As anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the last several months knows, today Barack Obama became the acting President of the United States.  I dragged my sorry butt awake at 8 in the morning to watch the proceedings.  They were lovely and poignant and truly something that felt shared by every citizen of this country.

One thing I've noticed about Obama and anyone on his staff who makes public statements is that he avoids the topic of race.  He made a few little omages to racism in the inauguration speech, acknowledging the moment without being too dogmatic about it.  The implications of his election are pretty obvious.

...Or so I thought.  But now I'm not so sure it's so obvious.  Take what I overheard a classmate say:

"Everyone's talking about how this just means so much to black people.  But it's basically irrelevant.  George W. Bush was a white guy.  Did the fact that he was white have an effect on us [whites]?  Not really."

I'm between being horrified and embarrassed by this guy.  I'm so dumbfounded, in fact, that I'm finding it difficult to throw together a coherant rebuttal.  But I'm going to try here, for the sake of my own sanity.

Racism exists.  The only people who consistently say that racism doesn't exist are people who have lived such isolated, homogenous, or possibly ignorant lives that the best they cannot recognize their own hypocracy.  It is a deep primal instinct to be discriminating of those who are "different," "not of the tribe," "genetically defective."  It's a natural selection thing that must be consciously overcome.  Declaring "I'm not a racist" is almost always false.  "I do my best to live by the belief that all people deserve equal treatment under the law and by their fellows" is probably more accurate, if legalistic, statement, and even then most of us build in moralistic loopholes.

This is not to say that everyone, or even most of us, are vindictively or even intentionally racist.  And as we as a society become more refined in our definition of discrimination, institutionalized racism is waning.  It is by no means gone.  Statistically speaking, there should be about 15 black senators.  There is one--Roland Burris, who currently fills Obama's vacated seat.

The statistics inspire some to change, but more often they suppress the motivation to do so.  I've had many black classmates who consistently say that they're fighting an opposing current, that they can't get ahead of the curve, that the system is against them.  Obama's election sends a powerful signal that the "system," be it beurocracy, democracy, civil rights law, or something less definable, that the time for inspiration is here.  It tells them, you are a minority, but we are listening.  We hear you.  We are fighting for you.  Don't settle for less.

George W. Bush was the "settle for less" candidate, classmate.  He has never been an inspiring or inspired mind.  He was the public face of the right-wing hawks, and the rest of us didn't care enough to go vote for the other guy.  His white, Texan blandness was fine because we felt fine.  We weren't in a recession, we didn't have any outstanding internation crises to deal with, and frankly the Republican party had all the better strategists.

But over the last eight years we have seen our rights eroded, our financial system protections gutted, our industries become more irresponsible, and our international integrity disappear.  As a measure for any president, it is decidedly uninspiring.

Obama's race has always been a secondary factor next to his policies.  I don't know a single person who voted for him or against him because he was the black guy.  The very fact that race has become irrelevant to policy is the reason it's relevant to the demise of institutionalized racism.

That matters for all of us, black, white, asian, latino or other.  It says that we are better now than we were, and that all of us, especially oppressed people, have brighter hopes.  And if we have hope, all things are possible




Note: this still feels sloppy to me.  I will come back and edit it later.

My third diary over at the Daily Kos.  It is about why I (and young voters) am inspired by the broad sweeping oratory of our favorite Democratic Presidential Nominee.

It had 27 comments and 16 recommenders in under an hour.   That's pretty awesome.

Come read my first-ever diary over at the Daily Kos! (Intro cross-posted here):

6:04:  John McCain says Americans are angry.  Have you noticed that at your rallies at all John?  The angry seems to manifest as calling Obama a terrorist, not in calls for cuts in capitol gains tax.  And speaking of cap gains taxes, who exactly is paying them right now?  My impression was that stock prices are falling faster than those brass parachutes.


