Eideard

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A coalition of House Republicans and Democrats voiced its frustration at President Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, amassing more than 200 votes on a plan to speed up the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The move for a quicker exit from Afghanistan was narrowly defeated on a 204-215 vote. In all, 178 Democrats and 26 Republicans voted for the plan by Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Walter Jones, R-N.C. Similar legislation last year got 138 votes, with far less GOP support.

Today’s action was the first test in the House of Representatives of Obama’s Afghanistan policy since the president announced May 1 that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan by U.S. special operations forces.

Obama is set to begin withdrawing some of the 100,000 troops from Afghanistan starting in July. But lawmakers have become increasingly impatient about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and have been asking for a clear strategy for success.

Now that bin Laden is dead, people say America’s longest war should end. Nearly 60% of Americans said in a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll that they agreed with the statement that the United States “has accomplished its mission in Afghanistan and should bring its troops home.”

“There is no clear mission. The Karzai government is corrupt. We continue to borrow money to pay for this war,” McGovern said. “We need to rethink what we’re doing in Afghanistan…”

McGovern and Jones got an interesting coalition of liberals and conservatives to support their amendment, including votes from the top Democrats in the House: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. On the GOP side, Tea Party favorites such as Joe Walsh of Illinois and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina were among the conservatives to support the amendment.

Just as an aside, our neighbors up in the Great White North – with a conservative Prime Minister – are preparing to reduce the number of Canadians dedicated to making war by almost 10%. Anyone in Congress or the White House ready to start down that road with the Pentagon?

Elderly people who are very worried about falling are more likely to have a fall – even if they are in reasonable health and their physical risk of falling seems low, new research has found. In contrast, those with a higher physical risk, but who were unconcerned about falling, were actually less likely to fall…

Doctors have spent a lot of time looking at the physical factors that affect risk of falling – for example, people’s eyesight, balance, muscle strength, and the type of medication they take. But it’s been recognised for some time that fear of falling is closely associated with likelihood of having a fall.

What doctors didn’t know was whether fear of falling was simply a rational response to the person’s actual, physical risk. Also, if people were encouraged to be less fearful of falling, would that actually increase their risk of a fall, by allowing them to take more risks..?

About one third of the people in the study had either an overly optimistic or overly pessimistic view of their chances of having a fall, compared with their assessed physical risk.

The people who had a low physical risk, but were very fearful of falling, were much more likely to have a fall than the people with the same level of physical risk, but a low fear of falling.

Perhaps surprisingly, the people who had a high risk on the physical assessment, but who weren’t worried about falling, were much less likely to fall, compared with people with both a high risk and a high fear of falling.

The factors that seemed to increase people’s fear of falls were symptoms of depression, self-perceived poor health, a poorer quality of life, and symptoms of anxiety. People with a lower fear of falling were more likely to have an active lifestyle, less likely to take medicine that could affect their balance, had a higher quality of life, and rated their overall health as good…

However, we can’t be sure that it was simply fear that made the difference to people’s likelihood of falling. It could be that fear was related to something not measured in the study, which affected falls risk. The study doesn’t explain why fear of falling is linked to a higher risk of falling.

This article actually makes me smile. I had a strong fear of falling when I was a kid; but, ended up doing a fair bit of high altitude hill-walking and rough climbing. Reason and acquired skills overcame the fear. Mostly.

Yes, I carry a cane – though I use it only a small percentage of the time. I find it useful to get me standing more erect when setting out for one of my dog walks along the fence line. I grabbed this article because I thought it may have moved forward to greater understanding of the phenomenon. At best, it’s confirmation. A start.

Around a northern Georgia home sporadically illuminated by fireflies and distant lightning, music rises as darkness falls. A couple dozen smiling guests, glasses of sweet tea or white wine in their hands, settle onto sofas or lean against doorposts.

It’s time for the magic to begin.

This is a house concert, a growing phenomenon in which musicians perform in private living rooms for a small but attentive paying audience.

The connection between performer and patron is almost palpable…

Audience members “are here for the music,” Ladd said. “They’re not here to find a date or to cruise around the bar and talk.”

And artists appreciate not having to compete with billiard games or blaring televisions.

“There’s this intimacy to it where, as a storyteller and an acoustic musician, the subtleties of that kind of craft can come across,” Jonathan Byrd said. “When you’re in a really big place with a lot of people, it’s harder to get the subtlety of acoustic music, the dynamic range of it.”

