Hot Air: Letting the Troops Speak for themselves
Jenny Hatch

The resurgence of break dancing
A new documentary at the New York film festival…
OK, true confessions, I broke my thumb break dancing at a chuch dance in 1984. We had formed a circle and everyone was going into the middle one at a time and doing their thing, and I decided to do a worm, where you roll up onto your shoulder and then come down onto your stomach, and landed squarely on my thumb and it cracked in two.
I loved break dancing and organized a group dance to a Michael Jackson song (if I remember right it was wanna be startin somethin’) for our school talent show in 84. I did the breathtaking pop up from flat on your back and land on your feet. One night made it up, and the next night could not get the momentum and rolled back down onto my back and felt really stupid.
In 1985 my mom directed a Stake Dance Festival and I’ll never forget being at the audition for a break dancing group from Detroit. Five guys doing some of the most cool moves I had ever seen. They were not able to be in the show however, at the last minute they quit to be in a dance competition or something, but it was really fun to see them dancing at the audition.
I continued to break dance and met my two best friends in high school at a school dance, Janice and Audie, when they came up to me and asked me to teach them a dance sequence I had performed previously and was doing at the dance.
Jenny Hatch
Break Dancer – even writing that I feel like laughing. Those were the days

Still The best feature on his blog:
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE:
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: A recent National Journal article (sorry, link is subscriber-only) suggests that lobbyists are worried:
But beneath the surface there was a feeling of anxiety among the lobbyists gathered at Pentagon City’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, Va. They had their minds on a rule adopted by the House in January that toughens the process for winning — and will likely restrict — appropriations earmarks. Those are special-interest provisions, ubiquitous in recent years, in which members of Congress direct money to specific projects by inserting narrow, targeted language into spending bills.
Lobbying for earmarks has become a profitable business for many K Street firms. Weapons makers, colleges and universities, hospitals, municipalities, and many other clients pay lobbyists big fees to persuade the right lawmaker to include a pet project or favorite program in an appropriations measure.
The new rule is causing heartburn because it requires lobbyists and members to submit additional paperwork explaining and justifying their earmark requests. At the Murtha bash, said one lobbyist who attended, there was a lot of chatter about the “onerous documentation” now required of those seeking earmarks.
Beyond that, the lobbyist added, 2007 is shaping up as “a perfect storm for defense earmarks.” In addition to the tougher rule — intended to stop ethical abuses that have given earmarks a bad name — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forcing budget constraints that are sure to reduce the number of defense earmarks in this year’s spending bills.
This is a time of uncertainty for lobbyists who have prospered by capitalizing on the booming earmark business in defense as well as other industries and economic sectors. “We’re warning all our clients that they have to be realistic in their requests in terms of dollars,” said Stewart Van Scoyoc, who attended the Murtha event and is the founder of the 17-year-old firm whose name is often linked with earmark lobbying.
This is music to my ears. Let’s hope the “perfect storm” is as perfect as we can make it.
Very Cool Indeed!
Jenny Hatch

The Military’s Media Problem

Jenny Hatch

Wellesley Class Sees ‘One of Us’ Bearing Standard

For her Wellesley classmates, Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first female president is a generational mirror. Some like what they see; others are less certain.

They were there for her fiery commencement speech, delivered at the height of the Vietnam War, when she described her class’s search for a “more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living” and said that every protest was “unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age.” The speech landed Hillary Rodham in the spotlight as a celebrated archetype of a new generation of women.

“We were very proud of her: she was a feminist; she was outspoken,” said Jane Moss, a classmate who now teaches French at Colby College. “Hillary was speaking for all of us, for a generation that felt we weren’t being heard.”

Jenny Hatch