From People:

Talk about an odd couple: conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and outspoken gay-marriage advocate Elton John.

But, according to a News Corporation (which owns Fox News) wire report, the Rocket Man, 63, serenaded the 400 guests into the wee hours Saturday night to celebrate the marriage of Limbaugh, 59, to Kathryn Rogers, 33, in the Ponce de Leon ballroom of Florida’s fabled Breakers hotel in Palm Beach. Sir Elton’s fee: $1 million, the report notes.

Amid dozens of giant bouquets of white roses (and very tight security), reports the Palm Beach Post, guests at the wedding included former Bush adviser Karl Rove; actor-politician Fred Thompson; former Kansas City Royals slugger George Brett; Fox News commentator Sean Hannity; former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft; former Clinton adviser James Carville and his wife, GOP analyst Mary Matalin; and golfer Tom Watson. A wedding guest also tells PEOPLE that among the others was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The couple met six years ago, while she was running a charity golf tournament and Limbaugh was in the process of divorcing for the third time.

0744: The MedMart boondoggle in Cleveland meets Roldo and Roldo”s right – MedMart deal needs vast amounts of oversight applied to it. I”ll start January 1.

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

shedding its richness on them
silently as snow, keeper and maker
of places wholly dark. And in him
something dark applauds.

-from The Farmer And The Sea, p. 46

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Farming: A Hand Book by Wendell Berry.

Another League for Democracy, this time, Arakan, has called bullshit on Myanmar’s maybe-planned faux elections in the fall. Lots of parties are cropping up already, but the groups that have been involved in Myanmar politics for the long haul know a rigged game when they see one and are refusing to play.

From Narinjara:

The Burmese military government has been planning to hold an election this year, and three political parties have recently emerged to represent Arakan and run in the 2010 election. They are the Rakhine National Progressive Party, the Mro and Khami National Solidarity Organization, and the Myanmar Rakhine State National Force Party.

The Arakan League for Democracy, or ALD, which won the most votes in Arakan and 11 parliamentary seats, has officially announced that not only will they boycott the election but they will not even register as a party with the election commission. The ALD states as it reasons that the new constitution of Burma was unscrupulously adopted by force and fraud, and it will not bring any democratic or ethnic rights to the people of Burma.

Dr. Khin Maung Exiled Arakanese Political Leader As with the Arakanese political parties, perspectives on the election among the people are also mixed. In such circumstances, one of the leading figures from the Arakanese political community, Dr. Khin Maung, sat with Narinjara’s Ko Maung Aye to discuss the parties that will run in the upcoming election.

There is a tremendous amount of energy and time being devoted to an election that I seriously doubt will ever take place.

“The Proposal”

When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers must find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.

Wall street, and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of “tough decision”, and his board of directors gives him a big bonus.

Our government should not be immune from similar risks.

Therefore: Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members. Reduce Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Then, reduce their staff by 25%.

Accomplish this over the next 8 years (two steps/two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.

Some Yearly Monetary Gains Include:

$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165,200 pay/member/ yr.)

$97,175,000 for elimination of their Continue Reading »

Sharon Begley writes:

The DNA analysis undermines the claim that most of today’s Jews, particularly the Ashkenazi, are the direct lineal descendants of converted Khazars-which has angered many in the Jewish community as an implicit attack on the Jews’ claim to the land of Israel, since it implies that today’s Jews have no blood ties to the original Jews of the Middle East. Instead, find the scientists, at most there was “limited admixture with local populations, including Khazars and Slavs … during the 1,000-year (second millennium) history of the European Jews.”

Via she who Sees Invisible People…

Via reader Mary Jo…

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Via a Daily Dish reader:

Apparently this comedy/satire group, Latma, is fully funded by the Center for Security Policy’s Middle East Media program. And who runs the CSP? Yup, Frank Gaffney. So we have American neocons celebrating and making fun of the death of nine individuals, including an American citizen. How is this not a bigger deal?

So, I was wrong. The sickening video wasn’t done by Israeli neo-cons, it was done by American neo-cons pretending to be friends of Israel, or to use my friend Eric Vessel’s term: carpetbloggers.

Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don”t know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. Its is one way.

-from The Contrariness Of The Mad Farmer, p. 45

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Farming: A Hand Book by Wendell Berry.

At one level I have to wonder why Myanmar seems bent on joining the nuclear club — I really can’t see the generals fearing an U.S. invasion like Korea and Iran, it’s hardly worthy of an Axis of Evil designation — but this may be a case where the State Peace and Development Council feels a need for some nuclear viagra.

From the BBC:

Are the nukes to counter the damage done by the panties?

I Have Seen America”s Future and It Doesn”t Work

Copyright © 2009 by James Delingpole

Think of me as the hero of H. G. Wells”s The Time Machine, bursting into your present, my clothes all tattered and torn, and on my face an expression of dire horror and impending doom. For I am afraid I have a terrible message to impart. I have just seen the future. Your future. And I”m sorry to say it sucks.

