Video: Lion cub practices its roar (more like an adorable squeak at this point)

Sasha was not amused. It's funny, she actually knew that the squeak was from an animal - went nuts running to all the windows barking to defend us.

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Arab League monitors in Syria see 'nothing frightening'

It's nearly time to call it a day with the Arab League experiment in Syria. While the Arab League finds the situation on the ground "reassuring" the Syrians who are being killed by the government have to be wondering what is so reassuring. The tone may change now that Assad has removed most of the tanks but if the Arab League sticks around for a few weeks, chances are good that they will see something less reassuring.

"Some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening," Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, chief of the monitoring contingent, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus. "The situation seemed reassuring so far," he said on Wednesday after his team's foray into the city of one million people, the epicenter of anti-Assad upheaval inspired by the fall of several other Arab autocrats in uprisings this year. "Yesterday was quiet and there were no clashes. We did not see tanks but we did see some armored vehicles. But remember this was only the first day and it will need investigation. We have 20 people who will be there for a long time."

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Obama nominates two new Fed board members

Since the GOP rejected a Nobel economist for not being qualified last year, there has been a lot of debate over who will replace that candidate. With one of Bush's board members finishing early next year, Obama has chosen one economist who supports the Bernanke quantitative easing programs and another who served under Bush Sr. How inspiring. Since the White House is much too afraid to take a stand on actual economic policy, they've been relying on Bernanke to pump money into Wall Street in the belief that the cash will somehow trickle down. It doesn't and it hasn't. The two nominations help maintain the status quo which helps nobody other than Wall Street. Thanks again for nothing.

Jerome Powell, an attorney who was a Treasury undersecretary for former President George H.W. Bush, and Jeremy Stein, a Harvard University economist who has advised the current administration, are Obama’s picks. Pairing candidates who served under both parties may help ease approval by a Senate where the Democrats’ majority narrowed last year, letting Republicans block administration nominees. The Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors has two vacancies. While the term of Elizabeth Duke, an appointee of President George W. Bush, expires Jan. 31, she can continue to serve until a successor is appointed. Referring to the nominees, Obama said today in a statement that “their distinguished backgrounds and experience coupled with their impressive knowledge of economic and monetary policy make them tremendously qualified.”

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Samoa cancels Friday, well at least this once

At least cancel a day that needs canceling, like Tuesday.  Actually, they're moving the international date line east of them, so they'll be on the same schedule as their nearest trading partners.  From CNN, via JoeMyGod:

"In doing business with New Zealand and Australia we're losing out on two working days a week," he was quoted as saying in the English-language Samoa Observer. "While its Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand and when we're at church Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane."

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Is Obama under-estimating the NDAA & PIPA reactions?

There's a little bit of inside-baseball in this post, so forgive me. But I think there's an important and under-appreciated point.

I follow post stats at AMERICAblog pretty closely. Google, which owns Blogger thanks to one of its many buying runs, provides several statistics tables — among them, 10 best posts of the day (the "BOD" list), 10 best posts of the week (BOW list), and 10 best posts of the month (BOM list). What's measured is individual "views" for a given post, the number of people who actually click on a post to read it and its comments.

Normally, a "good" post does well in the BOD list, maybe moves to the BOW list, and fades. The process lasts a few days at most. A "very good" post moves to the BOM list fairly quickly, climbs in number of views, then peaks and disappears as it's replaced in the list. That takes no more than a week.

So that's my measurable — the life-cycle in days of "good" and "very good" posts, and when their peaks appear. Time moves on; interest passes to other newer subjects; the rhythm is almost boring in its predictability.

Now contrast that with this:

■ Our primary PIPA post, from November, is at the top of the BOD list — today. That's a shock; no post that old gets that high on that list. It also re-entered the BOW list last week and hasn't left it.

■ Our primary NDAA post, from mid-December, entered the BOM list almost immediately and has never stopped adding views. The total number of views is staggering. Every day it adds hundreds, as new viewers come to the post. It's on the BOD list today, despite its age, despite the holidays. It should have peaked and faded before Christmas.

■ We have a mortgage fraud post about an anti-bank whistleblower who died without suicide insurance, also from November. That post faded at the right time, but now has new life — it's on both the BOD and BOW lists, today.

I've never seen his behavior before. What does it mean?

1. There's an interest in these subjects (NDAA, PIPA, & mortgage fraud) that's deep and persistent. All of our site's regulars have weighed with their "views" a long time ago. As near as I can tell, the driver to all three posts is Google (search terms: PIPA, NDAA, "whistleblower found dead") as new people search on these subjects. If so, Google is telling us something.

2. Message for the left — If this really is a clue to the mind of left-leaning voters, it would be smart to hit these subjects hard, starting now. There are far more listeners, I suspect, for whom the PIPA, NDAA, and mortgage fraud messages resonate, than anyone appreciates.

I'd suggest taking advantage of this opportunity. If our small indicators are right, the time to plant seeds is now, not months from now. The soil is ready, so to speak. Let's not lose the chance.

