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Many members of Congress believe that fewer laws are better. "The country don't need any legislation," was the way the colorful Joseph G. Cannon, Republican of Illinois, put it. Elected Speaker in 1903, "Uncle Joe" Cannon was among the more conservative House members. He wielded his power to stop President Theodore Roosevelt's crusade to regulate business and land use.
As conservative members retired or lost elections, however, Cannon's base of support gradually eroded. Conservative Republican control of the chamber became vulnerable to an alliance of Progressive Republicans and Democrats. In 1910, Nebraska's George W. Norris, one of the Progressive reformers, proposed new rules to curb the Speaker's power—igniting two days of nearly continuous debate. The Progressive–Democrat coalition prevailed, and many hailed Norris's resolution as a return to democracy in the House.
"The country don't need any legislation."
— Speaker Joseph G. Cannon
Joseph Cannon, by Freeman Thorp, 1914
Architect of the Capitol
This cartoon shows the dilemma facing House insurgents—the mice—plotting to confront Speaker Cannon—the cat.
U.S. Senate Collection, Center for Legislative Archives
Capitol carpenters built wooden packing crates for members to store or ship their papers at the end of a Congress. This trunk, discovered in the Capitol in 1994, held materials for Speaker Joe Cannon in the early 20th century.
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
This letter by President Theodore Roosevelt was among the contents of Speaker Cannon's trunk. The president delicately attempted to influence Cannon's committee-assignment decisions—a power that was exclusively the Speaker's at this time.
Representative Francis Cushman of Washington candidly expressed his concerns to Cannon, who had requested Cushman support his candidacy for Speaker. Cushman addressed Cannon by a nickname commonly used at the time.
Cartoonists took witty note of Cannon's immense power as Speaker of the House. Here, legislators plead for him to assign them to plum chairmanships.
Collection of the U.S. Senate, Center for Legislative Archives
Exhibition Hall: E Pluribus Unum


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Narrow your search
The Seattle app maker is so frustrated by Apple's long approval process, it launched its Localicious app today in the Android Market rather than in the iPhone App Store.
Mansion Map is a faintly creepy new site that lets you discover who lives in the biggest houses and how the 1 percent of the 1 percent made their money.
Calls from telemarketers can eat up your monthly minutes, or just plain waste your time. If you're tired of answering or calling back to these "businesses," the most recent update to the Current Caller ID app by Whitepages is here to help.
Current Caller ID by WhitePages helps you block people who call or text too often, whether they're in your address book or not.
The flood of Facebook friend updates continues unabated. Are you ready for it to invade your caller ID, too?
Why the Starbucks and Square partnership matters, the growing concerns over cell phone radiation, and the free app that brings caller ID to your Android phone.
Have you ever received a phone call from a mystery number, but had no way to find out who was on the other side? A new online service called NumberGuru lets you perform a reverse number search to identify the source, and our friends from BeenVerified.com are in the studio to tell us all about it.
Today on the show, we discover that Windows Phone 7 does have a life in the wild -- at least one phone does, anyway. Also, Plants vs. Zombies are taking over the world and BT, Steve, and I are headed for a Tetris showdown. RIM continues to try to defend its co-CEO setup (why!?) and fans rage, rage, against the dying of the cheap Netflix plans. We direct them elsewhere: toward the studios who want so much for streaming content in the first place.
Researchers at Avast are pointing fingers at large ad delivery platforms for serving up infected ads in new "malvertising" trend.
Site investigates malware delivered via ads on its site in a fake antivirus attack similar to that on the Drudge Report site.

subset: commoncrawl


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Andrew Breitbart, who died in Los Angeles today at age 43, angered the left less because of what he did than what the left repeatedly failed to do itself.
I first encountered the conservative activist at the 2011 Netroots Nation conference, an annual gathering for progressive bloggers and tech types. Camera in hand, Breitbart had come over to the Netroots site from the conservative Right Online conference nearby. When he walked into the lobby, liberal activists shouted at him, accusing him of nefarious activities with male prostitutes and more. Breitbart smiled as he filmed it all.
When I tracked Breitbart down at Right Online a few minutes later, no one shouted at me (though many knew I was a progressive commentator from my appearances on Fox News). Breitbart had such a sense of humor about being vilified by the left that he posed for a picture in which he pretended to strangle me. Later that evening, we sat down and talked for an hour over drinks. I'm not sure how many other prominent left-wing activists would sit down for a long, probing conversation with a relative stranger from the right. Breitbart may have been nasty in public, but in private he was generous and kind.
Breitbart was such a looming and frustrating enemy of the left in part because he was a public-relations mastermind. He had an eye for digging up dirt and the unique combination of Internet savvy and charisma to spread his campaigns like wildfire. I think history will judge him unkindly for many of his actions, including his false attacks on ACORN and Shirley Sherrod. In the case of ACORN, a community organization that assisted low- and moderate-income Americans, Breitbart publicized a heavily doctored video in which ACORN workers appear to encourage prostitution; the resulting scandal led ACORN to close its doors. A year later, he got Shirley Sherrod, head of the United States Department of Agriculture's rural development office in Georgia, fired from her post by posting two clips that, taken out of context, appeared to show her admitting to bias against white people. The resulting media firestorm demonstrated the damage a rabble-rouser with a camera and a website—combined with a complacent media—can do.
But there was also a lesson for the left in these manufactured scandals. With ACORN, Breitbart may have lit the match, but a Democratic president and Democrat-controlled Congress sat by and watched (or even worsened the situation) as the flames grew. Many progressive organizations and so-called allies similarly refused to help as ACORN burned to the ground. In the case of Sherrod, the NAACP condemned her remarks shortly after they were publicized. Perhaps if we had been as passionate and savvy about defending ourselves as Breitbart had been about attacking us, he wouldn't have been so successful.
I'm not suggesting that the left should go out and doctor videos of a Focus on the Family conference, but Breitbart at the very least did challenge the left to up its game, and perhaps journalists are now a bit more careful about amplifying a meme without checking their facts. I have no doubt that Daily Kos, TPM, and Think Progress (not to mention the Huffington Post, which he helped launch) sharpened their claws because Breitbart threw down the gauntlet.
As much a villain as Breitbart might have been to the left, he was far more of an iconoclast within the conservative movement than he is generally given credit for; he was a very public supporter of GOProud, the gay Republican organization, as well as immigration reform and other traditionally "liberal" causes. His penchant for bucking a trend might stem from having grown up a conservative in liberal-leaning Hollywood and feeling attacked for his differences. Unfortunately, Breitbart never realized how myopic and warped his perspective was. But being an underdog is something any liberal can sympathize with.
My thoughts and prayers are with his family, and my hope is that the progressive movement will be less susceptible to the Breitbarts of the future.
Thu, 2012-03-01 22:22
Jim In Panama
Fri, 2012-03-02 19:02
The wingers call him a "journalist" .... Fox is news. He was an ahole whose only talent was lying to the choir. How anyone has anything positive to say about this cancerous POS is dumbfounding. I don't even feel sorry for his children, they've had a terrible role model taken out of their lives.
Thu, 2012-03-01 23:13
Fri, 2012-03-02 06:07
"I'm not sure how many other prominent left-wing activists would sit down for a long, probing conversation with a relative stranger from the right. Breitbart may have been nasty in public, but in private he was generous and kind."
This is going to sound unfair, but I think that this is probably due to a built-in feature of how left-right politics works in this country. Most liberals, including liberal activists/hacks, truly believe in the cause and in the arguments they advance. Whereas a very large chunk of conservative hackdom clearly doesn't. They want conservatives to "win" and probably have some affinity for the ideology, but this has nothing to do with whether they believe the arguments they advance in the media.
Thus they aren't liars, per se, but bullsh**ters. The truth-value of their statements is something that they are completely indifferent to, because those statements are designed solely to persuade the maximum number of people irrespective of whether they are factually correct or logically sound. Andrew Breitbart clearly didn't believe his own bulls**t, so of course he had no reason to be mean in private toward his ideological opposites. The same can't be said of liberals - to them, the stuff that they and others say and do actually matters. To Breitbart and the rest of the bought-and-paid-for right, all that is mostly just a game.
POed Lib
Fri, 2012-03-02 17:18
Fri, 2012-03-02 17:55
the idea that we are better off because breitbart, with the full support and encouragement of fox network cnbc cnn abc cbs and npr as well as WAPO NYT and the whole washington press corps and the whole democratic party which isn't to the left of humphrey and mccarthy, pulled down even further the basic standards of journalism in the USA is a very bad very perverted sick joke. the fact that no democrats not to left of robert la follette and jane adams did squat to save acorn or planned parenthood or shirley sherrod or any of obama's non wall street white washes is only to their shame and in no way a tribute to breitbart who should have been as easy to squash as a slug caught out in the sun. if anybody bothered to show any light on the bug it would have dried up and blown away on its own.
Jim In Panama
Fri, 2012-03-02 18:54
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Many of you have probably read a wonderful blog called The Greening of Gavin, written by an Australian father of 4 who watched "An Inconvenient Truth," in 2006, and decided to lessen his carbon footprint. This is his short profile at the top of his home page:
Gavin began making cheese toward the end of 2008, and in 2009, he made 12 different kinds of cheese. He told me our book, Home Cheese Making was the first book he bought after taking a course in Australia. In his blog, there are great articles about each of the cheeses he made and about his wine refrigerator which he converted to an aging "cave."
I picked one of his cheeses to publish here, with his permission, of course. I added links to our products and I converted some of the measurements from metrics. Otherwise, this is Gavin's simple recipe for a very popular cheese:
Recipe and Method
Makes about 2 pounds (850 gm)
1/4 teaspoon direct set Mesophilic culture (C101)
1/2 tsp. (2.5 ml) rennet (R7 or others)
mixed with 5 tsp. (25 ml) non-chlorinated water
1/2 tsp. (3 ml) calcium chloride (C14)
if using homogenized milk
3 teaspoons non-iodized salt (S1)
Stir the curds and whey for 10 minutes, then let rest for 15 minutes. Stir the curd again as you raise the temperature to 90F (32C). Maintain this temperature, and stir the curd as often as necessary to stop the curd knitting together. Do this for 2 hours.
After the two hours break up the curd for one final time and apply the salt. Mix the curds and salt well.
Remove from press and cheesecloth. Place on a board and allow to dry for 2 days. Apply wax and store at 55-59F (13-15C) at 80-85% humidity. Can be eaten in 3 weeks or aged for up to 3 months.
This is a wonderful cheese, and I have never been able to find Wensleydale in the local grocery store. There is no equal as far as I am concerned and beats the store bought tasty cheddar any day. However my opinion may change when I try my Pepperjack when it matures!
For more great recipes, check out Gavin's blog- www.greeningofgavin.com.


