From Politico:

Tea party-backed candidate Debra Medina is closing on Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas”s Republican gubernatorial primary, increasing the odds the race led by Gov. Rick Perry will be thrown into a runoff.

According to a survey out Tuesday by Public Policy Polling, Medina, a nurse who”s now a businesswoman, had the support of 24 percent of likely Republican primary voters, trailing the three-term senator by only 4 percentage points. Perry, who leads Hutchison by double-digits in several polls, got 39 percent in the latest survey.

This is how the Tea Bagger war on the Republican Party is going to run.

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 weather update I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

If I hadn”t been willing to Do It Anyway, to get the thing written no matter how much I hated writing it, there would have been no book and I would have learned none of the lessons the experience provided. And that, I submit, is in itself the most important of those lessons. p. 103

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

That media in the United States continues to focus extensively on American citizen Nyi Nyi Aung trial on political charges, but I also understand that readers become much more interested in international stories when there is a local angle. If we want to keep Myanmar in the thoughts of Americans then Nyi Nyi’s story needs to be told.

From The New York Times:

At the time of Myanmar”s seminal pro-democracy uprising in 1988, [Nyi Nyi] was a teenager and had helped to organize high school students. He fled with many other organizers when the military began its crackdown.

He came to the United States in 1993 as a refugee, earned a computer science degree from Purdue University and worked as a technician at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

But he was restless, said his fiancée, Wa Wa Kyaw. “He really, really wants to do everything for freedom and democracy in Burma,” she said.

Mr. Nyi Nyi Aung, who was born as Kyaw Zaw Lwin, shuttled between Maryland and Mae Sot, Thailand, a border town where many Burmese exiles are based. And after he received American citizenship in 2002, he began visiting Myanmar.

Each time, he obtained a visa from Myanmar”s government, his lawyers said. But the last visit came after the junta publicly singled him out, accusing him of inciting unrest. He was arrested after he landed in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, Myanmar”s main city, on Sept. 3.

Nyi Nyi is only one of more than 2,100 political prisoners in Myanmar. For now, however, he is our political prisoner.

1047: WCPN today on Cuyahoga County Reform – The Sound of Total Farce

0948: Late Night PB Theatre: The Who

0723: GOP’s John Kasich: He Owns 45,000 Shares ($1.2 Million) Of Corp. Praising Ohio’s Tax Climate ‘As Better Than Ever’

[Update — 1047: I should have known that County Council candidate Tim Russo would weigh in on this.]

If you didn’t listen to it live, make sure you have medicine at hand for when you stomach starts roilling and give a listen to Martin Zanotti and Jim McCafferty, the un-elected co-czars of Issue 6 Lets Fuck Cuyahoga County Voters. It’s a real skidmark moment.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Republican Gubernatorial candidate John Kasich holds 45,000 share of stock in company that says “Ohio”s business climate is better than ever.” Oops.

The revelation came The Daily Bellwether, a blog by former Plain Dealer reporter Bill Sloat in Cinicinnati.

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 weather update I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

All of this is generally translatable as “I-don”t-wanna-write-this-thing-cuz-I”m-scared-I”ll-screw-it-up.” p. 103

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

Around the world some 28,000 people, half of them children starve to death every, single, day. They died yesterday, they’ll die today and they’ll die tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. So, when Ghana has to reject 15,000 bags of unwholesome rice from Myanmar, that’s a crime.

From News24:

Ghana’s Food and Drugs Board last month rejected a shipment of Myanmar rice “for being unwholesome for human consumption”, as it was infested with weevils and gave off an offensive smell, the Myanmar Times reported.

Myo Aung Kyaw, a central executive committee member of the Myanmar Rice Industry Association and secretary of the Myanmar Rice Traders Association, said the rejection was a wake-up call for the local industry.

“Africa is a key export market for Myanmar rice, and quality control is a priority, from seeds to finished products,” he said.

What about the people those 15,000 bags were supposed to feed?

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Cleveland”s TV station owners are – as are other corporations – taking advantage of the job problems – by slashing the pay of its workers. It”s for no other reason than they can apparently get away with it.

The Cleveland Scene has been watching this issue.

Scene & Heard reveals that WKYC-TV, Channel 3, is slashing pay without dealing with its union. Just cut it and let them run to the NLRB, I guess is the attitude.

What people need to do is tell WKYC that they will boycott the station”s news as long as its workers are being so shabbily treated.