Biden Deplores Own Campaign's Ad (NY Sun, 9/22/08)
The Democratic nominee for vice president, Senator Biden of Delaware, is denouncing a television advertisement released by the campaign he is running along with Senator Obama of Illinois.During an interview with CBS yesterday, Mr. Biden disowned an Obama-Biden ad that suggested the Republican nominee, Senator McCain, was out of touch because he does not use a computer.
"I thought that was terrible," Mr. Biden told news anchor Katie Couric after she made reference to the ad while asking about the tone of the campaign. After the ad was released, several of Mr. McCain's allies pointed to press reports saying he cannot type because of injuries he incurred while a prisoner during the Vietnam War.
"I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it," the vice presidential nominee said.
This statement just emailed, perhaps notably, not by a Biden-specific aide but by Obama spokesman Bill Burton:“I was asked about an ad I’d never seen, reacting merely to press reports..."
MORE:
The Story Behind Biden's Emergency Helicopter Landing in Afghanistan (Jake Tapper, September 22, 2008, Political Punch)
"Ladies and gentlemen, where are we now? Where are we now?" Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said to the National Guard Association today, talking about the war in Afghanistan."If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden said. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are." [...]
In February 2008, Biden -- along with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. -- was on a chopper that made an emergency landing in the mountains of Afghanistan.
A snowstorm had forced them down.
Anti-Iran Rally Turns Into Anti-Obama Rally (Marcia Kramer, 9/22/08, CBS)
It was a simple sign that read "We Want Sarah. Shame On The Rally Organizer."Howard Webber from Brooklyn held it.
"As important an event as this is, you needed a unity of Democrats and Republicans to show Ahmadinejad that we're not going to accept a nuclear Iran."
Buddy Macy of Little Fells, N.J., felt much the same way.
"I'm so disappointed, upset," Macy said. "She would have brought 10,000-20,000 more supporters of Israel. People who were curious were stopped because of partisan action."
Why McCain Loves Misha: Georgia's president is a man after the Republican nominee's heart. (Owen Matthews, 9/20/08, NEWSWEEK)
It's not surprising that Saakashvili, 41, known to Georgians by the nickname Misha, would turn to McCain at a moment of crisis: their decade-long friendship is among the closest McCain has with any foreign leader. Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, traveled to Georgia in 2006 with a delegation led by McCain. He says Saakashvili saw the Republican nominee "as a man of greatness … on a different level" from the other legislators. And it's clear why McCain would admire the Georgian president. In many ways he's McCain's McCain—a passionate and unorthodox reformer, and a stalwart freedom fighter ranged against the Russian bear. Saakashvili's stint as Georgia's justice minister ended abruptly at a cabinet meeting in 2001 when he brandished a dossier of photos showing top ministers' lavish country homes, slapped it on the table and demanded that his colleagues be prosecuted immediately. "We are similar in many ways," Saakashvili says. "We agree that you can't compromise your beliefs."That's exactly what worries some of McCain's many foreign-policy consultants. As the two presidential candidates prepare to debate foreign affairs and national security this Friday night, the Republican nominee is widely assumed to have an edge: polls consistently show that voters think he's better prepared than Sen. Barack Obama to be commander in chief. His relationships with leaders like Saakashvili contribute to that reputation. Yet McCain's affection for Misha runs counter to the instincts of many Republican foreign-policy "realists."
Extinct tortoise 'can live again' (Richard Black. 9/22/08, , BBC News)
An extinct Galapagos tortoise species could walk again, scientists believe.Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report finding relatives of Geochelone elephantopus alive and well.
Cross-breeding these living tortoises might re-create the extinct species - though it could take a century.
McCain and Palin Have an Opportunity in the Frozen North (Michael Barone, 9/22/08, US News)
[T]he reshuffling of the political deck seems to have opened up more states for McCain and have closed off some states for Obama, specifically, in the northern tier of the country: call it the Frozen North. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington seem to be in play now. Preconvention polls showed Obama well ahead in each; postconvention polls show him leading by only a few points. That's 31 electoral votes on the table. And North Dakota, Montana, and Alaska seem to be out of play. Obama was competitive there in pre-convention polls, though there weren't many of them; he's well behind in postconvention polls. That's nine electoral votes off the table. Net advantage to McCain: 40 electoral votes. The Obama campaign has evidently reached the same conclusion: It is closing its North Dakota offices and the sending staffers to Minnesota and Wisconsin.The obvious explanation, and not just for Alaska, is Sarah Palin.
Upwardly Mobile America? (Stephen Moore, September 22, 2008 , The American)
Q. Is there really a ‘war against the middle class’ in America as claimed by people such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs?A. Well, if the middle class is fighting a war, they’ve been winning. Graph 2 shows the income range needed to be considered in the middle class in the United States (between the 40th and 60th percentiles in income for families). In 1967 the average middle-class pre-tax income was about $40,000; in 2005 it was about $60,000. And this does not include the increased generosity of non-wage and non-salary benefits such as healthcare, pensions, flexible workweeks, and more family leave, vacation, and holidays.
Most economists agree that when these income numbers are adjusted by a more accurate inflation measure—one that takes full account of the improved quality of the products we now have access to, such as cell phones, laptop computers, and new medical technologies, for example—the purchasing power of the American middle-class family is about one-third higher today than in the 1970s.
The Census Bureau family income data indicate that in 1967 one in 20 families had an income of $100,000 or more (in today’s dollars). In 2005 one in six families did. There are three times as many families earning more than $75,000 a year today than there were in 1967.
