Feeling like I'm getting sick

According to this article in New Scientist, a swine flu epidemic has been predictable for some time:

We could have seen this coming, though. This type of virus emerged in the US in 1998 and has since become endemic on hog farms across North America. Equipped with a suite of pig, bird and human genes, it was also evolving rapidly....

Over decades, H1N1 evolved in pigs into a mild, purely swine flu, and became genetically fairly stable. In 1976, there was an outbreak of swine H1N1 in people at a military camp in New Jersey, with one death. The virus did not spread efficiently, though, and soon fizzled out.

But in 1998, says Richard Webby of St Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, swine H1N1 hybridised with human and bird viruses, resulting in "triple reassortants" that surfaced in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas....

It turns out that one in five pig farmers has antibodies to swine flu. That is, they've already been infected in the past.

And the CDC already warned last year that H1N1 swine flu represented a pandemic threat. Pigs aren't getting it because they're being vaccinated, but they can still spread it.

Another happy result of breeding animals for food.

Or at least an argument for Hebrew National kosher franks, for those of you inclined to eat meat anyway. (Note that I'm not endorsing chicken, turkey or beef, either.  And we can save the discussion about the myriad problems with raising "kosher" meat - see AgriProcessors - for another time.) 

Which brings up the request by Israeli deputy health minister Yakov Litzman that swine flu be called "Mexican flu" because references to pigs are not kosher or halal, so "swine flu" is accordingly offensive to Jews and Muslims. On the other hand, offending Mexicans? Eh, not so much of a concern for Mr. Litzman.

Eso es todo amigos.

(I'm not aware of a large segment of Jews that were offended that Mel Blanc, voice of Porky Pig, gave a voice to a swine, or had the words of a pig inscribed on his tombstone. But, in the world of Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Medved, and others who claim to speak for us, you never know. Moreover, according to records that I could locate, Blanc didn't die from Swine Flu, despite a lifetime working with - or pretending to be - farm animals.) 

Chillin' at the TV

Sooner or later I'm going to pull the trigger on this (knowing me, later). I just cannot rationalize our cable bill, given the limited amount of time we spend watching TV.

Here are some tips on how to use the MacMini as the center of a home entertainment system.

Hulu, an antenna, a flat screen TV and a MacMini or AppleTV (which way to go?!). Use the Mac as a fancy TiVO.

The only issue left is live sports...

Luck of the draw

So, apparently Arlen Specter is now a Democrat. 

The guy has never been all that much of a radical conservative, but he's always been willing, when push comes to shove, to carry their water.  Just ask Anita Hill.  He's made a career out of swinging wildly between voting his conscience and placating the extremists in his party.

So let's be clear on this - the guy is not moving to the left with this switch. It's just that his (former) party has moved so far to the perverse "right" that (a) he could not have survived the Republican primary (which he effectively admitted), where the increasingly blue Pennsylvania has seen its moderate Republicans re-register as Obama Democrats, stripping Specter of his GOP base, and (b) he couldn't stand to associate with their increasingly radicalized views.  (What's remarkable to me - although it probably shouldn't be given his record as a pro-military action hawk - is that he blames his irreconcilable rift with the GOP on economic policy - which is GOP posturing and hypocrisy, although with a nasty edge that is bringing out some truly vile elements in America - rather than on their heartfelt, gross and sadistic endorsement of torture.)

Case in point: Rush Limbaugh is happy "to be weeding out people who aren't really Republicans." And this after Specter, before seeing the Republican primary polls that told him he had no choice but defect, debased himself earlier this month and said he liked Rush. Some gratitude!

How soon before there are no Northeastern Republicans remaining in Congress?  And how many Jewish Republicans are left holding national office? Eric Cantor is a lonely, lonely man - not that he doesn't deserve it. (Contra: Joe Lieberman has welcomed Specter into the Democratic party. Hmmm.)

Norm, it's time to hang it up on the election challenge, brother, and get back to "help[ing] the RJC as it plans for the future and looks at ways to continue its historic record of growth and success." Clown school is getting very lonely, and the tent is getting smaller.

