Not quite back to normalcy yet...

I only say that because of Sukkot starting this upcoming weekend.

Anyway, it looks like there is some great news for us fans of that legendary group from Liverpool, The Beatles, in which Paul McCartney will buy back the rights of the songs written by him and the late John Lennon.

Now the former Beatle has learned the rights to many of the songs, which include 'Come Together' and 'Getting Better,' are set to return to him automatically.

He revealed to Britain's Daiily Express newspaper: "In about 10 years a lot of the back catalogue returns to me, just legally. Some of the important rights are about to return which I didn't realise."

McCartney, 64, has previously admitted he hates the fact he has to pay Jackson money every time he plays one of his own songs on tour.

He recently said: "You know what doesn't feel very good is going on tour and paying to sing all my songs. Every time I sing 'Hey Jude' I've got to pay someone."

McCartney does make a good point.

Blues rock legend Eric Clapton has started to play "Cocaine" on his tours again. He's playing it as an anti-drug song.

Eric Clapton is playing "Cocaine" in concert again. The recovering drug addict and alcoholic, who founded the Crossroads Centre addiction recovery center on the Caribbean island of Antigua, stopped performing the song written by J.J. Cale when he first got sober.

"I thought that it might be giving the wrong message to people who were in the same boat as me," Clapton recently told The Associated Press.

"But further investigation proved ... the song, if anything, if it's not even ambivalent, it's an anti-drug song. And so I thought that might be a better way to do it, to approach it from a more positive point of view. And carry on performing it as not a pro-drug song, but just as a reality check about what it does."

Not that I'm doing it anytime soon, but if there's anyone considering classes at the famed Second City in Chicago, well, now you can take some for college credit.

In a program that starts in January, Columbia College is offering students a semester's worth of credit for enrolling full-time at the famed comedy troupe's Training Center. Students will attend "class" every day at the center and at the end of the semester will earn 16 hours of course credit.

"It's like a semester abroad at Second City on Wells Street," said Sheldon Patinkin, chairman of Columbia's theater department and one of Second City's founders.

It sounds unbelievable to me.

Jonathan Miller had an op-ed in the Courier-Journal to promote financial literacy. It is important to be financially literate because if you aren't, creditors will go after you. Anyway, I'm going to reprint some excerpts from the op-ed that he wrote on the subject.

Pay cash. Don't make purchases on a credit card if you don't have to.

Make a budget. Before you go to the mall, plan how much you want to spend on gifts this season and stick to it.

Make a list. Have an idea of what you're going to buy before you go shopping. This will cut down on impulse buying and keep you from spending more than you intended.

Spread buying out over the year. If you can, purchase gifts throughout the year and set them aside.

Use only one credit card. It is easier to manage payments to one company than to several.

Don't skip payments. Many credit card companies provide the opportunity to miss a payment without penalty during the holiday season. Don't fall for it. While this may ease your cash flow temporarily, it can significantly increase the length of time it takes you to pay off your balance.

Elvis Presley asked in song, "Why can't every day be like Christmas?" The great news is, unlike so many things about the holiday season, this advice applies all year long. If you follow these simple rules in your regular shopping practices, you will already have good spending habits when the holidays roll around.

Of course, smart credit card use isn't just a topic for the holidays. And today, the earlier you learn good credit practices, the better. That's why I have teamed up with the Center for Student Credit Card Education, Inc. in an effort to present a credit card literacy class in high schools throughout the Commonwealth. Our goal is to teach students essential facts about credit now so that they can make informed and responsible decisions when it comes time to apply for credit lines.

That's the public service announcement of the day and don't forget that there will be some activities going on this evening over at The Compassionate Community in celebration of Jonathan's book being released.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy blasted the "politics of fear" while at the 40th anniversary of the Harvard Institute of Politics.

Kennedy’s speech was the first in a series of discussions held over the weekend as part of the Institute’s 40th anniversary. Panelists from Saturday included Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, author Alvin Toffler, and Biotechonomy CEO Juan Enriquez.

This sounds very interesting.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and The Daily Show host Jon Stewart will appear for a one-night-only special event at the Geffen Playhouse.

I just realized by way of this that I have yet to see Free Zone with Natalie Portman.

Mark Warner went down to Alabama.

If reelected, Senator Lieberman will retain his seniority in the United States Senate. He's still going to caucus with the Democrats no matter how much support he gets from the Republicans.

