Is this Question Somewhat Stupid, Stupid, Very Stupid...

From one of the online surveys with which I occasionally amuse myself:



Adding to the all-round dumbness of the question ("What is your favorite color, Green or Other?") is the annoying fact that (a) Hispanic and Latino are not universally regarded as the same thing*, and (b) neither Hispanic nor Latino is a race!

Other than that, though, a fine example of the art of the survey.
________________________

* This quoted at Wikipedia ("Hispanic and Latino Americans"):

Some authorities of American English maintain a distinction between the terms Hispanic and Latino:

"Though often used interchangeably in American English, Hispanic and Latino are not identical terms, and in certain contexts the choice between them can be significant. Hispanic, from the Latin word for "Spain," has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both hemispheres and emphasizing the common denominator of language among communities that sometimes have little else in common. Latino—which in Spanish means "Latin" but which as an English word is probably a shortening of the Spanish word latinoamericano—refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American origin. Of the two, only Hispanic can be used in referring to Spain and its history and culture; a native of Spain residing in the United States is a Hispanic, not a Latino, and one cannot substitute Latino in the phrase the Hispanic influence on native Mexican cultures without garbling the meaning. In practice, however, this distinction is of little significance when referring to residents of the United States, most of whom are of Latin American origin and can theoretically be called by either word."^[17]

17 "American Heritage Dictionary". Retrieved on 2007-03-18.

Is the Earth Quarantined???

Why haven't we met aliens yet? And why aren't we sending rockets all over the solar system? There is only one plausible explanation. Earth is being quarantined! A combination of higher alien civilizations and our own Earth-based military forces are working together to keep the Earth contained and neutralized.

read more | digg story

How The McCains Changed Their Baby Adoption Story Just Before Campaign Began

Mark Nickolas in The Huffington Post:As was pointed out yesterday by the Christian Science Monitor, the McCain campaign was called out for lying about the purported urging of Cindy McCain by Mother Teresa herself to adopt two children at her orphanage back in 1991. Turns out, McCain never met or even spoke with Mother Teresa on that trip.Once confronted by the Monitor about the deception, the campaign quickly erased such claims from the website, as it did with Cindy's family recipes, which were proved to be lifted from the Food Network.

read more | digg story

As Suspected

more animals

Protect Us from Those Who Would Protect Us

This from today's Delancyplace.com excerpt. I have much the same thought in re those who seek to ban abortion. The Law of Unintended Consequence always applies.

In today's encore excerpt--the U.S. outlaws the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcoholic beverages under the Volstead Act (1920-1933), more commonly called Prohibition. Against expectations, Prohibition resulted in even greater levels of alcohol consumption in America and it was repealed in 1933. The backlash that led to Prohibition extended to other areas as well, including banning highly suggestive language such as "the cat's meow":

"When, at the stroke of New Year 1920, the U.S. formally went 'dry,' most revellers would have only experienced the dull ache of their hangovers. It was only as time went by that the realization sunk in of how profoundly Prohibition had altered American life. It would be 1925 before Variety would note that Times Square--between 34th and 52nd streets--boasted 2,500 speakeasies, where before Prohibition there had been only 300 saloons. In the entire country, in 1925, there were estimated to be three million 'booze joints,' where 'pre-Prohibition cafes numbered 177,000.' In other words, a nation of moderate drinkers was turned into a nation of obsessive alcoholics, paying for criminals to build up an immense black market that would affect the nation's economy for decades (and continues to do so in the drug age). There would be fun, gaiety, abandon, dancing, hot-cha-cha, cheers and laughter, and buzzing joints like the Cotton Club and Texas Guinan's cabarets, but also killings, sickness, fraud, repression and the corruption of states and city halls. ...

"The moral guardians, however, continued their march, moving in, as King Booze leered over the city, on 'suggestive' performances and sexual innuendo. In February 1921, the Music Publisher's Protective Association began a 'housecleaning' campaign aimed at banishing 'all 'blue' and double-meaning lyrics' from the market, [stating] all 'indecent material, or songs that are capable of indecent construction' should be banned. ... Vaudeville shows were to be vigorously cleaned up too, 'the latitude allowed shimmy and jazz dancers' was to be curtailed. ... Current slang, like 'Hot Dog,' 'The Cat's Meow,' 'Cat's Pajamas' and 'Hot Cat,' was also on the proscribed list."

Simon Louvish, Mae West, St. Martin's Press, Copyright 2005 by Simon Louvish, pp. 82-83.


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An Un-American Litmus Test

This from Kathleen Parker in today's Washington Post:

Pastor Rick's Test
The Candidates Submit, and a Principle Suffers


By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A15


At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.

It is also un-American.

For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won.

Was it the nuanced, thoughtful Obama, who may have convinced a few more skeptics that he isn't a Muslim? Or was it the direct, confident McCain, who breezes through town-hall-style meetings the way Obama sinks three-pointers from the back court?