Aging Gracefully (Dave Cameron - September 22, 2008, Fan Graphs)
Jamie Moyer is 45 years old. Jamie Moyer has thrown 190 innings, has won 15 games, and has a 3.78 ERA. Jamie Moyer is 45 years old.This is, in two words, historically remarkable. Very few pitchers last long enough to throw until they’re 45, and even fewer do it at a level that adds value to their team. Finding pitchers who are significantly better than the league average starting pitcher at age 45 is almost impossible.
In the history of baseball, the list of guys who have been this good while being this old essentially reads like this:
Satchel Paige, 1952 and 1953
Phil Niekro, 1984
Jamie Moyer, 2008
McCain Holds Slight Lead In Latest NH Poll (WMUR, September 22, 2008)
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has built a slight lead over Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama in the latest New Hampshire poll.The WMUR/Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center shows that 47 percent of likely voters plan to vote for McCain, with 45 percent saying they plan to vote for Obama.
Barack Obama, John McCain and the Language of Race (BRENT STAPLES, 9/22/08, NY Times)
It was not that long ago that black people in the Deep South could be beaten or killed for seeking the right to vote, talking back to the wrong white man or failing to give way on the sidewalk. [...]In what is probably a harbinger of things to come, the McCain campaign has already run a commercial that carries a similar intimation, accusing Mr. Obama of being “disrespectful” to Sarah Palin. The argument is muted, but its racial antecedents are very clear.
The throwback references that have surfaced in the campaign suggest that Republicans are fighting on racial grounds, even when express references to race are not evident. In a replay of elections past, the G.O.P. will try to leverage racial ghosts and fears without getting its hands visibly dirty. The Democrats try to parry in customary ways.
Mr. Obama seems to understand that he is always an utterance away from a statement — or a phrase — that could transform him in a campaign ad from the affable, rational and racially ambiguous candidate into the archetypical angry black man who scares off the white vote. His caution is evident from the way he sifts and searches the language as he speaks, stepping around words that might push him into the danger zone.
These maneuvers are often painful to watch. The troubling part is that they are necessary.
Of course, the problem is that it's been thirty years since most Americans were willing to lie back and catch that sort of flak. Nowadays we properly note the fear and loathing of his own country that must animate the author if he truly believes this nonsense. Kind of sad when giving him the benefit of the doubt means assuming he's just trying to exploit race for partisan political purposes.
Franken helps craft McCain 'SNL' skit (Jonathan Martin, Josh Kraushaar Sat Sep 20, 2008, Politico)
Al Franken, the former "Saturday Night Live" star now running in a high-profile Senate race in Minnesota, helped craft the opening sketch mocking John McCain that kicked off the NBC comedy show Saturday, according to two well-placed sources inside the network. [...]Franken’s input to the show blindsided his campaign staff, who have been forced to explain away some of the more crass and profane parts of his past writing and acting that have been used as fodder against him in a state known for its polite manners.
Palin on Ahmadinejad: 'He Must Be Stopped' (SARAH PALIN, September 22, 2008, NY Sun)
Governor Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, was scheduled to speak today at a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to protest the appearance here of President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Her appearance was canceled by rally organizers who sought a nonpolitical event. Following are the remarks Mrs. Palin would have given:I am honored to be with you and with leaders from across this great country — leaders from different faiths and political parties united in a single voice of outrage.
Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.
Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator's intentions and to call for action to thwart him.
He must be stopped.
GOP gaining in govs races, too (Louis Jacobson, 9/18/08, Stateline.org)
Washington state: In the rematch of an exceedingly close 2004 contest, challenger Dino Rossi (R) out-raised and out-spent Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire in August. The impact is clear. An automated SurveyUSA poll in early September found Rossi, once consistently trailing in the race, ahead, 48 percent – 47 percent. The shift was most noticeable among women – a potentially alarming trend for a female governor.The SurveyUSA poll underscored Gregoire’s underwhelming two-point primary win over Rossi on Aug. 19. (Under the state’s unusual primary system, the top two finishers, regardless of party, face off in the general election.) And while Obama is doing well in Washington state, Republicans contend that Rossi – running as a candidate of change against someone he dismisses as a lifelong politician – might be able to pick off a few change-minded Obama supporters.
Stocks Fall on Objections to Rescue Plan (MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM, 9/22/08, NY Times)
Stocks fell sharply and oil prices suddenly spiked on Monday as investors anxiously waited for Washington lawmakers to hash out the details of the biggest government bailout in history — a politically fraught process that will create a new slate of winners and losers on Wall Street.That uncertainty, about a shaken financial system still in flux, appeared to spook investors away from assets tied directly to the health of the American government. The dollar dropped sharply against the euro, and oil prices jumped, closing up more than $16 a barrel.
The Battleground Poll and the vanishing moderate (Bruce Walker, September 22, 2008, Enter Stage Right)
The percentage of Americans who describe themselves as conservative has remained over the last thirteen Battleground Polls around sixty percent. That is the biggest missing story in politics. A study of the archives of the Battleground Poll shows that this powerful conservative majority has been around since the question was first asked, in September 1996, twelve years ago. Fifty-seven percent of Americans, on the eve of re-electing Bill Clinton, considered themselves conservatives. In the twenty-two Battleground Polls since then, the clear conservative majority has never been lower than fifty-three percent and has gotten as high as sixty-two percent. The mean average over these dozen years has been 58.5% but over the last six and a half years, that percentage has averaged 59.9% - the sixty percent I mentioned in my previous article.There is no way to tweak this number into something other than what it is. The respondents polled were different in each of these many polls. The options of "very conservative," "somewhat conservative," "very liberal," "somewhat liberal," "moderate," and "don't know / refused" has been available in every Battleground Poll since December 1997. Respondents have embraced the conservative label deliberately. More interestingly, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as "very conservative" has risen steadily. Over the last several Battleground Polls, that percentage has been about twenty-one percent. At the beginning of the decade, only about sixteen percent of Americans in these polls identified themselves as very conservative.
