Super Tuesday: The Dems

Clinton vs. Obama vs. McCain vs. Romney vs. Huckabee vs. My Near-Complete Lack of Interest

So it's Super Tuesday, or Monster Tuesday, or whatever term the cable news people will come up with next. Can you feel the excitement?

Wow.

Gradually the primary process has done its job, acting as a perverse gatekeeper to drain all the time, money and enthusiasm, along with qualified ideologically motivated candidates, or alternately, genuine whackos, out of the race, leaving us with bland, lowest common denominator gruel on the Democratic side, and sort of middle of the road crazy Republicans, instead of the truly inventive crazy Republicans.

It's an exciting time to be alive!

On the Republican side, you've lost your open race-baiters like Tancredo, who actually ran an ad saying that Mexicans were going to team up with Al-Queda to put nuclear bombs in your local mall. You lost Ghouliani, whose campaign was brilliantly summed up by otherwise useless tool Joe Biden as 'a noun, a verb, and 9/11'. You lost Fred Thompson, the first man to ever try to sleepwalk his way into the White House.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Bill Richardson, who was stupid enough to say that being gay is a 'choice' at a GLBT debate, fell on his sword. Chris Dodd, who's fought the good fight for many long, hard months to protect us from warrantless mass-searches and wiretaps, along with immunity for corporate lawbreakers, bowed out, as did John Edwards, a man who's spent his entire career fighting for the poor, the victimized, the blood that greases our mighty economic engine's cogs.

So, what are we left with?

Not counting Ron Paul (hahahaha.... loser), you have McCain, a man most of his own party hates, Romney, a man most of his own party claims to love, but secretly hate (because he's a Mormon, or because he only claims to believe what they want him to believe to get votes... take your pick), Huckabee, a corrupt Southern caricature, Clinton and Obama.

Gah. Our collective wrists are ready to be laid bare if this is the best we can do.

But the worst of it, the very worst thing, is the inability of most people to ACKNOWLEDGE how lousy our choices are, that we're stuck with the lesser of the lesser of several evils now. Instead you get foaming at the mouth partisans raving about how, if you don't vote for THEIR candidate, you're some kind of anti-American whacko.

Case in point: two Washington Post op-eds by an Obama supporter, and a Clinton supporter, that could leave you tearing your hair out in frustration.

First up, Michael Chabon, author, about how if you don't vote for Obama you're against hope and puppies:

There are many reasons not to support Barack Obama's candidacy for president, but every one of them is bad for the same reason.

It's nice that Chabon was given the gift of omniscience. Could he please tell me where I put my keys?

Because I have come out publicly for the senator from Illinois, I am often called upon to listen as people offer up -- with wistfulness and regret, or with a pundit's show of certainty, or with a well-earned but useless skepticism -- their bad reasons for not giving Obama their support. For a long time now, I have listened to these people with forbearance and with a sense of duty -- not to some principle of open debate or of the inherent merit in the free exchange of even meritless ideas, but rather out of obligation to the candidate whose cause I champion.

Oh, how he suffers for our sins. Like Jesus on a cross, he reads the newspapers and turns on his teevee, every day.

Because Obama appears to be a patient, forbearing man with a gift for listening, I figured I owed it to him to play the thing his way. So I have nodded and looked into their eyes and hummed sympathetically as people gave their reasons and made their excuses and generally offered up, as if they were golden ingots of profound wisdom, the handful of two-penny nails with which they plan to board up the windows of their hopes for themselves, their families, their country and the world.

Yes, that's precisely what those of us who are critical of Obama want to do. We want to take nails that are not made of gold and use them to board up a nonsensical metaphor, thus destroying America.

But now, with everything seeming to come down, at last, to the first Tuesday in February, and in the wake of an all-out, months-long push by the cynicism industry to cook up an entire line of bad reasons ready to heat and serve, I admit that I'm getting tired of listening to rationales from people who know that Obama is a remarkable, even an extraordinary politician, the kind who comes along, in this era of snakes and empty smiles, no more than once a generation.