The candidates' usual supporters felt validated in their choices. McCain convinced and comforted with characteristic certitude those who are most at ease with certitude; Obama convinced and comforted with his characteristic intellectual ambivalence those who are most at ease with ambivalence.

The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state.

The loser was America.

Indeed. This is neither the first nor the last time that a candidate for elective office will feel required to unzip and prove he's the bigger "Christian." And to what end? If I can convince you that I'm as "good" a "Christian" as you are, then you'll vote for me? Is this any way to run an election...for water commissioner, let alone president?

She continues:

His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than what the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?

The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. Warren's Q&A wasn't an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.

Which is precisely why I decided early on to shine it by. What could any of them--Obama, McCain, Warren--possibly have to say that would be of any use to me at all? I do not vote for or against anybody on the basis of religion, and I concluded long ago that the whole "pro-life/pro-choice" dichotomy is a blind developed by people who are too lazy to examine nuances. (You would be just as well off to decide you will support only those candidates whose middle names begin with a letter in the second half of the alphabet...it has just as much relevancy.) I know I will vote for Obama, I will not vote for McCain, and I'm not going to join Warren's church.

Besides, I knew the whole thing was going to be endlessly discussed over the ensuing days and weeks, so even though I watched none of the silly affair, I really feel like I was there in the audience.

That's not a good thing, by the way. When I first heard of the Saddleback Civil Forum, I felt uneasy. I believe strongly in the separation of church and state, and I believe it's in the best interest of both church and state to rigorously maintain that division. And as someone who strives to be something like a Christian, I deeply resent evangelicals' usurping of the term to mean people who think/believe/speak like we do.

So this resonates:

What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What's a proper relationship with Jesus? What's next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate would dare decline on the basis of mere principle?

Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?

What, indeed, does it mean? Well, it means that we are so narrow and so intellectually slothful that we seek only the right buzzwords--the shibboleth--on which to base our conclusions. "Candidate X failed to acknowledge Jesus as his 'personal savior,' so that means he's not a real Christian."

It's an odd thing about Christianity: I find that the people who go around thumping themselves on the chest and bragging about what fantabulous "Christians" they are are the people who need to be kept an eye on at all times.

And of course such "Christians" invariably confuse religion and spirituality, spirituality and faith, and faith and morality. They insist that "faith" is that which drives an individual's actions, when in fact it's morality that guides us, with or without "faith." Writes Parker,

Warren tried to defuse criticism about staging the interviews in his church by saying that though "we" believe in the separation of church and state, "we" don't believe in the separation of faith and politics. Faith, he said, "is just a worldview, and everybody has some kind of worldview. It's important to know what they are."

In short, it's important to know if they speak "our" code. To "prove" they're "Christian enough" for "us."

It's helpful, perhaps, to remember at this juncture that Article VI of the Constitution of the United States says "...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." [Found at http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Article6]

Parker concludes:

For the moment, let's set aside our curiosity about what Jesus might do in a given circumstance and wonder what our Founding Fathers would have done at Saddleback Church. What would have happened to Thomas Jefferson if he had responded as he wrote in 1781:

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Would the crowd at Saddleback have applauded and nodded through that one? Doubtful.

By today's new standard of pulpits in the public square, Jefferson -- the great advocate for religious freedom in America -- would have lost.

As have we all, thanks to Pastor Rick and his followers.

Kuttner: Amazon, Barnes & Noble Battle Over My Obama Book

Robert Kuttner in The Huffington Post in re his book Obama's Challenge:

Margo [Baldwin, president of Kuttner's publisher, Chelsea Green Publishers] negotiated a highly creative deal with Amazon, to offer readers the benefits of its new print-on-demand service. You order it, they print, and you get it two days from the time of your order. An Amazon discount coupon will also be in the packets of DNC delegates, alternates, and media. In the meantime, Chelsea Green is rushing out its regular print edition, which will be in bookstores after Labor Day. Or maybe it won't.

When the Amazon agreement was announced, Amazon's retail competitors pushed back big time. Amazon is of course the 800 pound gorilla of bookselling. What was an independent publisher doing in bed with it?

Barnes and Noble canceled its initial order and has decided not to stock the book in any of its stores, making it available only on B&N.com and by special order. Only one independent bookseller did likewise. In an open letter to the bookseller community, Margo appealed for perspective, and argued that the Amazon launch strategy was designed to build interest in the book initially, creating the demand that would result in strong sales in all retail outlets. With an expanded pie, there would be more book sales for everyone. And the market would hardly be exhausted in two weeks.

He concludes:

All innovators take risks. For a small publishing house that depends on the goodwill of booksellers, this was a huge one. The book could have a shelf life of just eight weeks. If Obama loses, this book will be a historic curiosity, and we will have a bonfire of unsold books. If he wins, maybe it will make a difference.
read more | digg story

Hardly makes one feel too much enthusiasm for spending money at Barnes and Noble, though, does it?

