JackRabbit Cafe

Hello Goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Sun, 08 May 2011 01:03:00 +0000

I started this blog as a kind of travelogue, I guess. I was a hand-carry courier in early 2008 because I just wanted to fly and see new places. I don't really remember, but I have an archive!

Welcome to JackRabbit Cafe, my new blog and early warning device. Let's just say that it's in "beta" mode now, and will (hopefully) be tweaked and prodded until I like it enough to stop tweaking and prodding. I'm leaving sometime Sunday for Taipei, then Guadalajara, and decided that a blog may be the best way to record whatever journeys I may be taking. This first trip will total 16,500 air miles; that's more miles than I put on my '93 Mazda. This time, I'll be bringing the same, lousy Sony Vaio laptop that I used in Russia. If I decide to continue as a courier, I'll end up getting a Macbook; better for travel, great for writing and managing an online lifestyle.
So, this is my introductory post. Check back often for pungent pearls of wisdom and other random thoughts...

I ended up in Taipei and Guadalajara every week for six or so in a row, and while I dug both those cities, they, too, became more of the same.

Anyway, the blog has been tons of fun for a long time, through all my thicks and all my thins; elections, politics, sports, the health care debate--most everything except what I had for breakfast or when I clipped my fingernails--you know, the Facebook stuff.

But I think it's time to move along. I'm horrified at the concept of continually stating the obvious and simply reposting things I find repulsive, because Fox News is omnipresent, and they can speak for themselves.

And I'll never tell you about my fingernails, anyway.

Thank you for visiting here; I became enough of a Big Brother to recognize you, at least geographically. The Internet's a big place, and it's really cool that you came here.

This is your country.

I wish you peace.

Boston To Honor Bill Russell

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 04 May 2011 23:54:00 +0000

From ESPN.Boston:

The Boston Celtics announced Wednesday that, at long last, Bill Russell will be honored with a statue in the city of Boston.

"We are honored to play a role in paying tribute to such an extraordinary athlete, leader and legacy," Celtics managing partner/co-owner Stephen Pagliuca said. "Bill Russell will forever be remembered in Boston, and it's fitting that the ultimate benefactors of his legacy will be future generations of our beloved city's youth."
Said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who convened and hosted the first meetings of the newly formed Bill Russell Legacy Committee: "I am so proud to be part of an effort to honor Bill Russell. He is not only one of the greatest champions the sports world has ever seen, he is a man who has stood by and delivered for our young people through his support of mentoring programs. I want all Bostonians and all who work or visit here to recognize Bill Russell and all his accomplishments."
The team also announced the creation of a mentoring program in Russell's name.
For his part, Russell was humbled by the honor.
"I am uncomfortable with honors such as this but my years as captain of the Boston Celtics were the proudest moments of my career," Russell said. "Mayor Menino's Boston has proven to be a city that embraces the diverse contributions of all its people and neighborhoods. I am thankful to the Celtics and all the contributors for the effort to create such a wonderful mentoring program."
During a White House ceremony earlier this year in which he awarded Russell a Medal of Freedom, President Barack Obama said he hoped Boston would build a statue of Russell.
"I hope that one day in the streets of Boston, children will look up at a statue built not only to Bill Russell the player, but Bill Russell the man," Obama said.

RIP: Jim Dickson

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:51:00 +0000

Jim Dickson, a key architect of the '60s folk-rock sound and the original manager of the Byrds, died of unknown causes April 19 in Costa Mesa, Calif. He was 80.
Born in Los Angeles, Dickson worked as a record producer in the early '60s, cutting proto-folk-rock sides by singer-songwriter Hamilton Camp, progressive bluegrass units the Dillards and the Hillmen (which included future Byrds member Chris Hillman) and singer-songwriter David Crosby.
He took up management of Hillman and Crosby's fledgling new band, which was styling itself as an L.A. equivalent of the Beatles. Employing free studio time cadged by Dickson, then a staff producer at World Pacific Studios, the group cut early tracks as the Beefeaters and the Jet Set.
In 1964, Dickson received an acetate of the unreleased Bob Dylan song "Mr. Tambourine Man" from the singer-songwriter's publisher. His charges, a quintet now known as the Byrds, recorded it for Columbia Records (employing backup studio musicians), and it became the band's breakthrough No. 1 single.
Dickson and management partner Eddie Tickner handled the Byrds, who became the preeminent folk-rock band of the era, through a bitter split in June 1967. The pair subsequently worked with the Flying Burrito Brothers, a country-rock unit including Hillman, Byrds drummer Michael Clarke and latter-day Byrds member Gram Parsons.
Dickson produced the group's A&M albums "Burrito Deluxe," "The Flying Burrito Brothers" and the live "Last of the Red Hot Burritos," and is credited with helming some of Parsons' post-Burritos solo recordings.