Ok, see, you can't use four metaphors in two paragraphs and still call yourself an author. You are now officially a hack.

Oh, sure, most of these people tell me they would like to see Obama become president. No question, he comes off as at once brilliant and sensible, vibrant and measured, engaged and engaging, talented, forthright, quick-witted, passionate, thoughtful and, as with all remarkable people whom experience has taught both the extent and the bitter limits of their gifts, reasonably humble.

I'm honestly surprised you could type all that out with Obama's cock in your mouth. I guess Chabon has a wireless keyboard.

Things are so bad we just can't afford to waste our votes, people tell me, on some fantasy super-president with magical powers. We need someone electable, someone, as I have been told repeatedly in the past year, who can win.

Well, I for one AM against Superman being President. It's dubiously Constitutional, and he's a dick. I'll admit that. On the other hand: how could he not win? Is Batman running?

The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

Yes, Bush, and his minions (do they have wings and little organ grinder costumes like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz?), the big lobbies, the media, etc, they're all blameless. It's OUR fault. Michael Chabon gives out indulgences now, too!

Since I started talking and writing about Obama I have come to see that this ruling fear, and nothing else, lies at the back of every objection or reservation people raise or harbor regarding the man and his candidacy.

Really? Huh. Here I thought I disliked a crass political opportunist who changes his positions to suit whatever wind is blowing, a man with ties to corrupt developers and criminals, a man with an empty, silly, outright stupid message of 'bipartisanship' that is sure to lead to more gridlock and less progress for Americans. But silly me. I'm a coward! Thank you Michael Chabon for showing me the error of my ways!

But the most pitiable fear of all is the fear of disappointment, of having our hearts broken and our hopes dashed by this radiant, humane politician who seems not just with his words but with every step he takes, simply by the fact of his running at all, to promise so much for our country, for our future and for the eventual state of our national soul.

Dude, no matter how many times you repeat it in one article, 'phobocracy' is not a word. It's just too stupid to tolerate.

Also, he's radiant? His every step is divine? For the last time, OBAMA IS NOT JESUS

Meanwhile, they run another op-ed by a Clinton supporter in much the same vein.

"Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women," said Bill Kristol yesterday on Fox News Sunday, one of the many "news" outlets to expose Kristol's reliable sexism. "The Democratic establishment would be crazy to follow an establishment that led it to defeat year after year," Kristol continued in his woolly, repetitive style. "White women are a problem, you know. We all live with that."

Bill Kristol has been much criticized for his war mongering, arrogance, poor writing and lack of fact checking. But at least the guy is honest. He considers women a problem -- especially white women. And he feels confident enough as an alpha male to be open about it. "I shouldn't have said that," he demurred. But he can say anything he likes and still fall eternally upward. He's a white man, lord of all he surveys -- including Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I'm lord of all I survey? SWEET. I can survey a LOT!

I'm hardly the only woman who sees my life mirrored in hers. She's always worked twice as hard to get half as far as the men around her. She endured a demanding Republican father she could seldom please and a brilliant, straying husband who played around with bimbos. She was clearly his intellectual soul mate, but the women he chased were dumb and dumber.

Ahh, this is that feminist 'solidarity' I hear so much about. Charming! Could we get a criticism of their fashion sense next?

Nothing she did was ever enough to stop her detractors. Supporting a politician husband by being a successful lawyer, raising a terrific daughter, saving her marriage when the love of her life publicly humiliated her -- these are things that would be considered enormously admirable in most politicians and public figures. But because she's a white woman, she's been pilloried for them.

She's had to endure nutcrackers made in her image, insults about the shape of her ankles and nasty cracks from mediocrities in the media like Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews and Kristol.

Oh no, a nutcracker made in her image! SHE MUST IN FACT BE JESUS!