The New Evangelical Politics

"The Christian agenda is shifting, and that's good news for Barack Obama."

So, at least, reads the deck on "The New Evangelical Politics" by E. J. Dionne Jr. in today's Washington Post.

Dionne makes a compelling argument, especially for someone (like me) who would like to believe it. He writes:

The notion that Christianity in general and evangelicalism in particular are by nature right-wing creeds has always been wrong. How can a faith built around a commitment to the poor and the vulnerable be seen as leading ineluctably to conservative political conclusions?

And when political commentators talk about "evangelicals," they are almost always talking about white evangelicals, forgetting that millions of African Americans are devout evangelical Christians and are hardly part of the conservative base. The civil rights movement was one of the greatest faith-based mobilizations in American history, even as it also drew on the energies of thousands of secular liberals who walked hand in hand with believers.

He continues:

In 2004, Warren [Rick Warren, pastor of the evangelical Saddleback Church, which last weekend hosted the forum in which the presidential candidates discussed their religious and moral points of view] took the view that Christians should vote on a short list of "nonnegotiable" issues, including abortion. But in 2006, on Fox News, of all places, Warren declared: "Jesus's agenda is far bigger than just one or two issues. . . . We have to care about poverty, we have to care about disease, we have to care about illiteracy, we have to care about corruption in government, sex trafficking." That is the new politics of evangelical Christianity.

None of this means that white evangelicals will convert en masse to the Democratic Party. McCain, who carefully touched every hot button on the control panel of religious conservatism, will certainly get a substantial majority of their votes. The question is whether Obama can cut the Republican margin among white evangelicals by, say, five or 10 points.

"If Obama ever establishes any kind of trust [with evangelicals], there will be a noticeable shift," the Rev. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church outside of Orlando and a leading evangelical moderate, said in an interview. "It will not be huge, but it will be significant."

Well, that would certainly be nice. And it is indeed refreshing to find that there might after all be some people out there who are waking up to the idea that it isn't all about The One Issue (it would be especially refreshing if more people in my own church would wake up to that important fact, but one learns after awhile to not expect miracles where religion is concerned).

But I'm a little troubled by Dionne's conclusion, in light of some current events. He writes:

For a Democratic nominee four years ago, a meeting at Warren's church would have been an away game -- if it had taken place at all. This time around, Pastor Rick made sure that in a Christian house of worship, there would be no home-court advantage. [read more | digg story]

Really? As several commentators have written--I posted a link to Linda Bergthold's article, "Leaks in McCain's Cone of Silence?," in The Huffington Post a couple of days ago--there's reason to wonder if "Pastor Rick" did indeed make sure there was "no home-court advantage." Indeed, increasingly it seems to me that, despite his protests to the contrary--protests which seem to be constantly changing--the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency was stacked in McCain's favor. Which doesn't sound like "the Christian agenda" is "shifting" at all.

At least, not in the right direction.

Linda Bergthold: Leaks in McCain's Cone of Silence?

Warren has now given 2 or 3 different versions of which questions he told the candidates about prior to the event. First he said he told them about the orphan question and the abortion question. Then he said he told them about the "wise advisers" question and the "moral failure" question. That's four questions so far. Are there more?

read more | digg story

The Corporate Free Ride

The seeming ease with which corporations escape the taxman compounds a fundamental unfairness in the American economy.

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Mixing Politics and Wal-Mart

The Federal Election Commission should swiftly and aggressively investigate the allegations that Wal-Mart violated election rules.Facing the prospect that union-friendly Democrats could win both the White House and Congress, the retail giant is now turning its attention to this year’s election.

read more | digg story

What's News With You?

I subscribe to several services that purport to bring me breaking news. But what, one wonders, constitutes "news"? What is "breaking"? The following came this morning from France24:



Interestingly, CNN, ABCNews, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today--none of them--provided me any news, breaking or otherwise, about this burgeoning war on the other side of the world. Not on their radar, evidently. Olympic competition, sure--and I would not argue that that is not news. Ditto for the death of Isaac Hayes. All newsworthy, all even "breaking"-news worthy. But I'm almost certain there's a big world out there, and lots of stuff going on in it, and it's astonishing how US news outlets--even the big, well-regarded ones--tend to overlook it. Yes, you may certainly visit those websites and find coverage of events in Georgia. But it doesn't seem to be considered "breaking" news, and thus it isn't going to be pushed to your inbox. You have to go get it.

(Yes, you can subscribe to their newsfeeds. Still not the same as having them treat a non-US story as important enough to push its distribution to those of us who have expressed an interest in receiving same. There is a difference between having it come to me and my having to go get it, even if the latter means checking my RSS feeds.)

