The Last Ephor

We're waiting. My wife and I. She is more than me. I'm essentially ballast. The support team. Like the track marshals at an auto race waiting for disaster so they can rush in to assist the survivors. My wife's grandfather has cancer. It's everywhere and it's terminal. The hospice nurse told us that he has a matter of weeks. Less than a month to be sure. He sleeps most days and has little to no appetite. His spirits vary from denial to anger to passivity. He still has a laugh here or there. Usually reserved for my kids. His only great grandchildren. He's 85 years old and finally starting to look it. He left school after 8th grade to take care of the family when his father died. The war came and he went to the Pacific Theater for some nasty fighting that he recaps with one line: "I fought those Japs. They're a bunch a bastards." Any further questions are met with a stare like he just explained the situation and isn't clear on ...

Fed Booze Police Go Bonkers . (h/t Insty ) Any official making even oblique threats in this regard should be immediately transferred to Saudi Arabia for the remainder of their career. If they hate alcohol that much Saudi Arabia should be paradise for them.

Police blow up foul-mouthed CDs that blared in church Why? Just why? You have to have some real burning hatred for people to desecrate their house of worship like this.

BREITBART.COM - Saddam's lawyer plans book on president's 'secrets' . Reading the article you can see that this rube is going to retro-actively create a heroic myth about Saddam and his wisdom, bravery etc. I'm sure Comical Ali can help out and tell us about how the Americans fled in terror before Mighty Saddam's defiant gaze.

The Indepundit has a story about a one man counter protest. Read the whole thing.

US deficit is shrinking, for now With the robust economy, tax revenues are pouring in. But rising costs lie ahead. Despite the ongoing costs of US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the outlook for the federal budget has grown substantially brighter. Tax revenues are rising much faster than spending , according to Treasury Department numbers released last week. The recent trend is strong enough that, were it to continue, the budget could move into surplus in barely a year , one economist calculates. Already, the federal deficit is shrinking toward about half the size that it has averaged since 1970 , when analyzed as a percentage of gross domestic product. The shift reflects a strong economy, with higher incomes and corporate profits generating a bigger flow of tax revenue. In turn, the Treasury's progress could help the economy by buoying investor confidence in the nation's fiscal position. Some experts say the budget could achieve balance in the short run of the ne...

Eat your heart out Leni Riefenstahl . This film has it all. The grand chorus, the sweeping epic shots, the shots mounted on the armored vehicles to show the adoring crowd. Really, they ought to give her estate some royalties. For a glimpse into modern day Orwellian 1984 type dynastic communist kingdom watch it.

Whispers in the Loggia talks about The (Ash) Capital of the World . Truly, if you've not seen this phenomenon it can be striking. I used to work two stops from St. Pats and it was the natural choice for ashes as they are a well oiled machine. They have multiple concurrent streams of clergy administering ashes. The tone of the line was always interesting. The further to the end of the line you were, the more jovial and relaxed things were. The closer to the front you were, the more somber and reverent. I worked in Gotham for a few years and it was very common to have an office full of people wearing ashes. Then I moved to Charlotte. There was a tiny chapel in the center of the city call it the Trinity Church of Charlotte. (Couldn't remember the name but after Googling, it's St. Peter's !) I went to get ashes at lunchtime. It was a quick affair as I went late (for lunch). I got back to my office and the woman I worked with is looking at my head like she wants...

Iraqi Insurgents Use 2nd 'Dirty' Bomb . This one really grabbed my eye. Not just one but two dirty bombs in Iraq? Really!? Well, no. They mean dirty as in underhanded tactic not dirty as in nuclear fissile material. I have no doubt they used the word dirty in the headline as in intentionally misleading way. Quotes or no quotes, they knew the readers would be alarmed and click through to the story. I declare shenanigans.

Al Gore, Global warming hypocrite. I don't like Hannity, but he has Gore dead to rights on this one. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. And that is the sound of Edwards campaign crashing on the rocks. What would the world be without America? Mr. Sulu pwn's Hardaway

De la Where has a rant about wealthy and class envy. As usual, he's oversimplifying things to the point of straw man. So in essence you are saying that I should get over my envy and become that which I despise? That's a clear indication that you despise rich people. Liberals are supposed to be all about nuance but you paint rich people with the broadest brush possible. Are there no rich people who are not worthy of spite? If not, why not? Is there something intrinsically wrong with being rich? That I should reward my self with enormous sums of money and force my employees to be squeezed financially more and more for my own gain? No, there are plenty of rich people who own companies that don't do that. SAS Institute is a prime example. Isn’t that called exploitation? Perhaps that is what angers us, not class envy. Exploitation implies force. Employees are not forced to work in any job or for any employer. Next up is a laundry list of perfidity: I should aspire to ge...

I'm a Sirius subscriber and have been for over a year now. I could never go back to terrestrial radio. On the rare occasions when I don't have my Sirius with me, I have to listen to a CD or nothing. The constant interruptions by commercials, limited choices and heavy rotation are too much to bear. There's been a lot of back an forth about which service is better and whether the merger is good or bad. Since I have DirecTV at home, I also have XM so I have been able to compare the two. Sirius has much much better sound quality. XM stretches their bandwidth so tight the music is tinny and hollow. Sirius is much richer. When I pulled out my S50 for some relatives over Christmas, they all remarked that the sound was excellent. Content is really the big difference here. Clearly the music channels will be consolidated. There's no need for two of the same channels with slightly different programming modulation. The talk channels and sports programming will be the bi...

Father killed family for being too western "Riaz, who had spent the evening drinking, set himself on fire and died two days later." Because, you know, drinking is not haraam or anything. Seems to me the only problem here is that he got things out of order. If he had gone first everyone would be better off.

a beating this bad since Ortiz v. Shamrock . Not for the squeamish or feint of heart.

The ancient girl with the golden eye

I never go to the movies. I'm too time poor and frankly they're way too expensive considering the tripe they offer. This film however, might be the one that gets me moving. If it's anything like the trailer I'm certain to love it. Here's hoping.

GOP donor hit with terror charges . I have a hard time reconciling this one. Why would he simultaneously aid both sides of the conflict? Why give cash to the party that is prosecuting the war against the people he's giving money to in Afghanistan? The GOP said they haven't decided what they're going to do with his donation. I'm no political strategery guy but I can think of two things: 1. Give it back 2. Donate it to soldiers who have been killed or wounded. Morons.

with hammer and tongs . Far from being over, this debate seems to be heating up (if you'll pardon the pun).

are right twice a day.

I'm frequently lukewarm on Hot Air. Some of the stuff is solid but frequently falls flat for some reason. This one, however, is a home run. Better than almost anything the GOP put forward in the last election cycle.

Signs of the coming hedge-fund apocalypse. . So says Daniel Gross. Excerpt: Those same signs suggest that our next bubble is already here, and it's … hedge funds. Let's review the classic warning signs: 1) Public investors are getting really excited when insiders sell, believing they're being cut in on a great deal. 2) Everybody and their mother is getting into the business. 3) As the naive newbies are plunging in, the successful early adapters move on to the next big thing. 4) In the late stages, the investment craze crosses over into the broader consumer culture. 5) My portfolio is in turnaround. #5 notwithstanding, these would ordinarily be very good warning signs. However, he's missing the elephant in the room. Derivatives. The rise of derivatives which was once the subject of a fear mongering report on 60 Minutes is now largely responsible for the mass stability seen in global markets. This IMF report spells out how that works. Essentially, the rise of credi...