That intimacy is just as valuable to a big-voiced R&B singer like Kira Small. She and husband-bassist Bryan Beller have been performing at house concerts for about a year, most recently in Bill and Teri Hooson’s tightly packed living room in Covington, Georgia.

“We just love being able to connect with everybody this closely,” said Small, standing barefoot behind her electronic keyboard not 10 feet from the first row of seats…

Concert hosts usually ask guests to make a $15 to $30 donation; they don’t call it an admission charge because that would make the venture a business and raise zoning issues, said Fran Snyder, who runs ConcertsInYourHome.com, one of several sites that help match performers with home venues.

RTFA. This has always been part of the history of performing arts – and especially music.

Of course, in our uptight society, the people who believe in governing behavior above all else will try to find some way to make it illegal.

One that didn’t miss

A newly discovered asteroid designated 2009 VA, which is only about 7 meters in size, passed about 2 Earth radii (14,000 km) from the Earth’s surface Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST. This is the third-closest known (non-impacting) Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid…

On average, objects the size of 2009 VA pass this close about twice per year and impact Earth about once every 5 years.

Asteroid 2009 VA was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey about 15 hours before the close approach, and was quickly identified by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge MA as an object that would soon pass very close to the Earth. JPL’s Near-Earth Object Program Office also computed an orbit solution for this object, and determined that it was not headed for an impact.

Phew!

Chrysler has told a bankruptcy court that it plans to close about one quarter of its dealerships. Chrysler said it wants to shut down 789 out of its current 3,200 dealers.

Just over half of the dealers account for about 90% of the company’s US sales, it added. “In addition, as suburbs grew and the modern interstate system continued to evolve, long-standing dealerships no longer were in the best or growing locations,” the company said in its filing.

As a result, the troubled carmaker has written to those dealers it wants to close down.

“It just says whether you’re in or out,” said Anthony Viviano, president of the Detroit Dodge dealers association. “Some of my fellow dealers have already called and said they’re out. They got the poison letter.”

The Dodge truck line is solid as a rock and needs damned little change to their big boys.

Offer me a Dakota with the 3-litre [or smaller] Cummins V6 diesel and I’d be waiting in line.

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked Pentagon staff to draw up plans for shutting the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The camp holds about 250 suspected terrorists, down from a peak of roughly 750 men from 40 countries. It houses several top al Qaeda figures, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the confessed architect of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Gates’ spokesman described it as a contingency plan in case the new administration wants to take it up early in the new year.

“I would like to see it closed,” Gates told Charlie Rose in a PBS interview. “And I think it will be a high priority for the new administration.”

Perhaps, Obama will be bright enough to put the land-lease to good use, as well.

My kin in the Great White North never stopped trading with Cuba. In fact, for many farm-based folks, that country is a reliable source of income.

In the waning days of the election season, as both parties campaign fervently for their candidates, one man has been notably absent — President George W. Bush.

Reporters began asking questions immediately after the White House schedule last week noted Bush had no public events Friday through Monday, and would spend most of his time at Camp David.

“The president is pretty focused on the activities that we have here, especially getting this economy back in order,” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday.

Now, that is the most hysterical fracking lie I’ve heard in a long time!

“We canceled a lot of our fundraisers, and he’s going to focus on being with Mrs. Bush and others this weekend at Camp David.”

But Perino couldn’t list any fundraisers that had been canceled recently.

Friday, Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto offered a more detailed explanation.

“The truth is we’re also trying to stay out of the public limelight during this period of the election season,” said Fratto. “There are two individuals out there running to be president of the United States, and we don’t want to complicate that for them.”

When I saw this being discussed on some news show, this morning, they couldn’t find a photo of any House or Senate candidate with George W. Bush since late August, 2007.

What? They lost his red nose?

U.S. President George Bush has decided not to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison and has never considered options to transfer its detainees.

Despite his stated desire to close the military prison camp where the United States houses suspected terrorists and “illegal enemy combatants,” Bush hasn’t given any consideration to options drawn up by State Department and U.S. Defense Department officials to do so, unnamed senior administration officials told The New York Times.

A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in June found that the 250 detainees at Guantanamo have the right to make habeas corpus appeals, undercutting a core rationale for keeping the prison off U.S. soil. The ruling raised hopes it would spur Bush to close the facility, where human rights advocates say the United States has engaged in torture and other prisoner abuses banned by the Geneva Conventions.

Simple as ever. As many times that Bush publicly stated his goal was to close Gitmo, he lied.