Some random items for a crisp spring Friday morning

Despite an “uptick” on the unemployment rate, blamed on statistical errors of the past month (wtf?), the jobs report for April is “the best in five years.”  So, I guess there’s room for cautious optimism.  The latest deep recession graphic looks a bit friendlier this month as well.

Even Calculated Risk is cautiously optimistic.

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So much for my hope that the Bin Laden killing would end drone strikes.  I wonder if these strikes were set based upon information obtained from the seized data.  Al Qaida is probably trying to reshuffle things in a hurry to render the data moot, but that’s easier said that done.  The first protests of Bin Laden’s killing are happening.

A sad sidebar to the Bin Laden killing – his kids are without a nation.  An odd quote too from an OBL supporter which is a small example of the powers of cognitive dissonance in the mind of a fanatic:

Walking into Lal Masjid, 22-year-old Fahim Khan said that while he doesn’t believe bin Laden is dead, he hopes the children are assimilated in madrassas like Jamia Afridi, a school funded by the mosque.

But, if their father is still alive and such a good guy, shouldn’t the kids be with him?

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I keep forgetting to include in my links list Hank Sims new blog Lost Coast Outpost, in which he posts lots of Town Dandyish stuff.  Of the most recent interest, he joined in Rob Arkley’s public records request to discover that Supervisor Mark Lovelace had “leaked” a letter to a couple of community activists which to paraphrase Brit Hume is “illustrative of something.”  Out of the discovery also came the Arkley/Lovelace Steel Cage Deathmatch.  There are about 4 or 5 posts on the topic of the public disclosures, everything “illustrative of something.”

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Lots and lots of great photos of local spring phenomena over at Humboldt Homestead.  Have a look.

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Oh, and this just in.  Not all bankers believe that Elizabeth Warren is “akin to the anti-Christ.”  That’s good to know.

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Addendum:  I forgot to mention!  I watched God Spoke last night, which is a “War Room” style non-narration documentary consisting of cameras following Al Franken around during the Bush/Kerry campaign, the early days of the ill-fated Air America (though the cream of the progressive programming seems to have survived in syndication), and culminating in his final decision to run against Norm Coleman for Senate as “the only New York Jew in the race who was raised in Minnesota.”  The final punch line, “I guess I won’t tell that joke” was a perfect cap to an insightful look at a public figure who feels things very deeply (prompting his arch-nemesis Bill O’Reilly to hiss when Franken’s Senate campaign was taken seriously and lament Franken’s “emotional problems”) and who is brilliant to the point of eccentricity which becomes much more obvious with a couple of hours of non-stop exposure to him (and his lovely and eccentric wife).

It’s was produced by the same people who did the War Room, and while it might not be as compelling as the earlier film, they captured some choice moments.  The uncharacteristically nervous expressions and twitches just prior to a debate with Franken, to the half-smiles and awkward glances from various Republican dignitaries at a 2004 GOP Convention society event in which Franken almost didn’t make it in, to his half-joking imperative that Chuck Schumer “shut up, I’m trying to make some money for you hear” at a fundraiser.

Here’s a clip of Franken kind of losing it with Michael Medved (who does have a bit of depth for a Republican talk show host) over Zell Miller’s exaggerations, and you can see it on Medved’s face that he knows he’s in the wrong.  They actually have the entirely of the film sectioned up at youtube.  Unfortunately NBC blocked the portion at the GOP society event, which is the best part of the film.