UPDATE: Just caught Olbermann, and Chris Matthews was on, showing how he would have campaigned against Specter had Matthews decided to run for the Senate as a Democrat, and Specter had somehow remained a Republican and won the GOP nomination.  In short, Specter is without principle, blows with the wind, and will say and do anything to remain in power. Hard to argue the point.  Thirty years in the Senate has not made Matthews respect Arlen Specter, has it?

Carry the Water

Both Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, and Andrew Sullivan, express their frustration with a media that confuses the notion of "balance" - the idea that "both sides" of an issue should be presented equally - with fairness - the idea of honestly reporting facts. In the case of Sullivan, of course, the issue is torture:

The fact that the editors of the New York Times cannot reflect this core truth in its use of plain English is a scandal of journalistic cowardice, evasion and willful ignorance. It is entirely a function not of seeking the truth but of placating those in power and maintaining a fictitious illusion of "balance". The idea that the Bush administration's insistence for the first time in human history that waterboarding is legal and not torture - when it has itself used the torture technique - is to be weighed equally against the entire body of legal, historical and cultural evidence in deciding what to call torture is preposterous.

In the case of Carl Pope, the issue is global warming and "clean coal":

Few of the reporters who write these stories are themselves in doubt--I know because I talk to them all the time. But many media outlets insist on treating obvious truths as doubtful if someone can be found who doubts them. If there is a dispute about the facts, however self-interested or discredited a perspective may be, both sides get equal weight. A perfect example is George Will's February 15 column in the Washington Post, which contained several false claims about global warming--one being that the U.N. World Meteorological Organization has said that "there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade." In fact, according to the WMO, the past decade is the warmest on record. Asked for a retraction, however, the Post refused, contending that the column had been sufficiently fact-checked.

Look at Holdren's other examples. Apart from the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, every state acquiring nuclear weapons (or on the verge of developing them) has done so using civilian nuclear power technology. Yet when nuclear power advocates deny a linkage with proliferation, their comments are reported seriously. Or consider the myth of "clean coal." The coal industry defines the term as "any technology to reduce pollutants associated with the burning of coal that was not in widespread use prior to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990." It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with reducing CO2 at all.

But the media continue to report about clean coal as if it had something to do with protecting the climate. Journalists who know better are trapped by the idea that their job is to report a debate--not judge it or even referee by calling obvious fouls. For the media to refuse to describe what we have learned about the way the world works is one of those childish things it's now time to put away.

The discussions are interchangeable, and in each case the media's behavior is an insult to the idea of journalism.

The "dean" of political journalism, David Broder, proves the point in his Sunday Washington Post column, ridiculously titled "Stop Scapegoating".

But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps -- or, at least, careers and reputations.

Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability -- and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance....

But having vowed to end the practices, Obama should use all the influence of his office to stop the retroactive search for scapegoats.

This is not another Sept. 11 situation, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed. We had to investigate the flawed performances and gaps in the system and make the necessary repairs to reduce the chances of a deadly repetition.

The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places -- the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department -- by the proper officials.

One administration later, a different group of individuals occupying the same offices has -- thankfully -- made the opposite decision. Do they now go back and investigate or indict their predecessors?

That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness -- and injustice.

I'd make my case against Broder, but Ta-Nehisi Coates does so much better than I can hope:

Listen, there's a case to be made against pushing forward on torture--mostly a political one, that many commenters have made in this space. (Marc gives another one here.) But Broder isn't even serious enough to do that. He is a pug confusing a journeyman with the champ.

I'm always amazed at how people accrue these reputations in high places. Watching Broder fumble with the basic, rudimentary work of intellectual honesty is like watching a Harvard physicist fumble with basic Algebra. And yet somehow, much, much worse.

Nothing to see here. Keep moving on.