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Landsat 8 Satellite Successfully Launches Into Orbit 28 28
Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the looking-inward dept.
from the looking-inward dept.
New adosch writes "The Landsat Data Continuity Mission is now in orbit, after launching Monday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Calif. After about three months of testing, the U.S. Geological Survey will take control and the mission, renamed Landsat 8, will extend more than 40 years of global land observations critical to energy and water management, forest monitoring, human and environmental health, urban planning, disaster recovery, and agriculture." We still need more new observation satellites to avoid losing Earth observing capabilities as the work horses of the NASA/USGS fleet die of old age.


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Quarterly Report: 2009, July - September (Q1), Atka
Julie Dirks
DCRA Regional Office:
Gov't Type:
Second Class City
Agreement Date:
City of Atka
Assessment Status:
Assessment Date:
Exp Date:
Last Updated:
Community Sanitation Overview:
The community system was constructed in 1978 and was expanded in 1982 to a new housing area. Water is supplied by a stream and wooden reservoir dam northwest of the City. It is stored in two 30,000-gallon water tanks before distribution. All 50 homes are connected to the piped water and sewer system and are plumbed. Sewage is piped to a central septic system. Wastewater flows untreated through outfall lines into Nazan Bay. Garbage is collected twice a week. The City has requested funds to increase water capacity, replace the water treatment system, replace connections, and treat the sewage outfall. A hydro-electric system at Chuniisax Creek will complete construction by 2010. The City of Atka assumed operation of the electric utility in 2007. Work began on extension and repavement of the Atka airstrip in summer of 2008; this work will be completed in 2009. Atka Pride Seafoods processing plant will be expanded to allow for processing of multi-species. A crab allocation was purchased by Atka Pride Seafoods and APICDA from Westward Seafoods. The crab will be processed in the local plant.
RUBA Status & Activities This Qtr:
Documents were requested from the Administrator located in Anchorage to up-date the assessment. All documents were provided and an evaluation indicates that the City of Atka does not meet all essential indicators. A review of the accounts receivable report indicates that several residential customers have high outstanding balances meaning the collection policy is not being enforced. When a budget and financial statement for use the water/sanitation utility was requested, the City Administrator said she did not understand what was being asked for. Utility revenues and expenses are included in the overall budget but appear not to be separately tracked. An explanation was provided on how to prepare a budget that separates functions and how to track revenues and expenditures using QuickBooks classes. On October 3rd a copy of a water utility budget and financial statement was received from the City Administrator.
RUBA Activities for the Coming Qtr:
RUBA staff will continue to be available to provide assistance for the essential and sustainable capacity indicators that are not being met by the City of Atka. RUBA staff will followup with the Administrator on collection issues that emerged during the previous quarter. Additional information concerning whether the City budget is being tracked by function will be obtained. RUBA staff will work to recruit City staff located in Atka to attend UTM Organizational Management training in Anchorage during December and a planned QuickBooks training.
Essential Indicators:
24 of 26
Sustainable Indicators:
24 of 27
Total Score:
48 of 53
Essential Indicators
All revenues and expenses for the utility are listed in the utility budget.
The utility has adopted a balanced realistic budget.
Monthly financial reports are prepared and submitted to the policy making board.
The utility is current in paying all water/wastewater electric bills.
The utility has on hand a year's adequate fuel supply or it has a financial plan to purchase an adequate supply.
The utility is receiving revenues (user fees or other sources) sufficient to cover operating expenses.
Sustainable Indicators
The utility is receiving revenues (user fees or other sources sufficient to cover operating expenses and Repair & Replacement (R) costs.
YTD revenues are at a level equal to or above those budgeted.
YTD expenditures are at a level equal to or below those budgeted.
A monthly manager's report is prepared.
Budget amendments are completed and adopted as necessary.
Finances Comments
Currently, the City provides water and sewer treatment services with billing services separate from the electric. Residential electricity is charged through POWERSTAT system by using a pre-pay card system with the customer. The future plan is to have all services under one system with one payment. As of 9/30/08 no progress on using the POWERSTAT system to collect water/sanitation payments had been made. Atka is home to Atka Pride Seafoods and receives local fish tax revenues annually. Atka also receives significant revenues from fish taxes collected in the unincorporated area of the western Aleutians. The city provided a balanced budget. The balance sheet identifies reserves in Merrill Lynch, current assets of diesel and gasoline inventory, and values for fixed assets. Monthly financial reports provided to the governing body are Profit and Loss Budget vs. Actual. They identify year-to-date expenditures, adopted budget, and amount remaining over/under budget. A copy of the current utility budget and a utility financial statement was provided on October 3rd.
Accounting Systems
Essential Indicators
The utility has adopted a collection policy and actively follows it.
The utility bills customers on a regular basis.
An accounts receivable system is in place which tracks customers and reports past due accounts and amounts.
An accounts payable system is in place.
The payroll system correctly calculates payroll and keeps records.
A cash receipt system is in place that records incoming money and how it was spent.
The utility has a cash disbursement system that records how money was spent.
Sustainable Indicators
A chart of accounts is used that identifies categories in a reasonable, usable manner.
Monthly bank reconciliations have been completed for all utility accounts.
The utility has a purchasing system that requires approval prior to purchase, and the approval process compares proposed purchases to budgeted amounts.
Accounting Systems Comments
The City accounting system uses online QuickBooks Pro. The City Administrator is responsible for overseeing accounting functions. She has an bookkeeping background, has operated her own business and pays attention to detail. She lives and maintains a city office in Anchorage and visits Atka when the need arises. Check writing and receipt of cash is handled by staff in the City office located in Atka. The Administrator prefers to use a numbered chart of accounts (COA). The Atka COA has balance totals for all assets, liabilities, and equity. The COA was drafted by the previous City Administrator and has been customized to the present Administrator's work style. Currently, it is detailed with the same expenditure items used in each department and given a different number for each department. The City does have an adopted purchasing system. The Mayor approves purchases within the scope of the adopted operating budget. Major purchases are approved by the City Council. A recent review of the accounts receivable for the water/sanitation utility indicates that there are several residential customers who are not paying for water and sewer services even though they are being billed regularly.
Tax Problems
Essential Indicators
The utility has a system to accurately calculate, track, and report payroll tax liabilities.
The utility is current on filing tax reports.
The utility is current on making tax deposits.
If there are any past due tax liabilities or recorded tax liens, a lien release has been issued or a repayment agreement has been signed and repayments are current.
Tax Problems Comments
The State DOL reports that the City of Atka in in compliance with ESC reporting and ESC tax payments as of June 30, 2008. IRS reports that the City is in compliance with quarterly reporting and deposits. Copies of 941/ESC quarterly reports for the quarters ending 9/07, 12/07, 3/08, and 6/08 were provided.
Personnel System
Essential Indicators
The utility has a posted workers compensation insurance policy in effect.
Sustainable Indicators
The utility has adopted and uses a Personnel Policy, which has been reviewed by an attorney, AML or Commerce for topics and language.
The utility has adequate written job descriptions for all positions.
The utility has adopted and follows a written personnel evaluation process that ties the job description to the evaluation.
The utility has an adequate written hiring process.
The utility has personnel folders on every employee that contain at least: I-9, Job Application and Letter of Acceptance.
The utility has a probationary period for new hires that includes orientation, job training/oversight, and evaluations.
The utility provides training opportunities to staff as needed and available.
Personnel System Comments
The City has purchased a Workers Compensation policy through AML/JIA for the year July 1, 2008 through July 1, 2009. Employment recruitment is done within the city first. Every original appointment and every promotional appointment of permanent employees is subject to a probationary period of three months from the date of appointment. An evaluation of performance completed at the end of the probationary period and thereafter, on their anniversary date.
Organizational Management
Essential Indicators
The entity that owns the utility is known; the entity that will operate the utility is set.
The policy making body is active in policy making of the utility.
The policy making body enforces utility policy.
The utility has an adequately trained manager.
The utility has an adequately trained bookkeeper.
The utility has an adequately trained operator or operators.
The utility has adopted the necessary ordinances (or rules and regulations) necessary to give it the authority to operate.
Sustainable Indicators
The utility has adopted an organizational chart that reflects the current structure.
The policy making body meets as required.
The utility complies with the open meeting act for all meetings.
Organizational Management Comments
The Atka Administrator maintains an office in Anchorage and travels to Atka when necessary. The Mayor and City Council are responsible for daily supervision of staff including supervision of the Administrator. The Administrator's office is connected to Atka via fax, e-mail, and phone. The Administrator previously worked a number of years handling bookkeeping in her own business. The City has two operators, Both are certified in water and wastewater treatment until 12/31/2010. They each work full-time. They both have additional duties besides maintaining the water and sanitation systems. The Atka City Council meets monthly for regular meetings. The City Council schedules special meetings when the need arises. All meetings comply with the Open Meeting Act. The City has adopted a Water/Sewer Utility ordinance. The ordinance provides for flat rate service fees for four classes: residential, public facility, commercial, and contract. Customers pay a rate that covers a portion of the cost to provide the services and subsidizes the remaining operating cost with general funds. The city has adopted an organizational chart that identifies positions and duties for each position.
Operation of Utility
Essential Indicators
The utility operator(s) are actively working towards necessary certification.
The utility has a preventative maintenance plan developed for the existing sanitation facilities.
Sustainable Indicators
The manager receives a monthly O&M report from the utility operator and routinely "spot checks" the facilities to see that the maintenance items are being completed.
The utility has a safety manual and holds safety meetings.
Utility facilities have not suffered any major problems/outages due to management issues that are unresolved.
The utility is operating at the level of service that was proposed.
The operator provides status reports to the manager on a routine basis.
The utility has completed and distributed its "Consumer Confidence Report".
The utility is not on the "Significant Non-Complier" (SNC) list.
The utility maintains an inventory control list.
The utility maintains a critical spare parts list.
Operation of Utility Comments
Both operators are certified until 12/31/2010 The water operators provide verbal reports to the Mayor. The city administrator provides written reports to the governing body. The 2007 Community Confidence Report was completed and distributed. The City Administrator will be actively working with the community to develop both an inventory control list and a critical spare parts list. The City Administrator attended the RUBA sponsored Financial Management for Utility Managers class and the Power Cost Equilization training in Anchorage, held February 11-15 and March 4-6, 2008.
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Clark keeps kids energizedPosted by on December 4, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Safety Ryan Clark brought his high energy to Whittier Elementary School on Tuesday morning as a part of the NFL's Play 60 Super School Visit.
Clark, who was named the Steelers Walter Payton Man of the Year for his on-field play and off-the-field community involvement, spoke to the students about the importance of good health and getting 60 minutes of exercise a day.
He then took it to another level when he and rookie Kelvin Beachum led 50 kids who won the chance to participate in fitness activities during an NFL Play 60 Keep Gym in School Physical Education Class.
"It was a good time today," said Clark. "The kids were extremely energetic, very excited we could come to their school. I had an awesome time."
Clark knows how important it is for kids to be active, as he is a father of three that, as he will tell you, don't sit still often.
"I think that is the big message, to say not only do I support it because the NFL and the school are doing it, this is the way I raise my children," said Clark. "This is something I want my children to be a part of. It makes them relate to you better when you have kids that play soccer, basketball or football. They say this guy is not that bad."
Clark also presented the school with a $10,000 NFL Play 60 grant for health and wellness programming or equipment.
Whittier won the contest, which is a part of the NFL's Back to Football campaign, by starting the school year and the Steelers' season off with football themed activities. Students wore their favorite player jersey or other Steelers' apparel and learned about the history of the game, as well as fun football facts and football skills.
Students had the opportunity to work on those skills on a daily basis at recess, naming their own football teams and each child being a player from that team in recess games.
Lee Dreshman, the school's Health and Physical Education teacher, entered Whittier in the contest, inspired by his own opportunity to meet former Steelers running back Walter Abercrombie back in 1983 through a contest, and he still had a picture of him with the running back that has always inspired him.
"It's something that meant a lot to me and I wanted the students to have the same feeling I had back when I was in second grade when I met a Steeler," said Dreshman. "It was a big deal for me and I felt like I was on top of the world. I will always remember that visit and I wanted to pay it forward to the students here at Whittier. It was a big deal that day."
Clark hopes that down the road his visit to the school will have the same impact on a child.
"You can't see it today," said Clark. "You see the smiles and you love that, but you don't know the lasting impact. Seeing a coach come in and say here is a picture of me when I was a kid and him still remember that day, makes you think maybe going out and doing these things will impact children for the rest of their lives."
Posted in Community, News, Player | 2 Comments »
2 Responses
to "Clark keeps kids energized"
By southernsteelersfan on Dec 4, 2012 | Reply
It's good to see someone of Ryan Clark's stature and popularity influencing children to be active both physically and in their community by setting a fine example !! Thank You !
By southernsteelersfan on Dec 4, 2012 | Reply
It's good to see someone of Ryan Clark's stature and popularity influencing children to be active Physically and in their community by setting a fine example!! Thank You!
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.