Make sure to check out this video from HonestReporting.com.

Wow. I'm not the least bit surprised here. They brought it on themselves.

Congress did pass a bill recently to extend sanctions against Iran even though congressional members think it does not go far enough.

The Senate passed the Iran Freedom Support Act in a voice vote early Saturday morning after last minute wrangling between the parties.

The House of Representatives had passed the act in a voice vote on Sept. 29.

Democrats in Congress told JTA that it was presented to them as a fait accompli and that they felt they had no choice but to pass it because the previous act sanctioning Iran was lapsing.

The Senate was to have considered another act, passed overwhelmingly by the House in the spring, that would have considerably expanded sanctions against Iran by targeting third parties that deal with the Islamic republic.

The latest version, negotiated last week by the White House, and Republicans in the Senate and House, removes key passages from the earlier version that would have punished offshore subsidiaries of U.S. companies that deal with Iran. Democrats say that’s a gift to Halliburton, an oil company with close ties to the White House. Republicans say such sanctions would have been unduly punitive for companies that signed legal contracts with Iran.

Is another war with Hezbollah imminent? It looks like that.

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel’s national infrastructure minister and former defense minister, said Tuesday that the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army in former Hezbollah strongholds was no guarantee that the current quiet would hold.

“I predict another war with Hezbollah within months,” Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio. “We must not take lightly Hezbollah’s rhetoric about the Lebanese army’s presence in southern Lebanon being no guarantee of security for Israel. We should rehabilitate the Israel Defense Forces and the home front as fast as possible.”

Surprisingly, Iran still has a large Jewish community in Teheran.

So it was a great surprise when, on my first Friday evening in Teheran, my friends took me to the large synagogue in Yosefabad, in central Teheran, a neighborhood that is home to a large Jewish population, and I found the sanctuary packed. Inside the main gate there were ads for Hebrew lessons and family activities sponsored by the Jewish Association.

There was an Iranian policeman on guard outside, but with the exception of the signs in Farsi, the Hebrew-Farsi prayer books and the style of the women's hair coverings, this could have been an Orthodox synagogue in America.

Excepting Israel, Iran boasts the Middle East's largest Jewish community. While there are no accurate numbers, the capital contains around 10,000 Jews as well as Jewish schools that serve 2,000 students. Teheran also has a Jewish retirement home with 50 residents, and its Jewish Association owns a number of buildings, including a large library used by Jews and non-Jews alike.

Why are the Jews still here? Answers differed across the generations.

For many older people like Saketkhoo, Iran is simply their home. As the owner of a successful carpet and souvenir shop, Saketkhoo has provided well for his three children, and devotes a good deal of time to Jewish Association activities. At his home on Friday night after services, where he showed me his collection of Kabbala books and a large tapestry of Moses splitting the sea, he told me about how he had traveled around the world only to learn that nothing was better than home.

Asked about the future of the Iranian Jewish community, he replied: "Did you see how many children were there tonight?"

He was right. It was hard to concentrate on praying in the synagogue, where at least 300 people had come, because of all the children running up and down the aisles and chattering outside.

But there is a difference between children and young adults. Peyman, Saketkhoo's 27-year-old son, was fond of saying, "Everyone in Iran has a problem," meaning that everyone - Jewish and non-Jewish - wants to leave.[...]

As Arash saw it, there were no problems between Iranians on a religious basis. On the issue of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, other Iranians of different ages, Jewish and Muslim, pointed to a unifying national idea.

Iranian culture dates back nearly 2,500 years, to the days of Cyrus the Great and Darius, founders of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty (ca. 600 BCE) mentioned in the Bible. Throughout Iran, citizens of all religions are proud of their national history, and of the various pre-Islamic leaders and dynasties. Many parents even name their children Darius or Cyrus.

Following the advent of Islam in the seventh century, the Persian language adopted Arabic characters but remained distinct from Arabic. National holidays that existed before Islam are celebrated by the Jewish community as well. This past spring, Iranians celebrated Norouz (New Day), the Persian New Year, which begins on March 21, and the rabbi in Yosefabad spoke about Norouz in his sermon.

The Jewish Association's calendar begins not on January 1, but on March 21. This pre-Islamic culture, even in the Islamic Republic of Iran, is still respected and unifies Iranians of different backgrounds.

That's it...for now.