This new president you”ve elected. You think he”s going to make everything okay, right? Even if you didn”t vote for him, you”re kind of hoping that some good must surely come of it. He”s young, he”s personable, he”s the same attractive shade as Tiger Woods, and he had nothing to do with the recession or the credit crunch or the mistakes that were made in Iraq or Afghanistan or any of the other old-regime bad things. This handsome JFK-revisited guy is going to magically sweep away all those bad things with his magic new broom. Right? Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. That”s the sound of me laughing darkly, by the way. You see, where you are now, so my country was twelve years ago when we elected our very own prototype of your shiny, grinning Obama guy.

The man”s name was Blair, Tony Blair, someone to whom you”re likely quite well disposed. From the American perspective I can see he must have seemed a pretty good thing. He stood shoulder to shoulder with your last president in the War on Terror.

He understood the nature of the threat (as many still do not) and committed his fair share of fighting troops (unlike some pantywaist nations I could name, and will indeed name later). He wasn”t afraid to be called Bush”s poodle (which he certainly was over here, all too frequently).

But what you”re less likely to know-and I don”t blame you; why should you? If I lived in a country like yours that had everything, I doubt I”d worry about Continue Reading »

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The $800 million plus insured by the quarter percent extra sales tax by Cuyahoga County Commissioners wasn”t sugary enough for MMPI and the Chicago Kennedys. So the Ohio State Legislature added more sweeteners to the deal.

The County is collecting some $40 million a year on the tax passed by Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora”s vote without public input. The tax lasts 20 years (if you believe that). The revenue goes to MMPI, a private developer and operator.

The County has given very little information on how the nearly $100 million already collected is being spent. The Plain Dealer – bastion of County reform – has neglected to tell the public Continue Reading »

Why is it that doctors call what they do “practice?”

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

their hands gathering the stones up into walls,
and relaxing, the stones crawling back into the ground.

-from The Current, p. 41

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Farming: A Hand Book by Wendell Berry.

The Intertubes are thumping this morning with nuclear news out of Myanmar. The Washington Post reports on stacks of documents smuggled out of Myanmar and a U.S. Senator has postponed a diplomatic trip there because of the news. All of which gives me reason to revisit BOB: Myanmar’s Big Odd Boxes.

From Arms Control Wonk:

According to [Democratic Voice of Burma’s] sources, North Korea had nothing to do with setting up the two machine shops inside the Boxes. In fact, the Boxes seem to have been set up as general purpose machine shops and probably do not violate either the MTCR or even political sanctions imposed by Europe against the Junta (Europe”s sanctions against the Burmese Junta are considerably loser than those of the US and these exports were probably legal.

Now that there is evidence of the production of missile related components those companies will probably want to rethink their future exports.) However, this whole episode is an indication of how proliferation might be changing.

Consider how India got started on its road to preeminence in solid propellant missile technology: it licensed the technology from France, received detailed written know-how on production (and training of technicians in France), and received a list of production equipment, which India purchased elsewhere.

France was obviously capable of producing the needed equipment and chose-presumably for political reasons since the US was at the time trying to pressure other countries not to assist India”s rocket/missile program-not to sell them directly.

North Korea is also at least claiming the ability to produce advanced production machines and probably did sell a certain level of technology to Iran for missile production. However, North Korea must wonder if it will always be able to ship large pieces of equipment out of its country or even if its clients would settle for DPRK”s finest.

Instead, the spread of precision engineering worldwide- A. Q. Khan”s use of Malaysai”s SCOPE engineering is the clearest example of this-has opened up the possibility of proliferation networks more as consulting engineering firms rather than one-stop-shopping centers.

After all, without the testimony of DVB”s sources, it would be impossible to tell the difference between the Boxes set up by Westerners with the equipment list coming from a North Korean consultant for WMD/delivery production and the Boxes set up by Westerners as general purpose machining.

Fireworks! We’re building fireworks, err, satellites, yes! That’s the ticket! We’re launching weather satellites.

THE JEWS AND ARABS – INTERESTING POINT OF VIEW

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000 ONE BILLION TWO
HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world’s population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes.

Literature: 1988 – Najib Mahfooz.

Peace: 1978 – Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat; 1994 – Yaser Arafat; 1990 – Elias James Corey; 1999 – Ahmed Zewai.

Economics: (zero)

Physics: (zero)

Medicine: 1960 – Peter Brian Medawar; 1998 – Ferid Mourad.

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000 — Only FOURTEEN MILLION or
about 0.02% of the world’s population (Just one hundredth that of the Islamic population).

However, they have received the following Nobel Prizes.

Literature: 1910 – Paul Heyse; 1927 – Henri Bergson; 1958 – Boris Pasternak; 1966 – Shmuel Yosef Agnon; 1966 – Nelly Sachs; Continue Reading »