Our visit to the People’s Daily commences with this blast from the past: a ceremony in Beijing to honor 3,000 or so “model workers” of the People’s Republic. Among the “workers” is Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets, and 800 government functionaries, along with over 1,000 industrial workers and several hundred agricultural wrokers. Capitalism with Chinese characteristics indeed. Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chain store contracts. And (I guess) in honor of May Day, we get a most unusual visit: the Taiwanese opposition party Kuo Min-Tang (“KMT”) leader Lien Chan meets with CPC...

Our visit to Pravda gives us this explanation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision not to sell Syria a class of Russian made missiles (during a visit to Israel), though Russia is planning on selling a shorter range, fixed air defense system to Syria (though the Russians have evidently fully disclosed the specifications to Israel, including noting that the system proposed cannot be used as shoulder fired missiles). Although I understand this is the first visit by a Russian leader to Israel, Russia’s relations with Israel (when compared, say, to the Soviet era) are “pretty good”. For one, Israel has...

The Florida Supreme Court (by a 4-3 vote) decided to uphold the right of prosecutors to seek Rush Limbaugh’s medical records to determine (presumably determine) if Rush committed a felony by “doctor shopping” in order to gain vast amounts of prescription drugs, in violation of Florida law (going from doctor to doctor with his medical complaints, obviously not telling each doctor about other doctors he saw). While I love sport as much as the next guy, and would love to see Rush behind bars, where he can see how many fans he has inside, this certainly smacks of “Big Brother”....

The President has threatened a veto of a very popular highway rehabilitation bill if its cost exceeds a certain magic number ($282 billion over six years, or something). While its nice to see anything at all resembling fiscal restraint on the part of the Bush Administration, for the umpteenth time, it is necessary to revisit our little nursery school exercise on the federal budget. Picture the federal budget as a large pie, representing around $2.5 trillion out of our $11 trillion or so GDP. That $2.5 trillion works out very nicely into five more or less even parts of $500...

With numbers like these as shown in this WaPo poll (2/3 opposing senate fillibuster changes, a healthy majority of people oppose the social security changes, and the presidential job approval rating is, overall, under 50%) one wonders why the nation keeps electing Republicans to strong majorities to both Houses of Congress and the White House if this is how the nation feels about that party’s governance. Oh wait. One thing to note is that on national security and terrorism, the polls still show that the President has well over 50% approval, which he will doubtless continue to have until such...

The Chinese Commerce Minister, according to this piece representing our visit to Beijing’s People’s Daily, warns that, though currently strong, Chinese-Japanese economic relations may eventually suffer as a result of lukewarm (or worse) political relations. The Japanese seem hell-bent on denying their own role in World War II era atrocities, particularly things like the Rape of Nanking and the forced enslavement, rape and murder of thousands of women in China and environs. Japanese have issued new school textbooks that amount to a whitewash of WWII atrocities and Japan’s premier frequently visits the Yasukuni Shrine that, frankly, honors war criminals. If...

For those wondering, your talking dog’s additional postings have been somewhat hampered by some physical problems (yes, Mr. Marathon Man) which landed him in an emergency room Friday afternoon, with a probable muscle spasm which at least felt all too close to a heart attack, and of course, with various machinations associated with Mrs. TD and I hosting the family Passover Seder. For those wondering, the “citizen journalist” thing is not a one-off. Stay tuned. And now, a day late and a ruble short, we give you this round-up of goodies from our comrades at Pravda, a source not afraid...

You get a damned bad day to post your damned rare-for-us-sparsely-read-blogs interview with “unlawful combatant” and dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla’s attorney, Donna Newman.

Your talking dog made the most of it, engaging in his preferred sport, that which suits his patient (read “stubborn”) character and personality, but alas, not his body-type, which is forever insisting on weighing at least 15 or 20 pounds above what those awful charts insist he should weigh… A spate of unseasonably warm weather coinciding with scheduled marathon runs entered its third straight, with an unseasonably high in the mid 70’s at the ninth running of the New Jersey Marathon down the shore (pronounced shawww), the 8th such “26” for me. Hence, a delightful and breezy first half led...

We’ll start our slightly overdue visit to Pravda (belayed by exigeses on the Communist Manifesto no less!) with this Steve Darnell piece sure to re-open wounds associated with the Schiavo case. And then we get the yan to Mr. Darnell’s yin in the form of David Hoffman’s unbelievably ambitious essay “I am a loser”, which I insist that you read now… here– click on this. Read it. All I can say is, I hear you, Brother David. I hear you. Check out this story on Kyrgystan— not on the political upheaval there, but on a literal landslide which may cause...