GAME 8:

(8) Kramnik,Vladimir - Anand,Vishwanathan (FIDE World Chess Championship Bonn, Germany (8), 24.10.2008)

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JUST TRIBES:

Pak uses tribals to fight Taliban (Jane Perlez & Pir Zubair, 10/24/08, Times of India)

Two tribal elders lay stretched out in an orthopedic ward here last week, their plastered limbs and winces of pain grim evidence of the slaughter they survived when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of their tribal gathering.

These wounded men, and many others in the hospital, were supposed to be the backbone of a Pakistani government effort to take on the Taliban, and its backers, al-Qaida, with armies of traditional tribesmen working in consultation with the Pakistani military.

The tribal militias, known as lashkars, have quickly become a crucial tool of Pakistan’s strategy in the tribal belt, where the army has been fighting the Taliban for more than two months in what army generals acknowledge is a tougher and more protracted slog than they had anticipated. And, indeed, the lashkars’ early efforts have been far from promising.

As the strength of the militants in the tribal areas grows, and as the war across the border in Afghanistan worsens, the Pakistanis are casting about for new tactics. The emergence of the lashkars is a sign of the tribesmen’s rising frustration with the ruthlessness of the Taliban, but also of their traditional desire to run their own affairs and keep the Pakistani army at bay, Pakistani officers and law enforcement officials say.

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YA' THINK SO?:

Polls: White support for Obama at historic level (DAVID PAUL KUHN, 10/24/08, Politico)

Barack Obama, the first black major party nominee, is positioned to win the largest share of white voters of any Democrat in more than three decades, according to an exclusive Politico analysis of recent Gallup and Pew Research Center polling.

The most recent two weeks of Gallup polling, which includes roughly 13,000 interviews, show 44 percent of non-Hispanic white voters presently support Obama — the highest number for a Democrat since 47 percent of whites backed Jimmy Carter in 1976.

We'll have to see that to believe it even if John McCain never runs a Reverend Wright ad.

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IT'S W'S FAULT:

'Earth's core is cooling off' (Times of India, 25 Oct 2008)

Scientists have discovered new evidence that the earth’s interior has cooled considerably over the last three billion years, a finding that leads to questions whether plate movement is only a relatively recent phenomenon.

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IS THAT A UNICORN HORN IN YOUR POCKET?:

When history spanks: Where were you when that incredible thing happened? How will you respond? (Mark Morford, October 24, 2008, SF Chronicle)

You really only get a handful, a smattering, maybe three or four per lifetime if you're lucky or blessed or just so happen to be paying the right kind of deeper karmic attention.

Historic events, I mean. Major shifts, upheavals, great leaps forward, the Thing That Changed Everything.

Do you notice? Do you care? When history walks up and slaps you upside the head with a megadose of human drama wrapped in shiny evolutionary paper, do you do anything about it? Offer thanks? Hold a ceremony? Join in?

Do you, at the very least, pause in your day and take a deep breath and say oh my God, would you look at that, the world is shifting right this very moment like I've never experienced before, and I can feel it rumbling beneath my feet hang on hang on oh holy hell hang on?

I'm here to suggest: Maybe you should.

Right now is a prime example. Right now might be a good time to pause and step back for a moment, blink a few times as you note how the momentous event that is this very election just so happens to be of the very kind that can change the timbre and tone not merely of our flawed and broken nation, but the entire planet. Such is the attention, such is the energetic reach. Rare and precious indeed.

To say it outright: I think President Obama will be just such a shift, an extraordinary marker, a type and flavor of history that we as preternaturally jaded humans rarely get to experience anymore.

They haven't been this excited since the Camelot disaster.

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THE ELITE VS THE DEVOUT (via Kevin Whited):

Civil War on the Right (E. J. Dionne Jr., October 24, 2008, Washington Post)

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity -- and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

And then there is George W. Bush.

One doesn't look to Mr. Dionne for insight about much of anything, least of all conservatism, but you'd think even he'd recognize that what he's describing here are Rationalist intellectuals who don't believe in conservative principles, but were willing to latch on to the religious party when it served their purposes (pretty much the essential teaching of Leo Strauss). That's why they consistently back the most secular candidate in the Republican primaries--who always loses--and why they're always uncomfortable with the eventual nominee, who is routinely a social conservative.

In this election they just happen to be more at odds with the vice presidential pick--who is more devout--than the presidential and they're dong their best to make sure she doesn't get the nod in 2012.

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• Talent Spotting:

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THE ONE, UNPLUGGED (via Thomas Crown):

Barack Obama on Dreams From My Father (Eye on Books)

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SO, LET'S SEE IF WE HAVE THIS STRAIGHT...:

Placebos don't make ethicists feel better: A survey of U.S. doctors finding wide use of dummy pills makes some uneasy with the deception. (Maria Cheng, October 24, 2008, LA Times)

About half of American doctors in a new survey say they regularly give patients placebo treatments -- usually drugs or vitamins that won't really help their conditions.

And many of the doctors are not honest with their patients about what they are doing, the survey found.

That contradicts advice from the American Medical Assn., which recommends that doctors use treatments with the full knowledge of their patients.

"It's a disturbing finding," said Franklin G. Miller, director of the research ethics program at the National Institutes of Health and one of the study authors. "There is an element of deception here which is contrary to the principle of informed consent."

...people are healthier than they've ever been, but demand diagnoses of and treatments for their non-existent "ailments" from doctors, who then give them a fake cure for the phony ill and everyone's happy. But the patients, who refused to accept that the were fine to begin with, will accept it when they're told the pill is just to shut them up? Color us dubious.

How about just restoring market principles and making patients pay for the medications they demand? That'll cut the problem drastically.

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WHEN HAVE COMMODITY PRICES EVER HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH SUPPLY?:

Oil falls despite OPEC move to cut output (Associated Press, October 24, 2008)

OPEC said at an emergency meeting today that it will slash oil production by 1.5 million barrels to stem the "dramatic collapse" of oil prices, but crude prices plunged 5 percent anyway as financial markets spiraled downward across the globe.

Demand for crude has evaporated and the supply levers held by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries appear to have little influence in the current economic climate.

When oil was being bid up it rose irrespective of the news. Now the speculators are bailing it is falling irrespective. We have plenty--the rest is just psychology.

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WHO GETS MAURY POVICH?:

Oprah 'to be U.S. ambassador to Britain if Obama wins election' (Daily Mail, 23rd October 2008)

Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey could be appointed as U.S. ambassador to Britain, according to rumours stoked by a former senior British diplomat. [...]

Many commentators have suggested that a more likely candidate for ambassador to Britain would be Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of assassinated US president John F Kennedy.

You'd think Ms Winfrey would be more useful in a country that could use more attention, like Afghanistan.

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THAT'LL MOTIVATE THE BASE!:

Blame game: GOP forms circular firing squad (JONATHAN MARTIN & MIKE ALLEN & JOHN F. HARRIS, 10/23/08, Politico)

With despair rising even among many of John McCain’s own advisors, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering—-much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely.

A McCain interview published Thursday in the Washington Times sparked the latest and most nasty round of Washington finger-pointing, with senior GOP hands close to President Bush and top congressional aides denouncing the candidate for what they said was an unfocused message and poorly executed campaign.

From whence derives the bizarre notion that a candidate can help himself by helping the opposition tear down the leader(s) of his own party.

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NOT ONLY CAN YOU CATCH UP ON THE OLD EPISODES...:

...but Hulu has the first episode of 30 Rock's third season available a week before it's on the network:

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