October 2007 archive

First, thanks to Sheddhead for the essay and great pictures. 

This would have been sooner, but I’m kinda’ new at this digital stuff and uploading on a public site, etc.

As Sheddhead said, the day turned out beautiful, although a little brisk.

I did not attend the Union Park Rally, or the march, but instead went early to Federal Plaza, where all protestors ultimately gathered.

Early arrival at Federal Plaza

There’s more:

Kos writes a timely piece on cults of personality:

when your hero turns out to be not so perfect after all, clinging to that fiction can’t possibly reflect well on you. Understand that these candidates are all human, thus imperfect. Understand that they have free will, thus will do things you will disagree with. And that’s okay. Politics is about weighing the good and the bad and going with the best we have. There is no such thing as “perfect” in this biz.

Feel free to rationalize every stupid thing your candidate does, but don’t expect the rest of us to go along with it. All of the Democrats have done stupid things and smart things. I mean, Chris Dodd announced his candidacy on Don Imus, for chrissakes. And yes, when they do those stupid things, some of us will be right there talking about how stupid those things are.

We’re not Republicans, “carrying water” for their leaders and keeping their mouths shut as they drag the nation into the gutter. And we certainly shouldn’t be like the 24% dead-enders, who still cling to Bush despite all evidence of him being the worst president in our nation’s history.

Hear! Hear!

Some news and OPEN THREAD.

1. Ribbit. Ribbit. Great News! Scientists in New Zealand have discovered a possible cure to a deadly disease that has been destroying much of the world’s population of frogs and other amphibians. Kim Griggs, BBC News science reporter, reports from Wellington, New Zealand of a Frog killer fungus ‘breakthrough’. The breakthrough is chloramphenicol, which is a common antibiotic used for humans as an eye ointment. “The researchers found frogs bathed in the solution became resistant to the killer disease, chytridiomycosis. The fungal disease has been blamed for the extinction of one-third of the 120 species lost since 1980.”

   “We found that we could cure them completely of chytrids,” said Phil Bishop from the University of Otago. “And even when they were really sick in the control group, we managed to bring them back almost from the dead.”

2. More good news. Xan Rice in Nairobi, Kenya for The Guardian reports Uganda ‘averts tragedy’ with reversal of decision to clear virgin forest for biofuel. “Conservationists have hailed a decision by the Ugandan government to drop plans that would have allowed a private company to grow sugar cane for biofuel production on a protected forest reserve.”

   “This is a tragedy averted,” said Paul Buckley, head of the Africa programme at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. “There are plenty of places to grow sugar cane, but not many tracts of virgin forest left in Uganda.”

   “The controversial proposal, which would have turned over 17,500 acres of the 74,000-acre Mabira forest to the Indian-owned Mehta Group, had caused alarm in environmental circles and stirred up racial tensions. Protected since 1932, the Mabira reserve acts as a vital catchment area for Lake Victoria, just eight miles south of the forest, and is home to more than 300 species of birds, 200 types of trees and nine different primates. Besides the biodiversity loss, local and international conservation groups claimed the forest’s value in storing carbon dioxide and mitigating global warming far exceeded any commercial gains from sugar cane production.”

Below the fold are stories about growing vegetables in Greenland, critter cameras, Lake Superior, and the nexus of birds and wind power in the Columbia River Gorge. That’s right! Two bonus stories today, making that a Four at Four first.

Light Emitting Pickle here to bring you the most recent open thread. First, a few words about Pickle Pony Parties:

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.

Rutgers University historian David Greenberg has an important column in today’s Washington Post:

You wouldn’t know it from reading the papers, but the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination is a confirmed right-winger. On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism.

Rudy.

Greenberg points out that anyone who lived in New York while Giuliani was mayor- anyone who actually knows anything about Giuliani- knows that he’s neither liberal nor moderate. As mayor, he tried to crush liberalism. But everyone from James Dobson and Richard Viguerie, to ABC’s Jake Tapper, NPR’s Mara Liasson, washingtonpost.com’s Chris Cillizza has been playing along with the “liberal” framing. Greenberg says that framing always boils down to “three overblown issues — guns, gay rights and abortion — and even in those cases, his deviation from conservative orthodoxy is far milder than is usually suggested.”

But:

The “social” and “cultural” issues that divide Americans encompass much more than guns, gay rights and abortion. They include state support of religion; the legitimacy of dissenting speech; the president’s right to keep information secret; the place of fair procedures in dispensing justice. The Bush administration’s hard-line stands on these matters have polarized the nation as much as the Iraq war has. And on these issues, Giuliani is just as hard-line as the man he’d like to succeed.

And here’s the money quote- the framing we will need make our number one talking point, should Giuliani be nominated:

If you’ve managed to keep liking President Bush, you’d have no trouble loving President Giuliani.

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