Feb 6

family movie night = Coraline

Feb 5

New Palin e-mails reveal 'First Dude's' influence in Alaskan government: Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails th... http://bit.ly/bu6pjt

Content of our character: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stirred up lots of controversy recently when ... http://bit.ly/b6Wf4U

Feb 4

AT&T Finally Lets You Use SlingPlayer with Your iPhone Over 3G - http://bit.ly/cy7rgs

Feb 3

Fists for Jesus - THE WEEK: A small but growing number of evangelical churches are using mixed martial ar... http://bit.ly/c9I8HN

824,000 Jobs Will Disappear on February 5th - Bloomberg.com: TV and Radio: http://bit.ly/drUerB

Websense fail. http://www.tentsandtarps.org/ "This Websense category is filtered: Potentially Damaging Content." #tentsandtarpsforhaiti

Left-right want Obama 'question time': Group launches campaign for regular, televised conversations like ... http://bit.ly/9KfaLJ

BBC News - France refuses a citizenship over full Islamic veil: The French government refuses to grant ci... http://bit.ly/dxqVlc

Obama Acts to Engage G.O.P., Testing Party’s Intentions: The outreach is a marked shift in White House st... http://bit.ly/dlIxcd

1 argument vs "we must do wrong since right doesn't work" is to show that doing right works http://nyti.ms/cLOSll http://bit.ly/a7yeu5

The Greatest of These is Love: Another thought on faith, doubt and Christianity.In I Corinthians 13, the ... http://bit.ly/94dCsw

Feb 2

Getting real about Congress: "No single vote by any single senator could possibly illustrate everything... http://bit.ly/95UPxi

How Reaper would have ended, straight from the creators  http://bit.ly/bO23VN

Feb 1

"Velvet Elvis" by @realrobbell is free for Kindle (or kindle app for iphone or your computer) today: http://bit.ly/cMI2qK

Poll: Republicans Think Obama Is A Socialist, And Palin More Qualified To Be President: A new Daily Kos/R... http://bit.ly/bd44FW

Faith and Doubt After "The Cognitive Turn": In my second class on doubt at church I focused on what I cal... http://bit.ly/9FoCCn

Palin PAC Spent More On Books Than Candidates: Ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin's (R) PAC spent more money buying c... http://bit.ly/aFlIeJ

watching Big Love jump the shark. too many wacky plot threads this season

Today we watched Coraline (2009,PG) for family movie night.  From ScreenIt!:

A lonely and bored preteen discovers a tunnel in her new house that leads to an alternate reality where most everything is the same, save for attentive parents who have buttons for eyes and want her to join them there.

Finn needed some convincing ahead of time about watching a movie that had people with buttons for eyes.  We convinced him to give it a chance.  The boys enjoyed it.  Finn said, "It wasn't scary.  It was creepy.  Indiana Jones was scary."

I give it 4 out of 5.

Tonight I finished watching Body of Lies (2008,R).  From Screen It!:

A Middle East based CIA field operative clashes with his supervisor back in the states as the two try to find and stop a terrorist ringleader.

We started it last weekend.  Lisa gave up on it pretty quickly with all of the non-stop gunfire at the beginning.  She missed the romance in the middle before the violence returned at the end.  It was OK...reminded me of The Kingdom. 

I give it 3 out of 5.

"Do you ever get the feeling that you want to tell everyone in the whole world that you love them?  I usually feel like that - kind of all soft in the tummy like milk."

Saginaw, MI, was recently named the most violent city per capita in the U.S. (link), keeping alive its 6-year run at the top.  Flint, Detroit, and Pontiac all made the top 11.  The news about Saginaw sparked a couple of local college students to publish the following comic in Delta College’s student newspaper:

From the Saginaw News (link):

The comic in question depicts a person making visits to Midland, Bay City and Saginaw. After receiving gifts of art and alcohol in Midland and Bay City, the character travels to Saginaw and is handed a bag of drugs by a man in a black mask.