Dodger Blues

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 04 May 2011 13:22:00 +0000

Red ink at Chavez Ravine:

The Dodgers currently do not have enough cash to meet payroll through this month, potentially accelerating a showdown between owner Frank McCourt and Major League Baseball. The cash shortage was confirmed Tuesday by two people familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the possibility of McCourt filing suit against MLB. McCourt received a $30-million loan from Fox last month, which provided funding for the Dodgers' two April payrolls and is expected to carry them through the first May payroll. The second May payroll, due at month's end, is the one that appears problematic at this time. If McCourt were to fail to meet payroll, the league would cover the expenses and would have the option to seize the Dodgers from him, according to one of the people familiar with the situation.

Maybe Miami Fans Can't Stand The Heat, Either

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 04 May 2011 03:39:00 +0000

NESN has this:

If you looked quickly at the beginning of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics, you'd probably recognize the attempted "whiteout" going on. As teams often do, Heat fans were either encouraged to wear white to American Airlines Center or they were given white T-shirts upon arrival. Apparently, the fans aren't the only ones in on the action -- the actual seats were, too. It's a solid tactic when you think about it. Seats draped in white blend in pretty well when everyone else is wearing white, too. However, when cameras zoomed in, multiple shots showed empty seats draped in white sheets throughout the arena as the first quarter began. No empty seats were more obvious than those in the first row right next to the benches. Miami sports fans don't have the greatest reputation as it is, and it's likely this won't help dispel those notions anytime soon.

Red, White & Brew

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:29:00 +0000

H/T: TruthDig

From 'Willamette Week' (Portland, OR): 9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 03:47:00 +0000

These graphs are from a piece by David Cay Johnston. Go here to read it in its entirety; Johnston nails it.

This is your country.

RIP: Poly Styrene

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:43:00 +0000

From BBC News:

Punk singer Poly Styrene, former singer with the X-Ray Spex, has died at the age of 53 after suffering from cancer.

She was one of the first female punk icons, whose unorthodox yet infectious style was highly influential.

Real name Marianne Elliot-Said, she had cancer of the spine and breast.

A statement on her official Twitter feed said: "We can confirm that the beautiful Poly Styrene, who has been a true fighter, won her battle on Monday evening to go to higher places."

Singer Billy Bragg was among those who paid tribute, saying: "Punk without Poly Styrene and the X-Ray Spex wouldn't have been the same."

Poly Styrene formed her band after watching the Sex Pistols perform on Hastings Pier on her 18th birthday and became known for her unpolished vocals and energetic rallying cries against consumerism and environmental destruction.
X-Ray Spex's signature tune was Oh Bondage Up Yours!, a riotous rejection of social and gender norms that began with Poly Styrene's spoken line: "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard."

The band released just one album, Germ Free Adolescents, in 1978, before splitting up.

RIP: Hazel Dickens

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:03:00 +0000

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.
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.
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'll Never Keep Us Down,” served as the musical voice of conscience for Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning 1976 documentary, “Harlan County, U.S.A.”

The full obit is here.

The Conservabot Returns

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 03:06:00 +0000

H/T: Daily Kos

Take Him Out Of The Ballgame

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 03:53:00 +0000

Donald Sterling isn't the only asshole who owns a sports team in Los Angeles. Frank McCourt (officially) lost control of the Dodgers today:

Major League Baseball has moved to seize control of the Dodgers, a famed franchise that fans and much of the baseball world had come to see as crippled by an owner who does not appear to have enough money to operate the team. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced Wednesday that he plans to appoint a trustee in the next few days to oversee "all business and day-to-day operations" of the ballclub. The move was prompted by a number of issues surrounding the Dodgers, including owner Frank McCourt's recent receipt of $30-million personal loan to meet payroll and the parking-lot attack at Dodger Stadium on March 31 that left a San Francisco Giants fan in a coma, according to a league source.

McCourt and his ex-wife Jamie blew into town as relative unknowns; now they are largely viewed as grifters:

Public opinion of the Dodgers' ownership — lukewarm in the best of times — turned chilly when court documents from the McCourts' divorce proceedings revealed that the Dodgers had been charging themselves millions in rent each year, with some of that money going toward the couple's personal expenses. The couple had made numerous real estate purchases, including side-by-side homes in Holmby Hills and Malibu, and paid Russian physicist Vladimir Shpunt to channel positive thoughts toward the team. As of 2009, court records showed, the team had accumulated more than $430 million in long-term debt. More recently, McCourt tried to arrange a $200-million loan from Fox, using the team's cable-television broadcast rights as collateral. Selig rejected the proposal.

Memo to Major League Baseball: next time, don't let a highly-leveraged parking lot owner buy one of your prized assets, and please--please--don't do anything to piss off Vin Scully.

'As Societies Grow Decadent, The Language Grows Decadent, Too'

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:14:00 +0000

That Gore Vidal quote, continued: "Words are used to disguise, not illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests."

Apt words if you believe what Republicans say about the deficit.

Here's Ezra Klein:

The new Republican line is that there's a “Democrat tax hike" on the way. And it's a big 'un: "An unprecedented $3.8 trillion increase" that will affect -- and this is their bold and underline, not mine -- "every American who pays income taxes!"

To understand what's going on here, you need to go back 10 years to the passage of the Bush tax cuts. In order to maximize the size of the cuts, Republicans had to minimize the influence of minority Democrats on the package. So they chose to run the bill through the reconciliation process.

But that posed some challenges. Budget reconciliation had never been used to increase the deficit. In fact, it specifically existed to decrease the deficit. That's why one of its rules was that you couldn't use it to increase the deficit outside the budget window. Republicans realized they could take that very literally: The budget window was 10 years. So if the tax cuts expired after 10 years, they wouldn't increase the deficit outside the budget window. They'd also have the added benefit of appearing less costly in the Congressional Budget Office's estimates, as the CBO duly scored them as expiring after 10 years, which kept the long-range budget picture from exploding.

But the plan was never to have the tax cuts expire. Instead, the idea was that people would get used to the new tax rates, and no future Congress would want to allow a big tax increase, so when the time came, either Republicans in office would extend the cuts or Republicans in the minority would hammer Democrats until they extended them. And that's where we are now: Democrats control the government, so Republicans are screaming about tax increases as a way to get Democrats to extend tax cuts.

It's really hard to know where to start with this one. It's not a tax increase passed into law by Democrats. It's a reversion to old tax rates passed into law by Republicans. It's not how law is supposed to work. It's the result of twisting a budget process meant to reduce the deficit so you could use it to massively increase the deficit. And as for the policy itself, it's a fiscal nightmare: No one who professes concern for short-term deficits can argue for the extension of these deficit-financed tax cuts and retain credibility on debt issues. This is a litmus test. It's not Democrats who are trying to pass the largest tax hike of all time, but Republicans who are calling for the largest increase in the deficit in memory.

This Modern World: Language Is A Virus

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:52:00 +0000

H/T: ThisModernWorld.com

Can I Write 'Em Off As A Bad Investment?

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:45:00 +0000

H/T: Salon.com

Mutiny On The Bounty

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:53:00 +0000

From Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:

Have I mentioned my favorite part of Obama's speech yesterday? Here it is:

America’s finances were in great shape by the year 2000. We went from deficit to surplus. America was actually on track to becoming completely debt free, and we were prepared for the retirement of the Baby Boomers.

But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program — but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts — tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.

To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our nation’s checkbook, consider this: In the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years.

But that’s not what happened. And so, by the time I took office, we once again found ourselves deeply in debt and unprepared for a Baby Boom retirement that is now starting to take place. When I took office, our projected deficit, annually, was more than $1 trillion. On top of that, we faced a terrible financial crisis and a recession that, like most recessions, led us to temporarily borrow even more.

Translation: Fuck you, Republicans.

Hey, that's my line!

Baby Blah Blah

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 01:30:00 +0000

From Pat Oliphant

Fox Fux Up (Again)

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 02:02:00 +0000

On Saturday's Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade attempted to dismiss the importance of Planned Parenthood funding by claiming that services like pap smears are available "at Walgreens." In response to an email about the segment, a Walgreens spokesperson told Media Matters that they do not offer such services.