6:14:  I hardly believe my ears.  McCain just said we SHOULDN'T spread the wealth around.  Yes, let's let those CEO's become billionaires while people in south central LA starve and struggle with crack addiction.  They don't need our help, they can lift themselves up by their boostraps if they try.

6:18:  John McCain insists that big government is bad.  He says big government has never been bigger since the era of "The Great Society."  So, we're no longer aspiring to be great?  Bad choice of words, if only that.

Aside: Yes, I'm snarky tonight.

6:39:  I've been yelling for a while now.  I can't BELIEVE McCain wants to validate his campaign's idiotic claims about Obama associating with terrorists by bringing them into this debate.  Every outlet has cried foul about how exaggurated and alarmist these claims are.  I did like Obama's response--basically, "you guys are being dicks and you should shut up."

6:44:  The question was, why would Sarah Palin be a better president than Joe Biden, John.  Not whether or not she's your "partner."

6:46:  John McCain doesn't think that requiring accountability and oversight in government is going to cost any money.  Wow, that's mavricky.  He's reached across the reality isle now.

6:48:  In case anyone didn't know this already, and you can take my word on this as an engineer with three internships at Hanford, nuclear power plants don't spring up overnight.  They take ten years OR LONGER to build and cost lots and lots of money.  We don't have the capability to do it immediately.  The Alaska natural gas pipeline won't work immediately either, because we don't have a lot of power plants that burn gas.  No solution to high oil prices is implementable RIGHT NOW.  McCain needs to stop deceiving people, it's mean.

7:01:  McCain thinks that if you like Obama's healthcare plan, you must like Canada and England.  I think there are plenty of people out there that are fond of Canada and England, if for no other reason than that their accents are cute.  Although Canada's healthcare system has many problems, John, England's is ranked among the best in the world.  As is Germany's--and universal healthcare doesn't interfere with the profitability of drug makers.  Germany's pharmeceutical and medical technology industries are booming.

I can't believe he wanted to use the same tired line of criticism when Obama stomped on it so thoroughly in the last debate, and is doing again.

This Joe guy is really convenient.  Is his last name "Sixpack"?
 
7:05:  Senator Government.  Yeah, That One.  He's not Senator Maverick.  Boo.

7:09:  John McCain says that any judge supporting Roe v. Wade is not qualified to be in office.  I don't want to remind my audience about that whole partisan judge scandal thing that the white house is being investigated about right now, so I'll just say that Obama...should answer the question.

7:12:  McCain wants to change the nation's view on abortion.  Pro-life people understand that everyone needs to think that abortion should be banned.  Speaking as a "pro-abortion" (who calls themself that?) movement member, take a read-through of the first amendment, will you?  Also?  Only 10% of people in this country believe that abortion should be absolutely illegal.  Why does EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM seem to work for the government?

7:21:  Did I just hear McCain propose that we deregulate teaching certification?  Oh dear god.

7:26:  McCain keeps trying to fight Obama on issues they agree on.  What the hell is this supposed to accomplish other than the impression that McCain has no idea where his opponent is on these issues?

7:28:  McCain's closing statements are so general that Obama could have made the exact same speech and his his demographic nodding.  Oh, but there goes the "country first" and "great honor/POWPOWPOW" thing.  Does his campaign really run on about 5 catchphrases?

EDIT:  A commentator on MSNBC declared the winner of the debate tonight to be Joe the Plumber.  Heh.

6:10:  Sen. McCain says that the new Secretary of the Treasury should be someone ordinary Americans identify with.  Knowing how bad the math skills of most ordinary Americans are, I don't want any of them NEAR the treasury...

6:13:  I'm really getting tired of this "greed and excess" line.  Greed and excess have always existed.  It's up to regulators to make sure they don't get out of hand.  Obama mentioned AIG a few minutes ago.  If the Feds had been paying attention to the loan money, that executive spa trip would never have been allowed to happen in the first place.

6:20: Obama: "We are mortgaging our children's future."  Effective line.

6:23:  McCain is anti-planetarium.

