Video: A gazillion Simpsons episodes at once

This video is oddly mesmerizing. Perhaps it's the day I've had. It started with Sasha waking me up after 7 hours of sleep - not a good thing any day, but worse on a Saturday. Then the neighbors texted, their sink was clogged and they needed to wash the baby's bottles, so I said, sure come on over. It's always nice hanging out with the neighbors. Unless of course your front door bolt gets stuck and then you get to really hang out with the neighbors. Well, neighbor singular. Her hubby was stuck 3 doors down with the baby and the dog, waiting for the plumber to show up, while we waiting for the emergency locksmith to show up. The locksmith was great, Pop-a-Lock here in the DC area. Great guy, Paul, and didn't charge me a lot. So after a few hours, neighbor and I were freed, just as their kitchen drain was freeing up as well.

Then the smoke detector battery alarm went off, and we have 12 foot ceilings in this building... Doh!

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83% odds for Greece to leave euro by 2015

Everyone wishes there was another option, but the best of the options always keeps coming back to leaving. It's possible to keep kicking the can down the road and having more emergency re-financing sessions but eventually everyone is going to get tired of it since there's little, if any, progress to be shown. The only delay now is figuring out how and when.

Who wants all pain and no gain?

There has been mounting speculation that Greece's economic woes will cause a breakup in the eurozone, the group of countries that share the euro as their currency. Like elections and sporting events, the online markets allow people to place bets on the likelihood that this will happen, giving us a means of predicting the odds.

Presently, the markets place an 83 percent likelihood on the odds that a country leaves the eurozone by 2015, adopting its own currency instead. Greece is the most likely country to cause this breakup, with Italy ranking a distant second.

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Bring your dog to work - it's good for your health

Who doesn't like a furry friend hanging around? LA Times:

The VCU researchers divided 76 employees into three groups: those who brought their dogs to work, those who owned dogs but left them home and those who didn't have pets. For one week, the scientists measured levels of the stress hormone cortisol in samples of the workers' saliva and used surveys to gauge their stress levels four times during a workday.

There was no significant difference in cortisol levels among the study participants. But by the end of the day, the average stress level scores fell about 11% among people who had brought their dogs to work, while they rose as much as 70% for members of the other groups.

The researchers also observed "unique dog-related communication" in the workplace, Barker said. During the day, people who hadn't brought pets walked over to colleagues who had and asked whether they could take the four-legged visitors for walks.

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Please help us elect Trevor Thomas to the US Congress

Bumped.

Today is the deadline for first quarter contributions for federal candidates. Anyone who has given politically is getting deluged with requests for contributions. Here's one more, for our friend Trevor Thomas. Our AMERICAblog ActBlue page for Trev is here.

And, there's more info. below in our original post, but here's an excerpt from an article about Trevor's kick-off, earlier this month. He's running "the campaign for all of us," because he's one of us (and he's up against two self-funding millionaires):

Standing before a crowd of supporters Saturday night, Democrat Trevor Thomas formally declared his campaign for the 3rd District Congressional seat, sharing a promise he would stand strong for woman’s rights, veterans and working-class families.

“So many people have asked me, ‘Trevor, why are you running?’ and I say, ‘I never forgot where I came from,’” said Thomas, sharing the story of his parents, who both worked on the factory line at a General Motors diesel plant for several decades.

Thomas said he understands the struggles of everyday families and plans to run a grass-roots campaign that focuses on the same values Gerald Ford had when he once moved from Grand Rapids to Washington, D.C.

Anyone who knows Trevor -- John and I know him well -- know that he absolutely means what he says. So, if you can, please donate. Thanks.
_________________________

We've written several posts about our good friend, Trevor Thomas, who is running for Congress in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Today we are joining with other LGBT and progressive bloggers to ask you to donate to Trevor's campaign via this link or the box below. We posted this at AMERICAblog Gay earlier today, too.

Trevor needs our help to make this happen. The first campaign filing deadline is Saturday, March 31. There will be a lot of attention paid to this first report. Big decisions are made about a candidate's so-called "viability." Let's make sure Trevor is viable financially. Suffice it say, Trevor conducted a poll before he got into the race that shows a path to victory. But, money matters -- too much -- but it matters.

Today, along with a large group of progressive and LGBT bloggers, we're raising funds for Trevor's campaign before the March 31 deadline.  Trevor is the real deal.  Please give whatever you can.

Also helping Trevor today are:

- Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel
- Chris Savage at EclectaBlog and Blogging for Michigan
- Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend
- Bil Browning at Bilerico Project
- Joe Jervis at Joe.My.God
- Jeremy Hooper at Good As You
- Andy Towle, Towleroad
- Karen Ocamb at LGBT POV
- Howie Klein, DownWithTyranny.com
- Scott Wooledge, Daily Kos
- David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

That's quite an impressive line-up. Not sure there are many other first-time primary candidates who could pull that off.