“Welcome to downtown Saginaw. We have the most violent crimes in the U.S.,” the comic strip reads. “Here’s a bag of drugs to thank you for stopping by.”

In the next frame, the masked man pulls out a knife and says: “OK, now give me all your money ... and drugs.”

Among those outraged by the illustration is Rev. Larry Camel, co-founder of the city outreach group, Parishioners on Patrol.

“It’s very negative,” Camel said. “We’re going to be talking out about it because it’s racist. It’s really a slam on Saginaw.”

Camel said the black bag slung over the cartoon criminal’s head represents black people.

Marchlewski Bachleda pointed out that, while the bag is black, there is no color in the criminal’s skin.

Camel said he and other religious leaders in Saginaw may visit Delta on Thursday to address the issue.

“We want to nip this in the bud,” he said. “We don’t want this reputation.”

Hmmm.  The F.B.I. has named you America's most violent city 6 years in a row, and you're worried a comic in a college newspaper might ruin your rep?  Well then, raise a ruckus.  What do you know?  The story ends up featured in the popular online column of The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto (link) and thousands of readers across the nation read about your dubious honor from the F.B.I.  Yep, your reputation is safe now.

Has Karl Rove forgotten about the 3 months Max Baucus spent negotiating the Senate health care bill with Enzi, Grassley, and Snowe in the Gang of 6 or is he just lying about it? (link)

Mr. Obama's problems remain reality rather than optics. Over the past year, he hemmed himself in by leaving it to Democratic congressional leaders to draft his health-care reform and other items of his agenda and by not pressing those leaders to negotiate with Republicans.

It's not that they didn't negotiate...on the health care bill, on the stimulus...They negotiated and compromised on the size of the stimulus, on the details of health care reform.  They just didn't get any Republican votes for it.  This is an unfortunate trend of compromising without getting anything in return or not even bothering to bargain (link).

Jan 30

The Visitor

Jan 29

time to get our Freeland Dairy on

Jan 28

Palin fans attack Obama’s narcissism. Hmm.

I Just Remembered Chris Matthews Was White

one dude I follow seems to think climate change is bogus and $trillion surplus to $trillion deficit from 2000 to 2008 is Obama’s failure

Jan 26

Bob Dylan to Perform at White House for First Time

Jan 25

freshman basketball Nouvel at Bay City Central

Andre Bauer equates ‘stray animals' to people on government aid | The Greenville News

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Project for a Healthy American Future - Steve Benen

dedication sunday

Jan 24

Finn says that he likes Sprint because they don’t say they’re better than someone else in their commercials.

Finn says that if he can’t play pro football he wants to be a Walmart cashier because their commercial says “Save money. Live better.”

Finn says “I know what God’s favorite animal is. Dog. It’s the backwards of his name.”

Jan 23

at a lacrosse practice with the boys who are trying it out

Lacrosse practice - http://twitpic.com/zfbkg

Greatest Finale Ever?

Maybe so. In case you missed it, check out the performance of “Freebird” from Conan O’Brien’s final Tonight Show last night. It features Will Ferrell on vocals along with Ben Harper, Billy Gibbons…

Time-lapse video depicts Flight 1549's days in icy Hudson

Jan 22

Saginaw activists outraged by Delta cartoon but newspaper adviser says it's not racist

Jan 21

The “Never Takes Responsibility for Anything” Wing

Brown Didn't Get Many Votes Because Of Health Care, According To Poll

NC State scores rare victory over No. 6 Duke

Jan 20

Is health-care reform stabilizing?

maybe we can?

Brown is pro-choice, voted for RomneyCare (roughly = to ObamaCare), and posed nude in Cosmo. an unlikely hero for social conservatives

Demoralized Democrats

Jan 19

TiVo Party Tonight: The Swell Season, Spoon, The Mountain Goats, The XX

Jan 18

Hoover: Present events similar to past» Abilene Reporter News

Jan 17

New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers