2016, and in 2010 he got an impressive 71 percent of the vote. Still, says Rick Moran at American Thinker , "Getting behind the wheel of a car when there's even a chance you may be legally intoxicated shows very poor judgment."
Sen. Mike Crapo
Baker's Eyesore?
Giant Thermometer
A giant thermometer built to attract motorists headed to and from Las Vegas has become an eyesore, and residents in this Southern California desert town are divided about whether to take the landmark down.
Erected in 1991 and billed as the "World's Largest Thermometer, the 134-foot-high structure equipped with nearly 5,000 light bulbs was a Mojave Desert beacon. After changing ownership a few times, the current owner has kept the thermometer dark, saying the light bill was about $8,000 a month, according to the Los Angeles Times reports.
Le Hayes, general manager of the Baker Community Services District, says its demise is an embarrassment to the town. He plans to remove a picture of it from the welcome sign on Baker's water tower.
The tower's height was selected because of the 134-degree record set in nearby Death Valley in 1913. The thermometer was the brainchild of local businessman Willis Herron, who built the giant monolith next to his Bun Boy Restaurant.
Baker, which considers itself the gateway to Death Valley and is known to travellers for its toasty temperatures, is located between Las Vegas and Los Angeles on Interstate 15. It is a frequent stopping point for travellers making the 280-mile trek, much of it across desert.
Giant Thermometer
Worker Reprimanded
Flatulence
An employee at the Social Security Administration's Baltimore office has been formally reprimanded for "conduct unbecoming of a federal employee," specifically for disrupting co-workers "by passing gas and releasing an unpleasant odor."
According to the letter, issued in December and obtained by the Smoking Gun website, the employee, who has been identified as a 38 year old male but was not identified by name, had been informed by his supervisor during a "performance discussion" in May 2012 that his co-workers had complained about the gas issue in the past. The individual was referred to an "Employee Assistance Program" to look into whether the frequent and unpleasant incidents could be symptomatic of a medical issue.
It seems the problem continued for some time after that though. The letter, which has been redacted so as not to include names, runs five pages long and details numerous similar exchanges.
The letter lists 60 specific incidences of gas passing from this employee over the roughly seven month period between mid-May when the issue was brought up, and early December when the reprimand was issued.
Flatulence
Moves To Israel
'Lost Tribe'
Dozens of Jews who claim to be the descendants of a lost biblical Jewish tribe emigrated to Israel on Monday from their village in northeastern India, celebrating their arrival after a five-year struggle to get in.
The Bnei Menashe say they are descended from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the eighth century B.C. An Israeli chief rabbi recognized them as a lost tribe in 2005, and about 1,700 moved to Israel over the next two years before the government stopped giving them visas.
Israel recently reversed that policy, agreeing to let the remaining 7,200 Bnei Menashe immigrate.
Fifty-three arrived on a flight Monday. Michael Freund, an Israel-based activist on their behalf, said nearly 300 others will arrive in the coming weeks.
The Bnei Menashe come from the states of Mizoram and Manipur near India's border with Myanmar, where, they say, their ancestors landed after the Assyrians banished them. Over the centuries they became animists, and in the 19th century, British missionaries converted many to Christianity.
'Lost Tribe'
In Memory
Jack Klugman
Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's "The Odd Couple" and the crime-fighting coroner in "Quincy, M.E.," died Monday, a son said. He was 90.
Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.
"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.
Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.
Never anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with - gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.
His was a city actor ideal for "The Odd Couple," which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman - the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison - and Tony Randall - the fussy photographer Felix Unger - in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series "Appointment with Adventure."
They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."
In "Quincy, M.E.," which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.
The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology). After serving in the Army during World War I, he went on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as both looked for paying jobs. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of "Golden Boy." His film credits included Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" and Blake Edwards' "Days of Wine and Roses" and an early television highlight was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of "The Petrified Forest." His performance in the classic 1959 musical "Gypsy" brought him a Tony nomination for best featured (supporting) actor in a musical.
He also appeared in several episodes of "The Twilight Zone," including a memorable 1963 one in which he played a negligent father whose son is seriously wounded in Vietnam. His other TV shows included "The Defenders" and the soap opera "The Greatest Gift."
In his later years, he guest-starred on TV series including "Third Watch" and "Crossing Jordan" and appeared in a 2010 theatrical film, "Camera Obscura."
Klugman's hobby was horse racing and he eventually took up raising them, too.
Klugman's wife, actress-comedian Brett Somers, played his ex-wife, Blanche, in the "Odd Couple" series. The couple, who married in 1953 and had two sons, Adam and David, had been estranged for years at the time of her death in 2007.
In February 2008, at age 85, Klugman married longtime girlfriend Peggy Crosby.
Jack Klugman
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