6:29:  There's the overhead projector again.  Does McCain not think that making kids interested in science is a good thing?  Education standards have gone up; with it the cost of educational equipment.

6:36:  McCain mentioned that the last time taxes were raised was when Hoover was in charge.  Weren't we talking about the Great Depression earlier?

6:40:  I kind of wanted to hear a full answer to that question about entitlements, but I think it's good that Obama's spelling out the tax plans.  Surveys show a lot of people still believe mistruths about Obama's tax plan.

6:41:  McCain: "It's not that hard to fix social security."  Oh yeah?  How come nobody's done it yet?
6:44:  McCain [On Nuclear Power]:  "Senator Obama says it has to be safe...or...something like that.  But look..."  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Not good John.  If you're going to tell the audience what the other guy thinks about the issue, you should probably know.  Also, dismissing nuclear safety?  A LOT of people in this country are still very uneasy with how safe nuclear power generation is.

6:53:  McCain counters Obama's accusation that his healthcare policy will combust employer-based healthcare is to....ignore it.  If you ignore it long enough, it goes away, right?

7:07:  Obama: we have a moral obligation to help others, if we can successfully convince others that that obligation exists.  McCain: Obama doesn't understand the complexity and delicacy of situations like that.  We could make things worse, or better.  These answers both reflect bad steriotypes of the candidates: Obama is young and niieve, and McCain is old and lacks conviction.

7:18:  ZOMGWTFBBQ McCain said Obama was right about stuff!!!!one!eleventy1

7:21:  Uh, Senator McCain?  I'm not sure that talking to Russia like the country's leadership is a bunch of criminals in need of reform is going to make them like us more.

John McCain said during the debate that Pakistan had not had leadership since the time of Alexander the Great.  He said he'd seen the tribal areas and that they were chaos.

I think there are  a lot of tribal leaders in Pakistan who would strongly object to the notion that the lack of a big centralized Western (dare I say imperial) government is the only kind of substantive leadership that counts.

I think there are plenty of tribal leaders who would disagree with him.

I have never been to Pakistan, but I do know people who have, who are actually from tribal areas of the middle east.  They get offended at the idea that tribal peoples don't understand the concept of leadership, that the lives they lead are full of chaos.  They balk at westerners who promote that westernized democracy is the only kind of government and deeply believe that such concepts are shortsighted and even prejudiced.

One of the big reasons that tribes in the mountains near where Al Qaeda is hiding have not helped the US more in removing the terrorist organization is an ancient custom in Islam stating that whether or not you agree with him, a guest in your village is your responsibility to protect.  It's a "good neighbor" sentiment, a type of "small town" civility that conservatives often tout.

A psychology professor I once had said that you can boil global cultural viewpoints into two main categories: that there is only one governing philosophy behind human action, or that there are multiple philosophies that are all valid.  John McCain's camp seems to believe very firmly in the former.

While I may not agree with Pakistani tribal leaders' decision to shelter Al Qaeda, as it ultimately undermines their safety as well as the safety of all people on Earth, I think John McCain's comments about a lack of leadership in the country are glib and even insulting.  We may not agree with these people, but we can't treat them as lesser human beings simply because of that.

Obama: Things are complicated, and it will take a complex strategy and a complex and flexible government to address them.
McCain: Senator Obama doesn't understand.  I'm OBVIOUSLY the better candidate.

And who's the elitist here?

Hunter over at the Daily Kos has a very good rundown of what's going on in D.C. with the negotiations on the bailout plan.

From watching the news and reading the blogs over the last couple of days, I am struck mainly with the impression I get anytime I see more than one economist talking: there is no such thing as a "solution."

The math and science behind the economy (a soft science, I must add) is complex and fluid.  Civilized societies are so vast and varied that even the soundest theories have serious flaws, shortcomings that are present only because no one can come up with a better explanation.