Memo to Fox News monkeys Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, compliments of Media Matters:

"Neither Walgreens, nor its in-store healthcare clinics, Take Care Clinics, offer pap smears or breast exams," Take Care Clinic spokeswoman Lauren Nestler told Media Matters after being emailed the segment.

Fox News does offer smears, though of a different kind.

RIP: Gil Robbins

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:56:00 +0000

Gil Robbins, a musician and actor who was a member of the 1960s folk group the Highwaymen, died Tuesday at his home in Mexico, said his son, actor-director Tim Robbins. He was 80 and had prostate cancer. "He was very charming, open and funny," Tim Robbins told The Times on Saturday. "He had a real strong moral center; he spoke up for what he believed in." In 1962, Gil Robbins joined the Highwaymen, best known for "Michael," their recording of "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." He spent three years with the folk group, singing baritone, writing songs and playing the guitarron, a large six-string guitar, on five albums. Before joining the Highwaymen, Robbins performed with the Cumberland Three, the Belafonte Singers and folk singer Tom Paxton.

Can Barack Come Out & Play?

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:27:00 +0000

So the government didn't shut down after all, like it did in the mid-90s. Seinfeld isn't on in primetime anymore, either. Ezra Klein reminds us that 2011 is not 1995:

The substance of this deal is bad. But the way Democrats are selling it makes it much, much worse.
The final compromise was $38.5 billion below 2010’s funding levels. That’s $78.5 billion below President Obama’s original budget proposal, which would’ve added $40 billion to 2010’s funding levels, and $6.5 billion below John Boehner’s original counteroffer, which would’ve subtracted $32 billion from 2010’s budget totals. In the end, the real negotiation was not between the Republicans and the Democrats, or even the Republicans and the White House. It was between John Boehner and the conservative wing of his party. And once that became clear, it turned out that Boehner’s original offer wasn’t even in the middle. It was slightly center-left.

But you would’ve never known it from President Obama’s encomium to the agreement. Obama bragged about “making the largest annual spending cut in our history.” Harry Reid joined him, repeatedly calling the cuts “historic.” It fell to Boehner to give a clipped, businesslike statement on the deal. If you were just tuning in, you might’ve thought Boehner had been arguing for moderation, while both Obama and Reid sought to cut deeper. You would never have known that Democrats had spent months resisting these “historic” cuts, warning that they’d cost jobs and slow the recovery...
...The Obama White House is looking toward the Clinton model. After all, Clinton also suffered a major setback in his first midterm, Clinton also faced down a hardline Republican Congress, Clinton also suffered major policy defeats, and yet Clinton, as the story goes, managed to co-opt the conservative agenda and remake himself into a successful centrist. The Obama administration has even hired many of Clinton’s top aides to help them recapture that late-90s magic.

The piece is here.

Forever Bob

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 04:03:00 +0000

If you know me or read this blog, you know my view of Bob Dylan. Simply put, I think he is the singular most important musical artist of the last half of the twentieth century. And that's with full knowledge that while he wasn't the sperm that birthed the baby that became rock n' roll, he was the brilliant son.
Dylan's first incarnation was folk music, of course, which he changed with glimmering literacy at the zeitgeist. He is on record as denying that he was the Voice of a Generation, although many most assuredly disagree. Then he plugged in and created a ragged sonic bohemianism in a mid-60s fantasmagorium that mesmerized the culture and influenced (and intimidated) his friends and peers. He imagined Highway 61 Revisited, perhaps still the finest record of the genre. He made the stunning Blonde on Blonde with a pack of Nashville cats, and when the Summer of Love arrived--with Beatles and Beach Boys in Nehru jackets trekking to India to meditate with the Maharishi--Bob Dylan retreated to Woodstock with his family and a sack of quiet songs. He hung out in a basement with that bunch of Canadians in his backing band the Hawks, who then became the Band, and everything changed all over again.
I'm a Bob Cat, all right, so I read with interest Maureen Dowd's critical take on the Bard's first trip to China, wherein Dylan allegedly agreed to a censored setlist:

Maybe the songwriter should reread some of his own lyrics: “I think you will find/When your death takes its toll/All the money you made/Will never buy back your soul.”