3. Note to Obama & his merry band — I would not underestimate the extent to which these issues, especially NDAA, are a bridge too far for your base. It seems you've been playing a game of "how low can we go" — how far can we stoop to the demands of the money-soaked property rights and national security establishments and not lose our dependable triangulated base.

You act like you're bullet-proof, ballot-wise. Team We Dare You To Quit Us has been playing chicken with progressives and assuming victory at every step.

Dear Team: That may not be a safe assumption. There is always a bridge too far. These issues — especially NDAA, with its Indefinite Detention provisions — may be on it. Tread lightly; some things even a Wall Street billion can't buy.

Just my thoughts on a midweek holiday day. For what they're worth.

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PPP: Paul still ahead in Iowa

It's Ron Paul, then Romney. While Gingrich's popularity continues to plummet life a former wife. Read the rest of this post...

Iran threatens to shut off Strait of Hormuz if west imposes sanctions for nuclear program

Good way to get yourself blown up.  I'm just not convinced the world can live with a nuclear Iran.  Israel certainly can't.  And my confidence level is low that Iran wouldn't some day think it wise to proliferate its nukes to other countries, and to other terrorists. It seems as if we're biding our time, hoping to knock off enough of their scientists to postpone their first nuke in the hopes that there's a friendly revolution first. Read the rest of this post...

Women under threat in Middle East

It is easy to forget that many of the freedoms we take for granted were hard won and are easily lost. The Left can be proud of its association internationally with the challenge to gender inequality. For the anti-imperialist Left, however, the willingness of the Right to use gender inequality as a stick with which to beat Muslim groups has caused something of a quandry. Some, but by no means all, have been driven to defend inequality on grounds of culture. That it is happening at all on the Left is to be deprecated. Neither gender is worth less than the other. No-one should be treated less favourably because of their gender. If cultural practices of any age and built on any foundation provide to the contrary then those practices should be challenged.

Two stories in today's Guardian highlight that in times of political strife it is women's rights that seem to be at the front of the queue to be thrown under the bus. In Egypt it seems that female protesters arrested by the Army were subjected to compulsory virginity tests. In Israel, Shimon Peres has spoken out against Haredi men who have been spitting on schoolgirls and calling them "whores" and "Nazis". Read the rest of this post...

The NYT on Romney’s awkwardness

This is hysterical. NYT:

For a candidate who is exceedingly risk-averse, Mr. Romney has developed an unlikely penchant for trying to puzzle out everything from voters’ personal relationships to their ancestral homelands.

“Sisters?” he asked. (Nope, stepmother and stepdaughter.) “Your husband?” he wondered. (No, just a friend from the neighborhood.) “Mother and daughter?” he guessed. (Cousins, actually.)

The results can be awkward. “Daughter?” he asked a woman sitting with a man and two younger girls at the diner in Tilton, N.H., on Friday morning. Her face turned a shade of red. “Wife.”

Oh, Mr. Romney said. “It was a compliment, I guess,” said the woman, Janelle Batchelder, 31. “At the same time, it was possibly an insult.”

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Protesters march in Homs, Syria as Arab League visits

Everyone knows what is happening in Syria, so the Arab League is going to have to assert itself and stand up for the victims of violence in Syria. There's an impressive video of the march that swelled to 70,000 people yesterday in Homs. Al Jazeera:

Activists, meanwhile, reported that about 70,000 protesters have tried to march to the centre of Homs, and that security forces have been firing tear gas in an attempt to break up the protests. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights earlier said a group was gathering in Khalidiyeh, one of the four parts of Homs where there has been heavy bloodshed as armed opposition fight security forces using tanks. Footage posted online also showed big crowds of anti-government protesters in the neighbourhood of Bab Sbaa and a funeral march in Ghouta area. Pro-Assad rallies were also reported in two other neighbourhoods. Witnesses said the army pulled back tanks from Bab Amr, a flashpoint neighbourhood in the city, ahead of the observers' arrival on Tuesday. However, some activists said tanks had just been repositioned in other areas of the city.

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Putin reassigns 'puppet master' to appease protesters

Unfortunately Putin can't be photographed doing something rugged as he did in the past to win over support. That was so yesterday. With the crowds of protesters increasing Putin had little choice but to acknowledge the demands for change. He's going to have to do a lot more than superficial changes if he wants the protests to stop. The Guardian:

The order by president Dmitry Medvedev to make Vladislav Surkov a deputy prime minister in charge of economic modernisation was variously interpreted as a sign that leaders recognise the need for significant reform and as a cosmetic move with little meaning. Allegations of fraud in December's national parliamentary election sparked a wave of protests unprecedented in post-Soviet Russia, including two vast rallies in Moscow that attracted tens of thousands. Putin, who was president in 2000-2008, seeks to return to the Kremlin in elections in March, and the protests have undermined his image as the inevitable winner. Putin and Medvedev have sought to dilute the protests by rolling out a set of proposed political reforms, but have firmly resisted the protest leaders' main demand that the parliament elections be annulled and rerun. Opposition forces also say the proposed reforms are too little and too late.

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