John Kerry: Oh, the humanity

So John Kerry read a bad joke the wrong way and ended up insulting the academic achievement of American troops in Iraq, rather than his intended target, George Bush, the architect of the plan that got us "stuck in Iraq."
Whether it was a misreading (not studying hard enough before the stump speech?) or a Freudian slip, either way, it played right into the hands of the very never-worn-the-uniform "Republican hacks" Kerry has been criticizing for their "swiftboat-style" attacks on Dem congressional candidates. Ah, deja vu.
Listening to him defend himself this afternoon was just painful -- the frustrated rage of someone who's been put in the same corner one time too many, but with nothing to do about it.

Will this halt the Democrat momentum?
Will it be 2004 all over again?
Will John Kerry go to "joke school"? ("Sure," he told some dude in the press corps)
And what about Fox vs. Limbaugh; D. Cheney vs. Rangel, L. Cheney vs. Blitzer, Harold Ford, Jr. vs. Miss October?
Will someone just send me an absentee ballot and then wake me on November 8?

Michael Steele: Party Pride

Maryland Senate candidate Steele on his party affiliation:

"It's an impediment. It's a hurdle I have to overcome."

"I've got an 'R' here, a scarlet letter."

"For me to pretend I'm not a Republican would be a lie."

"If this race is about Republicans and Democrats, I lose."

And of course, there's the infamous blue "Steele Democrat" sign and bumper sticker, which he told Tim Russert yesterday was conceived as a "cute" idea for his Democrat supporters, a reference to the "Reagan Democrats." Hmmm.

I guess posing as a Democrat might be an honest enough tactic as long as he kept it up for the next six years. But something tells me that won't happen.

If an un-election were held today, Bush and the GOP Congress would probably win...

... or lose, all depending on semantics, according to the lastest Newsweek poll.

Among the statistics, 51 percent of Americans believe impeaching Bush should be either a high or a low priority for Congress: "Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a 'top priority,' but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done." (italics mine)

Based on their joint track record, for those who take a longer retrospective view, (over the whole 5 1/2 years... I know it flew by, but some of us remember that far back) it seems fair enough.

This Salon article takes a stroll down memory lane.

Agree with him or not, Richard Dawkins has balls.

Not easily influenced by the spirit of the times, (which stands to reason, as he doesn't put much stock in spirits) Richard Dawkins has a new, unapologetically opinionated book, "The God Delusion," in which he expounds on the views of theology that inform his well-received science popularization books.
The book centers, as Dawkins tells BBC News in this interview, around an argument addressed not only to confirmed atheists, who will probably be the lion's share of his audience, but also to on-the-fence agnostics and even those who don't realize they're already inclined toward a lack of theistic belief but are afraid to admit it to themselves in a climate somewhat hostile to atheism. (Due to the tone, it's probably not going to inspire much other than ire or, at best, dismissal from most confirmed theists.)
It's obvious from the BBC interview that both Dawkins and the interviewer expect a different reaction to the book in America, which is probably a fair guess. So far, his toughest customer has been Stephen Colbert, but that's probably the tip of the iceberg.
Read it for yourself and see. The only copy at our local library is currently checked out by one of the librarians, but my shackmate signed up for it once it's available.
Here are some excerpts, courtesy of BBC and The New York Times.

Umm, I think you might have said it once or twice, Mr. President.

Bush to George Stephanopoulos this morning: "We’ve never been stay the course, George!"

I guess he's been spending more time listening to James Baker than he lets on.

Two slightly different views on the significance of the upcoming election

The glass is half empty, and the other half is filled with nitroglycerin:
Thomas Ferraro

The wine of victory is probably sour, anyway:
Bob Novak

A thoughtful reminder to certain constituents...

... from someone Tan D. Nguyen, the GOP challenger to Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, denies he is in any way affiliated with:

"You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

This ABC News article notes that "In fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can legally vote."

Of course, the letter was written in Spanish and only sent to constituents with suspicious-sounding names, such as a candidate for a local city council -- oops.

Methyl mercury, in moderation?

Finally, a little clarity on whether or not those super-healthy omega-3 fatty acids found in fish are worth the risk of ingesting dangerous levels of mercury.
This article even has a nifty little chart.
However, it's been noted that one can see the hand of the formidable tuna lobby in the refusal to rule out a popular product like canned white albacore, even for pregnant women.
And judging by the very high levels of mercury in large predatory fish, I'd personally stay away from them regardless of my age, gender, or reproductive status, not that I've ever been very tempted to eat shark or tilefish, anyway.
It seems like focusing on yummier seafood with low mercury and high omega-3 levels, like salmon and blue crabs, might be the way to go...

And because it's Sweden Week in Blogland...

... and also because I haven't filled my quota of news about the future, (it takes longer on the wires) look what else those Swedes have been up to while we weren't looking: a self-assembling cottage on the moon.

"We know where the Americans want to land people in 2020... It would be nice if we had a house for them when they come," Mikael Genberg said.

Wishful thinking?

Seriously, though, this is pretty cool.

"But when we put this house on the Moon, which is a kind of Swedish endeavour right now, we want to make it an international symbol... it will represent the position of our own planet in the universe, like a fragile thing."

And of course, wine in moderation, for your health and good fortune.

The property in red wine known as resveratrol has already been shown to be good for your heart and even promote longevity, according to a number of recent studies, and now they're saying it may also protect the brain from damage caused by stroke.
The recommended dosage is two glasses a day (a bit much for me on a work night, but one can aspire ;)
(And unfortunately, catching up on the weekend falls outside the category of "moderation." I'm still waiting for a study to come along and refute that, but I'll probably be waiting a while.)

And drinking with colleagues means earning more money, too, apparently, so one may as well combine the two regimens.

Speaking of Mehlman, "Abramoff's rock star"

This article appeared today in Salon. You have to register to read the full story, but here's the excerpt:

Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican Party, insists he doesn't have a Jack Abramoff problem. "Everything I did was above board and consistent with the rules," Mehlman told reporters this month about his work in the White House during President Bush's first term, when the now-disgraced super-lobbyist was hustling Washington. In fact, the Republican National Committee chairman likes to insinuate that Jack Abramoff never made much of an impression on him at all. He might have met with Abramoff or his lieutenants, Mehlman conceded to Fox News recently, but "I don't recall the specifics or the meetings."
But maybe Ken Mehlman does have an Abramoff problem. On Sept. 29, the very day the Foleygate scandal broke and sucked up most of the media oxygen, the House Committee on Government Reform released a bipartisan report on the contacts between the White House and Abramoff. The 91-page report lists 17 different Abramoff lobbying efforts directed at the White House Office of Political Affairs when Mehlman was that office's director from 2001 to 2003. But the most revealing story about Mehlman is told by the hundreds of pages of e-mails in the appendices of the report.

NBC News also covered Mehlman's Abramoff ties, including the Mariana Islands connection. That appeared in the week leading up to Rove assistant Susan Ralston's resignation on October 6, which I admit I kind of tuned out at the time, because the sheer breadth and depth, the seemingly infinite variety of the corruption was starting to give me a headache (or maybe I only kept silent because it was my Week of Golden Silence on such matters, or I was coming down with a cold.)

Vote for Real

So vote in November, too.
But since polls often seem to determine who/what we get to vote for in November, weighing in at Zogby might be sort of like cutting out the middle-man.
Here's the registration form to get on the Zogby mailing list, courtesy of the Libertarian blog Hammer of Truth.

You can't read this at home: Newsweek International's North Korea story

But happily, there's that great equalizer, the World Wide Web.

Northern Mariana Islands, Abramoff & co.: Beyond scandal, beyond sad

I admit I didn't even know the Northern Mariana Islands were a U.S. territory until I heard Wolf Blitzer broach the subject of yet another Abramoff-related scandal in an interview with Ken Mehlman on "Late Edition" today.
Apparently I wasn't paying attention a year and a half ago when the story broke.
Here are updates.

What they really think of the people who got them elected.

It's possible that Bush himself is a born-again, a true believer, but, according to David Kuo's new book “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," that would put him in the minority in the White House.
Kuo, himself an evangelical, quit his post in the faith-based initiatives program in 2003.
Of course, there are denials. But does this sort of thing really surprise anyone?
Wake up, people (I'm thinking, for example, of those kids worshipping the cardboard cutout of their caesar -- I mean, president.) You're being taken for a ride, and we're all paying the price.

Quote du Jour: Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari

"The situation is not as gloomy or as bad as things are."

-- speaking about the war in Iraq on CNN's "Late Edition" last Sunday, October 8.

OK, Mr. Zebari seems like a decent guy who's trying his best, and I know there's a language barrier, so it's not quite fair to parse words, but I still can't help wondering which "things" in Iraq are so much worse than "the situation."

The devil is in the details? Often the case, it seems. Durn details.

Sweden's "New Moderates": What's in a Name?