And, Trevor really needs the help. See, he's running against a rich self-funding, conservative Democrat, Steve Pestka in the August 8th Democratic primary. Then, he'll face the incumbent, Justin Amash, a self-funding Tea-Party GOPer in the fall. Just what Congress needs, more anti-choice millionaires, right?

Unlike Pestka and Amash, Trevor isn't a millionaire. He comes from a working class family -- his mom and dad met on the factory lines of General Motors where they worked together for more than 30 years. And, if you have ever worked with Trevor, as John and I have, you know that he's one of the smartest, earnest and most committed people you'll ever meet.

Marcy Wheeler lives in Trevor's district. She's learned first hand that the institutional Democrats don't like people talking about Pestka's anti-choice record. And, I find it very disturbing that any Democrats would describe Trevor's work on behalf of LGBT issues, which includeds the repeal of DADT, "extreme." We're going to watch this race closely to make sure there isn't anti-gay code talk coming from the other campaign. Needless to say, that would be a very, very, very bad strategy to pursue.

As Trev often points out, the seat for which he is running was once held by President Jerry Ford, who believed in clean water, the Civil Rights Act, LGBT equality, and a woman's right to make her own personal health care decisions. And, while the District leans red, Trevor is going to hold true to his solidly progressive stances, which, of course, are the same views held by Gerald Ford.

Today, I got another email from the DCCC about the GOP's war on women. This time it was from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

Since the year began, Republicans have waged some of the most extreme attacks against women’s health care I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Given the emphasis on women's health, you'd like to think that the DCCC is jumping on board with Trevor's campaign. His Democratic primary opponent, Steve Pestka, is anti-choice. But, the DCCC likes self-funders. The problem with conservative self-funders is that they don't generate enthusiasm among the base. The institutional Democrats look at candidates through a financial lens only. And, money matters, but it doesn't translate to excitement and enthusiasm.

So do what you can to help Trevor, please. I know there are a lot of requests for fundraising going on, but this is a chance to get a solid progressive into Congress. And, it's one of the only primary races, maybe the only one, that pits a pro-choice Democrat against an anti-choice Democrat.  Please give whatever you can -- even twenty-five dollars would be great.  Thanks so much. Read the rest of this post...

Spain announces harsh austerity plan

To some degree there's no choice but to make cuts, but at the same time, such harsh conditions will only drag this out longer and make it far more painful. The tough times in Spain are about to get a lot tougher. The economic problems in Greece are minuscule compared to the potential size of the problem in Spain. The Guardian:

"We are taking extraordinary measures because the situation is extraordinary," the budget minister, Cristóbal Montoro, said before announcing €27bn (£22.5bn) in spending cuts and tax rises.

Markets and fellow eurozone members increasingly fear that Spain – whose economy is twice the size of that of Greece, Ireland and Portugal put together – could be the biggest threat to their future.

"Spain is going to stop being a problem, especially for the Spanish people, but also for the European Union," finance minister Luis de Guindos said as he prepared to explain the austerity measures to concerned eurozone ministers who were meeting in Copenhagen.

This is wishful thinking, at best. The unemployment numbers in Spain are horrendous, the banks are wobbling and the real estate market is not unlike the worst markets in the US. Wishing away a problem and cutting everything is not going to fix it. Read the rest of this post...

In praise of Adrienne Rich, 1929–2012

We lost a couple more just recently, Earl Scruggs and the poet Adrienne Rich. Here's a taste of Rich, one of the finest of the moderns:

Translations
December 25, 1972

You show me the poems of some woman
my age, or younger
translated from your language

Certain words occur: enemy, oven, sorrow
enough to let me know
she's a woman of my time

obsessed

with Love, our subject:
we've trained it like ivy to our walls
baked it like bread in our ovens
worn it like lead on our ankles
watched it through binoculars as if
it were a helicopter
bringing food to our famine
or the satellite
of a hostile power

I begin to see that woman
doing things: stirring rice
ironing a skirt
typing a manuscript till dawn

trying to make a call
from a phone booth

The phone rings endlessly
in a man's bedroom
she hears him telling someone else
Never mind. She'll get tired.
hears him telling her story to her sister

who becomes her enemy
and will in her own way
light her own way to sorrow

ignorant of the fact this way of grief
is shared, unnecessary
and political
 

From The Nation: Five Poems by Adrienne Rich; h/t Welcome to Pottersville 2.

I wanted to tag this Music, but I didn't.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Jane's Addiction - Jane Says

My first week back home has been about as good as it gets for Paris weather. Sunshine and warm, but not hot. If only it could stick around longer. After a review of my garden, I now see that a painfully high number of plants were wiped out during the three weeks of cold in February. Plants that usually make it through the winter (camellia and jasmine) are done. If I'm lucky, I might be able to salvage one of my four camellia plants.

The cats have finished with snubbing me and we're now back to our normal relationship. They're both used to me being around all day so they weren't happy to be on their own until late evening (when Joelle gets home) while I was away. Sushi's medication for his hyperthyroidism problem isn't working so we're now scheduling a vet hospital visit for radioiodine treatment. The poor little guy keeps dropping weight so we hope that this works. Read the rest of this post...