A Thousand Words

And all of them not allowed on basic cable

Have You Seen Junior's Grades?

Diamond Dave, the most Fabulous Man in Rock in the 70's and 80's is going to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, along with bandmates Eddie (re-inventer of Rock Guitar), Alex, Michael and (alas)Sammy.

Joining Dave and Van Halen are GT12 faves Patti Smith, R.E.M., Grandmaster Flash and The Ronnettes.

Pals

(Jack and George at a December 2003 fundraiser)

Abramoff: “[Bush] has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met. … The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows.”

I'm As Strong As A Thousand Armies

I'm Your worn out Leather Jacket. I'm the volume in your fucked up teenage band.....

A Song Of Friendship, Devotion and Adventure.

What else is worth anything?

Of all their songs, you need this Social Distortion song in your life.

Or at least dedicated to you.

And, it is.

(special nod to unwired for the inspiration to post this)
(specialest nod to SB)

"Don't Take Me For Granted"

What's In A Word?

Word.A.Day--malkin

"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass might as well have been talking about this week's set of words. While these words do not have as many meanings as the word "set" (the Oxford English Dictionary devotes 26 pages to it), each of this week's hard-working words has many unrelated meanings. And they are not bland, like the word set.

With these words, one could say, we get our money's worth.

malkin (MO-kin, MAL-kin) noun

1. An untidy woman; a slattern.
2. A scarecrow or a grotesque effigy.
3. A mop made of a bundle or rags fastened to a stick.
4. A cat.
5. A hare.
[From Middle English Malkyn (little Molly), diminutive of the name Maud or Molly/Mary.]
A related word is grimalkin, referring to an old female cat or an ill-tempered old woman.
-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)
"And speaking o' cats, gray malkins hunt through the forest as well." Cecilia Dart-Thornton; The Battle of Evernight; Aspect; 2003.

Find a 2007 Malkin Here

From The Internets

Top Ten Bushisms

Global Language Monitor used a computer algorithm to track President Bush's comments in the print and electronic media over the last year to develop a list of the top ten "Bushisms."

I'm the Decider.

I use The Google.

It was not always certain that the

U.S. and America would have a close relationship.

I've got an ek-a-lec-tic reading list

The only way we can win is to leave before the job is done.

Stay the course.

When the final history is written on Iraq, it will look just like a comma.

The Congress was right to renew the Terrorist Act.

I want to be a war president; no president wants to be a war president.

The fiscal year that ended on February the 30th.

If Ya Gotta Hunt, Ya Gotta Have Hunting Grounds

From WaPo:

NRA Pressured To Resist Bush Energy Policies

Hunters Wary of Limited Land Access

SEATTLE -- After years of close association with the Republican Party and hard-nosed opposition to federal land-use regulation, the National Rifle Association is being pressured by its membership to distance itself from President Bush's energy policies that have opened more public land for oil and gas drilling and limited access to hunters and anglers.

"The Bush administration has placed more emphasis on oil and gas than access rights for hunters," said Ronald L. Schmeits, second vice president of the NRA, a member of its board of directors and a bank president in Raton, N.M.

The new emphasis on the issue of access to public lands, which Schmeits said is at the "discussion" level among the NRA's directors, would represent a strategic shift for the NRA, whose leadership in Washington has long maintained that its 4 million members were not complaining or even asking questions about access to public lands.

But, during the past six years, an increasing number of the country's 46 million hunters and anglers, including Republican-leaning shooting organizations such as the Boone and Crockett Club, have been grumbling about the Bush's administration fast-tracking of oil and gas drilling leases on public lands.

Rapturous Support

Sources:

CBS News Poll 1/4/07

AP/AOL Poll 12/31/06

Before Bubba

Years before Bill met Arsenio, there was Jack-n-Dick (say that fast three times)

Looking A Little Forward

From Political Insider:

Obama May Announce Next Week
There is growing speculation in Democratic political circles that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) will announce his presidential intentions on Martin Luther King Day. That timing would certainly highlight the historic nature of his candidacy.

Which Side Are You On?

A 1993 Test of Political Orientation. I tied with Bill Clinton at 15.

Hey, What's A Thousand more Dead Compared To Resurrecting Your Legacy?