Other breaking news that France24 alerted me to when the others didn't:

PLANE DROPS BOMBS ON TBILISI SUBURB
BOMB ATTACK ON POLICE STATION EAST OF ALGIERS
GEORGIA ANNOUNCES WITHDRAWAL FROM SOUTH OSSETIA
Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish dies at 67

Plus two or three French Olympic victories. And that's just today. Yesterday I got

GEORGIA DECLARES 'STATE OF WAR'
and
RUSSIAN TANKS CONTROL PARTS OF SOUTH OSSETIAN CAPITAL

as well as a "what's new" capsule.

When I was in college, back during an age that I like to call the 1970s, a political science professor and friend exhorted us to not rely on only one or two sources of news...and keep in mind, this was at a time when there were, effectively, three television networks (public television could be pretty spotty) and, in most locations, a single daily newspaper. No internet. So to ferret out stories that were not being covered by CBS, NBC, ABC, and the Omaha World-Herald, one had to, well, ferret out stories. Being on a university campus, that wasn't too tough: you hied on over to the library and read the Times, the Post, the Wall Street Journal, maybe had a glance at the Times of London, perused a couple of news magazines, pawed through the Economist, and came away amazed at all the goings-on in the world that you did not know about!

It was good advice then, and it's good advice now.

For instance, CNN, ABCNews, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today have failed to deliver me breaking news about events in Georgia and Algiers, or the death of Palestine's leading poet. However, to be fair, they have yet to tell me about Isaac Hayes. Or Bernie Mac.

John McCain, Paris Hilton, and the Politics of Nothing

Arianna Huffington in the Huffington Post, August 6:

With just ninety days left in the election it's come down to this: our energy policy and a good deal of this presidential campaign are being discussed through the lens of Paris Hilton. What a big goof it all is! If you just ignore all the soldiers and civilians dying in the Mideast, and all the millions losing their homes and their jobs at home, you could really see the lighter side of it all.

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The White House's Weak Denials

Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post, Wednesday, August 6:

The allegation in Ron Suskind's new book that the White House ordered the CIA to forge evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda is so incredibly grave that it demands a serious response from the government. If what Suskind writes is true -- or even partially true -- someone at the highest levels of the White House engaged in a criminal conspiracy to deceive the American public. (See yesterday's column for all the details.)

But so far, we've gotten mostly hyperbole, innuendo and narrowly constructed denials.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto's response was a classic non-denial denial: "The notion that the White House directed anyone to forge a letter from [former Iraqi intelligence chief Tahir Jalil] Habbush to Saddam Hussein is absurd," he said. He accused Suskind, a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter and well-respected chronicler of Bush administration secrets, of engaging in "gutter journalism."

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"Classic" indeed: The current administration, and too much of the GOP establishment, moves immediately to smear anyone who dares so much as question them, let alone point out that they are unclothed. One wonders how long before "real" Republicans, "genuine" Republicans--those of a more moderate bent, conservative but not ideological, engaged but not enraged and motivated by impulses other than sheer hatred for "the other" (and they exist: I know a few of them...although I suppose it's possible that they are the last of their kind)--wake up and realize how Bush, Cheney, McCain, et al., have all but destroyed their own party, and to what end?

Or is it already too late--for them and for the rest of us, too?

Shouldn't the Headline Make Me WANT to Read the Story?

Things are pretty bad when the Humane Society has to give you dining tips...

It's All Very Zenlike, No?

I happened to note this ad at the bottom of a page I have on one of the freebie web-hosting services. It sort of makes sense...

You...You Mean They LIED?!

This at Think Progress, posted by Satyam on Aug 5:

Suskind: White House Ordered Forged, Backdated Letter After Invasion To Concoct Saddam-9/11 Link

A new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind claims that, after the Iraq war began, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a “backdated, handwritten letter” from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to tie Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Here’s what Suskind reports:

– Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, told U.S. and British officials there was no WMD in Iraq, “intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

– In the fall of 2003, the White House ordered CIA Director George Tenet to forge a “fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq” and that Iraq bought yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaeda.

– The letter was commissioned “from the highest reaches of the White House.” “It would have to come from the very top,” Suskind told NPR today.

Also this:

Suskind also said he spoke with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

And in rebuttal, the usual:

White House press spokesman Tony Fratto attacked Suskind today, stating that he “makes a living from gutter journalism” and calling the book one of Suskind’s “bizarre conspiracy theories.”

Well, I hate to say it, but this begins to shake my faith in the Bush Administration a little...

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File Under "Unintended Consequences"

From the New York Times:

August 6, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor
Dark Meat

By SHMUEL HERZFELD

Washington

ACCORDING to the Jewish calendar we are now in the month of Av, a period of increasingly intense mourning that culminates with a total fast on the Ninth of Av, which this year coincides with Sunday, Aug. 10.

One of the customary practices in these nine days is the avoidance of meat: it’s the way we commemorate the destruction of the Temple, where daily animal sacrifices were once brought.

Refraining from food is symbolic, of course. The idea is not just to avoid meat but to limit ourselves so that we can better focus on the spiritual.