Nor are poisonous women pundits any more kind. Maureen Dowd regularly gives her a drubbing. And "progressives" from Susan Brownmiller to Oprah Winfrey sport Obama buttons.

If you're a woman and you don't support a woman, you're a sex-traitor. Apparently.

I, too, was a bluestocking from a woman's college, straight-A student, Phi Beta Kappa, who found my voice as a writer while exiled to the boonies with a husband who cheated. With every book I published, I saw more clearly how uneven was the playing field for women. We were let into the literary world on sufferance. Unless we wrote unreadable academic tracts that nobody bought, or mysteries or romances or something called "chick lit" (whatever that is), or biographies of Great Men, we were booed off the stage.

I'm so glad this election is about YOU.

She cannot have enjoyed her husband's playing around. She certainly never condoned it. But he was clever enough for her, he supported her dreams, and they both loved their smart and beautiful daughter.

Besides, what does anyone know about anyone else's marriage?

Well, apparently you know about how she feels about Bill, his adultery, and their daughter, so, some people know quite a lot...DID YOU NOT READ WHAT YOU JUST WROTE?

As a senator she has learned compromise and negotiation. She has gotten to know red America as well as blue. If she could win over the rednecks in upstate New York, she can win over any American. She knows this country is full of "security" moms as well as soccer moms. Since she is a woman, she has to show she's ready to be commander in chief. Hence her "triangulation" on Iraq and her signing the absurd Lieberman-Kyl resolution, which calls on our government to use "military instruments" to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran's meddling in Iraq.

Good of her to win over the 'rednecks', and good of her to show her bold leadership by caving left and right. Is that what you're saying?

You will point to Hillary's complicity. You will quote crazy-like-a-fox Ann Coulter, who claims to be voting for her.

You will also quote left-wing bloggers who love Barack Obama, and MoveOn.org peaceniks (I am one) who see no evil in him (nor do I). But I see little experience either. Obama is smart and attractive. Maybe he'll be president someday.

Yes, I quote Ann Coulter, a lot. I base my views almost entirely on what she says.

Also, I'm glad you find Obama 'attactive'.

He was lucky enough not to be in the Senate when the Iraq war resolution was floated after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell lied about WMDs. That was the true tragedy of race: a black man lying for a corrupt white administration that was using him as a token, much as they use Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now.

Obama is also a token -- of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension.

Alternately, the true tragedy of race could be when a national newspaper runs an op-ed calling a credible black candidate for President a 'token'. Either/or.

I understand my hopeful friends who think an Obama button will change America. But I'm sticking with Hillary. I trust her because all her life, her pro bono work has been for mothers and children. And mothers and children -- of all colors -- are the most oppressed group in our country. I trust her to speak for our children and grandchildren -- and for us. She always has.

Her for profit work was for Wal-Mart, amongst others, but when she wasn't busy cashing Sam Walton's checks, or triangulating to protect her image, why, she spoke for our... well, your... children and grandchildren.

This is why reading the paper can drive you to drink.

Sources: WaPo on Obama (Literal Title: Obama vs. the Phobocracy)

WaPo on Clinton (Literal Title: Clinton vs. the Patriarchy) You cannot make these titles up. They're like episodes of The Tick.

Space News, Above and Beyond

Spacey

Oops No Longer Topical
I kind of overslept, but hey. NASA decided to beam a Beatles song into deep space today at 7 PM EST. Namely, Across the Universe.

NASA will on 4 February beam Beatles' ditty Across the Universe into deep space to mark the 40th anniversary of the day the Fab Four recorded the song, as well as the launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1 and the 45th birthday of its Deep Space Network (DSN).

According to the press release, the transmission is being directed towards the North Star, Polaris, and will travel at 186,000 miles per second towards its 431 light year-distant target.

Dr Barry Geldzahler, the DSN's program executive at NASA's Washington headquarters, said of "Across The Universe Day": "I've been a Beatles fan for 45 years - as long as the Deep Space Network has been around. What a joy, especially considering that Across the Universe is my personal favorite Beatles song."