Apparently, Sweden, on the other hand, is so far left that the "Moderate Party" (recently re-packaged as the "New Moderates" to denote a more centrist stance) is all the way to the right of the political spectrum, according to the graphic in this article.
And they just won a majority in the parliament.
OK, maybe a little reform is needed, after 70 straight years of Social Democrat rule, although it sounds like they aren't doing too bad at the moment.
It will be interesting to watch (as will post-Blair Britain, an entirely different kettle of fish.)

Another paragon of conservative Christian family values bites the dust...

The sad story of country music star and GOP darling Sara Evans' simultaneous divorce announcement and withdrawal from the new hit show "Dancing With the Stars" (I kid you not; Tom DeLay has a cameo here) is too grotesquely Bizarro World, I would think, to even inspire liberal schadenfreude (except maybe for Al Franken, who's having a pretty bad day.)

If anyone is still buying this paradigm, I give up.

I guess this says something about America...

... although I'm still pondering precisely what that might be.

Liberal radio network files for bankruptcy

Good on Them: Nobel Committee Recognizes Role of Poverty in Violence

... in their nomination of Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, the so-called "Banker to the Poor," for the Peace Prize.

"Asle Sveen, a Norwegian historian who closely follows the Nobel Prize, told AFP: 'It is the first time that the fight against poverty has been rewarded in itself.

'There were enough good nominations in the area of conflict resolution in the strictest sense but the Nobel Committee is increasingly taking the fight to the fundamental reasons for which war is waged.

'It is not enough to make peace, this peace must be a just peace and the causes of war, such as hunger and poverty, must be treated at their roots.'"


The selection of Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk for the Lit prize is also controversial and has been criticized as being political, since Pamuk is a moderate voice in Turkey who has urged his country to own up to the Armenian genocide.

That criticism may be valid, assuming one can separate politics from literature, but how could the committee possibly separate politics from the international selection process? By choosing "mainstream," "apolitical" (read "Western") writers only, and shying away from any, like Harold Pinter, last year's choice, who are critical of American foreign policy?

In some parts of the world, where writers are either mouthpieces of the state or literally prosecuted for their views, as Pamuk was, it's pretty much impossible not to be political.

If either of these selections were political choices, I think the committee could have done worse. And maybe, just maybe, the work of each laureate, if examined on its own terms, outside a Western context, would speak for itself.

The Justice Cortex

Interesting...
Based merely on the study as it is summarized in this article, though, should the region of the brain that apparently evaluates fairness be associated with "morality" (in the form of righteous indignation) or simply delayed gratification?
(Although I believe some have argued that delayed gratification is synonymous with morality, so maybe that's a moot point.)
But a long-term strategist somewhere back in our evolutionary history may have been clever enough to punish unfair division of resources by refusing his or her sliver of woolly mammoth meat with a huff and roll of the eyes -- maybe even a prehistoric temper tantrum -- cunningly wagering that it might be worth it in the long run if, next time, it paid off with a bigger share of the pie.
I also wonder if self-conceived notions of where one stands in a group hierarchy might play into one's reactions to being apparently cheated.

Quote du Jour: Plato

“Moderation, which consists in an indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance.”

Nutshell history...

... of where Republicans and Democrats come from (good, notecard-size piece for parents who have been agonizing about that "little talk.")
I always thought it was interesting that, at least, post-Reconstruction and pre-Bush 43, Republicans seemed to be more "democratic" in principle (for the enfranchised) and Democrats seemed more "republican," and I assumed this ironic switcharoo gradually took place sometime between FDR and the Civil Rights movement, but it seems, although there was rhyme and reason to the original coinage, history unraveled in such a way that the two terms became pretty much random and interchangeable.

Breaking my golden silence on those zany 'pubs

OK, so my seven days of silence on the foibles of the Bush administration and congressional Republican leadership are mercifully ended.
And noting again my considerable admiration for those few (and fewer every vote) Republicans in Congress who manage to hold out against the giant magnet that's been affixed to the Far Right ever since it was determined that therein the "base" resides, I will go so far as to admit that even most of those in lockstep with the administration and leadership are probably decent folks who are kind to fluffy animals (off their respective seasons) and, leaving out any discussion of children for the time being, don't literally harbor cooties, even including North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry, (not to be confused with Patrick "Give me liberty or give me death" Henry) although pundits on this morning's talk shows implied that the "We are rubber; Dems are glue" tactic he's spearheaded is just kind of silly and probably won't work.
I guess that means it's back to Iraq, the one thing they all can agree on.
What's next?
Revolt of the soccer moms?
All right, I feel better now (aside from a bad case of the sniffles.)
I should have known better than to go cold turkey.