Here's more of Dowd's piece; I'm not one to give much credence to a Beltway writer when it comes to dissertations on music, but Dylan's legacy bleeds into the culture, and has always been about more than a G chord:

“Whatever the counterculture was, I’d seen enough of it,” (Dylan) wrote. He complained of being “anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent.”
Performing his message songs came to feel “like carrying a package of heavy rotting meat,” he wrote...
David Hajdu, the New Republic music critic, says the singer has always shown a tension between “not wanting to be a leader and wanting to be a celebrity.”
In Hajdu’s book, “Positively 4th Street,” Dylan is quoted saying that critics who charged that he’d sold out to rock ’n’ roll had it backward.
“I never saw myself as a folksinger,” he said. “They called me that if they wanted to. I didn’t care. I latched on, when I got to New York City, because I saw (what) a huge audience there was. I knew I wasn’t going to stay there. I knew it wasn’t my thing. ... I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.”
“Folk music,” he concluded, “is a bunch of fat people.”
Hajdu told me that Dylan has distanced himself from his protest songs because “he’s probably aware of the kind of careerism that’s apparent in that work.” Dylan employed propaganda to get successful but knows those songs are “too rigidly polemical” to be his best work.
“Maybe the Chinese bureaucrats are better music critics than we give them credit for,” Hajdu said, adding that Dylan was now “an old-school touring pro” like Frank Sinatra Sr.
Sean Wilentz, the Princeton professor who wrote “Bob Dylan in America,” said that the Chinese were “trying to guard the audience from some figure who hasn’t existed in 40 years. He’s been frozen in aspic in 1963 but he’s not the guy in the work shirt and blue jeans singing ‘Masters of War.’ ”
Wilentz and Hajdu say you can’t really censor Dylan because his songs are infused with subversion against all kinds of authority, except God. He’s been hard on bosses, courts, pols and anyone corrupted by money and power.

I gave up trying to figure out Bob Dylan's career over 30 years ago when he made a Christian record that I didn't entirely hate. I don't know why (if?) he allowed Chinese officials to tell him what to do, but I'm not sure I want to know why Bob Dylan does anything he does. I don't know anything about magic, either, but I still love it when a dove flies out of the handkerchief.

RIP: Sidney Lumet

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 15:21:00 +0000

Sidney Lumet, a director who preferred the streets of New York to the back lots of Hollywood and whose stories of conscience — “12 Angry Men,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Verdict,” “Network” — became modern American film classics, died Saturday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.

The obit is here.

One For The Road

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:22:00 +0000

We have a (six-day) deal!

Let's hope John Boehner can get a drink before closing time...

The nation's lawmakers reached a last-minute budget deal Friday night, averting a government shutdown just minutes before crossing a deadline that would have shuttered federal facilities and forced hundreds of thousands of workers to be furloughed without pay, House Speaker John A. Boehner said.
In a brief statement to reporters, Mr. Boehner said he was pleased that Republicans and Democrats have "come to an agreement that will in fact cut spending and keep our government open."
He added: "This has been a lot of discussion and a long fight. We fought to keep government spending down."
A Democratic source said negotiators had agreed to spending cuts totaling $38.5 billion and had resolved differences in funding for groups like Planned Parenthood that had been holding up a deal for days.
Mr. Boehner said the two sides had agreed to a six-day "bridge" extension of the government's spending authority in order to turn the agreement's framework into legislation that will fund federal operations through the end of the 2011 fiscal year in September. He said the final vote on the package would take place in the middle of next week.

New & Improved: JackRabbit Café In 'Dynamic Views' Mode!

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 01:41:00 +0000

Wanna see something cool?

The image above is this blog viewed in the Flipcard option of Blogger's Dynamic Views. I don't know how long this option has been available--I space out occasionally--but I like it, I like it, yes I do!

Check it out:

The normal URL for this blog is http://jackrabbitcafe.blogspot.com.

Just type /view after that URL for Dynamic Views (the URL then becomes http://jackrabbitcafe.blogspot.com/view.)

Here are the options you'll then have as a reader:

Flipcard:

Mouse over any of the cards to see the post title and comment count. As you scroll down, additional posts will continue to load.
Click on a card to see the post in full view. You can navigate through the posts using J (older post) and K (newer post) or the arrow keys. Hit escape or click Back to all posts to return to the Flipcard view.
In the upper left, click to sort by Date, Author and Category.