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The Salvation Army succeeds in serving the community thanks to the support of its donors and volunteers. From financial support to volunteering of time, the individuals that support The Salvation Army are critical to the success of its mission.
If your group, organization or club needs a speaker, then The Salvation Army is the place to find one. We have individuals who are experts on homelessness, volunteering, disaster services, The Salvation Army history and much more. If you are looking for a guest speaker for your event, please contact Faithe Colas at 414-302-4300 or firstname.lastname@example.com to find a match for your needs.
The Salvation Army is serving people 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In order to meet human needs, we need your help. We are providing a list of items that are greatly needed in all areas. Holding collections for these items is a great way for a family to bond, groups, teams and organizations to give back to the community and a way for everyone to make a difference. For a place to drop off donations, please call 800-264-6412.
Wish List


text:
The story starts with a comet that touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. Some forty people of various nations and ages are condemned to a two-year-long journey on the comet. They form a mini-society and coping with the hostile environment of the comet (mostly the cold). The size of the 'comet' is about 2300 kilometers in diameter - far larger than any comet or asteroid that actually exists.
The 36 inhabitants of Gallia include a German Jew, an Italian, three Frenchmen, eight Russians, 10 Spaniards, and 13 British soldiers. The main characters are:
The English translation by Ellen E. Frewer, was published in England by Sampson Low (November 1877), and the U.S. by Scribner Armstrong with the title Hector Servadac; Or the Career of a Comet. The Frewer translation alters the text considerably with additions and emendations, paraphrases dialogue, and rearranges material, although the general thread of the story is followed.
At the same time George Munro in New York published an anonymous translation in a newspaper format as #43 of his Seaside Library books. This is the only literal translation containing all the dialogue and scientific discussions. Unfortunately the translation stops after Part II Chapter 10, and continues with the Frewer translation.
The same year a still different translation by Edward Roth was published in Philadelphia by Claxton, Remsen, and Heffelfinger in two parts. Part I (October, 1877) was entitled To the Sun and Part II (May, 1878) Off on a Comet. This was reprinted in 1895 by David McKay.
Occasional reprints of these books were published around 1900 by Norman L. Munro, F.M. Lupton, Street&Smith, Hurst and Co., and Federal Book Co.
In 1911, Vincent Parke and Company published a shortened version of the Frewer translation, omitting Part II, Chapter 3. Parke used the title Off on a Comet, and since that time the book has usually been referred to with that title instead of the correct one, Hector Servadac.
In 1926 the first two issues of Amazing Stories carried Off on a Comet in two parts. In 1959, Classics Illustrated released Off on a Comet as a graphic novel (issue #149).
In 1960 Dover (New York) re-published the Roth translations, unabridged, as Space Novels by Jules Verne, including reproductions of the original engravings from the first French editions. In 1965 the I. O. Evans condensation of the Frewer translation was published in two volumes as Anomalous Phenomena and Homeward Bound by ARCO, UK and Associated Booksellers, US. University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu, re-published the Frewer translation in 2000. In September, 2007, Solaris Books (U.K.) published Off on a Comet as an appendix to Splinter by Adam Roberts; a slightly edited version of the Parke edition.
In October, 2007, Choptank Press published a version of Munro's 1877 Hector Servadac, Travels and Adventures through the Solar System edited by Norman Wolcott, followed (December, 2007) by Hector Servadac: The Missing Ten chapters from the Munro Translation newly translated by Norman Wolcott and Christian Sánchez.
From the beginning Verne had problems with this novel. Originally he intended that Gallia would crash into the earth killing all on board. This may have been the motivation for his ghoulish and rather unfunny joke naming the hero "Servadac" with the mirror of the French word cadavres (="corpses"), predicting all would die on the "return". His publisher Hetzel would not accept this however, given the large juvenile readership in his monthly magazine, and Verne was forced to graft a rather unsatisfying ending onto the story, allowing the inhabitants of Gallia to escape the crash in a balloon.
The first appearance in French was in the serial magazine Magazine d'Éducation et de Récréation, commencing on 1 January 1877 and ending on 15 December 1877. It was in June, 1877 when chapter 18 appeared with the introduction and description of Isac Hakhabut — "He was a man of fifty years, who looked sixty. Small, weakly, with eyes bright and false, a busked nose, a yellowish beard and unkempt hair, large feet, hands long and hooked, he offered the well-known type of the German Jew, recognizable among all. This was the usurer with supple back-bone, flat-hearted, a clipper of coins and a skin-flint. Silver should attract such a being as the magnet attracts iron, and if this Shylock was allowed to pay himself from his debtor, he would certainly sell the flesh at retail. Besides, although a Jew originally, he made himself a Mahometan in Mahometan provinces, when his profit demanded it, and he would have been a pagan to gain more."
This prompted the chief rabbi of Paris, Zadoc Kahn, to write a letter to Hetzel, objecting that this material had no place in a magazine for young people. Hetzel and Verne co-signed a reply indicating they had no intention of offending anyone, and promising to make corrections in the next edition. However Verne left the salvage work to Hetzel, asking Hetzel at the end of the summer, "Have you arranged the affair of the Jews in Servadac?" The principal change was to replace "Jew" with "Isac" throughout, and to add "christian countries" to those where Hakhabut plied his trade. The anti-semitic tone remained however, sales were lower than for other Verne books, and the American reprint houses saw little profit with only a single printing by George Munro in a newspaper format. Even the Hetzel revised version has never been translated into English, as both Victorian translations were made from the magazine version. This has caused some modern reviewers to unfairly criticize the early translators, assuming that they had inserted the anti-semitic material which Verne actually wrote.