Just to be clear: I am not necessarily in favor of a "truth commission" or getting bogged down in prosecutions.  But only as a result of circumstance, where we cannot really afford more distraction with so many crises bearing down on America.  But to call torture a policy difference is vulgar and stupid.  Torture is illegal, plain and simple.  It's an outrageous violation of law and moral values, not to mention a glaring act of cowardice, as is their failure to admit to it.  This is not about politics, it's about the rule of law, above which no man stands. Prosecutorial discretion may get Bush, Cheney and crew off the hook, but they do deserve to have their evil deeds exposed for all to see, to be shunned and disgraced and, if it made sense, to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. In the end, they're lucky they also destroyed the world's economy, fouled the environment, and radicalized the extreme right wing and marginalized their party, because the need to fix their mess is going to save their hides.  

There were movies

The New York Times previews Star Trek.

As I've expressed in my tribbles about the upcoming film, I'm a bit distressed by the liberties with Trek history and lore apparently taken by J. J. Abrams, as seen in the previews of the film. A bit of explanation in the article:

Perhaps more audaciously, this “Star Trek” also has a time-travel story line that essentially gives those on its creative team license to amend internal “Trek” history as they need to, and they aren’t timid about exercising it. (For example the villains of the movie are Romulans, even though the Enterprise’s first encounter with this alien race occurs in a well-known original “Trek” episode.)

And then:

“You had to love genre at your core in every possible way,” he said. “And yet you had to separate it from what ‘Trek’ had been, to make it feel fresh.”

The premise that Star Trek in its most recent small-screen incarnations - Voyager, followed by the awful Enterprise, and Nemesis on the large screen, had left Trek "in dire straits" is fair enough. But I'm not sure the assessment that Trek accordingly required a reimagining and amendment follows. 

The failure of Trek over the last decade has been a failure of imagination, a failure to adhere to the creativity that made Star Trek fascinating, and a failure to maintain consistency with its past. Trek lost not only the new audience, but its fans as well.  Enterprise abandoned any consistency with Trek lore. Angry, deceptive, manipulative Vulcans are humanity's true enemy? The Borg have a queen, who effectively destroys the collective because she has the hots for an android, even if that android is Commander Data? Zefram Cohran is a drunk? And what the heck was Nemesis about anyway? Some clone of Picard who neither looked or behaved anything like the man, apparently, and a dunce Data. And we wonder why the franchise was in disrepair? It's certainly not because it maintained its Trek character.

Abrams thinks that people aren't as interested in "space" as they once were.  That misses the point of Star Trek entirely.  Star Trek was never about space, it was about humanity and struggles and drama and pain and hope and triumph.  The greatest episodes of the original series and Next Generation both took place on firm ground - The City on the Edge of Forever, The Inner Light. Even The Wrath of Khan isn't really about space - it is really just a battle at sea, a marooning on an uncharted island, and finally a submarine battle (or whale versus boat); it's Moby Dick (and it's no secret, either - Khan spends the movie quoting Ahab).

Abrams directed Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III. In the previews, it appears that he's trying to turn Kirk into another Tom Cruise character. That's not a compliment.

I hope Star Trek is a great movie. I really do.

But I'd be a fool to hold my breath.

The Tide will Rise

At the beach this weekend with no internet, so there won't be much, if any, posting for now.

Turn around and just walk away

That's the shameful - and hypocritical - advice of people like Peggy Noonan and Jonah Goldberg with respect to facing up to the odious history of torture during the Bush Administration. As I pointed out a few days ago, the media has decided that the idea to just keep walking by is legitimate, in its never-ending quest to appear "unbiased" by presenting the ridiculous and absurd to be of equivalent (or greater) legitimacy with the factual or honest. And so we continue to question whether the torture regime of Bush was actually torture, and whether even if it is torture, whether that is nonetheless alright so long as it worked to keep us safe, and all of that without any shred of evidence that it did so (and substantial evidence that it has made us less safe). Sometimes the recognition of what is right - and what is legal - is simply black letter. There are no ifs, ands or buts. It just is, regardless of what the meaning of "is" is. It was laughable when that former President said it, but his reasons for that were at least obvious; he was an advocate for his own cause. The media has no such excuse, except for its own decay. 

Without equating human life with that of an innocent animal (but recognizing that if you choose to find offense in that, it's not worth my trouble to debate you) it's worth noting that I didn't hear too many calls to ignore Michael Vick's abuse of dogs. It's remarkable the company that the media chooses to keep, and support.

I'm not a full time blogger. I have time, some days between work and bed, and mixed in with the many other parts of my life, to get some thoughts down on what is going on in the world and in my head. It's a record for me, to recall things that happened and explain my thoughts about those issues, an opportunity to flesh out my thinking and grow. On this issue, there is so much to say, yet so little time to say it. 

As a result, on this issue, I'm going to have to leave much of the commentary to those who can go at it full time. Nobody does a better job in long-form than Glenn Greenwald. And nobody has the passion and the sheer volume on the issue than Andrew Sullivan. Go read what those two are saying, and wonder why the mainstream media is so willing to give deference to the torture apologists, and to influence the thinking of the Average American so that our President thinks it's acceptable to turn the page. The so-called liberal media needs to take a long, serious look at itself, go back to school to learn some understanding rather than just "reporting," and think about what Andrew and Glenn and others who have a conscience are saying.

Despite my periodic frustrations with him, Sullivan is getting added to my blog roll, because his voice is too important on this issue to ignore.

UPDATE:  Here's Andrew Sullivan from later today.

Nobody waits for the tide to rise

Every day is Earth Day.


(Via Pixelpasta.com)

As he dragged him around

There's an episode of Star Trek called Patterns of Force, in which Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock beam down to a planet that has been corrupted by a blatant violation of the Prime Directive, the non-interference directive.  In an attempt to create order, Federation historian John Gill blunderingly introduced the planet to Nazism. The predictable result - instead of pure efficiency, you end up with a repressive regime built on hatred for a specific group, in this case the Zeons, the brilliant but pacifistic race from the neighboring planet.

It was, in all honestly, not one of my favorite Trek episodes, in large part because I found the premise so ridiculous, only slightly less of a hammer on the head as the half-black, half-white, good-vs-evil, racism-is-bad bluntness of Let that be Your Last Battlefield. I couldn't get past the absurdist notion that any intelligent person, no less a leading historian, could believe that good could come from turning everyone into Nazis. Not to mention the disconcerting images of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in Gestapo uniforms, Jews wearing swasticas. Who could have hatched the idea that there was anything we needed to learn from this? What could be more obvious?

Yet, with the release of documents over the last week showing the specific torture techniques that were engaged in and approved by the Bush Administration, and the rationalization and justification of those actions from supposedly intelligent people, I am no longer so sure that the idea for Patterns of Force was all that fantastic after all.

Whether it's the minimization of what was done (it's not torture if they did it a hundred times and he didn't break!), or the obscene argument that it's okay because it kept us safe, or the Roveian charge that President Obama is making us less secure by releasing the horrendous torture memos, or the depravity of Jesse Helms advisor-cum-Bush head speech writer Marc Thiessen charging that the torturers are doing the Islamic victims a favor by "liberating" them to speak freely, the torture cheerleaders are seemingly everywhere - and being given voice by our bankrupt media which can no longer tell right from wrong, but only present "alternative viewpoints" as if up-is-downism is legitimate journalism. Or, as if status quo is always better than righteous dissent, power wins out and the voice of the helpless is diminished. Who stands for the oppressed, when the oppressors sit down for dinner and drinks with those who are charged with keeping them in check?  In Patterns of Force, Kirk and Spock are able to gain entry into the Fuhrer's headquarters by posing as part of the media, not as a watchdog of the people, but as an arm of the powerful, there to broadcast the glorious words of their leader so that the population would follow cheerfully behind. Does that vision of the media's future differ so much from the reality of the co-called news media today? 

It's not that we didn't know that the prior administration was engaged in these activities; it's been clear for a long time that Bush, Cheney and crew had taken America into this dark cavern. Yet now, having gambled with America's long- and hard-earned moral authority by placing our markers on a torture regime, the apologists for (and, almost indistinguishable, proponents of) torture are doubling down on their tortured torture rationales.

John Gill was wrong, now and always.

Which is something to keep in mind on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah.

And it's why my antipathy runs so deep for people like Douglas Feith, Bill Kristol and - yes, I know this will come as a shock - Joe Lieberman.  What does it mean to these people who trot their Judaism out for all to see, and use it to endorse the types of techniques and behaviors that should be anathema to us as Jews?  Those are not my Jewish values, and they are not the values we need to see from our most prominent representatives.

Yet true to form, Joe Lieberman responds to the release of the torture memos by saying:

Well, I take a minority position on this. Most people think it's definitely torture. The truth is, it has mostly a psychological impact on people. It's a terrible thing to do...

Why do I think it was a mistake to give it out? I wasn't necessary. It just helps our enemies. It doesn't really help us.

Again, the president can decide what tactics he wants the CIA or the military to use on people we capture, suspects of terrorism. But to let our enemies know what we are going to do or not do, that's not a good idea.

Joe Lieberman needs to watch more Star Trek, because it occurs to me now that the writers of that Trek episode were right. We do need constant reminders.

And so, on this Yom HaShoah: Never forget.

Lots of crackers and cheese

Men who eat lots of processed meat and dairy are less fertile, according to a Spanish study reported in the March edition of the journal Fertility and Sterility.  

Found it in the discarded refuse pile

I just came upon this amazing tin can artwork by David Wasserman.

Across the sky

Spockcation 2009.  

A toy Spock traveling around the world.

I don't know.  I really don't know.

Down the railroad track

President Obama has officially unveiled his plan for high speed rail, including a graphic of the identified high-speed rail corridors, including Tampa to my home of Orlando to Miami.

By the way, no identified corridor from Disneyland to Las Vegas.

ABCNews, meanwhile, responds by rehashing its spin, uh, article (subtitle: "Some Say President's Plan for High-Speed Rail Is Not Worth the Investment") that I highlighted a few days ago, right down to the nuclear powered bicycle.  That's what is known as "journalism."

The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times instead opt to report on the announcement, with commentary from actual experts on rail (including a skeptic), rather than political "think tanks." Obviously, they represent the liberal media with an agenda.

Of Moses too

Since it's still Passover.

The Finding of Moses, by Edwin Long (Via Wikipedia).

Walk in the sun

Yesterday's post begged for this musical interlude.  Sorry, only a link - no embedding permitted.

Here's a post-Waves embed from the CBS Early Show.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Wheels roll and the whistle will blow

OnEarth, the magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has an enthusiastic and informative article in its Spring 2009 issue regarding the development of high speed rail in the U.S. The article predates the final stimulus plan and the resulting nonsense about the right-wing branded and fictional Sin Express. It's an excellent, and valuable, read, and I've been planning to post about it for the last week or so.

AP, however, offers a more cynical view of high speed rail in the U.S. It could have offered a reasonable counterpoint to the NRDC's excessive, Bob the Builder can-do (Can we build it? Yes we can!) optimism. That is, it could have if only it weren't for the AP's decision to mimic Bobby Jindal and the FOX News imbalance, ridiculously leading the story with a reference to - catch your breath - Tomorrowland! (Look here, kids, a pretend train!) The point not being sufficiently obvious, AP then proceeds to give its examples of proposed bullet train lines in the U.S. You know, the trains to both Disney World and Disneyland (and those godless freaks in San Francisco and - since high-speed rail only really works in crazy places like Europe - France, to boot!). The AP then arrives at the station a day late and a Euro short to conclude that the stimulus dollars will go toward simple upgrade and maintenance of existing, slow-poke track.

That's not quite good enough for ABC, which has to do AP one better - or worse.

It's a huge investment that Daniel Mitchell, senior fellow at the libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute, called "just ludicrous," especially given the tanking economy.

