In prior conversations I suggested changing the rating systems, in particular #2 since it really didn’t say too much.
Thanks to the powers that be for making a change that at this time seems humorously appropriate. 🙂
Don’t worry, MG, you’re still appreciated by one and all. It just seems you’ve used the 2 so much that it’s now your namesake.
It’s kinda like having a dish named after you in your favorite restaurant.
Nate
This letter has been making the rounds. I think it speaks for itself:
Dear Vermont Hillary Clinton Supporter:
I was shocked to hear Senator Leahy say that Hillary Clinton should step out of the race. He amended his original statement to Vermont Public Radio later, only to say, “Senator Clinton has every right, but not a very good reason, to remain a candidate for as long as she wants to. As far as the delegate count and the interests of a Democratic victory in November go, there is not a very good reason for drawing this out.”
I have responded by saying it is very premature and patronizing to ask her to drop out. Ten states have yet to vote. The race remains very close. Leahy’s statement deprives these voters of having their voices heard. We are five months away from the Democratic National Convention. That is a long time to heal wounds. Compared to previous campaigns we are very early in the process. I am confident that no matter who wins, the candidates are so close on the issues that they will be able to unite their supporters. They both made such a statement today.
The voters are not dumb. They know the difference between McCain and either Clinton or Obama. They know what is at stake for the future of our country, from the ongoing war in Iraq to the failing economy. In an ideal world we would have chosen the Democratic candidate at the same time the Republicans chose theirs. But we live in a democracy and the democratic process is sometimes messy. However, it works better than any other system. I believe the primary process should play itself out until every state has voted. I strongly oppose Senator Leahy’s suggestion.
If you agree, let Senator Leahy know what you think. Call or email him at his offices: His email address is senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov. His Washington phone number is 202-224-4242. His Burlington number is 802-863-2525.
Madeleine M. Kunin
Lots of eye-opening stuff here in this escalation of what may grow into a genuine feud with this unprecedented intra-party smackdown. First and foremost is the simple fact of former Ambassador, Vermont Democratic Party icon and first woman Governor of the state Kunin issuing a considered attack on Leahy couched in such patronizing, even insulting terms.
What is missing is the allusion contained in her initial dismissal of Leahy’s statement that Clinton should bow out for the good of the Party: that it is somehow inherently sexist to make this suggestion. The implications were there when she characterized Leahy’s statement as saying to Clinton “Honey, you know you’ve got to drop out for the good of the Party”, and it has been the overriding primary narrative from her, suggesting as she did in the Washington Post that the vote for Clinton is a metric of the level of sexism in any given state (which, I guess means women are still wearing corsets and being footbound in Vermont, given her margin of defeat).
In any event, Democratic officeholders and former officeholders simply don’t attack Senator Leahy in this way – or in any way. And with nothing to be gained in the state, the comment and follow-up letter amounts to little more than picking a fight (and putting his official Senate office contact information for fired-up Clintonites – an office where discussing electoral politics is a massive no-no – seems to be a way to simply be as pesky as possible).
I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this.
This just in. A minor side effect, of course, but certainly indicative of the global impact of the ever increasing human carbon footprint. We note also that Galactose also has shown a small correlation to ovarian cancer.
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Global Warming Causing Increased Tooth Decay in Children
Scientists at the Food Science Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, have found a link between global warming and tooth decay in children.
Dr. William F. Green, Senior Project Chemist and a member of the Australian Academy of Sciences, revealed the results of an 8-year study on dental health associated with high natural fruit consumption in children at the annual meeting of the Australian Dental Association in Sydney on March 13, 2008. The problem, says Green, is that the increasing world temperatures have significantly changed the ratio between two types of sugar associated with common fruits: Fructose and Galactose. Galactose, which usually combines with Glucose to form Lactose, is normally associated with dairy products and typically not found in large amounts in common fruits, which characteristically are Fructose-dominant in sugar content. But increasing temperatures in the fruit bearing regions of Australia have apparently caused a significant shift in the ratios, with Galactose levels rising in both fruits and grains, whose predominate sugar is Maltose.
The problem lies with the decay-producing bacteria known as Streptococcus mutans, which uses sugar to produce acid leading to calcium deterioration, or tooth decay. The acid produced by Streptococcus mutans when metabolizing Galactose has a 16% lower ph ( is more acidic ) than that produced by the same bacterium metabolizing the more common Fructose. This in turn has led to an 8% rise in tooth decay among the 1800 children involved in the study, which was co-sponsored by the Australian Dental Association. “Increasing Galactose levels are increasing oral acid levels to the point where our common ph-balancing dentifrices cannot keep up,” says Dr. Green. “New formulations are going to be required to counter this problem, which has a clear link to ever-increasing mean growing temperatures in our fruit-producing orchard regions.”