I'm no expert in economic theory, and I do understand why negotiating this action in congress is so difficult.  I can't blindly accept the $700 billion - $1 trillion figure they've cited, and like Hunter and DevilsTower I'm annoyed that nobody can seem to come up with a plan that has more details, justification and (gasp!) agreeability.

Several prominent democrats have been on television since yesterday deploring attempts by members of the house and senate (mainly a group of uber-conservative republicans) to introduce a completely new bill.  While the one that's currently on the table does have deeply concerning flaws, introducing entire new pieces of legislation is not exactly an ideal solution -- the whole negotiating process would have to begin anew.

Many of these republicans also object strongly to the bailouts.  They can object until the cows come home, but that doesn't change the fact that it would be suicide not to do it.

The subprime mortgages aren't the problem. And the overleveraged firms shouldn't be a problem. The problem is keeping the rest of the economy afloat no matter what happens to the firms in trouble."

The bill these republicans are proposing also includes a lot of proposals democrats will never accept, including massive deregulation of the market and release of private companies from government stewardship.  Anybody who has been reading about this should recall that the general belief is that deregulation of the mortgage industry is largely to blame for people obtaining loans they really shouldn't have, causing the bubble, the collapse and now bankruptcies left and right on wall street.

Economic historians also place at least some blame for every major market collapse/"adjustment" on a lack of regulation.  To make an analogy, this also seems to be what has happened with the Executive Branch in this country in the last 8 (ok, 12) years: signing statements, executive privilege, partisan judiciaries and a hog-tied congress.  And while Economics is not an exact science, this is a pretty strong correlation.

Without substantive inquiry into the practices of wall street while it's recovering from this crisis, things could go very quickly downhill again.  I imagine the cost of this oversight is at least some of the missing $550 billion Hunter can't account for.  And despite the indignation of bloggers and the press, I don't think the $700 is completely unsubstantiated.  There's probably a very complex equation behind it...I just would like Bernake and Paulson to come out and explain it.

I imagine the fighting will continue throughout the day today, and spill into the presidential debate tonight.  I'm looking forward to hearing from Obama and McCain about foreign policy and the economy.  More later tonight with my take on the debates.

Short and sweet today.

The massive amounts of spin coming out of the McCain campaign could probably supply electricity to several continents, but here's an analysis of something that's always a key issue: tax cuts.

McCain's campaign has consistently insisted that Obama's tax cut would raise taxes on everyone and balloon the national deficeit...and it's a lie.  You can fact check that "accusation" here and here, and also here and here if you like slightly more partisan reporting.

Conveniently, though, there are people out there who can do math.  And then translate that math into something even easier for those non-mathy folk out there.  (Mostly) From The Washington Post:































Where's your wage bracket?  It''s more than likely you're one of those 95% of people making below $603,402/year who will see a tax break under Obama's blan.

Facts are great, aren't they?



UPDATE: Fixed picture

I point to IntrepidLiberal's diary over at the Daily Kos:

Ninety-percent of the project was paid through a highway trust fund while the states contributed ten percent of the funding. Eisenhower believed this law vital to America's national security interests to help the military to mobilize troops more effectively in case of invasion by a foreign power. Ultimately, the investment more than paid for itself through jobs, economic growth and the development of the suburbs.

However, the Interstate Highway System also resulted in vehicle pollution and increased our dependence on foreign oil. Hence, with global warming and collapsing bridges our infrastructure requires a twenty-first century upgrade."

IntrepidLiberal goes on to talk about the '08 presidential candidates' position on the issue.  You can read the entire summary over the link, so I won't bother to repost the majority of it.  Basically it comes down to this:  Barack Obama's position on infrastructure is that the feds need to increase funding and modernize projects to repair neglected public projects like roads and bridges across the nation.  John McCain wants to finance high-speed internet systems through local community efforts and private investors.