Unfortunately, this year kosher meat has become a different type of symbol, one not of mourning and spiritual devotion but of ridicule, embarrassment and hypocrisy. In May in Postville, Iowa, immigration officials raided Agriprocessors Inc., the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the country.

What began as an immigration sting, however, quickly took on larger dimensions. News reports and government documents have described abusive practices at Agriprocessors against workers, including minors. Children as young as 13 were said to be wielding knives on the killing floor; some teenagers were working 17-hour shifts, six days a week.

This poses a grave problem and calls into question whether the food processed in the plant qualifies as kosher.

You see, there is precedent for declaring something nonkosher on the basis of how employees are treated. Yisroel Salanter, the great 19th-century rabbi, is famously believed to have refused to certify a matzo factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly. In addition to the hypocrisy of calling something kosher when it is being sold and produced in an unethical manner, we have to take into account disturbing information about the plant that has come to light.

The affidavit filed in the United States District Court of Northern Iowa, for instance, alleges that an employee was physically abused by a rabbi on the floor of the plant. If true, this calls into question the reliability and judgment of the rabbi in charge of making sure the food was kosher.

What’s more, two workers who oversaw the poultry and beef division were recently arrested for helping illegal immigrants falsify documents. If they were willing to break national immigration laws, one could reasonably ask whether they would be likely to show the same lack of concern for Jewish dietary laws.

Unfortunately, the responses of the leading Orthodox organizations, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, have, in my opinion, fallen far short of what is needed to be done and have done little to diminish the extent of the desecration of God’s name. I am a member of both groups, but I am dissatisfied with their stance, which asks us to sit back patiently and wait for the results of a federal investigation. On some level, this might be prudent, but on another it is unacceptable.

What is needed is for the Orthodox Union to appoint an independent commission whose members have not in the past been paid by either the Orthodox Union or Agriprocessors. Such a commission would select a team of rabbinic experts to spend an extended period of time at the plant and then make suggestions and recommendations. This independent team would make sure the plant upholds basic standards of kashrut and worker and animal treatment — and that it is in full compliance with the laws of the United States.

Hebrew National used to run a commercial that said: “We answer to a Higher Authority.” Well, we do. We need to express shame and embarrassment about the reports coming out of Iowa, and we need to actively work to change these matters. Then we should ask ourselves if our behavior and our values need improvement. Only if we truly think about these issues will we truly be keeping kosher.

Shmuel Herzfeld, rabbi of Ohev Sholom-The National Synagogue, is a member of the Rabbinical Council of America.

---

Or we could file this under, "Who Watches the Watchers?"

What Other Kind Is There?

This from a "bulletin" today on Ecunet, aka FaithGroups. Emphasis added:

Late yesterday afternoon some Ecunet members may have experienced a service outage of up to an hour while a Spam filter was being updated but then inadvertently caused a system malfunction. The problem has since been fixed and you should now experience a greater degree of Spam protection as a result.

Despite Media Narrative, Obama Leads By Over 100 electoral votes

Mark Nickolas in The Huffington Post:

I realize that it cuts against the media narrative right now to focus on anything that doesn't suggest a dead-heat, but it's quite instructive to see how the independent groups (and even right-leaning ones) currently see the state of the race through the only prism that matters -- the Electoral College:


read more


Nikolas has this insight as well:

• In Michigan, McCain had not led in any poll since May;
• In Pennsylvania, McCain has not led in any poll April, and a Republican poll released last week showed McCain trailing by 9, in line with the current Pollster.com average;
• In New Hampshire, McCain has not led in any poll since April;
• In Minnesota, while one recent poll showed McCain within the margin of error, no other poll in the past month (including one poll taken more recently) has him within 12 points.

Of course, it could be that Nikolas is all wet, too. Time, as is its habit, will tell.

McCain security ousts reporter | tallahassee.com

This from Tallahassee.com:

Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Stephen Price on Friday was singled out and asked to leave a media area at the Panama City rally of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.

Price was among at least three other reporters, and the only black reporter, surrounding McCain's campaign bus — Gov. Charlie Crist and his fiancee, Carole Rome, were already aboard — when a member of the Arizona senator's security detail asked the reporter to identify himself. Price had shown his media credentials to enter the area.

Price showed his employee identification as well as his credentials for the Friday event.

"I explained I was with the state press, but the Secret Service man said that didn't matter and that I would have to go," Price said.

When another reporter asked why Price was being removed, she too was led out of the area.

These are dangerous times, comrades.

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G.O.P. Drops in Voting Rolls in Many States

From today's New York Times:

Voting experts say the registration numbers may signal the beginning of a shift that could affect local, state and national politics over several election cycles.

To which I add: Registration is one thing, turnout something else entirely.

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Why Does this Keep Happening to Me??

Well, it's happened again. I knew it was just a matter of time. But still...

