The actor Dick Van Dyke has claimed he was saved by a school of porpoises after he found himself adrift at sea on a surfboard.

 He claims he woke up, but could no longer see the beach. Van Dyke did not elaborate when the incident happened.

"I woke up out of sight of land ... and I started paddling with the swells and I started seeing fins swimming around me and I thought, 'I'm dead!'", he said

"They turned out to be porpoises [and] they pushed me all the way to shore. I'm not kidding."

The National Public Radio
Board of Directors held a public meeting Thursday in part to discuss the company's decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams, giving listeners a chance to voice their concerns directly to board members.

One problem: No one showed up to comment.

Mr. Obama's family rented the guest house inside a compound belonging to a prominent physician. There, according to the neighborhood's longtime residents, the young Obama, who had already experienced differences in class and religion in his short stay in Indonesia, was exposed to another aspect of Jakarta's diversity.

His nanny was an openly gay man who, in keeping with Indonesia's relaxed attitudes toward homosexuality, carried on an affair with a local butcher, longtime residents said. The nanny later joined a group of transvestites called Fantastic Dolls, who, like the many transvestites who remain fixtures of Jakarta's streetscape, entertained people by dancing and playing volleyball.

somewhat less funny from the same piece

One time, recalled the elder son, Slamet Januadi, now 52, Mr. Obama asked a group of boys whether they wanted to grow up to be president, a soldier or a businessman. A president would own nothing while a soldier would possess weapons and a businessmen would have money, the young Obama explained.

...

"Then Barry said he would become president and order the soldier to guard him and the businessman to use his money to build him something," Mr. Januadi said. "We told him, `You cheated. You didn't give us those details.' "

Another bloody Republican Senate primary election season is taking shape for 2012, with potentially serious intra-party challenges percolating in close to a half-dozen states.

Polls indicate that at least two veteran GOP senators are highly vulnerable to challenges on their right flank -- Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe - and there are rumblings about potential GOP bids against Nevada Sen. John Ensign, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar as well.

Bruce Springsteen will perform live on NBC's Late Night With Jimmy Fallon on November 16.

The taping will take place on Tuesday afternoon/evening, to air that night (early Wednesday morning) at 12:35 a.m. Eastern/11:35 Central.

PPP's newest batch of 2012 Republican primary polls conducted right before last week's election finds Mitt Romney ahead in the critical early state of Florida, Tim Pawlenty surprisingly weak in his home state of Minnesota, and Sarah Palin posting leads in Texas, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Maine.

The most important state to the nomination process on this list is Florida and there Romney's ahead with 28% to 22% for Palin and 15% for Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee.

and this

On this week's edition of The Brody File Show, Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer says a Mitt Romney presidential bid will run into major trouble with the Tea Party because of the healthcare plan he put in to place as governor of Massachusetts.

Otherwise, there would be no difference between Veteran's Day and Memorial Day.

There actually IS a difference, historically speaking, even though in modern times it is to honor those who have served.  The day was originally called "Armistice Day" and was in commemoration of the ending of WWI.  ("The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.")

Interesting factoid from Wiki:

The reason the truce was to go into effect on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th Month was as a remembrance of the Feast of the Soldier later Bishop, St. Martin of Tours, which is celebrated on November 11.

And some more history:

The U.S. President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed an Armistice Day for November 11, 1919. In proclaiming the holiday, he said

    "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with lots of pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations."

The United States Congress passed a concurrent resolution seven years later on June 4, 1926, requesting that the President (Calvin Coolidge) issue another proclamation to observe November 11 with appropriate ceremonies. An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U.S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday; "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."

In 1953, an Emporia, Kansas shoe store owner named Alfred King had the idea to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just those who served in World War I. King had been actively involved with the American War Dads during World War II. He began a campaign to turn Armistice Day into "All" Veterans Day. The Emporia Chamber of Commerce took up the cause after determining that 90% of Emporia merchants as well as the Board of Education supported closing their doors on November 11 to honor veterans. With the help of U.S. Representative Ed Rees, also from Emporia, a bill for the holiday was pushed through Congress. President Dwight Eisenhower signed it into law on May 26, 1954.

Congress amended this act on June 1, 1954, replacing "Armistice" with Veterans, and it has been known as Veterans Day since

The debate, sponsored by the Reagan Presidential Foundation, will be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif., during the spring of 2011

The Obama Administration has U.S. military trainers on the ground in Yemen and has already launched an attack and possibly multiple attacks in the country, drawing relatively little public attention and virtually no debate in Congress. Analysts and news reports suggest that the administration is now poised to escalate the secret war in Yemen, possibly by launching drone attacks targeting suspected terrorists.

The attention of the U.S. media briefly re-centered on Yemen late last month after explosives originating from the Gulf nation were found on two cargo planes in Britain and Dubai. The Obama Administration has fingered the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as responsible for the failed attempt. (AQAP also claimed responsibility.)  This is the same group that claimed responsibility for the failed attempt by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009.

But less attention has been paid to U.S. attacks on targets in Yemen -- of which there have been at least two since 2002 -- and the U.S. military role in training Yemeni forces as well as helping them carry out air strikes.

All of this is taking place in a nation that is beset by a struggling economy, two civil conflicts, and what has been called a "looming" water shortage.

The El Paso Times reports on a recent homicide in El Paso.  A man ran down another in his truck.

It was the fourth homicide in.....one week?  one month?

Nope.  It was the fourth homicide in El Paso for all of 2010.  
The average in El Paso is about 10 a year.  There was a recent uptick due to soldiers at Ft. Bliss back from Iraq.  That added three or four more one year.  Back in the day, there were probably a lot more homicides with Old West style gun fights and Pancho Villa just across the river....But the more Latino El Paso has become the more peaceful....

El Paso is by most accounts 80% Latino. Probably has untold numbers of those there illegally.  But a crime wave, menacing Latinos that Sharron Angle warned you about?  Not.