Let's forget for a moment that McCain seems to think the word "infrastructure" refers only to those newfangled Ted Stevens' Internet Tube Things that bring The Google to your Computer Machine.  Let's even forget that all during the GOP convention last week the speakers railed against Obama's community organizing.  He wants to what?  Like, um, the cable companies that hold local monopolies and therefore can gouge their customers while providing limited, highly interruptable and privacy-violating service?

I have to wonder sometimes exactly how many common-sense brain cells this man and his policymakers possess.

Our country has for years suffered from an aging and increasingly-dilapidated infrastructure.  Companies like those mentioned above have no incentive to spend money or be competitive, so they aren't.  The technology ages, breaks down, and customers are left holding the short end of the stick.

The Hanford Nuclear Power Plant, near where I live, is a well run, accident-free, clean source of power for a significant number of people in this country.  The plant engineers recently put in a request to extend the contract life of the plant, which was scheduled to close this year.  But closing the plant would mean building another source of power to replace it.  Dams or even a newer, more efficient nuke plant is simply out of the question.  Why?  No federal financing available.  No infrastructure funding.  It's not about 3-eyed fish.  It's about a fiscally conservative government not willing to let go of the cash.  They'd rather keep the old plant running at greater expense and increasing risk of something going wrong due to aging facilities.  It makes me crazy.

Having the *dreaded* Feds, devote/regulate funds and resources to infrastructure actually saves money, time, and resources, and also creates jobs and encourages industry competition.  Numerous case studies show this, concerning everything from the German rail system DeutcheBahn to High Speed Internet in Japan.

Take my experience for example:

My hometown of about 45,000 in Eastern Washington State finances and contracts all its road construction projects to the lowest bidder, almost always a local company.  These companies can take months to do a simple project like repaving a stretch of 1 blocks of 3-lane road.  I go to school in Seattle, population about 580,000, and I have seen similar and even more complex projects done in 1/5 of that time for about the same amount of money.  Not to say the Seattle transportation authority doesn't have its foibles.  But most "domestic" road construction?  Done in 2 days, weather pending.

Another article in the Times recently went on about how local wind farms do not possess infrastructure to power as much of the country as they theoretically could.  I mean, my god, the country is different than it was 50 years ago?  Shock, horror.  Those trip-back-to-the-50's conservatives must be stunned speechless.

Any fiscal conservative who complains about red tape and earmarks in federal projects should look at the overhead costs and CEO "perks" of your average publicly traded corporation.  Federal regulations could theoretically close many of the loopholes that keep these guys in such comfy mansions, but the GOP doesn't exactly have the "fight the power" attitude that would get that accomplished, either.  Who would, if they got paid so much money to look the other way?

So in the end, it's a choice between having the costs of those runaway corporations trickle down through product pricing and wasted money in government contracts, or paying taxes.  The taxes end up being cheaper for 99% of Americans.  Who knew?*

If the McCain camp really believes that no progress needs to be made in regard to infrastructure (assuming they know what it  means), they should at least say so.  Hiding behind one element of it doesn't make you look mavricky--it makes you look ignorant.

*This, by the way, is also the theory behind universal healthcare, an insitution that in England, France and Germany has notably not become the poster boy for economic catastrophe or failing pharmeceutical research.

Jebus knows I’m not a reporter; professional, amateur or otherwise.  I’m probably closer to a pundit: no necessary qualification or commitment to neutrality.

That having been said, I do respect reporters a great deal.  Aside from the ones who get their ugly falafel-rubbing (NWS) egos smeared all over the major networks, who as I may have implied are not even really that qualified to open their mouths, let alone report any kind of actual news.  Spin isn’t really news, sorry guys.  Capisce?

 So in order to distinguish between those times when I am simply reporting events and when I am generating possibly-biased commentary, I will clearly state which is which.  I feel it especially necessary to do so in this blog entry, to avoid any accusations of hypocrisy.

Here is the unbiased news, take it for what you will.