While the overwhelming conservative majority in America is the biggest story in politics, the second biggest story is what happened to that middle of the spectrum which the Left is always telling us we should try to reach – the "moderate" voter. When Battleground first began asking respondents about their ideology (and why, we can only wonder, do other polling organizations not also routinely answer this crucial question? - maybe these other polling groups do, but choose not to publicize their findings), the only options were "conservative," "moderate," and "liberal." With those choices, the conservative majority was still huge at fifty-seven percent, but those Americans who waved the white flag of "moderate" was a significant thirteen percent. That is a voting bloc worth pursuing. [...]
Then, in the January 2002 Battleground Poll, the number of Americans who chose to call themselves "moderate" dropped to three percent. In the Battleground Polls since then, the self-described moderates has never been higher than four percent; it has been as low as one percent; and it has averaged just about two percent of the population, or just exactly what it was in the August 2008 Battleground Poll. What happened?
...how the Unicorn Rider alienated Jake Tapper so badly, but it sure has amusing results.
US trade move big news for NZ: Clark (Paula Oliver, 9/23/08, New Zealand Herald)
Word seeped out yesterday that the US had decided to join the so-called P4 trade agreement, which encompasses New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei.The US decided in March to hold talks with the P4 focusing on investment and financial services only, but it's now decided to join the whole deal.
Prime Minister Helen Clark last night put the potential deal in the same ballpark as getting a bilateral free trade agreement with the US, something the Government has sought unsuccessfully for several years.
"I think the value to New Zealand of the United States coming into a transpacific agreement as a partner would be of the same value as we would hope to get from a bilateral FTA," Helen Clark said. "It's very, very big news."
Ululations for Obama across the globe (Kent Ewing, 9/23/08, Asia Times)
If Democratic Senator Barack Obama becomes the first African-American president of the United States, anyone living within a block of my family in this city is in for a shock: unbridled ululations.My neighbors have learned to ignore Hong Kong's daily noise barrage - the sirens, the jackhammers the car horns and the collective volubility of a population of nearly 7 million people who love life and the pursuit of money - but ululations of joy, as in long and loud emotional utterances, may stop them in their tracks.
This rapturous wailing will come from my Kenyan wife, who happens to be from the same tribe (the Luo) as the African side of Obama's family. In fact, she hails from the same village as the Illinois senator's father. So don't even bother to ask whom she favors in November 4 election. Blood and tribe are thicker than water and nation.
Do Soccer Celebrations Go Too Far For American TV Viewers? (The Gaffer, 9/22/08, EPL Talk)
What's conspicuous here is the other Chicago mentors they left out. But that attack comes in October...
G7 backs 'extraordinary' US plan to end crisis (Martin Waller, Suzy Jagger, Tom Baldwin, 9/22/08, Times of London)
The Group of Seven (G7) leading economies today said they “strongly welcome” the US Government's $700 billion (£379 billion)plan to bail out the American banking system amid political wrangling over whether UK and mainland European companies should be included in the deal.In a statement, the G7 said: “We pledge to enhance international cooperation to address the ongoing challenges in the global economy and world markets and maintain heightened close cooperation between finance ministries, central banks and regulators.
“We are ready to take whatever actions may be necessary, individually and collectively, to ensure the stability of the international financial system."
Uncommitted Voters More Engaged By RNC Telecasts (Nielsen Wire, September 22nd, 2008)
Voters not yet committed to either candidate were 12% more engaged by TV coverage of the GOP convention than the Democratic convention, according to an analysis released Monday by Nielsen IAG.“Engagement” refers to the amount of attention paid to a television program by the average viewer. Nielsen measures TV engagement by questioning a representative panel of viewers about their recall of specific telecasts’ content.
John McCain’s acceptance speech on September 4 drew the most attentive audience of uncommitted viewers, Nielsen reported. Telecasts of Barack Obama’s and Sarah Palin’s acceptance speeches on August 28 and September 3, respectively, tied in second place as the second most engaging telecasts among uncommitted viewers.
Is Obama Another Dukakis?: Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless? (Christopher Hitchens, Sept. 22, 2008, Slate)
There are three possible reasons for such a huge failure on Barack Obama's part. The first, and the most widely canvassed, is that he is too nice, too innocent, too honest, and too decent to get down in the arena and trade bloody thrusts with the right-wing enemy. (This is rapidly becoming the story line that will achieve mythic status, along with allegations of racial and religious rumor-mongering, if he actually loses in November.) The second is that crisis and difficulty, at home and abroad, sometimes make electors slightly more likely to trust the existing establishment, or some version of it, than any challenger or newcomer, however slight. The third is that Obama does not, and perhaps even cannot, represent "change" for the very simple reason that the Democrats are a status quo party.To analyze this is to be obliged to balance some of the qualities of Obama's own personality with some of the characteristics of his party. Here's a swift test. Be honest. What sentence can you quote from his convention speech in Denver? I thought so. All right, what about his big rally speech in Berlin? Just as I guessed. OK, help me out: Surely you can manage to cite a line or two from his imperishable address on race (compared by some liberal academics to Gettysburg itself) in Philadelphia? No, not the line about his white grandmother. Some other line. Oh, dear. Now do you see what I mean?