This is McCainomics here, also known as neo-Hooeverism, the idea that in a poor economy suffering from low spending, the solution is to stop spending. That's ludicrous. Let's drop everything and refresh ourselves on the meaning and purpose of stimulus, my friends. Yet ABC chugs on.

"If California voters want to throw money down a rat hole for high-speed rail, then let them," Mitchell said. "At least that is not going to cost the tax payers of Minnesota and South Carolina any money."

"You might as well have the government invest in nuclear-powered bicycles," Mitchell added. "That's probably the only thing I could imagine that would be more of a waste of money than inter-city rail."

Are those cold-fusion-powered bikes? Because that would be cool, and hot. Like riding on sunshine. Wooah. And don't it feel good? Yeah! I feel the love, I feel the love, I feel the love, that's really real. I'm on sunshine, baby!

Sorry.

But back to the point, that's the CATO institute. They're libertarians. They must be objective, reasonable. As long as you recognize that libertarianism, and CATO policy, means extreme conservative economic policy opposing almost all government spending, and a rabid opposition to environmental policy including global warming denialism. In other words, predictably opposed to high speed rail as either stimulus or good long-term environmental policy. (In practice, identifying yourself as a libertarian generally means you're pretty much a Republican, but don't want to pretend that you don't smoke pot.  But that's another issue for another day.) That's not objectivity we can believe in.

At least ABC didn't mention Disney. Gotta have some respect for the corporate parent.

Sigh.

Through, through, through! He got the train through!

On dry ground

Over the last couple of days I've been reading bits and pieces of the article in the April National Geographic, Australia's Dry Run, chronicling the devastating 7-year (and counting) drought and the mismanagement of water resources, both before and since the drought began, the perilous state of Australian ecosystems, the destruction of the lives of farmers who have lived off the land for generations (or for just years, where the water has been dangerously misallocated), the psychological impacts - depression, suicide watches - on its human victims, and the harbinger of change that this represents for the rest of the planet as we face worldwide climate change.

The Los Angeles Times has now picked up on this story as well, and tries to connect some of the political dots.

Scientists are frustrated that such dramatic anecdotal and empirical evidence hasn't sparked equally dramatic action from Australia's government. They suspect the inaction can be partly explained by examining the nation's relationship with coal. Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal and relies on it for 80% of its electricity. That helps make Australia and its 21 million people the world's highest per-capita producers of greenhouse gases in the industrialized world.

Dinner there I'll be

Apparently my invitation to the White House Seder with the President was lost in the mail. We couldn't make it up to Washington this year, though, so we had a very nice second night Seder with friends.

The Israelites

Passover.  The Seder.  Matzoh.  Eggs.

And nice Jewish girl Susannah Hoffs and the Bangles.

The cops in the donut shop need to switch to macaroons this week.

Pete and Manny

Or, since we're talking about Vermont, Ben and Jerry.  Following on the heels of the Iowa Supreme Court striking down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, the Vermont state legislature today did the right thing, overriding Vermont Governor Jim Douglas's (R) veto to become the first state to legislatively legalize marriage for all.

And the District of Columbia's counsel today also voted to recognize other state's marriages.

Progress.

UPDATE: I just saw that The Daily Show used the Ben and Jerry line, too. Not that it was such a clever line or anything, but just pointing it out.

Nobody There But Me

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

I recently read an interview of epic documentary filmmaker Ken Burns in which he pointed to the first line ("To see a World in a Grain of Sand") from that first stanza of William Blake's classic poem Auguries of Innocence, as a metaphor for Burns' philosophy for documentary-making and storytelling. Specifically, convey a huge huge event and history through small stories, picking out examples that enable you to see the wider picture though more personal events.