Yesterday a reporter, Amy Goodman, and two producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, all from the progressive site Democracy Now! were arrested in St. Paul, MN.  For any of you who may have missed this, St. Paul is where the GOP National Convention is being held this week.  The producers were arrested by police as part of crackdown against protestors, a few of which had broken off the main peace march and were becoming violent.  Kouddous and Salazar were covering the march.  During the arrest, Salazar was made to lie with her face to the ground, and officers dragged her by one leg across a street, resulting in a bloody nose and scraped face.  Kouddous was also slammed the wall and ground, and sustained injuries to his chest, back, and arms.  Goodman’s arm was twisted violently.

 Amy Goodman was called away from the convention floor and asked to see Salazar.  Here is her account of what happened.

And my commentary?  Oh, where to start.

This is disgusting and blatantly undemocratic, arresting reporters simply for being on the scene.  Salazar and Goodman repeatedly told the police that they were press and were wearing their credentials in plain view.  Police did not witness their involvement in, nor do the reporters have any discernable connection to, any of the violence that broke out at the protest marches.

 As Amy said in her video, the press is protected by First Amendment rights for a reason.  Dare I resort to clichés, but, as Alan Barth (Washington Post) once wrote:

 

 “If you want a watchdog to warn you of intruders, you must put up with a certain amount of mistaken barking...But if you muzzle him and leash him and teach him decorum, you will find that he doesn't do the job for which you got him in the first place. Some extraneous barking is the price you must pay for his services as a watchdog.  A free press is the watchdog of a free society.” 

 

Oppressing the press, arresting them and charging them for no reason is a fascist response, one I (and, I hope, most other people) find morally repugnant.  Yes, we have to put up with a certain amount of crap and bias from the press, but under no circumstances should any enforcement agency be allowed to prevent them from reporting.  When Americans no longer have a choice of news sources, they have lost that essential thing to which their free speech clings.  Free speech cannot truly be free if it is uninformed or misinformed.

I’m not saying that I think all citizens as it stands are truly informed about the world.  Many choose to believe the talking heads like O’Reilly and Scarborough and Hannity and Coulter and Stern (yes, a liberal one too).  But they choose to watch/listen to those commentators. Nothing in the world can stop those who choose to be ignorant…it is not giving them the choice that is irreconcilable.

That is the danger of spin: they try to make it sound like the truth, and once in a great while it is.  But the rest of the time it’s just a pack of blatant lies that appease their audience and infuriate everyone else.  It’s not conducive to teamplay, it’s definitely not nonpartisan, and it makes everyone feel yanked around.

 Some of this event involving Democracy Now! reporters I might have been willing to chock up to a mistake made by an overwhelmed security force, except for the fact that there seemed to be an excessive amount of force (dare I say brutality) done to these people who weren’t resisting.  Full disclosure…Amy may have trespassed on a police line by hopping the fence while demanding to see her producer, and I’m no lawyer, so I’m not going to attempt to dispute the misdemeanor charge.

But this is not an isolated incident.

 (News)  while the Democrats’ Convention was going on in Denver, many freelance reporters were already converging on St. Paul/Minneapolis.  Three from a site known as the Glassbead Collective had their equipment, including computers, cameras and cellphones, clothing and money unlawfully confiscated on a faulty charge of trespassing.  They did not consent to the search, and the police have changed their story a number of times about the charges: trespassing, suspicion of commission of burglary.  The artist/reporters from the Collective are not involved in violent activities and had come to document the free speech activities at the convention.  They are being represented by the National Lawyers Guild.  The NLG asserts that the true purpose of the search was to obtain information about upcoming protests and protestors in the area and stated that it was an egregious violation of first amendment rights.

 You can find video testimony of the incident under the headline “Not Trespassers” at www.theuptake.org.  Sorry, I can’t seem to get a direct link.  The update notes that the video equipment has been returned to the journalists.

 (Commentary)  One of the members of the collective states that part of the reason they had come to document the GOP convention this year was due to the horrible treatment of protesters during the 2004 convention in New York City—over which the city is still being sued.