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Tonyblack wrote:It occurred to me that Tiffany's foe in this book was ignorance. Demonising witches and executing them is something that maybe in the past now, but that type of ignorance is still very much with us with such things as racism and homophobia.
Did it seem a bit of a cop-out to you that amost all of the ignorance was due to a spell gone wrong? People just are that ignorant, and it might reach fever pitch levels sometimes, but it's always there. Alright so we might not know anyone who wants to execute witches, but any woman will tell you that there are still men (and even women) who think that women just aren't up to the job. And as you say, there is still racism and homophobia. And it doesn't take magic for this to happen, or for it to get out of hand.
But in ISWM, all the bad feeling wasn't the people's fault, and it went away overnight - phew!


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Emergency NumbersPhone Book (Must be on-campus or have a valid network account)
2001-2002 Academic Year
April 2002
Live @ the Jungle: Voices Under Fire
April 23rd, 2002
Mixing fiction, memoir and poetry, Jungle actors read selections from works by highly acclaimed Graywolf Press authors that chronicle personal perspectives of world violence, with accompanying music by Roberta Carlson. Selected works include Jack & Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance by Lawrence Sutin, Full Moon Boat by Fred Marchant, Ana Imagined by Perrin Ireland, and Without an Alphabet, Without a Face by Saadi Youssef.
Barbara Dimmick
Reading: April 24th, 2002
In residence: April 22nd-25th
Barbara Dimmick's first novel, In the Presence of Horses, was published in 1998 to much critical acclaim and was translated into five languages. Her reading will take place in the Teresa Reception Boardroom at the College of Saint Benedict.
March 2002
Saskia Hamilton
Reading: March 12th, 2002
In residence: March 10th-14th, 2002
Hamilton's poems have appeared in the Threepenny Review, the Kenyon Review, and the Colorado Review, among other journals. Hamilton is the recipient of a Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
February 2002
Fred Marchant
Reading: February 12th, 2002
In residence: February 11th-14th, 2002
Marchant is the author of Tipping Point, which won the Washington Prize in poetry and Full Moon Boat.
January 2002
Lawrence Sutin
Reading: January 24th, 2002
In residence: January 14th-May 10th
Sutin is an award-winning memoirist and biographer. His books include Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance, Divine Invasions: A Life of Phillip K. Dick, and Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowly.
November 2001
Victoria Redel
November 29th, 2001
October 2001
Albert Goldbarth
Reading: October 16th, 2001
In residence: October 15th-18th, 2001
Goldbarth is the author of many books of poetry and prose including Many Circles, Dark Waves and Light Matter, Great Topics of the World, and A Sympathy of Souls. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his poetry.
Live @ the Jungle: Portaits in Poetry
October 23rd, 2001
Jungle artists bring to life powerful new voices in poetry. This is the first event in a series of performances exploring the works of prize-winning poets and authors in the intimate setting of the Jungle Theater.


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ProteinChip arrays utilize selective capture strategies to reduce sample complexity, allowing detection of low-abundance proteins for a number of applications, such as protein profiling and biomarker discovery.
Biomarker Discovery Using SELDI Technology
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text: I have Windows 8 64 bit installed a long with a brothers printer. I can print in the desktop view ok but I can't print anything in any metro ui app. Can anyone help me with this? No errors are shown with the drivers, it's plugged into usb, and drivers are up to date.


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ENGLAND/ OFFICIAL, Surman extends with Norwich
SPAIN/ ATLETICO MADRID, Arda Turan's agent: "He'll surely leave. His next club will be made known in four days"
Interviewed by NTVSpor, Ahmed Bulut, agent of Turkish international offensive midfielder and winger Arda Turan (28), talked about his client being about to leave Atletico Madrid on a full basis: "He fulfilled all his aims in Madrid, and now he wants a new adventure. Col
BREAKING NEWS - SPAIN/ REAL MADRID, Maxi-plan for Bonucci: Isco and Morata involved, Bianconeri fans standing in the way
|Editore: TC&C srl web content publisher since 1994
|Partita IVA 01488100510


