Alexander M. Martin: Alexander M. Martin on Dominic Lieven’s ‘Russia Against Napoleon’ - Book Review - Truthdig

THE ROAD FROM MOSCOW
Western understandings of the Second World War validated the template inherited from accounts, such as Tolstoy's War and Peace of Napoleon’s downfall in Russia - both Napoleon and Hitler had the hubris to attempt to conquer all of Europe, but they were defeated by the freedom loving peoples of the West and the snowstorms in the East. Dominic Lieven’s Russia Against Napoleon makes the two central arguments that the real reason Napoleon lost was that the Bear's was better, this superiority related to retrograde features of Russian society and politics.
(TRUTHDIG)

How Sarah Palin Has Become a Singular National Industry -- New York Magazine

ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK
Sarah Palin is already president of right-wing America, a position that pays well.Over the past year, Palin has amassed a $12 million fortune. Her memoir has so far sold more than 2.2 million copies, and Palin is planning a second book with HarperCollins. This January, she signed a three-year contributor deal with Fox News worth $1 million a year. In March, Palin sold her cable show to TLC for a reported $1 million per episode, of which Palin is said to take in about $250,000 for each of the eight installments.
(NEW YORK MAGAZINE, suggested by MEDIA BISTRO)

Joe Cutbirth: Phelps' son says "God Hates Fags" church could turn violent

WHY DOES GOD HATE WEST VIRGINIA?
The hateful Westboro church cult spent this weekend in West Virginia taunting the families of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. They complained they didn't get adequate police protection during a picket at the state Capitol, where they carried signs that read: "Thank God for Dead Miners," "God Hates Your Tears" and "God Hates West Virginia."
(HUFFINGTON POST, suggested by Joel Sogol)

Shades of blue and gray

SHADES OF BLUE AND GRAY
Years ago, as a founder and board member of WHIL, I made a tour of other public radio stations on behalf of the CPB. I spent a few days in Cambridge and was shocked at the blind arrogance directed towards me as a "Southerner". Now, mind you, my hair was kinkier and longer than Jimi Hendrix's, my attire and politics were vintage Fugs and Allen Ginsberg, my heritage Puerto Rican. Yet, here I was listening to the stupidest comments in the world from the supposedly smartest people on the planet, who apparently couldn't see me for who I was. So, while I don't necessarily (completely) agree with him, I love this very articulate writer's response to The Atlantic ARTICLE. I especially like his comments about "the instinctive, knee-jerk hatred of the white southerner that is exhibited by most of the lefty elite media. It's pathological really. It's a similar, but much more intense form of the loathing displayed towards the white working class, and for similar reasons. You guys are the ones that hear dog whistles, not us."

Clandestine - Documentary & Fiction from the Movie Blog

FILM PREMIERES HERE
Clandestine a short film by Gideon C. Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater will be show today at 5 pm downtown at the Mobile Public Library's Bernheim Hall. Check out their site and you'll no doubt be intrigued. The film documents the history of the spies caught possessing these coded messages. Juxtaposed with the stories of their capture is the fictional tale of a man’s relationship with his father, a shortwave hobbyist, and his legacy of familial secrets.
(CLANDESTINE)

WHO'S THAT TAP TAP TAPPIN'?
They're called tap-taps, the wildly decorated buses of Port-au-Prince. Don't dismiss them as primitive folk art or an unimportant form of transportation, especially now in the midst of this horrible debacle.
(NEWSHOUR)

Dr. Joseph Mercola: MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets?

READ THE LABEL BEFORE YOU BUY
In 1959, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled MSG as "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS). Yet, it was a telling sign when just 10 years later a condition known as "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" entered the medical literature, describing the numerous side effects, from numbness to heart palpitations, that people experienced after eating MSG-laden food.
(HUFFINGTON POST, suggested by GARET COX)

- Salon.com

MOVING ON
As the health care reform bill waddles toward reconciliation, Republicans are complaining about having been excluded. But an examination of the health care reform bill shows that it includes 161 amendments authored by Republicans. Only 49 Republican amendments were rejected out of 210 considered. Yet the bill got zero Republican votes when it passed out of the committee.
(SALON)

SMITH Magazine: Creators of Six-Word Memoirs

WHAT'S SAID IN LESS IS MORE
Now four years old and going.
Minimalist six-word screeds they post.
Careful, though, this thing is addictive!

(SMITH)

Learning Medicine the Cuban Way | Feature | East Bay Express

WHERE IT HURTS
Cuba began educating American medical students after members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Fidel Castro in 2000. Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told Castro about areas in his district that suffer from extreme doctor shortages. The Cuban president responded by promising scholarships for 500 Americans to attend medical school in Cuba, under the umbrella of the Latin America School of Medicine. To qualify, the students would have to show aptitude and a commitment to work in under-served communities in the United States. Since then, 34 have graduated, and more than 160 are currently enrolled.
(EAST BAY EXPRESS, suggested by ALTERNET)

The Jihadist Next Door. | SomalilandPress

THE KID NEXT DOOR
Despite the name he acquired from his father, Omar Hammami was every bit an Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her conversation with blandishments like “sugar” and “darlin’.” Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve. As a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool just to be with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.” A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise in the most unimaginable way.
(SOMALI LAND PRESS, suggested by IRVING SILVER)

POPEYE AND THE ANIME
My friend Patti Martin sent me this. I used to watch Popeye every day. So, as someone who has unsuccessfully tried to watch and enjoy anime but never "got it" nor understood my kids' fascination with the genre, this video struck a really responsive chord.