>From the Sydney Science Journal, reported by G.F. Wilson and P.D. Swanson.
Another explanation of the origins of April Fools’ Day was provided by Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University. He explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job of running the empire. Constantine, amused, allowed a jester named Kugel to be king for one day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.
The Malta Independent on Sunday presents you with the Fool’s Guide to April Fool! http://www.independent.com.mt/…
1. The Covert Clicker
2. The Toilet Monster
3. Funny Crime Scene Tapes
4. Embarrassing Magnetic Bumper Stickers
5. Fake Parking Tickets
6. Fake Lottery Tickets
7. Exploding Golf Ball
8. Prank Envelopes
9. Shocking Pen
10. Spilled Coffee Cup*
*Actually nothing is funny about spilling coffee
A few days ago I was surfing the blogs and found myself struck by so many of the comments from Clinton supporters. They were so angry – and as consumed with righteous indignation as were the Obama supporters.
I honestly had a hard time understanding. The anger of Obama-ites I understand. Even before the Clinton slash-and-burn “kitchen sink” strategy – now dubbed the “Tonya Harding” option – the ongoing race baiting was a hard thing to stomach. But all the comparable charges from the Clintonites seemed almost delusional in comparison.
Most of the criticism now is focused at the comments of now-legendary former Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, casting Obama as a racist “hater” for being associated with him. Looking at Wright’s comments, I firmly expected to debunk the criticisms by bringing the real quotes out into the sunlight, bypassing the game of telephone-spin being propagated by the Clinton crowd through their ironic repetitive hyping of the phrase “words do matter” after continually insisting that Obama’s inspiring words didn’t.
Unfortunately, though, along with some truly meaningful charges against the dominant culture, there are ugly overtones as well, and I’m not talking about the reprinting of an article by a Palestinian attacking Israel. It’s the words of Wright himself. Obama handled the initial controversy quite well by personalizing it and humanizing Wright, but in the process he has cleaved himself more closely to Wright in the eyes of the media and political observers. This means that, while the “god damn America” clips may be largely (not completely) neutralized, further, genuinely offensive comments are now in Obama’s lap, and he needs to deal with them in a way that is consistent with his campaign’s rhetoric.
This is from the sermon which has been the most recent fodder for the press:
We had some great news from the Supreme Court yesterday: they threw out a pot conviction because of an illegal search.
Okay, that doesn't sound that wild, but the circumstances were. The defendant lives over in the Green Mountain National Forest, off a forest road that only he and the Forest Service, and he was conspicuously doing everything he could to keep people away from the place. “No trespassing” signs all over the place, told the local Forest Service guys that he didn't want anyone, including the Forest Service, coming onto his property. This is one guy who's serious about his privacy.
If you're the cops, and you see a guy who's serious about his privacy, you figure he must have something to hide, right?
What that means is they put a state trooper and a National Guard pilot in an army helicopter and flew over his place, where they circled and hovered, maybe 120 above the ground for up to an hour. Witnesses described the noise as “deafening”, another said he could feel the concussion from the helicopter's main rotor, and they all testified that the police were lying when they claimed they never went below 500 feet, which is the legal limit.
When they were all done they found three plots of marijuana.
The defendant's attorney, my old friend Bill Nelson, moved to suppress the results of the search, the trial court rejected the argument, but the Supreme Court said he was right, threw out the search, and reversed the conviction. They concluded that this extremely intrusive overflight of a location where the owner had clearly expressed his subjective expectation of privacy, was a search, and since they didn't have a warrant it was illegal:
So far, this is just regular good news: another guy not getting convicted and thrown in jail for a victimless crime. But what does Bobby Sand have to do with it?
You rember the flap over the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana earlier this year, right? One of the topics of debate was whether marijuana prohibition wastes too many governmental resources; after all, while they're chasing down pot smokers, or even pot dealers or growers, they're not going after real criminals, like drunk drivers or spouse abusers (two crimes in which your odds of committing it and then getting away with it are really pretty good). The law-enforcers' argument is that this is bogus, because they spend so few resources on marijuana that it really doesn't cost the state anything, either in police, prosecutorial, defense, court, or corrections expenditures.
