A dearth of acorns

Once again I'm indebted to John Aravosis at AMERICAblog for bringing this to everybody's attention. It's very, very disturbing:

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."

The article is from the Washington Post and it's right here.

Just watch it. Please.

President-elect Obama, are you listening? Please be listening.

Friday cat blogging!

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Black Friday

Oh this is just sickening:

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

The unidentified victim was rushed to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m., police said.

It certainly points up the value of movements like Buy Nothing Day.

UPDATE: Here's a comment about the same event that I found on Dependable Renegade:

All else aside, the behavior of the shoppers is directly connected to a situation Walmart carefully engineered, with limited supplies and time constraints connected to some very significant special discounts. They create an atmosphere of severe competition between their customers, a disproportionate number of whom are likely to behave poorly under such conditions -- then they act surprised the doorbuster busts doors and flattens temps.

I hope some crackerjack lawyer gets hold of the point and runs with it.

Family values

Oh my. I just had to nick this from John Aravosis over at AMERICAblog:

Obama's example could have society-altering effects, especially in the African American community. By his example, he telegraphs the following messages: Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.

Conservatives insist, correctly, that culture matters. Many liberals think so, too, by the way. Why, some liberals even stay married their entire lives to the same person and raise children to do the same.

You want Ward Cleaver? Meet Barack Obama. Michelle is June Cleaver with a law degree. Family values don't get more traditional than those of the Obamas, who ooze marital bliss and whose adorable daughters make feminist cynics want to bake cookies and learn to smock.

Though we may perish of boredom, the Obamas may do more to elevate the American family than all the pro-marriage initiatives conceived by those who claim to speak for the deity.

It was actually written by conservative Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post.

The food banks need our help

Please, please, please give to your local food bank. Here's what's happening:

Long lines, empty shelves and Thanksgiving chickens are just a few symptoms of the economic downturn's effect on food banks and community pantries across the country.

People are turning to charitable organizations for their Thanksgiving meal this year in record numbers, while donations have dropped significantly and funding has been slashed.

Here in Tulsa I donate at Akin's - a health food store. For every dollar donated, the food bank can make approximately $9.00 worth of food available to needy families. Do find a place in your community where it's easy to donate.

Playing for Change: Stand By Me

Don't stop this too soon; it just keeps getting better!

Description: The Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it travelled the globe.

Here's the transcript of a Bill Moyers segment on the "Playing for Change" project.

GOP operative now has regrets

Well, regret is pretty cheap at this point, pal. Didn't you know at the time that what you were doing was wrong?

As a self-admitted hit man for the GOP, Stone has had a hand in everything from Nixon's dirty tricks to Eliot Spitzer's resignation to spreading discredited rumors of a Michelle Obama “whitey” tape during the 2008 Democratic primaries.
...
The capstone of Stone’s career, at least in terms of results, was the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the 2000 election recount. This was when a Stone-led squad of pro-Bush protestors stormed the Miami-Dade County election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-Governor George W. Bush one step closer to the White House. Though he is quick to rebut GOP operatives who seek to minimize his role in the recount, Stone lately has been having second thoughts about what happened in Florida.

"There have been many times I've regretted it,” Stone told me over pizza at Grand Central Station. “When I look at those double-page New York Times spreads of all the individual pictures of people who have been killed [in Iraq], I got to think, 'Maybe there wouldn't have been a war if I hadn't gone to Miami-Dade. Maybe there hadn't have been, in my view, an unjustified war if Bush hadn't become president.' It's very disturbing to me."

Now here's the most sickening part:

Nor does Stone regret dirty politicking. Stone still offers his services as a no-holds-barred strategist to domestic and foreign politicians alike, and claims his client list is full.

Why can't we make that kind of thing illegal?

You can read the entire article right here.

FYI

Something that concerns me

Frank Ford sent me an article from The Nation by Christopher Hayes that contained the following paragraph:

Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about healthcare. And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left. There's tons of things the left is right about that aren't even close to mainstream (taking a hatchet to the national security state and ending the prison industrial complex to name just two), but hopefully we're moving there.

I just think it's a hoot that Obama's detractors have repeatedly called him a "socialist", that's all.

Well, isn't this a relief?

I found it on Think Progress:

On the Chris Matthews Show today, Matthews argued that one of the major differences between President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama is the fact that Obama is intellectually curious.

Here's the specific posting.

Sunday uplift blogging

In case you missed this on 60 Minutes tonight. Please watch! You won't regret it.


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"Does this get me fired?"