Candide's Notebooks: 2006-12-10

Good Morning. A couple of items for the weekend...

It’s turning into an interesting Christmas season for those mothers, fathers, wives, sons and daughters who’ll get to lose a husband, a father, a son in the next few weeks (and of course years) as the American death tally in Iraq ho ho hoses it to 3,000 while our Lord and Savior president and decider decides not to decide what to decide next for Iraq until — maybe to please Jenna and the other one — “after the holidays,” as the phraseology of the corporate cruiser goes. See Pierre's "Christmas Toll"

From the Daily Journal: Lebanon's worst enemies, South Africa's child murders, Italy's "war on Christmas," and Christmas again for the Muhammad Cartoons.

Good weekend everyone.pt

Good Morning. A few new items as the Democrats' Senate majority hangs by a thread...

Godspeed, Peter Boyle. But the death of one of the stars of "Everybody Loves Raymond" only highlights a death of much longer date. See "A Graveyard of Comedy..."

Jimmy Carter is catching all sorts of flack for his new book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Naturally, friends of Israel are hyperventilating. See Pierre's "You Mean It's Not Apartheid?"

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is having a hard time getting a hearing in some public schools, where the oil lobby is putting up a fuss. Candide's Notebooks contributor Linda Sexauer writes "Goring Gore from Schools..."

Plenty more in the Daily Journal, including barbarism with an American face, the flabby state of education, why the French riots were a good thing, and more... Thanks for reading.pt

Good Morning. A few new items since the weekend.

It isn't quantifiable. But it's tangible all the same. The America of 1979, for all its flaws, was more hopeful, more defensible, more admirable, than the America of 2006. To an immigrant, today's America is a heartbreak. See Pierre's Tuesday column, on the 20th anniversary of his naturalization as a U.S. citizen, "Losing America."

It's media's sickness, and some columnists have to play along; when Denver's Al Lewis compared car salesmen to Chihuahuas, he ended up in a self-described, and apparently self-assigned, "doghouse." His apology was worse than the offense. See "Groveling for Advertisers."

From the American Impression archives: A jaunt through the Idaho Engineering Laboratory, since 1947 the Department of Energy's lead nukes lab. See "Idaho, Nuclear Frontier."

Plenty more in Candide's Daily Journal. Thanks for reading.pt

Candide's Notebooks