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Unfiltered takes on politics, ideas and culture from Nation editors and contributors.
As soon as Gallup released a poll last week showing Texas Governor Rick Perry leading among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say they identify with the Tea Party, the media anointed Perry the Tea Party's favorite candidate. "The tea party retains considerable power within the GOP and its backing of Texas Gov. Rick Perry has installed him as the frontrunner in the fight for the nomination," writes Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post. "Roughly six in ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identify themselves as tea party supporters and among that group Perry takes 35 percent of the vote—well ahead of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (14 percent) and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (14 percent.)"
This confirms two trends we already saw developing: that each major entrant to the Republican field, enjoys an early bounce (Michele Bachmann's has already come and gone), and that Perry will vie for the support of right-wing extremists.
But there's a big difference between "the Tea Party," which is a nebulous network of right-wing activists, and Republicans who, when asked if they like the Tea Party say yes. Among actual Tea Party activists no consensus leader has emerged.
"What we have seen is that among our supporters—we poll them on a continuous basis to see what they're thinking and whether presidential candidates resonate with them—and it moves around," says Sal Russo, founder of Tea Party Express. "Newt Gingrich was popular, Romney did well for a while, after the New Hampshire debate Bachmann surged, now Perry is having his surge. Candidates go up and down based on what's going on, so they haven't settled on a candidate yet."
Dawn Wildman, national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, agrees. "Every time a new horse comes in it sort of shakes things up," says Wildman. Every candidate who has been in public life long enough has some blemishes on their record from the Tea Party perspective, but some more than others. "People don't like Gingrich," says Wildman. "He comes with too much baggage." Perry too comes with baggage. "The baggage with Perry is that he's from Texas and he sounds like Bush. Even with conservatives, they don't want to look like they're voting for Bush part three."
Then there's the fact that national polls should not be given too much credence. Not all primary voters are created equal. A handful of random states enjoy vastly outsized influence in the nomination process. So the real question is how Perry will perform in key early states and the answer, at least among Tea Partiers, is that it's too soon to tell.
Iowa, where religious social conservatives like Perry are a large force in the low turnout caucus system, will be a crucial battleground for Perry, as it is much more favorable terrain than socially liberal New Hampshire. But Iowa Tea Party Republicans are hardly ready to commit to Perry. "I don't think people have had the chance to vet him," says Ryan Rhodes, a state coordinator for the Iowa Tea Party. "In Iowa one thing people don't do is choose quickly. Perry might do well in a poll, but will have to answer questions one-on-one in Iowa."
And despite Perry's right-wing rhetoric in recent years, his long tenure in office provides ample opportunity for tough questions from Tea Party conservatives. While the Tea Party is nominally focused on economic and budgetary issues, Tea Party activists tend to be conservative on social and cultural issues like any other group of right-wing Republicans. So Perry's former moderation on immigration and his heretical and his heretical support for protecting Texan girls from cancer are particular sore spots. "I actually think Perry's going to answer a lot of tough question: his stances on border control, his HPV vaccinations program," says Rhodes. "He's been a governor for a long time and in doing that he is going to face a challenge."
Meanwhile, the Tea Party flavor of last month, Michele Bachmann, is hardly conceding the Tea Party vote. On Wednesday afternoon Bachmann spoke at a Tea Party Express rally in Des Moines. The competition between Bachmann and Perry for conservatives in Iowa will soon become a major front in the Republican nomination battle.
This Labor Day, for the first time in forty-five years, there won't be a Jerry Lewis telethon on TV. It will be a great day for people with disabilities.
The problem with the Jerry Lewis telethon was not that he tried to help people with muscular dystrophy. The problem was the way Jerry Lewis did it. Yes the telethon raised a lot of money. But it also perpetuated destructive stereotypes. Jerry's message was simple: "crippled children deserve pity." His critics offered an alternative: "people with disabilities deserve respect."
Every year it was the same. Jerry did his telethon shtick, parading little kids in wheelchairs across the Las Vegas stage, making maudlin appeals for cash, alternatively mugging and weeping, and generally claiming to be a friend to the doomed.
The pitch was always for "Jerry's kids." But two-thirds of the clients of the Muscular Dystrophy Association were adults, and they didn't like being referred to as "Jerry's kids." That's what Laura Hershey said in 1997—she was one of the activists who organized annual protests outside the telethon. She died in 2010.
All that money was supposed to find what Jerry called "a cure." Every year he said "We're closer than ever to a cure." But every doctor and nurse will tell you the same thing: there is no cure. In the program for the 2011 annual meeting of the Muscular Dystrophy Coordinating Committee, the word "cure" does not appear.
What people with the disability need is help with their symptoms and with mobility. Their quality of life can be improved, their symptoms can be reduced. They also need "accessible public transportation and housing, employment opportunities and other civil rights that a democratic society should ensure for all its citizens." That's what Mike Ervin says—he calls himself "a renegade Jerry's Kid" who was an official telethon poster child in the 1960s.
Some highlights of the telethon (thanks in part to Michael Sragow):
1973: Jerry holds up a child with muscular dystrophy and announces, "God goofed, and it's up to us to correct His mistakes."
1977: Jerry is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts, especially the telethon, by Representative Les Aspin (D-WI).
1983: President Reagan gets in on the act. Photos show him posing with Jerry and the official muscular dystrophy poster child. The kid is in a wheelchair. He is only 6 years old, but they dressed him in a three-piece suit and a bow tie for the occasion.
1986: Jerry responds to critics. When a female writer for the Montreal Gazette described his performance as "hyperactive, dated slapstick," Jerry tells the press, "When they get a period, it's really difficult for them to function as normal human beings."
For me, the worst moment of the telethon came in 1972 when John and Yoko appeared. They played some good music—"Imagine," and a reggae version of "Give Peace a Chance." But they were there for a political reason: President Nixon had been trying to deport them for almost a year, and they were desperate to say in the USA. So to prove they were deserving of residency, they stopped hanging out with Jerry Rubin and instead embraced Jerry Lewis. That's why Lennon told the telethon audience "Jerry is one of our favorite comedians."
Now it's over: no more "Jerry's kids." It's about time.
Some resources:
"The Kids are Alright"
"From Poster Child to Protester"
"Bloggers Protesting Pity"
Laura Hershey's website
"Muscular Distrophy: Treatment and Drugs"\
In what the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza called Jon Huntsman's "last, best shot" to give his flagging campaign some momentum, the former China ambassador released a plan to create jobs. Speaking in New Hampshire Wednesday afternoon, Huntsman outlined his ideas, with more detailed points on his website.
Huntsman, a former Utah Governor, positions himself as the sane, mainstream alternative to the wingnuts that make up the rest of the Republican field. But the plan is a compendium of conservative hobbyhorses.
The vast majority of his plan has nothing to do with creating jobs, at least in the short term. He focuses heavily on "regulatory reform," which sounds like some non-ideological effort to streamline government but is mostly code for pandering to the Tea Party. Huntsman would repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and the Affordable Care Act. He would "Dramatically Rein In The EPA" and "Curb The Excesses"—meaning eviscerate the essential regulatory power— of agencies like the National Labor Relations Board. All of this will please the Koch brothers, but what it has to do with spurring hiring in the near future is unclear, especially since conservatives like to moan about business being unable to hire in a climate of uncertainty. What they mean by uncertainty, it turns out, is if a business owner doesn't know if his top marginal income tax rate might go up by four points when the Bush tax cuts expire. The uncertainty of proposing enormous alterations to existing law is apparently no problem at all.
Huntsman's other ideas—such as streamlining drug approval at the FDA, increasing domestic oil drilling, eliminating subsides for foreign oil and expanded free trade—may have some minor job-creation benefits years down the line. They may also have adverse impacts on the environment or consumers' health. But what they surely will not have is an appreciable effect on the unemployment rate in 2013 if Huntsman were elected.
Huntsman's plan heavily emphasizes tax reform. His proposals are collectively intended to be revenue neutral. No Republican these days can propose to raise aggregate tax revenue, which is unfortunate, since, as they never tire of pointing out, we have a massive budget deficit. Of course, no Republican has laid out a plan to actually balance the budget entirely through spending cuts.
Our tax code already privileges wealth—in the form of capital gains, for example—over work, which is taxed at a higher rate. Huntsman would exacerbate that inequality by eliminating the tax on capital gains and dividends entirely. Presumably this is intended to spur investment, even though there is no evidence that tax rates affect whether people invest.
Huntsman would also lower income tax rates while eliminating deductions. That's an idea with merit, but it's an awfully slow way to grow jobs. "It is important when talking about a jobs plan to ask whether the plan will move the dial to substantially lower unemployment in the next year or two," says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. "It is hard to see how this plan would. Spending cuts and balancing the budget at 9 percent unemployment is widely and appropriately believed to reduce jobs, not create them."
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, dismisses Huntsman's plan as "just Tea Party talking points."
"We had strong growth with higher taxes—from the 1940s to the '70s and in the 1990s—and pathetic growth with lower taxes," Baker notes. "There has been no flood of regulations in the last decade, despite the Tea Party tirades, so the premise of this plan is a joke."
And that joke is the economic plan of the most serious Republican candidate.
"All these guys who were saying that we've got it made through athletics, it's just not so. You as an individual can make it, but I think we've got to concern ourselves with the masses of the people – not by what happens as an individual, so I merely tell these youngsters when I go out: certainly I've had opportunities that they haven't had, but because I've had these opportunities doesn't mean that I've forgotten." —Jackie Robinson
When did Michael Vick become a Horatio Alger story? The player who was vilified after spending nearly two years in federal prison for being part of a dog-fighting ring, is now our latest feel-good comeback story: a symbol of this country's remarkable capacity for empathy and forgiveness. Vick signed a head-spinning six-year, $100 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles on Tuesday, and the narrative has centered on the way he's been embraced by franchise and fans after falling so low. Mentioned often in an offhand manner, is that three years ago Vick was making eleven cents an hour as a janitor in Leavenworth.
No doubt the Vick journey is perhaps unrivaled in the history of sports. But take a moment to consider that eleven-cents-an hour wage along with Jackie Robinson's warning not to use the athletic achievement of one to blind us from larger realities. Michael Vick's janitorial job was just a sub atomic particle of a prison labor industrial complex intimately interwoven with the highest levels of corporate America.
The foundation of our bounty of incarcerated labor is the fact that we have more people behind bars than any country on earth. David Fathi, the director of the ACLU's National Prisoner Project, commented, "The United States is the world's leading prison nation, with 2.3 million prisoners and an incarceration rate six times higher than Canada's and twelve times higher than Japan's.… Prisoners can be made to work, they don't have to be paid, and they lack the protections that free workers have, like workers compensation and the right to join a union. So there's a real potential for exploitation and abuse."
Among African-American men, like Vick, the numbers incarcerated stagger the senses. As Michelle Alexander, best selling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, said in an August speech, "More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began." David Fathi also pointed out to me, "Most Americans know that the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude. What many don't know is that it contains an exception for prisoners."
A mind-boggling number of private companies outsource to US prisons. From K-Mart and JC Penny to McDonalds and Wendy's, you can see the products of jailhouse labor. When you call American Airlines or Avis, the person helping you with your travel might be chained to their desk.
As Liliana Segura, a board member at the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and fellow journalist at The Nation, said to me, "Just last year we saw thousands of prisoners go on strike across the state of Georgia, in large part to protest the total lack of compensation for the hours they spend working. In Louisiana, prisoners at Angola harvest crops by hand, earning pennies per hour. There's a reason people call it modern-day slavery. After the BP oil spill, Louisiana prisoners were used to clean up the beaches, a fact that not only angered local workers whose industries were being devastated, but also those who argued that such labor is not subject to adequate oversight given the risks involved. Prisoners represent nothing less than a massive—and expanding—invisible workforce in this country."
Yes, Michael Vick has gone from eleven cents an hour to a $100 million man, but for the mass of prisoners who can't run forty yards in 4.4 seconds or throw a ball sixty yards with a flick of the wrist, the future is bleak. That's why in times like this, we should remember Jackie Robinson's words. If we, as Jackie advised, "concern ourselves with the masses of the people," then we'd properly view Michael Vick's ascension as cause for reflection, not celebration. He made it out of the prison system intact. His story is exceptional because millions of people won't be able to say the same. That's what happens when caught in a system that measures your worth at eleven cents an hour.
Mitt Romney has solidified his status as the sole candidate of the moderate wing of the Republican Party. He vastly outpaced all his opponents in fundraising in the last quarter. Jon Huntsman attacks Romney relentlessly, aware that his only hope is to supplant Romney as the moderate choice, but he barely registers in polls. Last week Romney quickly starting scooping up endorsements from Tim Pawlenty supporters after Pawlenty proved insufficiently extremist for Iowa Republican activists. While Romney's overall front runner status has slipped thanks to the rise of Michele Bachmann and entry of Rick Perry, Romney remains the candidate of mainstream and establishment Republicans.
At first glance, this might seem natural and intuitive. Romney's record in Massachusetts is reasonable and pragmatic. But for the last four years Romney has been running for president, assiduously courting conservatives. His current positions—staunchly anti-abortion rights, anti–gay rights, anti-immigration and unconvinced of anthropogenic climate change—are anathema to the socially moderate elite wing of the GOP. So why are they sticking by Romney?
There are four reasons: the importance of biography over platform, the widespread assumption that Romney doesn't believe what he says, the lower salience of social issues and the lunacy of his competition.
After the gross incompetence of the Bush administration, mainstream Republicans want someone who conveys competence. Romney, with his successful business career and carefully coiffed, Power Point presentation–filled persona, has that base covered. "What Mitt Romney benefited from in 2008 is that there's a real hunger for a candidate who can really do the job of president," says David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter whose website FrumForum.com is the hub of intelligent and reasonable conservatism. "Romney convinces people he can do the job. As a manager of large organizations and a turnaround artist, he's especially appealing on that ground."
Then there's the way that Romney ironically benefits from the comically brazen, dishonest nature of his pandering to the right. Since it's so blatantly obvious that he doesn't really think we need, say, a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, no one in the Wall Street wing of the GOP needs to worry when he spouts such irrational dogma.
Republican elites have long backed candidates who take reactionary social positions, safe in the knowledge that they will never act on them, or never have the chance to. "There's no possibility of making abortion illegal," says Bruce Bartlett, a former economic advisor to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who has since left the Republican Party. "There's no possibility that we're going to pass legislation on prayer in schools. Social issues are not really legislative issues. They're just signaling mechanisms, a way of saying 'I'm one of you, vote for me.' We saw this in Reagan, where he never did anything on these issues."
Of course, Romney's biggest advantage in holding onto mainstream Republican support while adopting right-wing positions is the fact that he has no competition for their favor. "He's the most moderate candidate with a chance of winning," says Bartlett. "The other candidates are a mile right of center and he's only three-quarters of a mile. Maybe [moderate Republicans] hope he's not completely insane and he just says the stupid things he says because the Republican electorate demands it and they hope that he'll govern in as he did in Massachusetts. But maybe that's just wishful thinking."
The Obama administration's selection of Alan Krueger to lead the Council of Economic Advisers was greeted with applause from progressive economists, including Paul Krugman and Jared Bernstein. "Alan is a fine choice as chief economic adviser," wrote Krugman, who has often clashed with the administration over economic policy. "It's an inspired choice," added Bernstein.
Krueger served as an adviser in the Treasury Department from 2009–10, where he designed the successful cash-for-clunkers program, and, as a Princeton University professor, is regarded as one of the country's top labor economists. His nomination comes at a time when the Obama administration is belatedly realizing it needs to do much more to try to boost the lagging economy. The Wall Street Journal reports that, if confirmed, Krueger "is likely to provide a voice inside the administration for more-aggressive government action to bring down unemployment and, particularly, to address long-term joblessness."
Next week Obama will lay out his ideas to create jobs, which will likely include the extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, a tax cut for companies that hire new workers, an infrastructure bank to spur new construction jobs and job training for the long-term unemployed, reports Bloomberg News and the Washington Post. Whether these steps are enough to jumpstart an economic recovery, and whether anything the administration proposes can make it through Congress, remains to be seen.
It's now clear that the administration's obsession with cutting the deficit did nothing to boost the economy or help the president politically. The economy recovery has ground to a halt and Obama's approval ratings are at an all-time low. "The White House strategy failed, and it failed pretty spectacularly," writes Mike Tomasky in the Daily Beast.
Thanks to the Congressional "super-committee," Washington will still be gripped by deficit hysteria through Christmas, at least. But at least the issue of jobs is returning to the forefront of the conversation, and there seems to be an increasing realization by some in the Democratic Party, including House Democratic committee members, that growing the economy and creating jobs is also the best way to cut the deficit.
Finally, there's the question of whether Krueger's nomination will be approved by the Senate. He was unanimously confirmed for the Treasury job in May 2009 and Politico's "Morning Money" reported today that Senate Republicans will not block his nomination on the second go-round. We'll see—Senate Republicans have already killed many other well-qualified Obama nominees, including Peter Diamond for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and recently prevented the administration from making any recess appointments over the summer break. Things have gotten so bad that we don't even have a permanent commerce secretary. If he gets the job, it's probably an understatement to say that Krueger will have his work cut out for him.
—Ari Berman is the author of Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics. Follow him on Twitter at @AriBerman.
At this time last year, as the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approached, the country was gripped by a pernicious debate over a "mosque" (really, an Islamic cultural center) near Ground Zero in New York City.
Pushback against the project actually began months earlier and was led by a group called Stop Islamization of America, which launched "Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!" in May 2010. The group's founder, Pamela Geller, charged that "this is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem." The group's co-director, Robert Spencer, helped Geller organize rallies and protest campaigns aimed at a lower Manhattan community board, which reported getting "hundreds and hundreds" of calls and e-mails from around the world as a result of the well-funded and highly coordinated campaign.
Geller and Spencer's cause was loudly trumpeted by large right-wing media outlets, notably the New York Post and Fox News Channel, both News Corp. properties. The religious right quickly joined; Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention called the project "unacceptable" because "the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attack were Muslims and proclaimed they were doing what they were doing in the name of Islam." Soon, politicians were also on board: Newt Gingrich denounced the proposal and argued that although the cultural center was seemingly benign, "some radical Islamists use terrorism as a tactic to impose sharia, but others use nonviolent methods—a cultural, political, and legal jihad that seeks the same totalitarian goal even while claiming to repudiate violence."
By late summer, as September 11 approached, the "debate" had gone completely mainstream—Geller was invited to appear on CNN, and President Obama was forced to take a position. (Actually, two positions: he voiced support for the project before walking it halfway back).
At one point in August, more than two-thirds of Americans opposed the project. It was a stunning victory for Geller, Spencer, and the xenophobic right, but also an excellent case study of how they operate. According to a comprehensive new report by the Center for American Progress, anti-Islam efforts like this are no vast right-wing conspiracy: rather, it's a "rather small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts," operating on $40 million in funding from just seven organizations.
The report, titled "Fear, Inc.," names five "experts" who generate a huge amount of misinformation about Islam. They are:
• Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy
• David Yerushalmi at the Society of Americans for National Existence
• Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum
• Spencer, of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America
• Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism
Meanwhile, seven foundations have donated no less than $40 million to Islamophobic think tanks like these over the past ten years. They are:
• Donors Capital Fund
• Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
• Russell Berrie Foundation
• Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
• Fairbrook Foundation
In extensive detail, the report describes how this small group of donors fund a cluster of think tanks that promote rank Islamophobia, and how their misinformation is spread through a network of conservative media and grassroots organizers like Geller. The important context here is that anti-Islam sentiment is growing in the decade since the September 11 attacks: an ABC News taken last year in the wake of the Ground Zero mosque debate showed 49 percent of Americans had a negative view of Islam, compared with just 39 percent in October 2002.
The biggest contributor to these efforts, by far, is the Donors Capital Fund, which has given over $20.7 million to groups like Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism and the Clarion Fund—in fact, Donors Capital Fund fully funded the Clarion Fund's distribution of the DVD "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," which went to over 28 million swing-state voters before the 2008 presidential election.
Donors Capital Fund is a philanthropic organization run by a number of conservative heavyweights. The board includes members of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal.
The report does unearth a few new facts about the Islamophobia network, but many other parts were already known—the New York Times, for example, has already detailed Yerushalmi's efforts at getting "anti-Shariah" laws passed in statehouses across the country. But the report's real strength is in demonstrating exactly how small—and effective—this network is.
"It's not a lot of people, it's not a lot of organizations, it's not a lot of money. It is amazing what these people have accomplished," Eli Clifton, one of the report's authors, said in a press call Friday.
Faiz Shakir, a vice president at CAP and also a co-author, said the report is "trying to end Islamophobia. If we are to end it we have to identify who are they key motivators and drivers of this hate industry. We have to give a path for those who want to divorce themselves from the Islamophobia industry the opportunity to do so."
When the report was released on Friday, the targets responded with charaterstic and near-cartoonish zeal; Horowitz said CAP "has joined the Muslim Brotherhood," and Spencer accused the authors of belonging to the "Islamic supremacist propaganda machine."
The full report can be viewed here. (Full discloure: I worked at the Center for American Progress from August 2010 to April 2011).
Tea Party activists helped Republicans win a landslide in the 2010 midterm elections, but they are already unhappy. Less than a year into the new Congress, they see a string of broken promises: the debt ceiling raised, insufficient spending cuts and politics being conducted behind closed doors. "The Republican leadership came in with promises that didn't happen," says Dawn Wildman, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. "They are doing backroom deals, not putting up bills online for seventy-two hours before voting on them, and not keeping other promises."
Wildman is in regular contact with state and local Tea Party activists and she says they are displeased with their local Republican incumbents and open to backing primary challenges against them virtually everywhere. "There's not one state saying 'we just love our guys and want to keep them forever,' " says Wildman. "People are not willing to hold their nose to vote any more."
Some Republicans, though, may be given a pass by the DC-based conservative organizations that often partner with the Tea Parties. For instance FreedomWorks, Dick Armey's fiscally conservative group, takes a more pragmatic approach to politics. They intend to back right-wing challengers to senators in conservative states where the Republican primary essentially anoints the general election victor. But in Massachusetts, thus far, they are giving a pass to Republican Senator Scott Brown for his numerous heresies. "What you can get in Massachusetts is different than in Utah," says Matt Kibbe, executive director of FreedomWorks. "I don't see a better alternative to Scott Brown at this point."
Wildman calls that view "incredibly short-sighted." She says that Tea Party activists in Massachusetts "couldn't wait to see Scott Brown gone. They're more concerned with his RINO [Republican In Name Only] status than taking a Democratic seat. From outside we say that's about the best you're going to get, but on the inside there's no compromise."
Even so, there are plenty of states that grassroots Tea Partyers and national organizations like FreedomWorks will work together on, even if they haven't yet found a candidate. Here are four Senate races to watch for Tea Party insurgencies.
Utah: "We're going after Orrin Hatch," says Kibbe. "We're going to replace him with someone better." Hatch, like his former Senate colleague from Utah Bob Bennett, has a fairly conservative, if establishment-friendly, track record. But Tea Party activists took over the Utah Republican convention in 2010 and booted Bennett off the primary ballot, thus ending his career. Hatch, like Bennett, voted for the TARP bailouts and showed a willingness, later abandoned, to work with Democrats on healthcare reform. "[Hatch's] record looks like Senator Bennett's," says Kibbe. "Pro-spending, he supported virtually every bailout that's been on the table, the individual mandate."
But the thing that most sticks in the craw of Tea Party activists is that Hatch worked with Ted Kennedy to create the S-CHIP program, which gives health insurance to children from uninsured families that do not qualify for Medicaid.
Hatch has been on a charm offensive to win over Tea Party activists while eliminating prospective competition by raising vastly more funds than any prospectives opponent. Representative Jason Chaffetz, who was seen as Hatch's strongest potential challenger, announced last week that he isn't running. But Hatch is not in the clear yet. "We're happy with some of the recent votes that he's taken," says David Kirkham, a Utah Tea Party organizer. "He stood up for Cut, Cap and Balance." But, adds Kirkham, "he's got some real stinkers of votes." Hatch also, as conservative blogger Michele Malkin notes with disgust, co-sponsored a national service bill with Kennedy. Kirkham says the Utah Tea Party will be vetting candidates, looking for a challenger with private sector experience. Thanks to Utah's unusual rules governing ballot access, Tea Party leaders think they can keep Hatch off the primary ballot, thus mooting his financial advantage. Any candidate who meets with Tea Party approval would surely be an uncompromising extreme conservative. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who unseated Bennett, voted against the debt ceiling deal, issuing a statement with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) as to why.
Indiana: Just as Hatch's relationship with Kennedy was a famous example of bipartisan friendship, Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) mentored an Illinois freshman Democrat named Barack Obama. Lugar is fairly conservative, but he has made nuclear non-proliferation his legacy. "A lot of people are looking at Lugar," says Kibbe.
Nominally the Tea Party movement is focused on economic and constitutional liberty. But as studies of its membership have shown, Tea Party activists are overwhelmingly conservative Republicans. The best predictors of Tea Party identification, in fact, are socially conservative views. So Lugar is being targeted mostly for a record of sensible, bipartisan work like nuclear non-proliferation treaties, that has nothing to do with taxing and spending.
James Bratten, state coordinator for the Indiana Tea Party Patriots, lists Lugar's main apostasies as his role in the START treaty to reduce nuclear arms, supporting the nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, co-authorship of DREAM Act and voting for TARP. Bratten says conservative Indiana Republicans at the county level are lining up behind Richard Murdoch, the state treasurer. Replacing Lugar with a more doctrinaire conservative would be a major blow to bipartisanship, especially on foreign policy.
Florida: In 2010 the most high-profile Tea Party insurgency might have been Marco Rubio's overwhelming destruction of Florida Governor Charlie Crist in the Republican Senate primary. Crist had been a rising GOP star as recently as 2008, when he was short-listed by Senator John McCain for the vice-presidential nomination. Then the party took its dramatic rightward turn and Crist's moderate stances on some social and environmental issues made him persona non grata.
When Senator Mel Martinez stepped down, Crist had appointed his chief of staff, George LeMieux, to replace Martinez, safe in the assumption that LeMieux wouldn't run for the seat in 2010 and Crist could. LeMieux served sixteen months, while Crist got trounced by Rubio. Now LeMieux is running for the nomination to challenge Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), who is looking vulnerable. Tea Party icon Rep. Allen West (R-FL) has bowed out of the race, but Tea Party activists are coalescing around Adam Hasner, the former Florida House Majority Leader. So it's a Rubio protégé (Rubio was Florida's House Speaker) against a Crist protégé. Kibbe calls it a rerun of the 2010 race.
The candidates, naturally, are sparring over who is more conservative. LeMieux is touting his 92 percent rating from the American Conservative Union, while attacking Hasner for supporting a judicial bypass option in Florida's parental notification abortion law and voting for earmarks. Hasner counters that LeMieux is guilty by virtue of his association with Crist. If either candidate unseats Nelson, Florida will have an awfully conservative senate delegation for a swing state.
Texas: With Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison retiring, Tea Partyers have a chance to replace her with one of their own. Democrats are virtually nonexistent in Texas statewide elections. While Hutchison is no moderate, she was defeated in the 2010 gubernatorial primary by Governor Rick Perry, who ran to her right and portrayed her as a member of the Washington establishment. Tea Partiyers are supporting Ted Cruz, the former Solicitor General of Texas. "There is a huge difference between Cruz and [Lieutenant Governor] David Dewhurst who is the establishment deep-pocketed candidate," says Kibbe.
Cruz has won endorsements from right-wingers such as Rand Paul, Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) and National Review's Jay Nordlinger. Cruz has the perfect biography to excite any movement conservative. Half-Cuban, a debate champion at Princeton and a graduate of Harvard Law, he clerked for Judge Michael Luttig and Chief Justice William Rehnquist. (It's funny how supposedly anti-elite conservatives suddenly remember how much they love a fancy educational pedigree when one of their own possesses it.) Nordlinger writes that "Ted should be a national conservative cause, the way Rubio was in Florida," and goes on to fantastize about the "embarrassment of riches" in a future presidential primary between Rubio and Cruz. He's getting ahead of himself, but if Cruz wins the primary he's virtually certain to join Rubio in the Senate and gain national prominence.
Jerry Richardson, as a Google search quickly proves, is invariably described as "old school." The 75-year-old Carolina Panthers owner played pro football back when tickets cost one dollar, there were no player unions and black quarterbacks didn't exist. He made his fortune in the food service industry, with a strong emphasis on personal appearance and low wages for all under his employ. During the NFL lockout, he oozed with contempt toward every player, union official and fan. Even the sainted Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning earned an ugly sneer.
Now he is the owner who told number-one draft pick quarterback Cam Newton that grooming and servility are prerequisites for success. On The Charlie Rose Show, Richardson proudly recounted asking Newton if he had any tattoos or piercings. When Newton replied, "No sir, I don't have any," Richardson told Rose he informed his new franchise quarterback: "Good. We want to keep it that way. We want to keep no tattoos, no piercings and I think you've got a very nice haircut." No word if he then checked Newton's gums.
It is worth noting that Richardson didn't hesitate signing Jeremy Shockey in the off-season, a tight end with more tattoos than a Hell's Angel. But there is a difference. Shockey is a white good ol' boy from Oklahoma. Newton is black and branded by the media as having "character issues."
Certainly, many were surprised when the "old school" Richardson used the NFL draft's number-one overall pick on the Auburn University Heisman trophy winner. While Newton's talent, size and speed are unquestioned, his recent past has been a national soap opera. It includes multiple school transfers, accusations of theft and the finding that his father attempted to sell his services to the highest bidder. It was a unique journey that said less about Newton than the gutter economy of the NCAA, where everyone gets paid but those the people pay to see perform. Now Richardson is telling the world that no one should worry about Newton's "character issues" because he is under the owner's care from this point forward. He even told Newton not to worry about the past because Richardson would guide his future.
It is one thing to have the Panthers owner express these feelings to Newton privately. One gets the feeling that a rich variety of racist nonsense is said to players behind closed doors. We can remember last year, before the 2010 NFL draft, when it was leaked that Miami General Manager Jeff Ireland asked star Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant if his mother was a prostitute. Or recall Anthony Prior, former NFL player, who wrote the book Slave Side of Sunday. Prior said to me, "I've heard coaches call players 'boy,' 'porch monkeys,' 'sambos.' I've been in film sessions where coaches would try to get a rise out of players by calling them 'boy' or 'Jemima,' and players are so conditioned to not jeopardize their place, they just take it."
What differentiates Richardson's brand of racial paternalism is his public, boastful pride. It's like when Rick Perry made Jose Cuervo jokes in a speech at a Latino Political event. In other words, it's a way of proclaiming your power over others because your station, your bank account and your skin color allow you to treat others like they live on their knees.
There are some in the press defending Richardson on the grounds that "the Carolina Panthers are a company, Richardson runs the company and many companies have dress codes and rules concerning personal appearance." Yet there are two problems with that argument. The first is that the Panthers have no such team rules (see Shockey, Jeremy.). The second is that once you have on your pads and are under the helmet, no one can tell if you have more tattoos and piercings than Lisbeth Salander. This is not about Newton's personal appearance. It's about the public effort to exert control over a 22-year-old man by an owner who posesses what can only be called a plantation mentality. If Richardson really wants this kind of absolute power over young, gifted black athletes, he should just sell the Panthers and apply for a job at the NCAA. As for Cam Newton, he might want to read about some Panthers who weren't under the control of people like Jerry Richardson.
The State Department released its final environmental impact assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline Friday, and it's just as bad as some feared—perhaps worse. The report concludes, as did two prior versions, that there would be "no significant impact" on natural resources near the pipeline route, while also downplaying the potential for increased greenhouse gas emissions.
In a conference call with reporters, Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones stressed that "this is not the rubberstamp for this project. The permit that is required for this process has not been approved or rejected at all."
But the environmental concerns are clearly the main objection to Keystone XL, and the report is widely seen as removing one of the final roadblocks to the project. Environmental groups were quick to blast the results. "The U.S. State Department's final report on the Keystone XL today is an insult to anyone who expects government to work for the interests of the American people," the Sierra Club said in a statement.
On the issue of pipeline spills, the State Department report assesses that "there could be from 1.18 to 1.83 spills greater than 2,100 gallons per year" for the entire project. It helpfully adds that "crude oil spills are not likely to have toxic effects on the general public."
While that many spills might already sound risky, the real number is likely much higher than what the State Department calculated. First, as the report itself notes, there have already been fourteen spills along the existing Keystone pipeline since it began operating in June 2010.
In addition, the first independent analysis of the pipeline project, released last month by Dr. John Stansbury at the University of Nebraska, came up with much more ominous results. Stansbury calculated a potential for ninety-one spills over the next fifty years.
He also lays out a scenario that most certainly would involve "toxic effects on the general public." If a worst-case spill were to occur at the Platte River crossing, for example, benzene—a human carcinogen—would travel unabated down the Missouri River for several hundred miles and affect the drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people in cities like Lincoln, Omaha and Nebraska City in Nebraska and St. Joseph and Kansas City in Missouri.
Similarly, Stansbury estimates that a worst-case spill in the Sandhills region of Nebraska would contaminate 4.9 billion gallons of drinking water.
It's important to note that the State Department assessment relies upon assumptions that the Keystone XL pipeline will operate with a fairly high degree of efficiency and safety—more than the rest of the industry. If that somehow happens, the company alone will be responsible for that high standard, because federal regulators are currently incapable of adequately inspecting pipelines that carry tar sands.
The Department of Transportation's Cynthia Quarterman recently admitted to Congress that the DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had not evaluated the risks of tar sands pipelines and she did not know if current safety regulations could address them.
Beyond spills, there's also the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, which the Environmental Protection Agency estimates to be over 80 percent higher for tar sands than normal crude oils. While the State Deparment report acknowledges that "current projections suggest that the amount of energy required to extract all crude oils is projected to increase over time," it also says the greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands might stay flat or even decrease over time.
This analysis relies on industry claims that it will develop refining methods that emit fewer greenhouse gases. Numerous analyses have predicted much higher greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands development. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has written that "if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over" for reversing climate change.
Again, even the EPA predicts higher-than-normal greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands refining, and it's important to note that the EPA openly criticized the last environmental impact statement from the State Department, which isn't much different than the final version.
Despite claims that a final decision is yet to be made, today's environmental impact assessment virtually guarantees the State Department will approve the project by the end of the year. But environmental activists are not discouraged—and are placing their bets on President Barack Obama.
Bill McKibben, who has been leading the civil disobedience outside the White House, said "we knew from past experience that State might do something like this, which is why we've always said it's going to be Obama's call. They can't get the climate science right, but maybe they can get the politics right."


