christmas was invented just for me and you . . .

easy does it . . . counting the days to yuletide . . .

when you need picking up . . . but know you're okay . . .

So . . .

are we taking a holiday on Friday?

blues with an extraordinary lady . . .

My army bud and mentor Brian Voorhies was invited last evening to sit in on harmonica with a fine blues band from Syracuse led by the extraordinary Carolyn Kelly who "sings with as much power and style as anyone I've ever heard,and is such a gracious person as well." Enjoy.

merry christmas y'all . . . countin' down the days . . .

math is hard . . .

Jonathan Chait has the answer to why the Republicans aren't providing the spending cuts they desire . . .

“Where are the president’s spending cuts?” asks John Boehner. With Republicans coming to grips with their inability to stop taxes on the rich from rising, the center of the debate has turned to the expenditure side. In the short run, the two parties have run into an absurd standoff, where Republicans demand that President Obama produce an offer of higher spending cuts, and Obama replies that Republicans should say what spending cuts they want, and Republicans insist that Obama should try to guess what kind of spending cuts they would like.

Reporters are presenting this as a kind of negotiating problem, based on each side’s desire for the other to stick its neck out first. But it actually reflects a much more fundamental problem than that. Republicans think government spending is huge, but they can’t really identify ways they want to solve that problem, because government spending is not really huge. That is to say, on top of an ideological gulf between the two parties, we have an epistemological gulf. The Republican understanding of government spending is based on hazy, abstract notions that don’t match reality and can’t be translated into a workable program.

. . .

When the only cuts on the table would inflict real harm on people with modest incomes and save small amounts of money, that is a sign that there’s just not much money to save. It’s not just that Republicans disagree with this; they don’t seem to understand it. The absence of a Republican spending proposal is not just a negotiating tactic but a howling void where a specific grasp of the role of government ought to be. And negotiating around that void is extremely hard to do. The spending cuts aren’t there because they can’t be found.

Ravi Shankar . . . 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012

hey, A! . . . I love you . . .

recommended read . . .

From Nulwee over at Daily Kos . . . Pisugtooq ...

The Arcitc is a constantly variable dreamscape, and with its variations comes fortune or doom for the individual. These are populations that already reside in conditions that are as unpredictable and unrelenting as possible. We are throwing too much chaos in the equation.

Variations. It is very frustrating to behold months of dry conditions and then have your friends and neighbors complaining at the first, briefest rains that do little more than tide over wild biota as the streams run low, and the heat that is just not right to those with what's called 'native eye' and an affinity for the land. And it is troubling to know that whatever pleasant warmth these people feel, disproportionately larger changes are happening in the North's landscape of desire and imagination.

The Arctic is very sensitive to oil spills and other forms of pollution. Polar bears in areas affected by oil spills have been observed licking oil off their fur, resulting in the agony of renal failure. Of climate, the yearly return of something as simple as the narrow stream-like leads in the ice and a particular amount of snow is vital to the health of the population. There are so many things that climate variations can throw out of whack, and we don't know most of what those are. At the same time, the Arctic nations are witnessing the scramble for the next, great natural resource bubble.