The fascinating and the just plain weird

Like many of us, I am always wondering who is going to be the next Ross Perot. Might one of the also-rans in either party break off and make a run for it? Would it be someone sufficiently quirky to live up to the Perot legacy? For this reason, Ron Paul, Texas congressman and sometime Libertarian party presidential candidate, sort of fascinates me. He has some serious word-of-mouth support-building going on right now, to judge by the huge number of random people who call in to C-SPAN or comment on blogs in favor of his presidential candidacy. He was one of 2 Republicans to vote in favor of de-funding the Office of the Vice President.

But he does not fascinate me nearly as much as Mike Gravel.

Birds. Word.

Winged Migration is a pretty awesome movie. It's nice to have cable and get the opportunity to watch things like this instead of questionable reality TV or reruns of Will and Grace, when the boob tube mood strikes, isn't it?

Whether or not to get cable was actually a tough choice for my home recently. I think I won the day with the argument that "when you have cable, you don't necessarily watch more TV, you watch better TV." Like, you know, E! True Hollywood Stories, or Throwdown with Bobby Flay.

Git yer T-shirts...

... here in a variety of colors and styles for men and women.

A triplet on justice

Paris Hilton served her time,

Steve Griles got 10 months,

All's right with the world.


Judge Orders Time for Ex-Interior Deputy (WP)
Paris Hilton Due to Break Her Silence (AP)

The Science Times always amazes

Who knew that there was a technical term for the Wint-O-Green-Lifesaver-in-the-dark effect? (It's called triboluminescence, according to this NYT article.) Or that this phenomenon had something important to say about the way things break on a molecular level.

Frankly, I'm more on a level with Father Giambattista Beccaria, who, the article notes, wrote in 1753,

You may, when in the dark, frighten simple people only by chewing lumps of sugar, and, in the meantime, keeping your mouth open, which will appear to them as if full of fire.

Excellent. You can really freak people out by lighting magnesium on fire, too.

Prithee, unpop thy collar

I must object.

Twice or thrice within the past couple of weeks I have seen popped collars...on middle-aged women. The worst was recently when I saw a woman with several small children, all dressed in brightly colored polos, all with collars popped!!!

What gives? Has anyone else noticed this?

On obnoxious frat boys, you can just ignore it. Frequently, it is the least of their problems, from a fashion perspective.

But with these ladies--is it ironic? Doubtful. Is it non-ironic? Despicable. Is it non-ironically ironic? Color me mystified.

Use your voting power to help us get some voting power

The DC House Voting Rights Act is headed for the Senate floor after passing committee yesterday (The Hill). This long-awaited piece of legislation has already passed the House, which means we are one (big) step away from gaining a vote for the half million citizens of DC.

That's right, half a million people with no true representation in Congress. And this is the same city that had to battle, as late as 1973, to establish home rule. As in, an elected city council with some control over the way the place is run. What are we, a 17th century British colony? It gets worse when you realize that many DC citizens belong to demographic groups that are already underrepresented in Congress due to voter turnout and voter suppression issues.

Help us out here: please contact your senators and ask them to support the bill. DC Vote makes it easy on you with this quick e-mail action alert.

18 months later...

Amazing. Gonzales may well be here for the duration. The Republican performance on the Senate no-confidence vote yesterday (NYT), plus Bush's public statements of support for his buddy (Reuters, most recently), point to --->no resignation.

It does make some sense. Until recently, the surest way to retain an appointed office in the Bush administration has been getting publicly attacked (with resignation demanded!) by the left. The Bushies really close ranks around their own when threatened. None of this "resigning to spend more time with his family" bollocks. It's a decider thing. Genius, really, and an important step toward creating your own realities.

Except, of course, for those specifically marked for the slaughter, like Scooter Libby and Donald Rumsfeld. These folks are not answering only for their own sins, but also, representationally, for those of the entire administration. I figure they are kind of like the guy who gets burned at the stake or thrown in the bog at the end of the year to appease the gods and ensure a good harvest.

Perhaps if you have a problem with a particular Bush appointee and want him out, you better do what you can to make sure he gets tapped to be the sacrifice. I'm not so sure direct public pressure for a particular official's firing works at all. It seems to have the opposite effect, in fact. Take Rumsfeld (please!): during the Abu Ghraib revelations, when many Americans were calling for his head, he offered to resign. Twice. (CNN)

Thoughts?

Lame!!!

It hardly needs to be written that this a disappointing miscarriage of justice. I weep for our nation.

After spending five nights in jail, Paris Hilton was released early this morning and put under house arrest, The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department announced today...The decision was made after "extensive consultations with medical personnel"...According to the plans, she will finish the original sentence of 45 days in her own house with a tracker attached to an ankle. Her reduced jail term for violating probation on an alcohol-related driving charge was 23 days. (NYT)

And let's remember...house arrest for Paris Hilton is like vacation for the rest of us.

In fairness to evangelical Christians

You have probably heard these statistics--

In 2003, according to a Gallup poll, "42 percent of Americans self-identified as 'born-again or evangelical,' up from 36 percent in 1992." (Religion Link) In 2004, 78% of white evangelical voters voted for George Bush. (Pew Center for the People and the Press) The conventional narrative went: this growing juggernaut of socially conservative, born-again megachurchers are going to keep putting conservative Republicans in office.

As the awesome political power of evangelicals story got more and more play in the media during this decade, left-of-center Americans increasingly began to equate evangelical Christianity with rabid social conservatism and Republican party loyalty.

But what about the 22% of white evangelicals that didn't vote for Bush in 2004? What about the outspokenly progressive "social justice evangelicals"? I think that many of my friends and colleagues don't believe these people actually exist. I wouldn't either, except that I've met a few, and some of them are friends.

This impression may stem in part from the overrepresentation of conservative Christian leaders in the media. Media Matters recently released a report that found that

"Combining newspapers and television, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed in news stories 2.8 times as often as were progressive religious leaders.

On television news -- the three major television networks, the three major cable new channels, and PBS -- conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed almost 3.8 times as often as progressive leaders.

In major newspapers, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed 2.7 times as often as progressive leaders."

Media Matters' Paul Waldman discussed the report on On The Media last week--it's an interesting discussion, worth checking out. In this interview, journalist Jeff Sharlet makes a very important point: abortion is a deal-breaker for many conservative Christians and plays a huge role in their political behavior. They'll "hold their noses," in Sharlet's words, and vote for a Republican based on this alone--even if they strongly disagree with the party's or candidate's position on other issues.