Paul McCartney enthused to the agency: "Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

Now, Polaris, the star system they aimed it at, is 431 light-years away. It will take over four centuries for those radio waves to reach Polaris, where they will be impossibly attenuated.

But hey. Still sort of neat.

Me, I think they could have gone with other choices. I would have been in favor of Shatner doing 'Rocket Man', or that Leonard Nimoy rendition of 'Good Morning Starshine', just so the aliens know what they're dealing with.

Source: The Register

Telescope Arms Race
For once, huge amounts of money are going to something useful.

A telescope arms race is taking shape around the world. Astronomers are drawing up plans for the biggest, most powerful instruments ever constructed, capable of peering far deeper into the universe — and further back in time — than ever before.


The building boom, which is expected to play out over the next decade and cost billions of dollars, is being driven by technological advances that afford unprecedented clarity and magnification. Some scientists say it will be much like switching from regular TV to high-definition.

...

Just the names of many of the proposed observatories suggest an arms race: the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, which was downsized from the OverWhelmingly Large Telescope. Add to those three big ground observatories a new super eye in the sky, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013.

Giant telescopes... aghghghg.

This will keep me in a supply of desktop wallpaper for years!

More seriously, the article concerns four giant ground based telescopes and NASA's Super-Hubble, the James Webb thingummy. Yes, thingummy. Basically, adaptive optics, the technology of rapidly adjusting the telescope's vision to compensate for atmospheric distortion, is making big ground telescopes competitive with space ones like Hubble or Webb again. There's also mention of a huge radio telescope, the fourth of the ground-based supereyes they're making, so it's not all visible light astronomy here.

Nice to see money being spent on something other than pouring blood into the Iraqi desert, for a change.

Source: Raw Story

Iran, Iran So Far Away
So Iran has a space center, and they've launched a rocket from it. They're planning to put a lousy little satellite in Low Earth Orbit eventually. Whoopity-do!

Get the spin on this one though:

Amid fears in the West that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, some experts believe Iran's space program is possibly a cover to improve its military ballistic missiles

Yeah... you mean, like OURS WAS?

Pot, kettle. Kettle, Pot.

Source: CNN.com

Tanguska Boomy Boomy
So it looks like the rock that turned a chunk of Siberia into a pancake may have been smaller than originally thought... and thus, that smaller rocks from space pose a bigger threat than previously imagined.

Alan Harris, a planetary scientist at Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said he's been following Boslough's work on Tunguska for several years "and I think the idea that he has there seemed very sound."

"A meteorite or asteroid coming into Earth's atmosphere has a lot of momentum," he said. "The idea that it would push down into the atmosphere seems very plausible."

"The bottom line is it takes a lot less energy, a small explosion, to create ground damage" such as that at Tunguska, said Harris, who studies the frequency of such impacts to assess hazards.

In the future, he said, he'll take Boslough's work into account and revise estimates of damage from impacts by smaller objects.

Oh yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Cold indifferent universe, baby.

Source: CNN.com

Baghdad from Spaaaaaaaace
Baghdad has three sewer treatment plants. One is busted, one barely works, one is backed up and creating a huge lake of... sewage.. that you can apparently see... from Google Earth.

Baghdad is drowning in sewage, thirsty for water and largely powerless, an Iraqi official said in a grim assessment of services in the capital five years after the US-led invasion.

One of three sewage treatment plants is out of commission, one is working at stuttering capacity while a pipe blockage in the third means sewage is forming a foul lake so large it can be seen "as a big black spot on Google Earth," said Tahseen Sheikhly, civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.

I tried, I really did, to find the lake in question. I think it's in the northeast of the city, in a long line of obviously, horribly contaminated spill ponds. But it's hard to say. There are so many algae bloom covered lakes, so many toxic-red bodies of water, the Tigris looks like a bright green snake, which has got to be all the sewer runoff... wow.

