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.

Click here to join EMILY's List for a special $10 membership rate today!

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)

According to its ethics code, NPR still has a Fox News problem | Media Matters for America

FOX IN THE HEN HOUSE
National Public Radio operates under a wide-ranging ethics code that leaves little doubt about how its journalists should conduct themselves. This ethics code, written "to protect the credibility of NPR's programming by ensuring high standards of honesty, integrity, impartiality and staff conduct." And yet still, NPR finds itself struggling with the evergreen controversy that surrounds two of its well-known voices who regularly appear as commentators on Fox News, an organization that makes a mockery of ethical standards, a cable outlet whose employees would be summarily fired from NPR for the seemingly countless and chronic journalism transgressions they make.
(MEDIA MATTERS, suggested by ALTERNET)

Best Coquito in New York Is Named - NYTimes.com

TRADITION
Coquito is a very important tradition in the Puerto Rican community. Everyone has their own recipe. And behind every recipe there’s always a grandmother or an aunt or an old town. The drink is usually made with coconut and rum, along with nutmeg, cinnamon and various secret ingredients, sometimes egg yolks, sometimes condensed milk. It can be thick and creamy, light and spicy, boozy, mellow, sweet or tangy.
(NYT)

HERE'S OURS:

1 can coco lopez

1 can condensed milk

2 cans evaporated milk

2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2-3/4 litre white rum

6 egg yolks

cup sugar

RIGHT FACE!
While the John Birch Society was not too long ago considered far too ridiculous for the American mainstream (even Republicans considered them a political pariah), as conservatives have become more extreme, this fringe group has slowly worked itself back into the fold. So much so that this year JBS will co-sponsor the Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C.
(ALTERNET)

Donate SkyMiles with Delta's SkyWish program at delta.com

HOLIDAY IDEA
This seems like an absolutely painless and wonderful way to make a charitable donation. Skywish Charity takes those unused Skymiles of yours and lets you donate them to any of 14 organizations. I just donated mine to the American Cancer Society and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. But you can opt for CARE, Canine Assistants, Habitat for Humanity International, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and more.

DUMB BLOND JOKE
If you want to see a hilarious take down of Fox News and Gretchen Carlson, watch this analysis by Jon Stewart, who tells her not to store her intellect in an off-shore account.

ANOTHER WORLD
I got these Demotix photos showing "Karachi's eunuchs" holding a candlelit vigil on World AIDS. Eunuchs? Really? Now?

Well....

If the Supreme Court of Pakistan's (SCP) decision to give eunuchs seats in the Parliament comes into effect, the eunuchs are all set to draft a resolution against the Sindh police and City District Government Karachi (CDGK) officials for their brutal behaviour against the eunuchs. MORE

I know some people who think that eunuchs are God’s chosen favourites and one should not be rude to them. But while I can understand that some enuchs are born that way and deserve to be pitied, I think most hijras today have either got themselves castrated or have been forcibly castrated to earn money by begging. MORE

Unknown elements have launched a mysterious campaign against eunuchs since the last week, triggering anxiety among non-governmental organisations working for the prevention of HIV/AIDS. MORE

But, see:

For arguments sake, say you were one of the abductors in the aforementioned scenario, and the Madadgar 15 Police catch you with your pants down, along with your bored and ignorant friends, 3 eunuchs and some felonious t-shirts. One would expect you would have a nice, airtight excuse at the ready for just such an emergency. Surely you could'nt even hope to rely on the pathetic excuse for an excuse that is: “Oh Good Evening officer, me and my friends and my eunuchs are all on our way to NADRA”. MORE