On the other hand, we now see the reality. I don't know how much it costs to fly an army helicopter over to Goshen, hover over a guy's house for an hour, scare all the neighbors, and then bring the guy to trial, but I really have to say that it sounds expensive to me. Not to mention the court and lawyer time taken up defending the indefensible in the District Court and Supreme Court–after all, this case has been going on since 2003.
So go ahead, guys, and try to convince us that you're not spending anything chasing down marijuana cases, but I'm not buying it.
Senator Barack Obama said Friday he would return the country to the more traditional foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
At a town hall event at a local high school gymnasium, Obama praised George H.W. Bush – father of the president – for the way he handled the first Gulf War: with a large coalition and carefully defined objectives.
(Obama likens his foreign policy to that of Bush Sr., JFK, Reagan, Haaretz, 03/29/08)
This is a major, major downside to an Obama presidency. Every time he has an opportunity to talk to non-violence and why war is undesirable, it seems Obama instead follows the militant lead of our nation’s ultra-violent imperialism.
Every time I hear or read of Obama talking like this it makes it more and more unlikely I would vote for him.
Disloyalty That Merits An Insult
Washington Post
By James Carville
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Last Friday the New York Times asked me to comment on New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president. For 15 years, Richardson served with no small measure of distinction as the representative of New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District. But he gained national stature — and his career took off — when President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and later made him energy secretary.
So, when asked on Good Friday about Richardson’s rejection of the Clintons, the metaphor was too good to pass by. I compared Richardson to Judas Iscariot. (And Matthew Dowd is right: Had it been the Fourth of July, I probably would have called him Benedict Arnold.)
…..If Richardson was going to turn on the Clintons the way he did, I see no problem in saying what I said. Because if loyalty is one virtue, another is straight talk. And if Democrats can’t handle that, they’re going to have a hard time handling a Republican nominee who is seeking the presidency with that as his slogan.
A man
A metaphor
A Fool
Carville
Former Selectboard member, community volunteer in many organizations and columnist for the Brattleboro Reformer, Joerg was omnipresent. His intelligence, wry wit, candor and resolve were uncompromising.
Brattleboro is richer for all he did, and poorer for losing him.
The Irish reaction to Clinton’s claims that she was “instrumental” has already been documented over at Five Before Chaos by JD Ryan, but an AP article that’s making the rounds of European papers (not so much here) today is worth another look. I found it in the Guardian.
The story is that Clinton dedicated a park in Belfast that was to become the state’s “first Catholic-Protestant playground.” (Which is absurd in itself; Catholic kids and Protestant kids haven’t been isolated from each other in NI.) But in her role as peacemaker, she forgot to do anything more than dedicate the park; no playground was ever built.
“She was in charge of christening this wee corner (of the park) as some kind of peace playground. It never made any sense then, and there’s nothing there today,” said Brian Feeney, a Belfast political analyst, author and teacher. “Everything she did was for the optics.”
Although Irish Taosaich Bertie Ahern, David Hume, George Mitchell have all, rather weakly, backed her claims, they offer no specifics regarding anything she actually did, nor any policy talks in which she was influential or even any that she attended. And her recently released schedule as First Lady doesn’t back up the claims either. According to The Daily Telegraph (London):
(The) details of her visits to Northern Ireland indicated that she went little beyond the traditional role of a president’s wife, attending social events, meeting women’s groups and greeting children.
Despite Mrs Clinton’s claim last week that she was “instrumental” in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, the schedules do not record her attending a single policy meeting.
Here’s the thing: a Clinton presidency is seen as favorable by Hume and Ahern. They’ve already secured promises from her on a higher level of diplomacy in NI, and on Irish immigration – a bone to Hume and a bone to Ahern.
Meanwhile, criticism among the Irish people grows (particularly in the North), and the people who had their feet on the ground, those who did the real work, seem to be a bit perturbed with her insistence on making her role in Northern Ireland a centerpiece of her foreign policy experience. From the Guardian article:
“It’s crazy for Hillary to say she played a role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. … She seems to be confusing her record with her husband’s,” said Robin Wilson, founder of a Northern Ireland think tank, Democratic Dialogue.
All of this brings into question Clinton’s judgement, and her grasp of reality, her understanding of world affairs, and her opinion of our intelligence. Does she really believe she played an “instrumental” role in NI peace? Does she think dedicating a playground is peacemaking? If the answers are no, does she really think we’re going to buy it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…
http://www.independent.ie/worl…