Why is Obama so vapid and hesitant and gutless? Why, to put it another way, does he risk going into political history as a dusky Dukakis? Well, after the self-imposed Jeremiah Wright nightmare, he can't afford any more militancy, or militant-sounding stuff, even if it might be justified. His other problems are self-inflicted or party-inflicted as well. He couldn't have picked a gifted Democratic woman as his running mate, because he couldn't have chosen a female who wasn't the ever-present Sen. Clinton, and so he handed the free gift of doing so to his Republican opponent (whose own choice has set up a screech from the liberals like nothing I have heard since the nomination of Clarence Thomas). So the unquantifiable yet important "atmospherics" of politics, with all their little X factors, belong at present to the other team.
John McCain: Immigration reform redux: The Republican puts immigration front and center for Irish Americans. (Mark Silva, 9/22/08, The Swamp)
John McCain opened today with an old Irish joke about a couple of guys buying each other drinks at a bar and bit by bit discovering how much they have in common, even went to the same high school."The O'Reilly twins are getting drunk again,'' the bartender explains.
The green-garbed audience at the Irish-American Presidential Forum in Scranton, Pa., seemed to know the joke. "I'm proud to be the first Republican to appear before the forum,'' McCain, the Republican nominee for president, said to more cheers.
And before long, McCain was talking about a subject that hasn't been aired much lately: His vision for comprehensive immigration reform, helping some of the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants find a "path to citizenship'' - including some 50,000 illegal Irish immigrants, as he noted in Scranton today.
Westwood points finger at Azinger (BBC, 9/22/08)
Europe's Lee Westwood has blamed United States captain Paul Azinger for the "shameful" behaviour of some of the crowd at the Ryder Cup in Valhalla.Westwood pinpointed Azinger's rallying call, in which he urged fans to cheer missed Europeans putts, as the reason for some of the unsavoury scenes.
"Some people don't know the difference between supporting their team and abusing the opposition," he said.
The Royal Society is sadly unenlightened on creationism (George Pitcher, 18/09/2008, Daily Telegraph)
The Rev Professor Michael Reiss didn't say he was a creationist. He merely said in a speech last week that children with a creationist upbringing should be engaged with in science lessons, rather than simply dismissed as wrong."Just because something lacks scientific support doesn't seem to me to be a sufficient reason to omit it from the science lesson," he said. "There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts that they have - hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching - and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion."
Hardly revolutionary, perhaps, but sufficiently heretical for the zealots of science successfully to demand his head. He had let a chink of creationism in, you see, and the new secular scientific establishment decided he was an enemy of the state. A pusillanimous Royal Society duly condemned him.
Because even to acknowledge the existence of creationism is to encourage decadence. In a neo-Stalinist way, creationism must be air-brushed from the picture of the world that our children see, so toxic is it to scientific truth.
The assumption is that Prof Weiss believes that the universe was created by God several thousand years ago in six days, as recorded by witnesses in the book of Genesis.
Just as I believe in an invisible sky fairy, apparently, I must also believe in the literal interpretation of the Genesis story. Actually, I believe in neither.
But I do believe in a purpose to the human story, a meta-narrative to history, if you like, or a journey to understand the mind of God, in Prof Stephen Hawking's phrase. I believe there is evidence for all that. And that, I guess, makes me a creationist.
Iraq's Mehdi Army at Crossroads as U.S. Scales Down (REUTERS, 22/09/2008)
Greater religious authority could be one way Sadr intends to retain relevance. Widely believed to be studying in Iran, Ubaidi said it would not be long before Sadr would enter the ranks of the Marjaiya, or senior Shi'ite Islamic clergy."The next key step for the Sadrist movement may relate to Sadr's religious status, and in particular whether he is going to make an attempt to act as a scholar with the ability to issue his own fatwas (religious edicts)," Visser said.
In Shi'ite-majority Iraq the Marjaiya have huge influence, although frosty ties with Iraq's top Shi'ite clergy mean it is unclear how much weight would be given to Sadr's fatwas.
Often ambiguous and sometimes contradictory, many of Sadr's frequent statements give few clues to his thinking.
Making few public appearances, Sadr may next appear when the U.S.-Iraqi security deal is signed, Ubaidi said. Until then, the support of at least some of Iraq's Shi'ite poor remains strong.
Independent Jolts Minnesota Senate Race (BRAD HAYNES, 9/23/08, Wall Street Journal)
The late entry of a third-party candidate has upended the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, suggesting voter dissatisfaction with the state's two top candidates, as well as shaking Democrats' hopes of adding the seat to their Senate majority. [...]Coleman spokesman Mark Drake said he had expected Mr. Barkley's strong polling after Mr. Franken received only two-thirds of Democratic votes in the primary. "Dean Barkley is benefiting from Democrats fleeing Al Franken in droves," he said. [...]
Mr. Barkley draws voters from both parties, but many observers see his candidacy as more threatening to Mr. Franken, who has struggled to consolidate Democratic support. "He is competing with Franken for the angry voter who disapproves of Bush and sees the country as off on the wrong track," pollster Larry Jacobs, a professor at the University of Minnesota, said after early polling. [...]
Mr. Barkley's emphasis on reducing the national debt may appeal to fiscal conservatives, but his opposition to the Iraq war and support of gay rights appeal to liberal voters.
