Don't mess with -- or miss -- "CATS"

CATS
Now Playing at the Palace Theater


The legendary "CATS" has opened at the Palace, and it should not be missed. This most successful of all stage musicals has been very nicely brought to Columbus, and if the range of ages among the audience at opening night is any indication, the success should continue here.

The levels of genius in this show are many. The concept of doing an entire musical based on the thin reed of the personalities of a few eccentric cats (aren't they all?) would make a great pitch parody for "The Producers." Add the chutzpah of cobbling together poetry from a long-dead English poet (albeit a Nobel Prize winner), dressing up the cast in feline finery and hanging the story line on a single cat's desire to be reborn, and you've got a formula that should never work.

But there is true magic here, first and foremost that of Andrew Lloyd Weber. The score for this show is magnificent. It's topped off, of course, by the standard "Memories," the classic lament of a creaky, crotchety elder headed to the graveyard, hoping to become somehow young again.

New nukes in Idaho = more cancer

The Idaho Power Company recently submitted a plan to state utility commissioners, a proposed blueprint for how energy would be generated for the state’s growing population. Over the next 20 years, new energy sources would be created – including a new nuclear power plant. This would be the first such plant in Idaho – but not the state’s first encounter with nuclear power.

- The Idaho National Laboratory just west of Idaho Falls, ran for over four decades. A large amount of highly radioactive waste exists at the site, and cleanup by the U.S. Energy Department is underway.

- The Hanford site in southeastern Washington is just over 100 miles west (upwind) of northern Idaho. Hanford released enormous amounts of radioactivity into the air, especially in the early years of the Cold War.

- Fallout from Nevada atomic bomb tests drifted over the nation, and precipitation brought it into the food chain. The National Cancer Institute found that of the five U.S. counties with the highest exposures, four were in Idaho (Blaine, Custer, Gem, Lemhi).

Renowned computer security expert agrees to meet California county supervisor's '1000 to 1' challenge to 'manipulate' Sequoia voting machine!

An expert computer security programmer who successfully manipulated the results of a mock election held on a Diebold optical-scan voting machine in Florida, as well as finding major security vulnerabilities on a Diebold touch-screen system in Utah, has agreed to meet a public challenge to "manipulate" a Sequoia voting system in Riverside County, California.

Read more at BradBlog.

Tinker Bell, Pinochet and the fairy tale miracle of Chile

Chile’s former military dictator General Augusto Pinochet died today at the age of 91.

Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Tinker Bell and General Augusto Pinochet had much in common.

All three performed magical good deeds. In the case of Pinochet, he was universally credited with the Miracle of Chile, the wildly successful experiment in free markets, privatization, de-regulation and union-free economic expansion whose laissez-faire seeds spread from Valparaiso to Virginia.

But Cinderella’s pumpkin did not really turn into a coach. The Miracle of Chile, too, was just another fairy tale. The claim that General Pinochet begat an economic powerhouse was one of those utterances whose truth rested entirely on its repetition.

Chile could boast some economic success. But that was the work of Salvador Allende - who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death.

In 1973, the year General Pinochet brutally seized the government, Chile’s unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernization, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule.

100 phantom votes found in one precinct; DelCo board of elections hinders investigation

Media, Pennsylvania, Dec 11, 2006. Something was rotten in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, on Election Day, November 7, 2006. According to the Numbered List of Voters in the precinct known as "Newtown 1" in the Philadelphia suburbs, 984 citizens arrived at the precinct to cast their votes. But the voting machines tallied 1089 ballots -- an overvote of 10%.

We don't know exactly what happened. It's clear that the next thing to check is the pollbook -- but the Delaware County Board of Elections has not responded to Election Integrity's week-old request to see the pollbook. And whatever the pollbook says, it won't explain how the Delaware County Board of Elections missed such a whopping discrepancy in their certification process.

We also don't know how many other precincts in Delaware County have similar problems. We found this discrepancy while examining a mere 10 precincts (out of hundreds), in a routine check on Election Integrity's Election Verification Exit Poll. A request to see materials from other precincts has been referred to the County's Right to Know officer, who has stated that Right to Know office requires 30 calendar days to respond.

