news bits early August 2014

Will there be a new Senator from Kentucky next year? Answering this was the point of the Fancy Farm get together held this weekend. Here is the video where both Alison Grimes and Mitch McConnell gave their prepared remarks at the Graves County, Kentucky Fancy Farm last Saturday. The occasion is the traditional start to the Kentucky political season and this year these two are running for McConnell's Senate seat. Ms Grimes really let incumbent McConnell have it and he, in response, seemed to be running against president Barack Obama. McConnell is the current Senate Minority leader, the head of the Republican party in the US Senate.

Yes, the military assault on Gaza by Israel has overcome the news. Over 1600  Palestinians have been killed in the last thirty days with around sixty Israeli's killed. The protests over the weekends continue. Digby gives a rundown of why the US responses have been all too typical and ineffective, and why many tune out the carnage and loss of life. It is horrible, unconsionable and yet, totally predictable. The Israeli's are defending themselves, the Palestinians are being slaughtered and try to defend themselves with ineffective forces. Many ask why the US seems so unable to influence their favorite ally in the region. They could get the Israeli's attention to threaten to cut off the flow of arms there, but that announcemnet is completely untenable to neocons here at home.

If anybody is curious how the one-percent live, Daniel Schulman, the author of the new book "Sons of Wichita", about the Koch family of Wichita, KS had a teaser up at Vanity Fair last May. In it the lesser known Frederick Koch gives a tour of his six-story Manhattan property that he has filled up like a museum. A longer discussion with the author about the book is at firedoglake.com.

These cocoa bean workers in the Ivory Coast, amazingly get their first taste of the product they harvest.

Moss has been here a long time and will probably stick around for a lot longer. Found the link in this article by Robert Krulwich at NPR.