Bright Spot for the Republican Party: Lots of Cash (Greg Giroux, 9/23/08, CQ)
[T]here are other players — namely the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the two major national party committees. And the RNC is a crucial lifeline for McCain as he competes with the better-financed Obama.The RNC began September with $76.5 million left in the bank which was more than four times as much cash-on-hand as the DNC, which had $17.7 million. Both party committees revealed these figures in updated campaign finance reports that they filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday.
Investors in Stock Funds Show Calm (DAISY MAXEY, 9/22/08, Wall Street Journal)
Investors have been pulling money from stock-based mutual funds since mid-June but have been relatively calm in the face of the extreme volatility of recent weeks."There has not been during this period a huge exodus from equity mutual funds," said Robert Adler, president of AMG Data Services Inc., an Arcata, Calif., company that tracks mutual-fund flows. "On balance, mutual-fund investors have been relatively stable."
Investors sold a net $3.9 billion of stock-focused mutual funds in the week through Wednesday, the largest one-week outflow since July 23, according to AMG. The funds have experienced steady outflows since the week of June 11, but those outflows are relatively small, considering that the equity mutual funds reporting to AMG weekly hold some $2 trillion in assets, he said.
Creation Simulation (ROBERT COSTA, 9/19/08, Wall Street Journal)
The HMS Beagle, with a 26-year-old Charles Darwin onboard, anchored near the Galapagos Islands 173 years ago this week. If that young man were alive today, he just might be hibernating in his parents' basement instead, eating cheese puffs and playing Spore on his laptop. It's true that Darwin once said that "a man who dares waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life." But he might have found Spore, an elaborate videogame that simulates the creation of our universe, to be an enlightening diversion.The player chooses the adaptations of his own micro-organism to transform it from underwater prey to solar-system demigod. The creatures are guided through five stages of evolution -- starting with a single cell, then moving to land creatures, then entire tribes, civilizations and, finally, space invaders.
In typical Darwinian fashion, Spore has caused a ruckus on blogs for its premise and narrative. One site, AntiSpore.com, appeared to be set up to counter what one poster, a self-described concerned Christian parent, called the game's "propaganda aimed directly at our children to teach them evolution instead of creationism." But after thousands of postings on AntiSpore, mostly by angst-filled atheist gamers bewildered and angry that someone could actually question evolution, the anonymous creator of the site announced last week that AntiSpore was in fact a hoax.
AntiSpore.com was meant to parody religious fundamentalism, but the atheists who fell for the hoax ended up parodying themselves with their over-the-top vituperation.
Patriots had no answers for Miami's scheme (Mike Reiss, September 21, 2008, Boston Globe)
The Wildcat got 'em.That's what Ricky Williams called the unconventional offensive package the Dolphins sprung on the Patriots during today's 38-13 beatdown at Gillette Stadium. The unique strategy had running back Ronnie Brown taking a direct snap while lined up in the shotgun as the quarterback, Williams coming left to right in motion as a receiver, and quarterback Chad Pennington at receiver.
Some might call it a gimmick, but gimmicks are usually one-time deals, trick plays used sparingly. In this case, the Dolphins went to the Wildcat six times, and clawed the Patriots' defense into submission with touchdown runs of 2, 5, and 62 yards, as well as Brown's 19-yard touchdown pass.
That's no gimmick. It's just domination.
Strange that a dynasty built on the complete replaceability of NFL players isn't replacing the oldest and least effective ones.
Consumers Cut Health Spending, As Economic Downturn Takes Toll (VANESSA FUHRMANS, 9/22/08, Wall Street Journal)
As the credit crunch threatens to throw the economy into a deep slump, Americans are already cutting back on health care, a sector once thought to be invulnerable to recession. Spending on everything from doctors' appointments to preventive tests to prescription drugs is under pressure.The number of prescriptions filled in the U.S. fell 0.5% in the first quarter and a steeper 1.97% in the second, compared with the same periods in 2007 -- the first negative quarters in at least a decade, according to data from market researcher IMS Health. Despite an aging and growing U.S. population, the number of physician office visits also has been declining since the end of 2006. Between July 2007 and 2008, the most recent month for which data are available, visits fell 1.2%, according to IMS.
In a survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners last month, 22% of 686 consumers said that economy-related woes were causing them to go to the doctor less often. About 11% said they've scaled back on prescription drugs to save money. Some of the areas being hit include hip and knee replacements, mammograms, and visits to the emergency room, according to a survey conducted by D2Hawkeye Inc., a Waltham, Mass., medical data analytics firm, on behalf of The Wall Street Journal.
McCain closes huge gap on key question for women (DAVID PAUL KUHN, 9/22/08, Politico)
Since picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has obliterated what had been a 34-percentage-point deficit in a poll of likely women voters on the question of which candidate has a “better understanding of women and what is important” to them.The two are now effectively tied, with McCain's 44 to 42 percentage lead within the margin of error of the most recent poll conducted by pollsters Kellyanne Conway and Celinda Lake for Lifetime Television. In Lifetime's July poll, women preferred Barack Obama on the same question by nearly three-to-one— 52 to 18 percent.
In this latest poll, conducted Sept. 11-15, age remained a key determinant in response to the question about women’s concerns. Young women, ages 18-34, chose the Obama/Biden ticket as more empathetic to their needs, while women aged 35-64 went for McCain/Palin. Unlike black and Hispanic women, White women saw McCain and Palin as most understanding of their concerns.
About one in four women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries now said McCain and Palin have a better grasp of women’s needs than Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden.