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Early Learning Center Childcare Rates
You can choose to enroll your child at EvCC's Early Learning Center by the quarter, for the academic year, or for full-year care. To qualify for the student childcare rates, you must be enrolled for at least 3 EvCC credit hours for the quarter your child attends.
Quarterly Rates
Enrollment for a single quarter.
- Summer 2014: June 30, 2014 to August 21, 2014. Click here for Summer rates.
- Fall 2014: Sept. 22, 2014 to Dec. 12, 2014. Click here for Fall rates.
- Winter 2015: Jan. 5, 2015 to March 20, 2015. Click here for Winter rates.
- Spring 2015: March 30, 2015 to June 12, 2015. Click here for Spring rates.
Academic Year Rates
Enrollment is for 37 weeks/9 months, from Sept. 15, 2014 to June 12, 2015. The ELC is closed December 22, 2014 - January 2, 2015. Click here for rates.
Full Year Rates
Enrollment is for June 30, 2014 to June 26, 2015. The ELC is closed December 22, 2014 - January 2, 2015. Click here for rates.
Registration Fee: A non-refundable registration fee is due upon initial registration.
- Quarterly Registration: $25
- Academic Year Registration: $50 (Fall, Winter, and Spring)
- Full Calendar Year Registration: $75 (June 30, 2014 to June 26, 2015)
Late Pickup Fee: $1 per minute per child.
Schedule Change Fee: $25 for schedule changes made after the first week of the quarter.
Withdrawl Fee: Two weeks written notice is required to withdrawal. Tuition for those two weeks will be billed. This also applies to withdrawals which happen prior to the start of the quarter.
Payment Deadline
Payments are due on the 20th of the month prior to care and are payable at the Cashier's Office in the Parks Building or online using the EvCC Student Kiosk. A $25 late fee will be charged to all outstanding accounts.
Free ECEAP Preschool
We offer free ECEAP (Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program) preschool to eligible families with 4 to 5 year olds. Children are accepted into ECEAP based on age, family income, or other reasons that they would benefit from education, family support, and health services.
Contact ECEAP Coordinator & Program Supervisor Barbara Scienski at 425-388-9121 or email@example.com for more information.


