Some well-intentioned ninny at St. Mike’s asked me to sign this pile o’steaming, yesterday: Vermonters for the CCA The Civilian Claims Act is a bill written by Senator Leahy which would provide monetary compensation for innocent civilians accidentally harmed by the U.S. military in war zones. Currently, civilian losses are addressed by the Condolence Payments program which is both arbitrarily administered and inadequate. (It has a cap of $2500 per

An image driven by the metaphor of Ron Howard:

From my friend, Jonathan Wilton: Billabonk: to make passionate love beside a waterhole Bludgie: a partner who doesn’t work, but is kept as a pet Dodgeridoo: a fake indigenous artefact Fair drinkum: good-quality Aussie wine Flatypus: a cat that has been run over by a vehicle Mateshit: all your flat mate’s belongings, lying strewn around the floor Shagman: an unemployed male, roaming the Australian bush in search of sexual activity

too dependent on catering to foreign students.

I found this woeful article from the Times of London via Hot Air. The author, a certain Minette Marrin, feels pressured and censored, but bravely decides that it she will bear the brunt of disapproval to state what many feel but won’t say: This misleading news story [claiming that more Britons were refusing to abort Down’s-afflicted children] provoked an impassioned response. Several parents of babies and children with Down’s, and

…we’d be pretty much covered. And honestly, don’t you deserve a life free from chance or freak occurrences? “Wal-Mart Worker Death Sparks New Law Proposal”: Two days after a mob of impatient shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart worker to death at a Valley Stream, N.Y., store, a Queens, N.Y.-based lawmaker announced plans to propose a new law aimed at controlling future Black Friday crowds, according to the Chicago Tribune. Long Island

Hey, all. One more week until I head off to Boulder to film a set of instructional videos, so between heavy training and the Thanksgiving holiday (to include Black Friday-Sunday shopping, without any instances of trampling or being trampled on my end) I’ve been away from the computer and unable to post. That is likely to continue this week as my wife travels on business and I finish up preparing

The CRA should be abolished, along with the government-sponsored enterprises that fueled the secondary market for subprimes — under pressure from Clinton, who ordered HUD to set quotas for “affirmative action” lending at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But powerful Democrats in Washington want to protect the act — along with Fannie and Freddie — and spin the subprime scandal as the result of too little regulation, not too much.

Well, if you’re Jon Swift, it’s pretty much a pretext for jackassery, because obviously the trampling to death of the Wal-Mart worker on Long Island is the result of 8 years of failed Bush policies. What a funny, edgy guy.

Baader Meinhof: just as principled as the Weather Underground. NYT: White capitalists to blame for Wal-Mart trampling death Al Jazeera on Root Causes: While India awaits the outcome of the criminal investigation in the aftermath of the attacks, some analysts have speculated that a marked shift in Indian foreign policy over the last few years, namely a growing closeness to the US, could be a reason why the country was