Today, the New York Times web site published a short documentary film on Zablon Simantov, the "last Jew in Afghanistan," a complicated man who spent years feuding with the only other remaining Afghani Jew until the Hatfeldman to his McCoy passed away a few years ago, and who, years before that, sent the rest of his family, including his wife, to live in Israel, to fulfill his destiny as the sole Jew in Afghanistan. Yet this deceptively simple, haunting work captures images of a lone (and, seemingly, lonely - yet in part of his own design) man preserving himself as the sole remnant of Jewish culture in Kabul, keeper of the Taliban-desecrated-but-still-standing synagogue, link between Israel and the East, hope and despair, faith and fear, keeper of flowers on Flower Street. It's strange and heartwarming and disturbing.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

See which way the wind blows today

Iowa gave Barack Obama his opening win in the primaries almost a year and a half ago.  Iowa followed that up with a victory for Obama in the general election.

The state of Iowa continues to impress and progress.

Scandal-ridden pol

What is Rod Blagojevich going to do now that he's been indicted on sixteen felony counts?

He's going to Disney World!

Really.

Don't make a lot of damn sense

Following up on my early morning post on the right's disinterest in and disregard for the truth, today Steve Benen points out some other current examples.  Here, here and here.  And that's just today. 

They're nothing if not consistent.

A strange conception of the holy truth

In a piece last night by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate (via JMM), Lithwick takes on the current right-wing smears on Harold Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School whom President Obama has selected as legal advisor to the State Department, the complete absence of truth to the smears, including the the distortion that he wants to subordinate U.S. law to Sharia law, and fact that the right wing nutosphere led by Fox News and right-wing blogs effectively have been given carte blanche by the rest of the media to spread their nonsense.

Dahlia gets to the gist of the problem here:

There is no rest stop on the misinformation superhighway. Some senators apparently cannot be bothered to fact-check the claims they have read in the blogosphere. And that makes the rest of us responsible for fact-checking them as needed and for getting angry when good people are smeared for views they do not hold. One needn't read all of the thousands of pages Koh has written over his career to find an opinion or argument with which you disagree. But the fact that his critics must fabricate Koh's opinions in order to take issue with them suggests that they haven't read any of them.

Which is sadly typical of the right wing (and, as far as fact-checking goes, much of the other side, too, for shame). 

Yet, just as with respect to the non-existent Sin Express high-speed rail from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, or Michelle Bachmann's current absurdist fantasy about a plan to replace the U.S. dollar with a world currency, or myriad other examples, the right wing is simply not interested in the truth, but only in scoring points for scare tactics. It's not that they haven't read any of Koh's opinions, Dahlia, it's that they are not interested in his actual opinions.  

It's all about messaging. That, and destruction of the Obama administration. 

How about a Bill Moyers investigation?

One slip, one fall

I have always been troubled by New York Governor Patterson's appointment of Kirsten Gillibrand to the U.S. Senate, to fill the seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.

First, she had only served one term in Congress, hardly the significant experience that was being called for by those who were objecting to a possible Caroline Kennedy appointment.

Second, she has never really proven herself as a vote-getter, having beaten the disgraced wife-beater John Sweeney in 2006, and riding the Obama wave to reelection in 2008. Thus, she is, electorally speaking, a very weak candidate for reelection (having never even run a statewide campaign).

Third, she is a social "moderate" whose votes are not reliable for the Democratic majority, a liability that is acceptable in the House (in fact, it can help to moderate Pelosi and others in the House Democratic leadership) but not in a Senate that is corrupted by its inability to seat a rightfully-elected Senator and an abused filibuster imposing a phony 60-vote requirement.

But most importantly, it put at risk a hard-fought Democratic seat in a solidly Republican up-state New York district.

Today we're witnessing the folly of that decision, in a neck-and-neck count and probable recount of the votes to fill Gillibrand's seat.  Even if Democrat Scott Murphy pulls this off (and I don't have high hopes - Republicans typically outdo Democrats in absentee ballots, which is going to decide this thing), this shouldn't be happening at all. 

It's. Just. Dumb.  

Prognosticators of Doom

Stunning.  Norm Coleman was declared the winner of the long-running Senate vote recount today by a three-member panel of the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Not.  

Enjoy the rest of the day.