Marion — I wish I lived closer, you have such a gracious way of making your breakfasts and even the day’s news sound so appealing.

Another great roundup — thank you!

RIP Aaron Swartz. I didn’t know of him until reading about his death, which I reacted to with a profound sense of loss. It’s so sad that artistic and creative people are not valued in our society unless their creativity goes toward making money for the corporate world. In this young man’s life, he was punished for his efforts toward making information freely available to anyone in the world. As Glenn Greewald writes in his tribute: “Whatever else is true, Swartz was destroyed by a “justice” system that fully protects the most egregious criminals as long as they are members of or useful to the nation’s most powerful factions, but punishes with incomparable mercilessness and harshness those who lack power and, most of all, those who challenge power.”

So…we develop all these fancy weapons to make war on other people in other countries, and now we’re surprised that they’ve made their way to our streets? Must be the weapon manufacturers don’t make enough money on the wars. And, we don’t seem capable of calling these kids and crazies “terrorists” unless they have an arabic sounding name or brown skin.

Merry Christmas to all of you. TBogg is my favorite blog on the internet — and Thursday Night Basset blogging is the VERY best!! Have a wonderful holiday!

Bleach has always worked for me. We had black mold behind wallpaper in a cottage and the bleach completely removed it.

What a relief that you’re staying on — we need humor to get through the days and nights! Thank you for spotlighting the absurdities.

Nice addition to your “family” !!! Thanks!

And then there’s the war profiteers — I forgot to include that and it’s huge.

We went from pensions to 401Ks – that didn’t work out so well. We’ve gone heavily into privatizing prisons – in other words crime pays – for the prisons. Health insurance – private. Every year or so there’s an attempt to privatize social security. And this time around, privatizing schools seems to be the goal. I don’t know if any of this greed-focused mess can be corrected in my lifetime. Meanwhile, it’s awful to watch and experience.

I look forward to your “roundups” — thanks!

Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary to my favorite blogger. I love the dogs and I love your humor. It’s a happy respite from the usual bad and almost always humorless news of the day.

Regarding July birthdays, my sister became a grandmother yesterday (Friday). Her son and daughter-in-law are living in San Diego (I think that’s where you are). Anyhow…new life. A girl. Juliana. We’re celebrating!

Have a great year!

I’m a lurker. For many years. Since the Libby trial. I learn so much here, but I don’t feel like I have anything important to add. So I mostly listen. I really appreciate this site, the writers, and the commentors. It’s the first place I land each morning. I love the book salons. And the sticky buns in the morning. Thank you all for what you do.

I worked for Herman Miller (Herman Miller Research) in the 70s. Actually Herman Miller was VERY supportive of its designers and if they did market research (I don’t know if they did then) if there had been a conflict, they would have gone with their designers before any market research recommendations. It was a wonderful company to work for.

My dad was a “general practitioner” (family practice) in a small town which he started after he came home from WWII. He had a small office, made house calls, delivered babies, set broken bones, etc. He retired before he should have but mostly because his malpractice insurance was too high (even tho he had never been sued). I talked to a resident at the VA about ten years ago who wanted to set up her own practice in an area where there weren’t physicians but she was already in debt for $100,000 in student loans so her only option was to join a corporate group of physicians. It’s too costly to go to school, and the insurance industry has helped this along. Very sad.

I was looking for hotel information for an upcoming trip and I noticed soon after that on pages that I visit, they started being populated with hotel ads. So I think it more has to do with what we (the visitor) have been looking at rather than what FDL is targeting.