Pakistani leaders 'should have been at bombed hotel' (Philippe Naughton, and Zahid Hussain, 9/22/08, Times of London)
Pakistan's top leaders were to have attended a state dinner at the luxury Islamabad hotel devastated in a suicide bomb attack on Saturday but changed venue at the last minute, it emerged today.Rehman Malik, who heads the Interior Ministry, said that both President Zardari and Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Prime Minister, were expected at the Marriott hotel to mark Mr Zardari's inaugural presidential address to Parliament.
“The National Assembly speaker had arranged a dinner for the entire leadership, for the President, Prime Minister and armed services chiefs at the Marriott that day,” Mr Malik told reporters.
“The President and the Prime Minister changed the venue to the Prime Minister’s house. The function was not held at the Marriott, thus the whole leadership was saved."
MORE:
The gloves are off in Pakistan (Syed Saleem Shahzad , 9/23/08, Asia Times)
Pakistan is now the declared battleground in this struggle by Islamic militants to strike first against American interests before the United States' war machine completes its preparations to storm the sanctuaries of al-Qaeda in Pakistan. [...]Approximately 20 kilometers from Islamabad lies Tarbella, the brigade headquarters of Pakistan's Special Operation Task Force (SOTF). Recently, 300 American officials landed at this facility, with the official designation as a "training advisory group", according to documents seen by Asia Times Online.
However, high-level contacts claim this is not as simple as a training program.
In the mid-1990s, during the government of Nawaz Sharif, a special US Central Intelligence Agency unit was based at the same facility, tasked with catching Osama bin Laden. They left after Pervez Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999.
Now, the US has bought a huge plot of land at Tarbella, several square kilometers, according to sources directly handling the project. Recently, 20 large containers arrived at the facility. They were handled by the Americans, who did not allow any Pakistani officials to inspect them.
Given the size of the containers, it is believed they contain special arms and ammunition and even tanks and armored vehicles - and certainly have nothing to do with any training program.
There is little doubt in the minds of those familiar with the American activities at Tarbella that preparations are being made for an all-out offensive in North-West Frontier Province against sanctuaries belonging to the Taliban and al-Qaeda led by bin Laden. Pakistani security sources maintain more American troops will arrive in the coming days.
Pakistan recently offered ceasefire agreements to militants in the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. These were not only summarily rejected, but followed with attacks in the two Waziristans on security forces, and then the Marriott operation.
Obama campaign staff pulling out of ND (DALE WETZEL, 9/22/08, The Associated Press)
Barack Obama, who has deployed more than 50 staffers in North Dakota in an attempt to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1964, is pulling out.An Obama spokeswoman, Amy Brundage, confirmed Sunday that the campaign's 11 North Dakota offices are being shut and its staffers dispatched to Minnesota and Wisconsin, where recent polls have shown a tight race between Obama and Republican John McCain.
From NBC News/Mason Dixon poll:
Obama 46, McCain 44
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Kwame Kilpatrick exits, with Barack Obama holding the door (Edward McClelland, Sep. 04, 2008, Salon)
In 2008, with the economy in recession -- in free fall in Michigan -- this bluish-purple state, which hasn't gone for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, should be Obama's for the taking. With Kilpatrick's misbehavior dominating the local news on every TV station in a metro area that holds nearly half Michigan's population, he's barely leading: A recent Detroit News poll has him beating McCain 43-41.Ever since the 1967 riot sent hundreds of thousands of whites in a great migration across 8 Mile Road -- the city limit, and the symbolic border between black and white Detroit -- the city and its suburbs have coexisted as uncomfortably as Soweto and Johannesburg.
It was pollster Stanley Greenberg who discovered Detroit's white exiles resettled, but still seething, in Macomb County, and gave them the Linnaean name "Reagan Democrats." The original Reagan Democrat, circa 1980, was a blue-collar voter who abandoned his native party over antiwar protests, busing, affirmative action and welfare queens. Some Reagan Democrats were from an Appalachian background, their forebears having moved north for auto factory jobs. Many were ethnics, white Catholics whose ancestors had come to America long after slavery was abolished. Neither strain had much patience with white guilt, many were stung by Michigan's industrial implosion, as those factory jobs disappeared, and all were outraged by a court decision ordering cross-district busing to integrate their children's schools. (It was overturned by the Supreme Court.) They were also horrified at Detroit's transformation into the original New Jack City. Thanks to drug outfits like the Chambers Brothers and Young Boys Inc., the city had the highest murder rate in the nation.
During Greenberg's first trip to Macomb County, at the height of the Reagan years, he found that whites "expressed a profound distaste for black America, a sentiment that pervaded almost everything they thought about government and politics. Blacks constituted the explanation for their vulnerability and for almost everything that had gone wrong in their lives."
And now, for the last eight months, the local news emanating every day from this black city to its white suburbs has featured the legal, sexual and administrative misadventures of a black mayor who doesn't just play the race card, he is the race card. [...]
Kilpatrick escaped from the 2005 primary with 27 percent of the vote. But his opponent in the general election, an all-Democratic runoff, had a fatal handicap. Former Deputy Mayor Freman Hendrix had come in first in the primary with 44 percent of the vote, almost enough to prevent the runoff. But Freman wasn't his first name. It was Helmut, a moniker given him by his mother, an Austrian Army bride named Rudolfine Ernegger. Kilpatrick knew how to play the Oreo card. His supporters took out an ad in the Michigan Chronicle, Detroit's black newspaper, asking voters to "Just say 'no' to the suburban raiders and their puppet Helmut Hendrix (a.k.a. Freman)." Kwame's father, Bernard "Killer" Kilpatrick, compared his son's critics to Nazis. On Election Day, the mayor skunked the pollsters with a 6-point win.