"Interestingly enough, one administration official admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one because the American people have run out of patience and President Bush is running out of time to achieve some kind of success in Iraq. While this plan will clearly draw some stiff opposition on Capitol Hill, the president is expected to announce it a week from today,"

- NBC's Jim Miklaszewski, on the reasoning behind the new Iraq "strategy."

Maybe We Should Start Using Sealing Wax Again...

I am embarrassed to say that the man continues to surprise me....

From The NY Post:

W pushes envelope on U.S. spying

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

... "The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said.

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."
A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It's something we're going to look into."

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Full Article Here

A Dream of a Birthday Present

Power shift: Democrats take control of Congress

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democrats Thursday took control of both houses of Congress with plans to quickly raise the minimum wage and toughen lobbying rules.

Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will accept her new position "in the spirit of partnership, not partisanship," according to an advance text of her remarks. "With today's convening of the 110th Congress, we begin anew."

The Democratic takeover after spending most of the past dozen years in the minority comes as President Bush echoes congressional calls for bipartisanship -- but with indications of partisan fights to come.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, becomes the first woman to hold that post and Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, takes over as Senate majority leader. (Watch to see what the Democratic-led Congress might accomplish )

"Let us join together in the first 100 hours to make this Congress the most honest and open in history," Pelosi's text said.

Amid bursts of applause, new members of Congress took oaths of office in ceremonies on Thursday in the Capitol.

Pelosi was escorted into the House chamber by her grandchildren. She greeted colleagues with hugs and handshakes as her family walked beside her.

Exit polls showed that rising discontent over corruption scandals and the war in Iraq helped drive voters to hand Democrats control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994.

"Nowhere were the American people more clear about the need for a new direction than in Iraq," said Pelosi's text. "The American people rejected an open-ended obligation to a war without end."

A national poll released this week showed Democrats have strong support for nearly all the measures they want to pass in their first days in charge. But Democrats' thin hold on power ensures that any successful legislation must have at least some GOP support.

The Senate is divided 51-49, with hospitalized South Dakota Democrat Tim Johnson recovering weeks after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

Before the House and Senate were called to order, Reid invited both Democrats and Republicans to a rare closed-door conference Thursday in the Old Senate Chamber in hopes of setting a bipartisan mood after years of political rancor.

A memo from Reid to colleagues lays out the Senate's agenda, which closely follows planned votes in the House, starting with ethics and lobbying reform, a minimum wage hike, reforming the Medicare prescription drug program, acting on recommendations of the 9/11 commission and full funding of embryonic stem cell research.

"Our efforts are going to be to work in a bipartisan basis in an open fashion to solve the problems of the American people," Reid said after the conference, according to The Associated Press.

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the meeting gave senators in both parties "a chance to express some of their quiet frustrations [about] the level of partisanship that we've witnessed in recent years," according to AP.

After passage of a series of routine resolutions -- including elevating 89-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, as President Pro Tempore, third in the line of presidential succession -- the Senate floor will open up for speeches about the upcoming session.

Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters that Democrats would move quickly on rules changes.

"On Thursday and Friday, we're going to adopt rules that will change the way the people's house operates to ensure its integrity, to ensure its openness and to ensure its transparency," Hoyer said Wednesday.

Tighter restrictions on spending earmarks, lobbying, gifts and travel will be proposed, Democratic House leaders said. (View what House Democrats pledge to pass in the first 100 legislative hours)

A $2.10 hourly increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 is among six bills Democrats pledged to advance in their first 100 hours of making new laws next week, after members are seated and committees are organized.

The minimum wage was last increased in 1997. Democrats want to phase increases over two years, a proposal that has drawn conditional support from President Bush. (Minimum wages by state)

But they may face a tougher hurdle in efforts to repeal Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. In the only veto of his presidency to date, Bush killed a similar bill that passed with bipartisan support last year -- and White House spokesman Tony Snow said Wednesday that the president's position has not changed.

The schedule for the 100 legislative hours stretches from Tuesday through January 18, five days ahead of Bush's State of the Union address.

Bush: Avoid 'stalemate'

In a statement in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, Bush urged Congress to make the tax cuts passed during his administration permanent and grant him line-item veto power, which would allow the president to cut specific spending from a bill without killing the entire measure.

And in an opinion piece published in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Bush wrote that Democrats now have a responsibility to avoid creating a "stalemate" by passing bills "that are simply political statements."

"If a different approach is taken, the next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation," Bush wrote. (Full story)

CNN's Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

Today's Birthdays

Sir Isaac Newton