In the curmudgeonly holiday spirit here at the Forvm, I give you this:

Sad news today: Les Paul has dies at age 94.

What the heck can you say about this guy? Invented the electric guitar... invented multitrack recording... played with everyone from... well, he played with everyone.

Some personal suggestions of tracks to listen to: "How High The Moon", of course, but you also might want to check out the records he made with Bing Crosby. Incredible playing underneath Crosby's vocals.

If you like modern rock, country, and jazz guitar, you have Les Paul to thank. RIP, Les.

I'll apologize in advance if this diary is a big huge posting rules violation. But good freaking Jeebus, the United States of America is the only country in the industrialized world that does not have a single payer system and/or universal health care coverage of its citizens.

For those who missed it (and the coverage in the US media has been surprisingly sparse), Roxana Saberi has been released. Since there were some here and in the mainstream of punditry who thought that Ms. Saberi's case was a sure sign of the folly of any sort of engagement with Iran, I thought it only fair to point out that, as it appears now, diplomacy might have actually worked.

There's been a lot of panic and smoke blown over the Swine Flu/H1N1 influenza outbreak, a bit here at the Forvm and a whole lot in the mainstream press. I present this as a small attempt to cast some light amidst all the heat and smoke.

Somewhere in the midst of all the worry over retention bonuses at AIG, and whether or not Barack Obama is entitled to indulge in gallows humor from time to time, nobody seems to have paid attention to this:

Now that the GOP has awoken out of power and, it seems, out of relevance, they have re-discovered the principle of fiscal responsibility:

As short as a year ago, that would have seemed an absurd scenario. These days, it's looking more and more likely that the Big Three will be the Big Two, or Big One, or even the Big Zero after this recession is over. Consider this:

I was just about to walk out the door to head into work on Sunday morning when, in a last-minute indulgence of sloth, I turned on "Meet The Press." I got hooked and spent 15 minutes watching Colin Powell quietly and calmly lay out the case for his endorsement of Barack Obama for President of the United States. It was fascinating television, if not quite history-in-the-making. I had been expecting something like this for quite some time now.

Paul Krugman has won the Nobel Prize for Economics.

You'll remember that Professor Krugman warned back in 2005 that the housing bubble was about to deflate, and that economic chaos could result. "Nonsense!" said conservative commenters (including some here). "That'll never happen. Another round of tax cuts!" Well, Krugman was right.

Congratulations, Professor. I hope Senator Obama takes a good long look towards Princeton if he gets lucky enough to have to fill Cabinet spots.