It was a racist campaign, but it also played on the pride of black Detroiters. They relish their control over City Hall and the regional water supply (the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department serves all of southeastern Michigan), and are adamant that suburbanites have no right to reclaim what they abandoned.
"There's still a fear that the whites will come back and they'll take over the city, they'll take over the water department," a man from the West Side told me as I covered the campaign in 2005. "People say, 'We stayed. We suffered through the city for 40 years. The whites fled. Why should they come in and reap the benefits?'"
The whites are unlikely to return. If anything, they'd like to jackhammer 8 Mile and replace it with razor wire. Earlier this year, Greenberg went back to Macomb, where he found Obama "underperforming" among its tradition-minded Democrats. John Kerry lost the county by 1 point, but Obama was trailing McCain 46-39. Only 71 percent of Democrats were ready to vote for him, versus 85 percent of Democrats nationwide.
This time around, Greenberg found that voters still resented government aid to blacks. Presented with Robert F. Kennedy's statement that America has a "special burden" to help blacks, they responded, "Get over it" and "Didn't they get forty acres and a mule? That's more than I got." But they also distinguished Obama from black leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who were disdained as demanding troublemakers. This time, Macomb County voters were far more concerned about the economy than about blacks, although there was a hint that Kilpatrick could revive the racial rivalry.
"Welfare, crime, reverse discrimination, blacks and Detroit were never mentioned in the discussion of why the country and state are off track, except for some asides about Detroit's pathetic mayor," Greenberg wrote. Obama's soft support in Macomb was more a matter of hesitation than resistance. Voters wanted assurance that Obama won't put black interests above white interests, that he'll work to keep blue-collar jobs in America, and that his exotic name and background won't prevent him from fighting terrorism. Race played a role in some of those concerns. But the poll also demonstrated that white, blue-collar voters are the toughest sell in any election: Resolutely middle class, they're skeptical of both elites and the poor, and they don't worship at the altar of either party.
Train crushes railway sex couple (BBC, 9/22/08)
A couple in South Africa who were having sex on a railway track in Mpumalanga Province have been killed by a goods train, police say.
So Far, It Just Isn't Looking Like Asia's Century (Joshua Kurlantzick, September 7, 2008, Washington Post)
The problem: Calls to nationalism and an obsession with sovereignty are drowning out calls for cooperation. The passage of time since World War II, when nationalism led to catastrophe, has allowed politicians to wield it more freely for short-term gain. "The Chinese are ignorant, so they are overjoyed," Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara quipped after China launched a manned spaceship in 2003. "That [spacecraft] was an outdated one. If Japan wanted to do it, we could do it in one year."This sort of nationalism isn't the stuff of a few firebrands. Across the continent, populist politicians have scrubbed school textbooks, whether to minimize Japan's atrocities in South Korea and China during World War II or to erase the memory of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia -- perhaps because Prime Minister Hun Sen was an officer in the genocidal regime before he turned against it. Traveling to Cambodia, I meet teenagers who know practically nothing about what happened in their country in the 1970s. China, too, has whitewashed the memory of the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 4, 1989. When a "Frontline" documentary crew went to Beijing University a few years ago and showed students the iconic 1989 photograph of the man who stopped a tank in its tracks, no one recognized it.
Politicians aren't the only ones embracing nationalism. In 2002, when Thailand was still recovering from its financial meltdown, government-backed filmmakers produced "The Legend of Suriyothai" to restore their country's wounded pride. One of the most expensive pictures in Thai history, it told the story of an ancient Thai queen who died fighting Burmese invaders -- and compounded Thais' hostility toward Burma, their neighbor to the west.
The Internet has further empowered Asian nationalists, allowing them to air their vitriol unchecked. On Chinese online bulletin boards such as the "Strong Nation Forum," which is run by the People's Daily, respondents compete for the most aggressive stance and ridicule Chinese leaders for compromising on issues such as relations with neighboring countries or Tibet or Taiwan. In Japan, the blogosphere helped spark sales of the manga comic book "Hating the Korean Wave." And in Indonesia, online writers helped fuel anger at neighboring Malaysia for the use of a supposedly Indonesian jingle in a tourism campaign and for the mistreatment of an Indonesian karate referee. These are petty grievances, but the Internet amplifies even the smallest outbursts, and reactions can be fierce. Just last week, Vietnam's foreign ministry called in China's ambassador to protest the appearance on Chinese Web sites of "invasion plans" that purported to detail the occupation of Vietnam by the People's Liberation Army.
Whenever I visit Asia, I meet young people who detest neighbors they barely know. "The Thais, all they care about is money. Nothing else," one Burmese acquaintance told me in Rangoon, despite the fact that he'd never actually been to Thailand. In one study taken last year by a leading Japanese nongovernmental organization, two-thirds of the Chinese polled said they had either a "very bad" or "relatively bad" impression of Japan.