 The lawyer failed to mention that these reporters’ Forth Amendment rights, which protect citizens from unreasonable search and seizure, may also have been violated.  The reporters were not involved in suspicious activity and refused to allow a search.  Citizens are allowed to refuse searches if no probable cause can be found for exactly the reason why this incident is so outrageous: to prevent intimidation by or from peacekeeping forces, to protect their privacy, those with connections to them, and their First Amendment rights.

 Not to mention all that stuff about them being reporters.  Credentialed or not. 

Probably the story that really got me going on the freedom of the press issue, though, appeared before the conventions.  It was this piece in the New York Times, particularly the part where Kamber and Arango begin to talk about the restrictions being placed on field reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan today.  They are probably the most restrictive rules in the history of war photography.  I agree that it is a complex and delicate issue, but I also think that, as with our favorite pundits, people can make a choice not to pay attention, or pay attention to different things.  But restricting what the press can see, by “protecting” them from the danger they would rather witness, it does the public they are trying to serve a great disservice.  It’s deceptive on the part of the authorities, and wrong. 

Yes, I think a lot of reporters develop a sort of messiah complex, but that doesn’t mean that what they doesn’t affect the world.  The world has a right to see what is happening “on the ground,” whether it is in New Orleans, Iraq, or Minneapolis-St. Paul.  I’m not blaming one particular institution for the state of journalism in this country (although I have some choice words for the current Executive Administration on the subject). 

Falafel O’Reilly and Honky Matthews may annoy the crap out of me, but so help me I will never utter a word about forcing them to shut up.  I do, after all, possess all the willpower necessary to change the channel.  They’re entitled to their opinions, regardless of how *coughwrongcough* they are. 

If they have the right to their incredible closed-minded spin, actual reporters most certainly have the right to bring facts to the air waves.  Or the “freedom” we so value in this country will truly be lost.

I quite like this song. It sounds revolutionary.

Anyway, here's a bunch of articles I've managed to accumulate over the summer to share with everyone. They are either good or hilarious (or both). * for particularly good, ^ for funny. They are sorted by subject.

^Bill O'reilly SINGS (and background): And why it's funny. Falafels, anyone?

Travel/Insurance: How to Get Sick Overseas (If You Must)

Science Education: Using the 'Beauties of Physics' to Conquer Science Illiteracy

^Um...philo-science?: A Survival Imperative for Space Colonization

*^Daily Show: the Mid-East Money Pit



*^Islam on Evolution: Islamic Creationist and a Book Sent Round the World

*Islamic Extremism from the Ground (How the World Sees America series): Hate America: Hate Amar Too?

*Ideology of the Mid-East wars (How the World Sees America Series): Ahmed Rashid: Bush Didn't Listen

Overzealous defense of the Bush Administration Blowback: [Bill] Krystol Clear

*FACEBOOK:An Unmanageable Circle of Friends

Music Sharing: Bill would force "top 25 piracy schools" to adopt anti-P2P technology

Music Sharing: AT&T willing to spy for NSA, MPAA, and RIAA

^Rupert Murdoch, ubiquitous owner of, well, everything.: Homer Simpson Has What the Bancrofts Want

This is not about politics, not at all. National views on scientific (<===hint hint, key word here) issues have nothing to do with party stances. I love how freakishly frequent hurricanes "just happen," but the emergence of life on this planet was a devine plan, don't you? It just makes so much more sense.

Now will you let me enjoy my jesus-loves-US cake in peace? Oh sure, and I'd love some guitar music.

P.S., pollingreport.com is an unbiased newssource...probably the last thing you expected from me, right?

A few other good articles:

Washington Post: DeLay's Influence Transcends his Title
Washington Post: Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Case Clearer
The Nation Gitmo's Shame (Guantanimo hunger strike)
The Nation: Running on Fumes
The Nation: An Ill for every Pill
The Nation: Desperate Housewives of the Ivy League?