Once again a well-meaning but oh-so-gullible friend has forwarded to me (and about 100,000 other people, giving me about six inches' worth of addresses to scroll past before I get to the meat of the message...which contains not only the hideous and distracting " > " in front of every line but also " > " in front of each line as well, making it especially fun to read) a completely sincere "warning" about something that I know darn well is a hoax.

In this case, it's the classic old VERY IMPORTANT - BIG VIRUS COMING - Disquised as a Hallmark Card. I assume a "disquise" must be a portmanteau, perhaps for "disquieting disguise." Not sure. More research needed.

Since I have been "warned" about this BIG VIRUS more than once over the years I no longer need to go to the Urban Legends Reference Pages to look it up. If you want to, you can do so here.

At this point you're wondering what the problem is. After all, I know it's a hoax; I can simply ignore it, no? Well, sure, I could. Except I always feel, in these instances, a responsibility to allay people's fears. The BIG VIRUS COMING is supposed to burn "the whole hard disc C of your computer" if you open the "POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK" attachment that purports to accompany it. (The annoying thing, which the Urban Legends Reference Pages explains, is that there really is a "postcard" virus out there, but it isn't new, and it won't burn holes in anything. But the BIG VIRUS COMING warning is a hoax about something that is real, though less scary than the hoax portrays.) So I have a mental picture of these other 99,000 people to whom my friend forwarded the warning--which of course includes the exhortation to further forward it to everybody they know--living in constant fear of receiving the dreaded POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK that will burn a hole through their C drive and on down to the earth's core.

And so it is more than likely that I will compose a reply that tries very hard to avoid making my friend feel foolish while at the same time setting her straight and encouraging her to be less gullible in the future. (It's the "gullible" and "not feeling foolish" tension that makes such replies tricky.)

Not that it will do much good, probably. Some time back, an acquaintance was in the habit of forwarding every single hoax or gag that went around--viruses, dying kids, exploding gasoline pumps, unlocking your car with your cell phone, you name it. And every time I would kindly explain that this was something else to add to the don't-worry list, or something else that didn't work, or something else that wouldn't happen. And she would thank me...and, two days later, send out the next hoax or e-mail urban legend. One day, however, I noticed that it had been some time since I had heard from her. I would have liked to think I had wised her up, but I checked with a mutual acquaintance and got the information I knew I would.

She had simply dropped me from her mailing list.

McCain's Problem Isn't His Tactics. It's GOP Ideas.

By Greg Anrig, in yesterday's Washington Post.

Anrig writes:

But now, seemingly all of a sudden, conservatives are the ones who are tongue-tied, as demonstrated by Sen. John McCain's limping, message-free presidential campaign. McCain's ongoing difficulties in exciting voters aren't just a tactical problem; his woes stem largely from his long-standing adherence to a set of ideas that simply haven't worked in practice. The belief system and finely crafted policy pitches that enabled the right to dominate the war of ideas for the past 30 years have produced a relentless succession of governing failures, from Iraq to Katrina to the economy to the environment.

Also:

As I listen to leading voices and thinkers on the right pondering the condition of their ideology, it is increasingly clear to me that they face a fundamental dilemma -- one that cannot be resolved anytime soon and that might well leave the conservative movement out to pasture for as long as we progressives have been powerlessly chewing grass. That choice is whether to stick with rhetoric and policies wedded to free markets, limited government and bellicose unilateralism, or to endorse a more robust role for the public sector at home while relying more on diplomacy and international institutions abroad. Either way, conservative Republicans seem destined to have a much harder time winning elections for the foreseeable future. Just ask McCain how much fun he's having.

Me, I think it too early to be ordering the funeral spray. People like to be told what they like to hear--part of the reason I like Anrig's essay!--and are very good at filtering out inconveniences like "doesn't work." As Anrig himself points out. And once people have invested themselves emotionally in an idea, the abandonment of that idea--or ideology--becomes near-unthinkable.

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So Now They Have to Ignore a District Court, Instead

From today's New York Times:

Judge Rules Bush Advisers Can’t Ignore Subpoenas
By DAVID STOUT

Published: August 1, 2008


WASHINGTON — President Bush’s top advisers cannot ignore subpoenas issued by Congress, a federal judge ruled on Thursday in a case that involves the firings of several United States attorneys but has much wider constitutional implications for all three branches of government.


“The executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled Congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law,” the judge, John D. Bates, ruled in United States District Court here.

Read all about it here. But understand it ain't over, by a long shot.

Apostrophe Catastrophe

It's one thing when ordinary citizens can't bring themselves to put an s on the end of a word without sticking an apostrophe in front of it. (I wish I had a firecracker to put in every mailbox in town that has Anderson's on it. But it's another when "professional" products are so afflicted, and when the "professionals" who produced them can't manage to check a style and usage guide...or ask a clever junior-high student.