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There is something about working on a project car that's been taken down to bare metal that really motivates you to start thrashing to get it completed. Maybe it's the peace of mind of having a blank slate to work with that flips a mental switch that makes you stay up wrenching until 3 a.m. on a work night; maybe it's simply knowing that your carefully chosen paint scheme will be tied directly to the project without someone else's terrible color choice from 1978 lurking underneath. However, motivation isn't the most common reason why folks take their cars' paint all the way off. Sometimes it's what is "lurking underneath" that makes you want to tear off your project's old skin to really assess what you're working with.
In the past, when you wanted to strip a car's paint to bare metal, you essentially had to remove it of all the trim, glass, and drivetrain before you could blast it. Sand media would pit and eventually break glass, and the trim would be annihilated by fast-moving particles. Also, sand media processes can actually heat up the metal through friction, causing it to warp in some cases. But there are safer and more environmentally friendly ways to strip your paint these days, and a soda blasting process is one of them.
The two most common reasons to get an old car blasted are to reveal any shoddy bodywork that may have been performed over the years and to get the car's surface nice and smooth for a fresh coat of new paint. Sometimes you may pick up a project that you think is a solid specimen, only to find out years later that the quarter-panel was made of Bondo. Or, on the brighter side of things, you may think a project is junk, and it turns out not so bad. Albert De Alba at Cal Blast in Upland, California, can help you determine what you have by blasting all your old paint away—without removing the glass or trim. Cal Blast uses a sodium carbonate material, which is worlds "softer" than sand media—a substance common in industrial applications. For classic cars and restorations though, a soda blast is a much more viable choice, as it doesn't heat the metal, yet is nearly as effective at removing coatings, such as paint, primer, old stickers, and body filler. Soda also leaves a protective invisible layer that will prolong your car from rusting right away, so you can actually drive the car around in bare metal. We did. However, soda is not aggressive enough to remove rust, so shops like Cal Blast offer a secondary copper blast process that removes rust as well as the invisible layer. If you opt out on the copper blast, you need to actually wash the bare car with soapy water before you can primer it, as it can create issues when the paint dries.
You may be wondering, why strip the paint off of your car when you can just paint over it anyway? Depending on the level of pickiness, car builders and/or owners don't want to cover old paint because it can come back to bite them later. Body filler cracks, hidden rot, or shoddy bodywork, in general, can show up in your paint years later and also, if there is a hefty buildup of old paint layers, it can "fade" away body lines that would otherwise be defined.


