They got a building down in New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I walked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604." - Alice's Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie, 1966

- Twilight! The Movie! Nay, the LDS Sparkledammerung! As reviewed and culturally annotated by a former LDS member, so you don't have to suffer it yourself. (via)

- The Obama cabinet so far, along with names being considered for still-vacant top posts.

- I read good things about Chu for Department of Energy, and a mixed review on Jackson for EPA. But they're both honest-to-Maude scientists, and words can't convey how happy I am that our next president will be talking on a regular basis to people who won't hear the term "peer review" and wonder if it refers to teenagers who've gotten really organized about encouraging each other's bad habits.

- Yesterday was the 118th anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre.

- Another taser death, and a report of a man who was tasered because a diabetic shock was mistaken for resisting arrest.

- How can a person get so angry about not dressing up in stupid costumes that they'd tell a 5 year old to "go to hell"? Baffling.

- WalMart: "Always low wages. Always"

- New life for the nuclear disarmament movement comes with the inauguration of the Global Zero campaign with its high profile buy-in by notables like Sir Richard Branson and Queen Rania of Jordan. The European Union also seems keen to take steps towards global disarmament. Godspeed with that one.

- Basic, preventive health care can be transformative, as a program that trains locals as community health workers in rural India demonstrates.

- The JCPenney holiday gender police would like to remind everyone that pink things and girl toys are way icky. If you would like to thumb your nose at them, you could consider a feminist holiday gift guide for those special people in your life who can tell the difference between women and doormats.

- Union organizing for bankers, SEIU-style. Here, if you like, you can imagine me steepling my fingers together, looking shifty and saying, "Eehhhhhhksssellent, Smithers."

- Senate Democrats want Blagojevich to resign and are threatening not to seat anyone he might try to appoint to fill Obama's former position.

- Governors and Democrats in Congress expected to widely support Obama's economic recovery program. Republicans are expected to oppose it, but not all of them, because some of them would like to get re-elected someday.

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It is important that we wrestle with these questions consciously and openly -- before the greening of the world's economies proceeds irretrievably along the same lines as the unjust, unequal, gray economy. There is no racist governor standing in the warehouse door, blocking solar-company CEOs from hiring urban youth. There are no white-hooded hoodlums insisting that health-food stores charge prices for healthy food that low-income parents could never afford. On the other hand, there is no Bull Connor preventing African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, Middle Easterners, or Latinos from joining the movement to reverse climate change. The barriers separating us from each other are wafer thin -- and largely of our own making.

The Green Collar Economy, Van Jones

- When will these tasteless abstinence fetishists learn to stop creeping everybody out with ostentatious displays of their deviant lifestyle? I've known plenty of people in the BDSM community who were more polite about only discussing their kink with interested parties.

- Sex isn't all about the boy parts.

- It's apparently breaking news to people who aren't liberal that Obama isn't very liberal ... as many people who were liberal were saying all along.

- The disadvantages of an elite education.

- You know how city governments compete for big conferences to boost hotel booking rates, as well as tourist income at local restaurants and retail establishments? When those conferences have international attendees, visa foot-dragging may start costing the US conference events.

- Who could ever have predicted that ideologically satisfying (to someone) but purely cosmetic attempts to solve problems would a) not work and b) in fact make them worse? You can't solve bigotry with firearms, you can't protect the sanctity of the electoral process by excluding more voters, and you can't solve airport security by forcing everyone to throw away their hand lotion and shuffle around in their sock feet in public.

- Across much of the mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Upper Midwest, there are no acorns this year. Holy frakking bleep.

- Pakistan not source of all bad behavior in Indian subcontinent.

- Jim Jones, Obama's new national security adviser has a truly disastrous energy policy outlook, courtesy his wankerrific associates at the human habitat-hating Chamber of Commerce. The CoC, if you weren't aware, seems to be of the discredited opinion that human beings can continue having an economy after completely destroying the habitat that provides their life support.

Now you, what's on your minds?

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- Upper management has always kept hope alive that profits could expand infinitely, but longstanding opposition to centralized pensions and healthcare has brought down industry after industry.

- What to expect next year from government? Even if card check becomes the law, employees can still have secret ballots once a union has been formed. Meet the new head of the Office of Management and Budget, and apparently a fan of using national health care to save American industry.

- Sustainability is the key to the next economy.

- More gay people need the beatdown to earn equal rights, says Huckabee.

- Conservatives objectively pro-death.

- Saturday editorial cartoons and a profile in shame of six Senate Republicans who hate the jobless.

- The new justification for racism isn't inherent inferiority, but that some people's cultures are scary. Though the culture that worries me is the one that's strained international law to the point that piracy is back in a big way.

There's more...

- The verdict on the Bush economy is in: total disaster.

- Green jobs may be one of the few growth industries on the horizon. Here's how to get certified to rate LEED construction, a sustainable building standard.

- Asheville Green Opportunities is roaring along, offering training for underserved youth in five career paths: green building, clean energy, materials recycling, sustainable agriculture and landscaping, and ecosystem restoration.

- Spam and Velveeta sales booming.

- How the census allows for gerrymandering based on imported prison populations.

- Life as a female reporter.

- The fossil of a grape-sized, single-celled organism may explain funny tracks found on fossilized seabed remains that appear in the record long before worm-like creatures were around.

- Over the last year, there have been 30 hate crime murders against transgender victims.

- An international panel considers suspending all tuna fishing in the Mediterranean for a year in response to dramatically falling stocks.

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It's hard to believe that the election is next week and the polls look good. But !, it's next week. So if your idea of a good time is waking up to a 60-seat majority in the Senate, please consider volunteering for or contributing to one of the road to 60 candidates. I only mention it because I want you to have a good next Wednesday.

Until then, some news and comment ...

- Yeah, so when did we invade Syria or Pakistan? Go here for more on the Taliban battles in Pakistan.

- When Congress gets settled into their new offices, you may want to remember these pointers about how to lobby them.

- Many Kentucky voters are unaware that Obama is a Christian.

- Two of my favorite bloggers take David Brooks and Peggy Noonan to the woodshed.

- Australia's shiny, new government, all fresh-faced and progressive, has only gone and put a smile on continuing policies of brutal, colonial oppression and theft towards the Aborigines.

- Yes, we tried 'pure' capitalism, it didn't work.

- No path to citizenship? Really?

- The University of Nebraska at Omaha releases a comprehensive report on the impact of undocumented immigrants on local economies.

- Breaking: World not enjoying the US-originated, record-breaking currency crisis.

- Who could've possibly predicted any of the last 8 years? The Onion. And please, please, make the crazy stop.

"The only people who don't seem to vote based on race are whites of European origin." - Michael Savage

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