Source: MSN
Also, Google Earth

I Survived the LSAT

But At What Cost?

Where the White Women At?
It's a question on Bill Kristol's mind, it seems.

BILL KRISTOL: Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women. The Democratic establishment -- it would be crazy for the Democratic Party to follow an establishment that's led it to defeat year after year. White women are a problem, that's, you know -- we all live with that.

[laughter]

JUAN WILLIAMS (National Public Radio correspondent and Fox News contributor): Not me!

HUME: Bill, for the record, I like white women.

KRISTOL: I know, I shouldn't have said that.

Probably not, no. Also, what's up with Juan Williams here?

*shrug*

Conservatives are weird.

Source: Media Matters

Neil Boortz, Total Ass
Neil Boorz, right-wing radio pundit and general waste of skin, has decided that it's time to reveal how he really feels about Katrina refugees.

Summary: On his nationally syndicated radio show, Neal Boortz made disparaging remarks about Hurricane Katrina victims, stating, "When these Katrina so-called refugees were scattered about the country, it was just a glorified episode of putting out the garbage." Boortz also described New Orleans as "a city of parasites, a city of people who could not and had no desire to fend for themselves."

Neil, please, go fuck yourself. Seriously. Racist, classist fuckwit.

Offhand I'd say it's hard to fend for yourself when your entire city is underwater due to gross federal negligence, there's no drinking water, no electricity, no security, bodies floating past what's left of you home and none of those federal agencies you pay taxes to every year show up to help or give a damn. For years afterward, either.

But why bother responding to this guy? He's a moron. He always will be a moron. There's no helping someone this monumentally, viciously stupid.

Source: Media Matters

Rise of the HPV Vaccine
A new study shows that the Human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer in women, also causes throat cancer in men, at a far higher rate than previously speculated.

I imagine that the religious right, who vehemently opposed the vaccine being given to preteen girls, will now absolutely CLAMOR that it be given to their boys.

Those arguments about preventing disease encouraging sex won't hold up in their tiny minds when it's their precious heirs at risk, after all. Women are just chattal; you can always buy more.

Source: The Associated Press

Chart of the Datasphere
Well, the (underwater) internet part of it, at any rate. Fascinating stuff. Largely the internet flows where you'd expect it to, with white developed areas receiving by far the hugest share, but things do stand out. Australia, for instance, has little connectivity, though some decent bandwidth (and more is planned). Brazil has a lot of undersea connections, distributed over different areas, so even if they had a similar cabling accident to the one that took out much of the Middle East's bandwidth this week, BRASIL!!! would still flood across the interwebs in rainbow colors.

Such a heartwarming thought.

The accident in question was caused by a ship that tried to put down anchor off the coast of Egypt during bad weather. Understandable thing to do. Unfortunately, said anchor snagged something other than rocks... two very, very pricey ocean-floor fiber optic cables.

According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.

Ooopsies.

Source: The Guardian
For nifty chart

Bill-O
For those who didn't see it on Olbermann (you know who you are), Bill O'Reilly's recent campaign against John Edwards for daring to note that a lot of veterans are homeless has culminated in a protest against him by the very homeless veterans he insisted didn't exist, or only existed because they were are all crazy and on drugs.

Carol Gardener, executive director of Fitzgerald House, which provides transitional housing and job placement assistance to homeless veterans, recently appeared at News Corporation headquarters to deliver a petition to FOX News mainstay and The O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly.

The petition, signed by 17,000 people, demands an apology from O'Reilly over a claim he made that there are no homeless veterans.

"The only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's brain," O'Reilly quipped during his January 4 broadcast, referring to part of a speech that former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards (D-NC) gave, dropping a figure of 200,000 veterans sleeping "under bridges and on grates." (The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 195,000.)

O'Reilly repeatedly joked about homeless veterans, insisting that, even if there was such a problem, there "aren't that many."

Worst...Person....In the World!!! (sorry Keith)

Source: Raw Story