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I've been slowly making some changes to Emmeth's room, at her request. You can see the before above. We've switched out the floral duvet for plain white and changed out the pillow cases. She wanted it to feel more grown up, but she's still, really, a kid. Not quite a teen. Not really even a tween just yet, although I'm seeing more and more of those moments. Her room is tiny, like Roan's, 10 feet x 10 feet, with no storage and low attic ceilings. Which left her no real "hang out" space where she and her friends could sit. So we decided to create a day bed for her. We checked out Craigslist together, as I thought transforming something would work out better than trying to buy new. She choose what I thought was the ugliest of the options. She insisted however and I have other battles to fight. I knew it would look better painted anyway. Here it is, in all it's "before" glory.
Bleh. Not my style. Now you know where that sneak peek from the lego post was going. I painted it with Chalk Paint, in cream, as I've wanted to try that out for a while and I didn't want to do any prep work on the bed. It's too cold for spray paint here now and I certainly wasn't going to look at that thing unpainted for several months. Once painted we set it up in her room and added more pillows. We (she) decided to center it under the windows, which left a weird space behind the bed, as the dresser has to be pushed right next to it, creating a weird corner. We thought about shelves, but they'd be impossible to reach and, because of the slant, wouldn't really fill the space. So instead we did this.
Party supplies and paper lanterns from World Market and Pearl River Supply. Loosely inspired by this pin. The star is a Christkindle Market purchase from a couple of years ago that she loved and requested as part of the mix. It's cute, although I wish I'd thought of a better way to hang them. I'm going to hate patching all those holes when she gets tired of the lanterns.
We brought up the chair from the guest room and created another sitting area (knitting area really) by the door. A quick change of throw, from the black and white stripes to purple ombre, made that versatile little chair perfect for her space.
As you can see, curtains are next on the agenda. I'm going to put some grommets in the fabric from her old curtains and create simple roll up shades that tie with a ribbon. Slowly, between other projects. Some rooms just work better that way, evolving. Much like Emmeth. Constantly changing, faster than I'd like some days, slower than molasses others.
Lovely !
I love those paper lanterns and the star. I've always wanted to hang some of those up.
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