MyNC.com:

A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges for threatening employees of two civil rights organizations because of their race and national origin.

The Department of Justice said Wednesday that Christopher Szaz of Raleigh sent threatening e-mails to employees at the National Council of La Raza and the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington.

According to court documents, Szaz sent two e-mail messages in June 2007 threatening to bomb CAIR's office. Szaz also sent an e-mail the next month stating he would kill employees at the La Raza office.

Prosecutors said Szaz admitted his actions were motivated by racial and ethnic bias. He was sentenced to 45 days in prison.

And yet Kathleen Parker is surprised ?

Check out this great essay from Suzanne Vega about the long and exciting life of her song, "Tom's Diner" - its creation, DNA's remix, its role in the creation of the MP3, and more.

Five-Card Nancy

Domestic Terrorism

"Puzzlewit!" "Honeyfugler!"

In a story I couldn't be less interested in, I nonetheless found something interesting:

AP: Tom Dimmock can't afford to be that leisurely. After more than a week trapped on the Illinois River, the 59-year-old retired lawyer from Raleigh, N.C., and his wife have a flight to catch Tuesday out of St. Louis. The couple will leave their 46-foot powerboat docked in Missouri for the next couple of weeks, then eventually fly back to resume their adventure.

By Monday afternoon, the battery on Dimmock's cell phone had just about shot craps. But he had enough time through the crackling reception to tell a reporter what he thought about getting the green light to shove off.

"shot craps" ? I've never heard that phrase used as a way to say "died" or "kicked the bucket" or "bit the dust", etc.. Is it a regional thing ?

This just in:

Following the problems in the sub-prime lending market in America and the run on Northern Rock in the UK, uncertainty has now hit Japan.

In the last 7 days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches.

Yesterday, it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song, while today shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived.

While Samurai Bank is soldiering on following sharp cutbacks, Ninja Bank is reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black.

Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.

Also, Fugu Bank has blown up, and investigators have determined that Geisha Bank was faking it all along. When Kimono Bank opened on Tuesday, the authorities were disgusted by what they saw and ordered the bank closed again. And finally, the troubles at Bukkake Bank have reportedly left the President with a bad taste in his mouth.

Tough times.

There are a lot of "what happened to the economy" articles out there right now. But this is the first one I've seen that ties the situation back to Bush's tax cuts; Douglas Rushkoff take it away:

Bush’s tax cuts and other measures favoring the rich led to the biggest redistribution of wealth from poor to rich in American history. The result was that the wealthy—the investment class—had more money to invest, or lend, than there were people and businesses looking to borrow.

The easiest way to bring more borrowers into the system—and to create more of a market for money—was to promote homeownership in America. This is precisely what the Bush administration did, touting home ownership as an American right. Of course, they weren’t talking about home ownership at all, but rather pushing people to borrow money tied to the value of a house. If people could be persuaded to take mortgages on homes, real estate values would go up for those already invested (like land trusts and real estate funds) and banks would have a market for the excess money they had accumulated.

In short, there was a surplus of credit in the system. Americans were encouraged to borrow in the form of mortgages, which created demand for the credit banks wanted to sell. In many cases the credit itself wasn’t even real, but leveraged off some other inflated commodity that the bank or investor may have owned.

Read the rest.

Martian Clouds

We were up in Cleveland a couple of weeks ago, for a funeral. I took this picture out the hotel window.

That's the roof of the front entrance of the hotel. Dig the crazy puddle.

A few days after I took that, on the way back to NC, we stopped at the small town of Point Pleasant, WV, which was the site of the events that the book and movie The Mothman Prophecies was based on. Back in '65, people started seeing UFOs. and a giant winged man, they started having crazy dreams about Christmas presents floating down the Ohio river, etc.. And then it all ended with a spectacular bridge collapse in mid-December '66: dozens of people were killed when their cars fell into the icy Ohio river. All of this - the UFOs, the dreams, the winged man, and the bridge collapse - has been lumped together in the "Mothman" legend. So, the town of Point Pleasant has a Mothman museum (a storefront, formerly a record store), a couple of gift shops, and an annual Mothman Festival. It's all a bit tacky, but fun.

Here he is:

Hmmm. He looks a lot like that puddle, doesn't he? Think it was a prophecy?