Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, other key Democrats and advocates of new revenues in this state were pleased - and surely relieved - by Oregon’s vote yesterday…

Close the book.

Speaking of prayers, I need some help.

My friend Sgt. Brian was wounded while in a HMMV gun turret in 2006 in Iraq. The Army flew his wife to Germany because they didn’t think he’d survive. He was in a coma for three months, had several surgeries and has been in recovery and rehab up until Oct 2009.
He’s a big strapping fellow again, and except for the scars on his head and a little stammer, you would not know how badly he was injured, but when he gets his white cane out you know.

A few minutes ago he had a seizure and was taken to the hospital in very serious condition, and his wife asked for prayers for him. Will you help me pray for Brian, please? His wife an children need him back.

---dick, not-quite-dead white guy

is it over yet?

I just came in from chores, I’m about to eat a wonderful fried chicken ‘n’ mashed yams dinner and I’m not about to ruin the first relaxed moment I’ve had in 12 daze with that big dork and hiz totus.

Fill me in if I miss something, ‘k?

[and by something I mean --
spontaneous combustion;
Michelle wearing sleeves;
singing of any kind;
Nancy + gum + choking;
Nancy sticking used gum on Biden;
TOTUS hacked by Porchers / actual unicorns / ChiComs
scratch that last—how coulja tell about the ChiComs

Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose book “A People’s History of the United States” became a million-selling leftist alternative to mainstream texts, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Auburndale, Mass.
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said.

~ * ~
Eager to help wipe out the Nazis, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943 and even persuaded the local draft board to let him mail his own induction notice. He flew missions throughout Europe, receiving an Air Medal, but he found himself questioning what it all meant. Back home, he gathered his medals and papers, put them in a folder and wrote on top: “Never again.”

dick, not-quite-dead white guy in comments

that’ll mess up Teh Perfect Crease

Vanderleun has the Hhistory:  *clicky*clicky*

As has been previously noted, there is on the far side of the sea - somewhere around Middle Earth - a nation of people who insist that reliability is NOT a valid prerequisite for employment.  This idea seems alien to our backward puritanical notions of “work ethic”, but theirs is an older and (as any one of them will tell you) far more evolved culture.

However, that’s not to say they don’t allow SOME employment standards to be enforced.  For example:

For the last four years, Scott has been working at RSVP, a call centre in east London that employs only artists, taking calls for Which? magazine and WeightWatchers. Shifts are available in the day, evening, or at weekends, ­allowing artists to plan their work around shows, rehearsals or auditions (one of the biggest problems for ­performers is not being able to get to auditions, which often come up at short notice).

Artists, as this article goes on at some length to explain, have a terribly difficult life in the Old World.  Unlike the situation on the continent, where artists are granted government stipends for their “contributions to the culture”, the artists of the British Isles often find themselves in the miserable position of

stacking supermarket shelves, waiting tables or writing ­advertising copy by day, and acting, dancing or sculpting by night.

...the HORROR!  Can you imagine?  The Bard must be rolling in his grave at such a thought; if Shakespeare had been forced to hold down a job during his formative years, how would he have found time to plagiarize all of Francis Bacon’s work?

What a day job inevitably means, of course, is spending the majority of your waking hours not doing the thing you love: making art.

Obviously, this situation is completely intolerable.  Which led, in this case, to the rise of a business which employs only artists, specifically tailoring its business model around the needs of the employees.

So: it’s illegal to require a prospective employee be reliable, but it’s perfectly acceptable to require them to be artists; presumably, artists whose body of work isn’t popular or lucrative (or reliable) enough to support them.

H/T David Thompson, who has a much broader take on the whole “artist entitlement” gig.

Obama is a fine, very impressive person. He really is. Unfortunately, everything that he is doing in economics is exactly wrong. He is a crappy president…

The rest is really shitty....

It doesn’t take a genius to know that governmental employees are not bonused.

Here’s Obama dropping in for a chat with his middle-class task force…

Are you pumped? I am so pumped. Obama is going to make a speech! Woooo!

He’ll probably talk about all the things he’s done right in the past year. Like…

Um…

Er…

“ Um…

Er… “

FIFY

srsly

Close the book.

devotees of Teh Narrative baffled

Ellie Light’s (the serial letter-to-the-editor writer) real identity is ... fruitcake.
Well, maybe. (I already got had once this week, so I’m cautious.)

This is an update to an earlier post.
via Nice Deb

When it comes to hiring staff, there are plenty of legal pitfalls employers need to watch out for these days.
So recruitment agency boss Nicole Mamo was especially careful to ensure her advert for hospital workers did not offend on grounds of race, age or sexual orientation.
However, she hadn’t reckoned on discriminating against a wholly different section of the community…