Here's a screenshot from Zap2It.com, which I checked to see when Doctor Who is on tonight (7:30, in case you're interested):

For the record: The lackluster Flash Gordon reincarnation, which was on SciFi last season but now has moved to Ion, is on at 7/6 C on Fridays. Not Friday's. Fridays. I know it's difficult, Ion marketing/advertising people, but with practice you too can learn to put the letter s at the end of a word without an apostrophe.

I put it to my students thusly: The apostrophe-s indicates either possession or contraction:

It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood = It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood = Correct!

The ball belongs to Spot = It is Spot's ball = Correct!

Members of the Nelson family are coming for dinner = The Nelson's are coming for dinner = Incorrect!

The lackluster Flash Gordon is on every Friday at 7 = The lackluster Flash Gordon is on Friday's at 7:00 = Incorrect! (Except for the lackluster part.)

So as I told the class, if you can't rephrase the sentence to indicate a contraction or possessive (and still have the sentence make sense!), then you need to ditch the apostrophe.

We will save for another day the matter of forming possessives when the word ends in s already!

---

Addendum A: I do wonder, however, about the mailbox mentioned above. It is, I suppose, possible that the labelers of said box intended to indicate that it belongs to Anderson, in which case Anderson's would be correct. But I rather suspect it's meant to indicate that the box receives mail for members of the Anderson household, in which case Andersons is what you need. Of course, you can save time, confusion, and a sticky metal letter if you go with Anderson and hope the letter carrier can figure it out from there.

Addendum B: Some years ago I worked for a company called The Webb Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. It no longer exists. The company, I mean. Anyhow, some time after I left there I communicated to a former co-worker that I would be meeting a friend of his who also had worked at Webb but had left shortly before I joined. My friend told me not to be alarmed when the other fellow referred to the place as Webbs, as my friend rendered it in his letter to me. And sure enough, when I introduced myself to the other fellow, mentioning our mutual friend, he in turn introduced me to his wife and said that I too had worked at Webbs...except that, as I later expressed to my friend, I think it was in fact more properly rendered Webb's. I have often noticed a local tendency to incorrectly render various business names as
possessives. One of the most common around here is the John Morrell meatpacking plant, which is universally referred to ('round here) as Morrell's...even though none of their signage or labeling has ever, to my knowledge, said anything except John Morrell or Morrell. I don't know why this should be, unless it goes back to a time when many if not businesses carried the proprietor's name: Bob's Grocery, Foley's Garage, etc. (Sure, names like that are still around, but my guess is there are fewer than in bygone times.)

McCain's Ugly Campaign

Eugene Robinson in this morning's Washington Post ("So Much for St. John") got me thinking, which is about par for the course with him:

It's awfully early for John McCain to be running such a desperate, ugly campaign against Barack Obama. But I guess it's useful for Democrats to get a reminder that the Republican Party plays presidential politics by the same moral code that guided the bad-boy Oakland Raiders in their heyday:"Just win, baby."

The latest bit of snarling, mean-spirited nonsense to come out of the McCain camp was the accusation, leveled by campaign manager Rick Davis, that Obama had "played the race card." He did so, apparently, by being black.

Not that anyone cares, but I'm extremely disappointed in John McCain. I was one of those naive souls who, eight years ago, thought he would be okay on Pennsylvania Avenue should he arrive there...which at the time seemed a disctinct possibility. He struck me than as someone who, as my father would have said, had his head on straight. He was, after all, a moderate. A maverick. A straight-talker. Even an unrepentant leftist like me found him the least-worrisome of the field of GOP contenders that summer.

(The GOP, of course, went and nominated the most worrisome of the contenders, but we all know that story.)

I'll be the first to admit I'm naive...but I'm not completely naive. I don't think that Straight-Talk McCain was a complete
fabrication. If so, he was pretty damn good at it. But the McCain we see today, Mud-Sling McCain, quick to disparage, quick to cast aspersions, quick to imply, quick to lie, seems so completely formed that I have to wonder about the man's personality. I mean, he didn't seem phony eight years ago when he was Straight-Talk McCain, and he doesn't seem phony now that he's Mud-Sling McCain.

So which one is real and which one the mask?

Or are they both real?

Or are they both masks?

Or is it simply that, having missed the brass ring the last time around, McCain this time decided to follow that time-honored tradition of doing anything--any...damn...thing--in order to win?

We wouldn't have dirty politics if it never worked.

As Robinson rightly points out:

Negative campaigning is not a pretty thing, and it should be beneath John McCain to stoop so low. But Democrats would be foolish to forget that sometimes it works.

Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Paul Krugman has this to offer:

Most criticism of John McCain’s decision to follow the Bush administration’s lead and embrace offshore
drilling as the answer to high gas prices has focused on the accusation that it’s junk economics — which it is.



A McCain campaign ad says that gas prices are high right now because “some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.” That’s just plain dishonest: the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration
says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn’t lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak the extra production would have an “insignificant” impact on oil prices.

What’s even more important than Mr. McCain’s bad economics, however, is what his reversal on this
issue — he was against offshore drilling before he was for it — says about his priorities.