DANIEL ABRAMS, who has been hailed throughout Europe and the Americas (Alan Rich wrote of his Town Hall debut in 1957: he must henceforth be taken into account when lists of pianists most likely to succeed are being compiled) will be presenting a concert of music from his “Opera For Piano” series in New York City on Wednesday, Oct. 15th. Included will be the American premier of his Musical Portraits from Wagner’s ’Ring’ (a 45-minute work). He feels that in his lifetime of music making, this is his most important contribution to music, and that “Opera For Piano” (please see Abrams’ statement below) will be a great addition to the performing pianist’s repertoire. Marta Argerich recently heard some of Abrams’ music performed in Europe and requested its inclusion in her Lugano Piano Festival. To give you some idea of Abrams‘ rare abilities as a musician and pianist, the following is from a review he received from “The NY Herald Tribune” when he presented the complete cycle of Mozart piano sonatas at the Kaufman Y:Mr. Abrams, as has been noted before, is born to the piano; he cannot help but make beautiful sounds and he brings to whatever he tackles not only musicianship, technique and interpretative prowess, but a very special kind of intellectual radiance that quite sets him apart. In short, the five sonatas heard contained a veritable galaxy of refinements -- indeed, the sort of refinements that seem slowly to be creeping out of contemporary piano playing.
The concert, at the Mannes College of Music, 150 West 85th St (between Columbus & Amsterdam Avenues) is on Wednesday, October 15th at 8 pm. There is no charge and seating begins at 7:30 pm.It promises to be a glorious evening of music making and the re-discovery of a truly great pianist!
More about Abrams: www.Daniel-Abrams.com
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-REVIEW: of Daniel Abrams - Fantasie Variations on Tales of Love. Fantasie Variations on Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde”; Chaconne on Dido's Lament from Henry Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas”; Fantasia on Carl Maria von Weber's "Der Freischutz”. (Tony Gualtieri, Classical Music Review)
In creating these operatic "fantasies," Abrams is reaching back to a tradition at least as old as Franz Liszt. Yet while Liszt attempted to reproduce the grandeur of opera, with clanging chords and breathtaking passages of high virtuosity, Abrams is aiming at something more intimate and, perhaps, more pianistic. In form, the Tristan Fantasie is a Theme and Variations; however, the music attempts to paraphrase the opera, moving from the Prelude to the Liebestod and taking in additional material from intervening sections of the opera. Thus Abrams, like Wagner, blends motifs to create new melodies as the piece moves through its variations. Abrams does not try to turn the piano into an orchestra, but rather resets the music as a work for piano. Hence textures are light and never reverberate into sonic mud. This also allows him to maintain a single dynamic flow throughout. When the "Tristan Chord" finally resolves, Abrams for the first time plays fortissimo, giving the moment a strong and appropriate dramatic impact. [...]Daniel Abrams made his New York debut at Town Hall in 1957. He subsequently performed in venues throughout the world but gave up flying after he survived a crash landing whilst on tour in South America. He taught at Goucher College and at Johns Hopkins, and he now lives in Woodstock, New York. He has a marvelous feel for the piano, a delicate but assured touch, and a freedom from virtuosic affectation. He has recently completed a 45-minute paraphrase of Wagner's Ring cycle, which it is to be hoped will appear in a subsequent release. The present disk is a splendid collection of affectionate responses to music of an earlier era and is highly recommended.
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Ralph Plaisted, 80, Adventurer and Polar Pioneer, Dies (BRUCE WEBER, 9/13/08)
In September 1909, Dr. Frederick A. Cook reappeared in Europe after a two-year absence from society and claimed to have crossed the polar ice cap by dogsled and stood at the North Pole on April 21, 1908.Just a few days after Cook’s announcement, Rear Adm. Robert E. Peary sent a wire to The New York Times from the far north of Canada proclaiming that he had planted an American flag at the North Pole on April 6, 1909. When he learned that Cook had beaten him there, Peary declared Cook’s claim fraudulent, and for many years the two men and their defenders argued over who was the real pioneer.
Actually, it was probably neither. Scientists and historians who have examined the diaries and navigation records of the two men have concluded that though both made formidable journeys, they more than likely never got close to the pole.
That leaves the title of the first man to cross the ice and indisputably reach the top of the world to Ralph Plaisted, who did it in a snowmobile in 1968, and who died of a heart attack on Monday at home in Wyoming, Minn., just north of the Twin Cities, his stepdaughter Lesle Tobkin said. He was 80.
Mr. Plaisted, an insurance man by profession, was an adventurer by nature who once uprooted his family to live for 15 months in the Saskatchewan wilderness. The Plaisteds slept in tents until they finished building cabins, and they dined on what they caught, picked and grew.
Durbin raps anti-Iran rally organizers (Jewish Telegraph, 09/21/2008)
A top Senate Democrat criticized the organizers of an anti-Iran rally.U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), speaking to Jewish and Israeli media on an Obama campaign conference call Friday afternoon, said there were "basic mistakes made by organizers of the rally" in the "way invitations were issued."
Monday's rally is protesting the appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations and his country's nuclear program.
Banana Cream Pie Bonanza (Seattle P-I, 9/22/08)
1/3 cup light vanilla soymilk2 ounces fat-free vanilla yogurt
1/2 medium banana, sliced and frozen
3 no-calorie sweetener packets
1 teaspoon Coffee-mate Fat Free French Vanilla powdered creamer, dissolved in 1 ounce warm water
5-8 ice cubes or 1 cup crushed ice
1/2 sheet (2 crackers) low-fat honey graham crackers, crushed
2 tablespoons fat-free Reddi-wip
Place soymilk, yogurt, banana slices, sweetener, creamer mixture and ice in a blender. Add 2 ounces water. Blend on the highest speed for 30 to 45 seconds (until completely blended). Then stir in half of the crushed graham crackers.
Pour into a tall glass. Top with whipped topping and sprinkle remaining graham cracker pieces on top.
from Hungry Girl