Mosaic:

Clicking on an individual tile will expand that post to the full width of the view, and clicking again will collapse the post back into its original position.
The exact position of the tiles is randomly determined each time the blog loads, but they will appear chronologically from top left to bottom right.
Once a tile is expanded, you can page down by using the "up" and "down" arrow keys as well as J and K.
This view is optimized for the tablet viewing, and supports screen rotation.

Sidebar:

Optimized for quick reading and browsing.
Left sidebar is list of chronological posts, with comment counts and thumbnails for individual posts.
J and K arrow keys will navigate through the posts, and comments can be displayed on the same page by clicking the Show link.

Snapshot:

This view will display only the posts which have images.
Clicking through any photo will display the full post page, with naviagtion links at the bottom for Newer and Older posts
Mousing over any photo will display a post snippet

Timeslide:

This view breaks the blog content down into three different areas:
- Left column: Enlarged picture with a post snippet, title, and snipppet displayed in chronological order
- Middle column: Displays just the post title and snippet
- Right column: Displays just the individual post titles
When searching for posts in this view, the results will be highlighted.

Dynamic Views: told ya it was cool!

The Real Budget Battle Isn't About Money, Is It?

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:14:00 +0000

So will the government be shut down tonight? And what does abortion have to do with the budget?

Officials said that Democrats had made concessions on both money and policy, and had moved toward the position of House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio on the overall level of spending, agreeing to $37 billion in cuts, with less of it coming from the Pentagon than Democrats had initially sought.
Democratic officials familiar with the negotiations said that proposed restrictions on money for Planned Parenthood remained the chief sticking point, and that attempts to resolve the disagreement through alternatives like allowing a separate floor vote on the issue had not been successful. Democrats said they were told by the Republicans that the votes of anti-abortion social conservatives would be needed to move any budget measure through the House.

It's not really about spending, is it?

This is your country.

UPDATE: Averted! For a few days, anyway...

Welcome (Back) To Voodoo Economics

noreply@blogger.com (JohnnyRussia) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:07:00 +0000

Paul Krugman isn't impressed with GOP whiz kid Paul Ryan's ballyhooed budget proposals:

First, Republicans have once again gone all in for voodoo economics — the claim, refuted by experience, that tax cuts pay for themselves.
Specifically, the Ryan proposal trumpets the results of an economic projection from the Heritage Foundation, which claims that the plan’s tax cuts would set off a gigantic boom. Indeed, the foundation initially predicted that the G.O.P. plan would bring the unemployment rate down to 2.8 percent — a number we haven’t achieved since the Korean War. After widespread jeering, the unemployment projection vanished from the Heritage Foundation’s Web site, but voodoo still permeates the rest of the analysis.
In particular, the original voodoo proposition — the claim that lower taxes mean higher revenue — is still very much there. The Heritage Foundation projection has large tax cuts actually increasing revenue by almost $600 billion over the next 10 years.
A more sober assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells a different story. It finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.
And about those spending cuts: leave health care on one side for a moment and focus on the rest of the proposal. It turns out that Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are assuming drastic cuts in nonhealth spending without explaining how that is supposed to happen.
How drastic? According to the budget office, which analyzed the plan using assumptions dictated by House Republicans, the proposal calls for spending on items other than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — but including defense — to fall from 12 percent of G.D.P. last year to 6 percent of G.D.P. in 2022, and just 3.5 percent of G.D.P. in the long run.
That last number is less than we currently spend on defense alone; it’s not much bigger than federal spending when Calvin Coolidge was president, and the United States, among other things, had only a tiny military establishment. How could such a drastic shrinking of government take place without crippling essential public functions? The plan doesn’t say.
And then there’s the much-ballyhooed proposal to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers that can be used to buy private health insurance.
The point here is that privatizing Medicare does nothing, in itself, to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of middlemen. Yet the House plan assumes that we can cut health-care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. despite an aging population and rising health care costs.
The only way that can happen is if those vouchers are worth much less than the cost of health insurance. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2030 the value of a voucher would cover only a third of the cost of a private insurance policy equivalent to Medicare as we know it. So the plan would deprive many and probably most seniors of adequate health care.
And that neither should nor will happen. Mr. Ryan and his colleagues can write down whatever numbers they like, but seniors vote. And when they find that their health-care vouchers are grossly inadequate, they’ll demand and get bigger vouchers — wiping out the plan’s supposed savings.
In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous.
And it’s also cruel.

Ludicrous and cruel; sounds like a GOP campaign slogan.