Back when he was cultivating a maverick image, Mr. McCain portrayed himself as more environmentally aware than the rest of his party. He even co-sponsored a bill calling for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions (although his remarks on several recent occasions suggest that he doesn’t understand
his own proposal). But the lure of a bit of political gain, it turns out, was all it took to transform him back into a standard drill-and-burn Republican.


And the planet can’t afford that kind of cynicism.

Whichever McCain is the real one--if either of them is, or if there even is a real McCain--the one who currently is running for president is exactly the one we don't need. And when I say "we," I don't mean just the United States.

Bet They Now Wish They Had Given it a Different Name!

This from BusinessWeek's Tech Beat:

Cuil: Another Google Challenger Launches--to a Cool Reception


Posted by: Rob Hof on July 28

Just weeks after the last highly touted Google challenger, Powerset, was snapped up by Microsoft, a new one is launching Sunday night. Cuil (pronounced “cool” and previously sporting an additional “l”), boasts a Web index three times the assumed size of Google’s (though I’m not aware of Google admitting to a particular index size lately), a management team with an impressive pedigree (several people from Google), a different set of algorithms that in part analyze the content of pages, and a radically different presentation of search results.

Read the whole article here.

Yet Another Reason to Avoid Wal-Mart. As if I Needed Another Reason...

This from this morning's Wall Street Journal Page One:

Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win

By ANN ZIMMERMAN and KRIS MAHER

August 1, 2008; Page A1

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

Yes, that's right: If the scary no-good godless bleeding-heart Democrats succeed in reclaiming the White House and/or Capitol Hill, they'll make it easier for workers to protect themselves from predators like Wal-Mart. The scurvy scoundrels!

I especially love this paragraph:

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized. (Emphasis added)

That's right, kiddo--if you join an organization that has the potential to protect you from me, that would be very, very bad. Um, for you, I mean. Yeah--bad for you. Me, I don't care. I'm just looking out for you. Like always. Heh-heh-heh.

It's times like this I wish I shopped at Wal-Mart so I could boycott them.

Reading Materials

I composed this as e-mail to my friend Jerry, with the warning that he should expect it to show up here at some point.

He replied, "Blog, hell, you should submit the piece to the National Review."

Nevertheless, here it is. If you're with the National Review, we can discuss reprint rights.

---

Now, this is interesting: "O'Reilly, Savage, Hannity on accused church shooter's reading list" (see below), the gist of which is that the guy who shot up a UUC children's program in Tennessee had in his personal library such classics as "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by talk show host Sean Hannity, and The O'Reilly Factor, by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly."

Adkisson targeted the church, Still [Bad editing on the part of TRS: "Still" is a Knoxville cop who is never ID'd in the story] wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

[The complete article is here]

Now, I put it to you this way: From time to time, you may have noticed, our right-wingnut friends will get all frothy on the subject of pornography (which they know when they see it). Despite any number of studies which might cause thinking people to question the existence of any causal link between the consumption of pornography and the commission of crimes, sexual or otherwise (and indeed I've read of studies that seem to indicate such misdeeds occur in greater frequency at times and in places where pornography has been tightly censored), our right-wingnut chums know--with that deep and unshakable and frighteningly single-mindedness which only they can master--that pornography will compel its consumer to act out that which he sees on the page or the screen.

After all, they will and have argued, there is agreement that people are positively influenced by "good" material like the Bible and other inspirational or motivational works. It is, then, only logical that they would be negatively influenced by "bad" material.

(I know plenty of people who have vast libraries of "Christian" books, CDs, DVDs, and bumper-stickers and who are, in practice, shits, which tends to belie the idea that reading/viewing/listening = behavior, but let's leave that for another time.)

So if we accept the "logic" expressed by the right-wingnuts who are on the prowl for every opportunity to scuttle the First Amendment, then we have to conclude that the works of Savage, Hannity, O'Reilly, et al., must be suppressed!

They are, after all, slanderous hatemongering tracts, which have, demonstrably, incited violence.

This sort of mentality--"they" are all bad; "they" are responsible for everything that has gone wrong; "they" are ruining "our" country; it's "us" against "them"--sounds dangerously familiar, does it not? Just replace the word liberals with the word Jews.

We would not, as a society, tolerate the mass production of books, television programs, radio broadcasts, and websites that suggest that Jews are responsible for everything bad in the world, Judaism is a mental disorder, Jews are godless sub-humans who need to be wiped out by any means. (Such things exist in the shadows, of course, but not on the bestseller lists.) Why would we not so tolerate? Because of the fear that such incendiary hatemongering might lead the mentally imbalanced to conclude that they must "do something"--burn something, blow something up, kill someone--in order to "solve" the "problem."

Well, golly...look what's happened in Tennessee.

The phrase "accessories before the fact" keeps percolating to mind...

Look for this to show up on the blog sooner or later...