Herod 

Today has been one of those perfect winter days, cold, brilliant and utterly still, when the bark of a shepherd’s dog carries for miles, and the great wild mountains come up close to the city walls…

Barges are unloading soil fertilizer at the river wharves. Soft drinks and sandwiches may be had in the inns at reasonable prices. Allotment gardening has become popular.

How have we ended up where we have ended up?

JESSE HELMS

Alan Grayson says there is no fiscal crisis, and that we've all just given in to the GOP crises mindset, and that Social Security has $2 trillion dollars in the bank ...  D'OH!

http://current.com/shows/viewpoint/videos/rep-alan-grayson-there-is-no-fiscal-crisis-and-republicans-are-crisis-junkies/

Brad Delong carried a piece today worthy of Paul Krugman ( I can think of no higher praise) .By Paul Krugman.

Here’s a taste

The original argument against expansionary fiscal policy in the current conjuncture was that it was not worth undertaking because of crowding-out. Fiscal expansion would push up long-term real interest rates and that would diminish private investment. The net effect on demand, employment, and spending would be zero--or even less than zero: the "expansionary austerity" meme.

 

I have studiously avoided as much as possible viewing the pictures of the slaughtered children from Sandy Hook.

It makes my heart explode, and I really am not right for hours thereafter.

Sometimes I get caught unawares, like I just did by Chris Hayes sitting in for Lawrence O'Donnell, in the prelude to discussing yesterday's  primary in Chicago.

What does our culture really think of children? I mean really think of them.

It seems pretty schizophrenic, to be frank. When I traveled to Guam, I was struck by very different attitudes towards the youngest of young people. Children were to be protected and many natives said that flat out - that children were the center of the culture.

A modest proposal.

Some among you of an esoteric (and perhaps senescent) character may remember the story of that jewel of kundalini yoga, Bhagwan Rajneesh.

(My friend "Nada", one of the many girls who revolutionized the sex industry upon the dissolution of Rajneeshpuram, used to say in her exotic South African accent, "Bhagwan was like heroin"-and she should know...but I digress.)

southern man

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/19/southern_poverty_pimps/?source=newsletter

I wish you all to read the contents of this link.

It is a good rant, it is a fair rant, it is a just rant.

This is a Fox Business Channel segment of surpassing entertainment value--watch it soon, cause it's bound to be taken down shortly.

Under the rubric "Is government being too hard on the banks?", "correspondent" Melissa Francis mounted a push-back against Elizabeth Warren's widely praised roasting of a panel of do-nothing regulators for their abysmal failure to punish even the most egregious bank criminality.

Rumor has it that the Pope faces arrest.

Reuters:

Pope will have security, immunity by remaining in the Vatican

http://itccs.org/ has several blurbs; apparently, an arrest warrant was issued on Feb. 4; six days later Ratzinger resigned; and then the PR spin began: pity the poor old man who is physically degenerating; he can hardly stand up!

It's old; and hardly news...and I don't think I've seen it here, so in case it's interesting:

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-01-16.html

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, THE MENTALLY ILL DO

I really don't like that whole "play the nazi/fascist card" thing. But sometimes, statements like this specific one by Coulter seem to exhibit  a willingnes of the speaker to walk right up to the boundary between "other stuff" and outright fascist-like eugenics.