Hillary Clinton and my Visa bill

I just got my Visa bill for my final election donations-all those click-and-donate appeals in my email box and on the Web. I gave more than I thought I had, more than I'd intended to spend, and more than I'd ever given before. You make enough $25 to $50 contributions, and soon you're talking real money, a tenth of my annual income.

But I feel just fine about my giving. I'm proud to have helped support Dean's 50-state strategy by donating to the Democratic National Committee early enough to help build key infrastructure, and then again and again as new opportunities emerged. I felt great about giving to Jon Tester six times, including for his final election week push. Between my donations and my volunteering with MoveOn's CallforChange program, I felt like I'd personally helped elect Tester, Jim Webb, Claire McCaskill, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse, and half the Congressional candidates from the NetRoots Act Blue page. I'd have felt proud to do my part even if the close races had gone the other way.

What doesn't please me, in fact disturbs me immensely, is discovering that

Dear Mr. O’Reilly, THIS is culture: the search for the heart of New Orleans, part III

It was early evening when my assistant, Little Red, and I disembarked. Coming into New Orleans I felt like a lost character from the set of the Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson film romp motorcycle classic “Easy Rider”. The vibe was light despite the abrupt fatal ending of the sixties epic. But these thoughts quickly slipped into the ether as we picked up our luggage and caught a cab to our hotel, The Royal Sonesta, which is located right on Bourbon Street. I was still feeling the ill effects of head congestion which was compounded with wicked cabin pressure and left me hard of hearing. The poor cab driver attempted to have a conversation with me, but I simply didn’t hear most of what was said. Little Red jumped in and tried to discreetly tell me what he was saying so I could respond, but my responses came out in whispers that the driver in turn could not hear. Unfortunately, I believe the man was left with a bad impression, but I tipped him a Jackson so that should assuage any and all slight my unfortunate condition might have caused.

Intolerable questions: the search for the heart of New Orleans, part II

Over a year after hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans and the Golf Coast region at large, a multitude of problems still exist. Some of the troubles currently facing the Crescent City include high rent, FEMA/insurance companies being slow to pay, contractor scam artists, squabbles over land rights, the West Nile Virus, citizens not returning from their “surrogate” cities, lack of employment opportunities, and the oh-so-popular and pervasive government inaction. While brilliant political pundits will debate the veracity and severity of the multitude of problems, I really have no desire to throw my hat into that ring. Instead, my dispatch from the former flooded plane of the Mississippi delta attempts to get to the bare, naked truth of the matter. At the heart of this story are the human hearts of the people and the very soul of the New Orleans area.

Bread, bread, everywhere, yet not a morsel to eat

Pelted by a perpetual hail of electrons fired through a cathode ray tube, the pixels on my PC monitor feed me a generous intellectual bounty of words and images emanating from virtually infinite points dotting the globe. Enabling me to interface with the Internet at will, my computer serves as my window to the world and as a portal through which I can unleash my writings upon the unsuspecting.

Earlier this week as I peered into cyberspace through my ostensibly one-way aperture, I happened upon a picture that my imperialist indoctrination had conditioned me to reflexively dismiss or ignore. However, I’ve grown increasingly resistant to the “charms” of the pathological delusions of American superiority, invulnerability, impunity, and entitlement to decadence. Something about this particular assemblage of glowing pixels left me flailing in a raging river of emotion. As I negotiated the tempestuous feelings surging within me, I made the conscious decision to forgo the American Way of dismissal and distraction. Instead, I connected and contemplated.

The Tin Man Challenge: Overcoming technology without Heart

In the Wizard of Oz tale, the Tin Man is in search of a heart to make himself more human. Our technology faces a similar challenge.

Not only has our intellectual capacity for invention shot way ahead of our physical and psychic need for the latest and greatest gadgetry, but most current technological advancement has little to do with what we care about most: connecting with ourselves and others in a meaningful, heart-felt way. It''s not just that we still can''t figure out how to program the VCR (now DVR), but you can''t get a hi-5 or a hug from one even when you have figured it out.

Our tech wizardry can help us see or talk to another person across the globe in real time, or shoot us into outer space, but does little to help us relate better to our loved ones. Nor does it console us in times of suffering, and offers us no great solutions to ending war after millennia of repeating our brutal mistakes.

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