Obama, GOP Confront Political Differences in Rare Debate | PBS NewsHour | Jan. 29, 2010 | PBS

TALKING TO EACH OTHER
I don't know how the spin meisters on the cable networks will feature it, but last night's News Hour segment shows the true value of real journalism. They featured an in-depth (or, at any rate, in-depth for television) account of the meeting between Obama and the GOP. I'm not sure that they "went at it" but the really important thing was that each side was actually talking TO (not AT) each other. I thought both sides acted responsibly and were reasonably courteous while still expressing their viewpoints. Each came out a winner. Now, if we could only get that translated into "Realpolitik".

Minneapolis News - Haze reunites over funky mystery record - page 1

VINYL SPELUNKING
"Whatever you're willing to pay, I'll take it," she said. The record store employee stood baffled, half-heartedly flipping through the selection with a blank look on his face. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't use any of these," the man said. The woman's face went red. "Well, I don't want these records. You can just have them.""That's not our policy. I'm sorry," the employee said. "Well, where's the closest dumpster?" the woman finally blurted. He pointed her to the SuperAmerica out the door.
(CITY PAGES)

Acta Non Verba

ACTA NON VERBA
Last week I went up to Tuscaloosa to see Carlos and decided to just follow Hwy 43 all the way up. I could have kicked myself for not having a camera when I passed through Forkland and saw this scene. Now, this is way the hell out in the boonies and just appears to be someone answering their creative or whimsical muses, driven by the voices commanding "Action, Not Words". I pondered this for a long time because I couldn't tell what the hell it was. Looks like maybe someone's farm. On the way back, though, I had it a little better together and just used my iPhone to take these pictures from inside of my car, which I think just adds to the "character" of it. (Amazingly enough, apparently iPhone has geo-tagged the photos because their locations appeared automatically on the google map.)

EMILY'S LIST OFFER
The health care reform debate has shown that we must defend every pro-choice Democratic woman facing a challenge and expand their numbers in Congress in 2010. Polling shows the dynamic that could doom Democrats across the country - Tea Party activists, Sarah Palin supporters, and other conservatives are energized and organizing. It's an "enthusiasm" that we must overcome by mobilizing women voters to go to the polls. Just look to Massachusetts to see the Republicans' 2010 strategy. They're building support from outside conservative groups, appealing to the right, and bringing in big guns to raise money hand over fist. GOP darling Scott Brown - a favorite of the Tea Party crowds - is a solid Republican loyalist who recently filed legislation that would allow the elimination of mandated coverage for critical health services for women - including mammograms and maternity care.
By becoming a member today, Emily's List can fully fund WOMEN VOTE! programs that are critical to progressive change.

That's why I urgently ask that you become an EMILY's List member today, so we can continue to turn out women through our WOMEN VOTE! program. And if you join today, they're offering a special membership rate of only $10.

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PERSONAL PORTAL
Most people never change their browser to meet their tastes or needs. That seems like such an under-utilization of a powerful tool. Instead of being stuck with the browser page set by your machine's manufacturer, you've always been able to set it to open to something else, like the Google search page, Google News, New York Times, etc. But, there are also quite a few tools now that let you make your own start page.

iGoogle is one of those. This screen shot is the one I set up for my office computer. It has a lot of the sites I visit regularly, like Google News, New York Times, Washington Post, local television stations, etc. And, like the portals that you see on Yahoo, I've put the weather, maps, the tunnel cams, TV Guide, Movies, Facebook, even sticky notes, on there.

THE GOV'NA AND THE BEAR
It is worth remembering that Paul William Bryant Jr. was a public man who lived in a poor and troubled state at a grim time. The year 1958, when Bryant fielded his first Alabama team, was also the year in which George C. Wallace made his first campaign for governor. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, these two men were the dominant figures of public life in Alabama and the state's main representatives to the nation. In that time, they so dominated the consciousness of the state that it is only in relation to Wallace that we can understand the service that Bear Bryant did Alabama and how, like so many lesser men, he also failed that state in the midnight of its humiliation.
(NEW REPUBLIC, suggested by SHARON NICHOLS BLOG THANK YOU MA'AM)

SPLCenter.org: A Decade of Defiance

HARD NUT TO CRACK
His name sounds drab, but John Joe Gray is one colorful character. While tax-dodging, money-laundering "sovereign-citizen" extremists claiming they are subject only to God's laws are imprisoned across the nation, Gray, a right-wing militia religious zealot, has been in a ten-year standoff with the state of Texas.
(SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER, suggested by ALTERNET)