Tomorrow: a fair and balanced analysis of the rising tension between my immune system and the upstart rhinovirus that has launched a vigorous campaign against it.

Modest Goals: Electing People Who Approve of Science

Well, I guess the new action group Scientists and Engineers for America figure it's a start.

(And since I'm still observing my Week of Not Talking Smack About Republican Politicians -- it's been a long week, and still two days to go -- I hope I can get away with this post, since I'm not personally talking any smack, but merely allowing a group whose advisory board contains eight Nobel laureates to do so for me.)

So what's up with all these shootings?

Having grown up close enough to Pennsylvania Amish country that the sight of horse-and-buggies clopping down the street between cars and trucks was not a novelty, I could picture the scene of a national cable news convergence on a quiet Amish schoolyard even before it was conjured up on each of the major news channels, in one case with an unidentified white-bearded Amish man being interviewed in a split-screen shot alongside a scene of the schoolhouse.
I think I had fallen prey to the prevailing pessimism that's been brooding in the country, with yesterday's incident marking the third so-called "school shooting" in a week. What's going on here?
Tonight's NewsHour interview with forensic psychologist and juvenile violence expert Dewey Cornell shed a little light, as Dr. Cornell noted that, overall, violence at schools in the U.S. has gone down over the last several years, although there have obviously been a number of sensational cases that seem to suggest it is becoming some kind of epidemic. He made the point that coining and throwing around the term "school shooting" has the potential to create an arbitary category that may serve as a lure for desperate people looking for the maximum notoriety for their violent fantasies.
As someone who works, to cite my bio, in the communications/media industry, I'm certainly not one of those who believes the media is the root of all evil; certainly not in the sense that violent video games or pornography incite normal, well-adjusted people to violence. And I don't believe that 24-hour cable news channels are slowly devouring the brains of those who watch them (provided those viewers take occasional breaks to eat, sleep and other things essential to life in the three-dimensional world.)
However, I do think it would be productive to examine the larger implications of 24-hour, internationally broadcast cable news, whose bread and butter, is, to be brutally honest, the "big stories" (which never tend to be the warm and fuzzy kind) on psychologically unstable individuals desiring to write their pain in a large hand across the world they feel has wronged them.
When you have people, whether kids or adults, with violent tendencies, either due to childhood abuse, relationships gone bad, school bullying or simply unmedicated psychopathology, offering them the promise of posthumous gratification of a megalomaniacal desire for instant, worldwide notoriety, while it is far from the cause of such behavior (these are people who, unless they got help or found a way to help themselves, would inevitably act out in some way, at some time) but I'm just thinking that the lure of those 15 minutes probably doesn't help much.

If you don't have anything nice to say...

So as anyone who has been frequenting this blog (if there are such people outside my own household :) may have noticed, I jumped to a new blogspot address, something a little shorter and catchier.
I chose not to go with my helpful shackmate's suggestion for the new address, bitterdemocrat.blogspot.com, (it's available, incidentally) but his point was taken. I've been straying a bit from my moderate credo when it comes to topics of a partisan nature.
But sheesh, look at the material I have to work with...Even David Brooks is stretching to find chipper things to say about the 'pubs these days.
So this is going to be hard, but I've decided to take a week's holiday from talking smack about Republican politicians, just as a little experiment in moderation.
If I fail, I may just have to yield the middle ground and join the legions of lefty bloggers queueing up for the guest list of Bill Clinton's next blogger luncheon.
Either way, wish me luck.

The straw that broke the elephant's back?

GOP House leaders admit they covered for Foley, hoping that if they kept it on the d/l, no one would notice (the way it always works in Washington, right, especially in election years?)

WTF? If Boehner and Hastert are allowed to wash their hands of this, it's a damn shame. I wish I could say precedent is against them, but after the way Abramoff was isolated and neutralized like the lobbyist equivalent of an ebola strain in a rhesus monkey lab, it's really anyone's guess.

Poetry makes the Sunday news (W.C. Williams would be pleased.)

"Poetry has shown me the way to feel again and again, how to contain my feeling, how to be able to feel in that complicated human way, when you feel more than one way at once, ways that seem contradictory but which are true, both at the same time."

-- the (fairly) new poet laureate, Donald Hall, reading from his first poem completed as the U.S. laureate (talk about pressure), and speaking on This Week with George Stephanopoulos