Oh good

The Koch brothers are pretending to give a ____ (fill in the blanks as your conscience dictates) about poverty.

COAL'S DECLINE. Here's an interesting take on that.

FINALLY, here's a sad look at what a life of fear sounds like.

It's not all bad (another installment)

There's been a lot of nastiness in the air over the Syrian refugee crisis. It was nice last night to attend an event at the Islamic Center in which Christians, Jews and Muslims stood together against hate and in favor of a humane response.

THIS MAY SOUND LIKE INSIDE BASEBALL, but an article in the Sunday Gazette-Mail by statehouse columnist Phil Kabler shows what happens when media is concentrated into a few very rich and very ideological hands. 

TALKING SENSE IN HUNTINGTON. This Herald-Dispatch editorial argues that mine safety violations should carry felony rather than misdemeanor charges. I'm with them.

Whatever happened to supporting the troops?

OK. I am not the biggest fan of the current US war in Afghanistan. Politics and the morality of war aside, my understanding of history as far back as Alexander the Great suggests that the country is the Mother Of All Bad Places to Wage a Counter-Insurgency.

Still and all, it boggles my mind that right wingers in American these days are pushing all the wrong buttons and making a bad situation even worse for people serving and living over there. The Manhattan mosque controversy sends a bad enough message to Muslims and puts the whole hearts and minds thing in jeopardy.

But even that is pretty mild compared with the international reaction to the plans of a "church" in Florida to mark the anniversary of 9/11 by burning copies of the Quran.

Here's how it played in Afghanistan, according to a weekend AP report:

Hundreds of Afghans railed against the United States and called for President Barack Obama's death at a rally in the capital Monday to denounce an American church's plans to burn the Islamic holy book on Sept. 11.

The crowd in Kabul, numbering as many as 500, chanted "Long live Islam" and "Death to America" as they listened to fiery speeches from members of parliament, provincial council deputies, and Islamic clerics who criticized the U.S. and demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country. Some threw rocks when a U.S. military convoy passed, but speakers shouted at them to stop and told police to arrest anyone who disobeyed.

These kinds of deliberate and gratuitous provocations are likely to get a lot of Americans and Afghan civilians killed. It's little surprise that General Petraeus was not amused:

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," Gen. Petraeus said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."

As the saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

THE CLOCK IS TICKING on a program that has created 240,000 jobs unless the Senate extends the Emergency TANF provisions of the Recovery Act.

THIS COULD BE INTERESTING. A new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission could shake up things at companies like Massey Energy.

MONEY AND HAPPINESS. Here's more on the link between the two.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED