Keep your psalms to yourself

In the news Thursday was this unusual report about a medical study that found prayer may have actually been worse than useless for its subjects.

In the largest scientific test of its kind, heart surgery patients showed no benefit when strangers prayed for their recovery. And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications. Doctors could only guess why.

Oh, but those of us without advanced degrees can also guess why, which is what makes this country grand. These results do seem strange, because you would think believing people are praying for your recovery, if anything, would contribute to some kind of placebo effect.

Yet I know I'm always deeply unsettled to learn some well-intentioned stranger is praying for me (partially because it would have to be a stranger). If they're doing anything, I can't help but suspect they're just interfering and metaphysically messing things up. Taken to its paranoid extreme, I sometimes suspect they're jinxing it all because their God knows I don't believe in him. Regardless, they're just plain creeping me out. Which in turn forces me to divert time, energy and focus, however trifling, toward being unnerved.

Perhaps that's what was going on here–some kind of strange spiritual transference. Maybe these subjects shifted some of the burden of hope and striving toward their own recoveries off to a third party and, confident it was taken care of, started internally slacking.

Also, prayer is quite possibly the lowest-cost means of "helping" other people for the agents. And as long as they say they're doing it, they don't even have to follow through.

Perchance these people paused to wonder that if the strangers praying for them supposedly cared so much about them having "a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications," why weren't they there doing something tangible?

But of course, the religious nutbags (this time sporting lab coats and letters after their names as if they afford them more credibility) can simply respond that, specific procedural flaws aside, science has no business studying prayer at all.

Science "is not designed to study the supernatural," said Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at the Duke University Medical Center. ...

Within the Christian tradition, God would be expected to be concerned with a person's eternal salvation, he said, and "why would God change his plans for a particular person just because they're in a research study?"

So, what, this study just happened to sample a bunch of people not blessed with the divine grace to have their suffering eased in this life? And by that logic, how can the faithful argue religious phenomena are pre-ordained, yet still claim prayer is powerful?

And if prayer had made a real, physical, observable difference, why couldn't a scientific study have measured it? I'm sure this supposed epistemological problem wouldn't have even popped into the discussion at all had the study found a prayer to be correlated with improved patient health–the religious kooks would be waving it as "proof."

But what do I know? Maybe someone should pray for me to see things correctly. Just let me know before you do so I can go put on my tinfoil hat.

Because corrupting one young mind isn't enough...

Congratulations to my mother on becoming a published children's book author and illustrator! (Even if the company she works for isn't giving her any royalties.) The sequel looks to be even better:

(click to enlarge; ad courtesy Laure Noe)

File under "just plain wrong"

Bush heads to Mexico, doesn't pack Speedo

I think I just physically felt the president's approval rating go up a point or two. Or perhaps that was just my pasta coming back up. I've seriously got to stop eating while watching the news.

Chewing the fat and, ideally, the fat-free snacks

According to the New York Times, President Bush has recently been having a series of "informal chats" with reporters from the major news organizations at the White House.

CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman said he thought the sessions were beneficial all around, and was paraphrased as saying, "Mr. Bush does better in such informal sessions than in formal presentations."

Now, I could be mistaken, but conventional wisdom would hold that functioning comfortably in formal situations is a rather vital part of the presidential job description. But of course, delicate creature and man of the people that he is, Bush prefers less structured chats, which, oh, by the way, just happen to be off-the-record.

That's like inviting an infectious disease specialist over to check out your raging case of exotic and virulent South Dakotan Hemorrhagic Weasel Fever, but then saying he or she can't treat you, research you or tell anyone else about you.

Is this the new strategy to win back enough reported public approval to make the president appear a legitimate democratic leader? If so it is somewhat comforting to know Bush is doing something besides accepting resignations from staff officials most Americans have never heard of, but still.

As delightful as I'm sure it is to kick back and sip an iced tea with the most powerful dullard on the planet, in such a situation, the president isn't obligated to answer any substantive questions, but can still claim that he gives reporters access and is Mr. Press Congeniality, therefore giving him leeway to shrug off those substantive questions in on-the-record, formal situations, and thereby obfuscate everything.

Which reminds me, for as much as Bush likes to spout about how history will judge his presidency rather than the public opinion of the moment, this weekend I saw a children's book on a Barnes & Noble clearance rack about the American presidents, through W.'s first term.

The cover presented four photos in a row: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush. It was like that "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong" game from "Sesame Street" come to life.

And the first thing listed inside the book under interesting facts about Dubya? That he once choked on a pretzel.

Black Nikes and purple hoods are so 1990s

This weekend I was invited to the Journalism School's annual awards dinner (yes, in a decidedly disturbing omen for the future of the free press, yours truly was deemed one of the five most accomplished students the school is turning out this year–and believe it or not, I didn't even have to submit a photograph), and though they couldn't even pick up the alcohol tab and our director, entertaining host though he was, mispronounced my name, the speeches given by alumni award-winners were actually quite interesting.

In particular, one spoke about how the reporting profession has become a veritable cult, wholly righteous in its view that everyone else is a liar and an enemy, and going after everyone else is the only way to tell the truth and make a proper difference in the world.

And if you ever leave the "cult," and for instance start working in government or for a non-profit (basically, anything with a stated interest other than "objectivity," which is pretty much impossible, not to mention arguably undesirable), or start entertaining the notion you're just telling and selling good stories like those in the creative professions, you're a traitor.

This cynical attitude, she argued, was probably driving some fine people away from or out of the field, and those in charge would be best advised to stop pouring the poisoned Kool-Aid and re-evaluate their collective mentality.

And as I'm beginning the dreaded career search, I see more than a little truth in that–in how I have to be concerned that whatever I do, the more interesting and compelling I'll find it, the more it could conceivably disqualify me for a "real" or "serious" reporting position somewhere down the road by imprinting the dreaded "bias."

So, you basically have to either risk it and go after something you want, or settle for starting as a bottom-rung reporter at a third-rate smalltown newspaper. And call me crazy, but the thought of my byline gracing the local section of the Turtle Lake Times, fine a publication as I'm sure it is, just doesn't set my soul atwitter.

And I was glad I got out of that awards reception when I did, because if one more older man came up to me and remarked how amazing it was that all five of the senior award winners were women, I would have been forced to start spouting off like one of those raging, anti-door-holding feminist harpies.

I have no firsthand experience with the advertising/PR side, but there were always plenty of guys in my reporting classes. Each one had the same opportunities any of us did to do well in our classes and pursue jobs and internships (and if recent talk of "gender balance" being skewed toward female applicants in higher education, causing girls to have to work harder to gain admission relative to their minority male counterparts are to be believed, they had an easier time getting into this university in the first place).

I know the gentlemen in question probably thought they were giving compliments, but what does our gender matter? I would hope we were judged the best on the basis of the work we did–we just happened to be female.

And so it should be–if we are joining a cult, at least we might be able to improve the dress code.

He'll trash countries, but not hotel rooms

As if I didn't already find this time of year sufficiently depressing, even news tidbits about Bush administration officials with ample opportunity to be comic gold are starting to come up cheap, tacky trifles. Take the publication this week by The Smoking Gun of Dick Cheney's "diva list" of requirements for outfitting his hotel suites.

Did it include any exotic, maniacally specific or ethically questionable food items? Illicit reading materials or entertainment paraphernalia? A medicine cabinet stocked with Ambien and a mini fridge full of premixed, fruity girlie drinks? Portable defibrillators? Ammo?

No such luck. The only one that's even marginally interesting or unnerving is the "All televisions tuned to FOX News" item. Is he just too lazy to change the channel himself lest he perform enough physical activity to jostle loose some congealing arterial plaque and avoid a fifth heart attack? Or is he just that determined to remain uncorrupted by any sources of information out in the "reality-based community," even for the moment it takes to punch a few buttons?

Either one is disturbing, but still–rich, old war-mongering Republicans, even their supposed evil masterminds, seem to be painfully dull in their quirky demands.

Is the possibility of someone getting tossed into Gitmo for bringing his Veepness Cheese Nips instead of Cheez-Its really so much to ask?

Chickens of the CDC

Forget duct tape and plastic sheeting, fellow citizens–we've now got Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, honest to god, telling Americans to stockpile cans of tuna and boxes of powdered milk under their beds to prepare for the fabled potential bird flu pandemic.

And as much as we would all like to think that was just another bizarre yet amusing instance of Ambien-fueled lunacy, we also know coming from a member of this administration, it probably wasn't.

Should bird flu swoop in to roost, officials are also advising people to be prepared to stay inside and away from others while the virus runs its course through the community. Which only takes about, oh, eight frickin' weeks. That's going to require quite the pile of processed pisces.

And yet, with all this fabulous material to work with, the government's Web portal of preparedness, avianflu.gov, is markedly disappointing when compared to previous efforts (ready.gov, anyone?). Foremost, I think they need some more engaging tips for weathering a hypothetical pandemic:

• If you see any strange men wearing suits, dark sunglasses and NSA badges crawling about the exterior of your home like over-caffeinated squirrels, do not be alarmed. They're merely surveilling neighborhood songbirds for suspicious chatter and hacking coughs, per direct orders from the president, and the details do not concern you, dear patriot.

• As summer approaches, though the normal hives of contagion popularly known as schools will be out, children will still be at risk for catching flu from neighborhood playmates. Luckily, you've still got time to refit your backyard sprinkler or Slip 'n' Slide to spray bleach, killing two birds with one stone, if you will.

• A bird flu pandemic could be the perfect opportunity to stick it to friends and neighbors who made fun of your Y2K disaster shelter and stockpile. If not, you might still get your chance when the Martians retaliate against Google for providing any common Earthling with an Internet connection satellite views of their top secret extraterrestrial enclaves–and you can bet they'll be more uppity and more heavily armed than disgruntled Wisconsin Democrats.

• Get involved in your community as it works to prepare for an influenza pandemic. Focus on preventing possible, future suffering and just try to ignore that feeling of character contamination that comes with knowing you've probably spent years ignoring neighbors who could have used your help during actualized crises.

• To limit the spread of germs and prevent infection, teach children to properly wash their hands, cover their coughs and kill themselves at the first sign of a sniffle to protect the populace from pandemic. Then model the correct behavior.

• Pandemics have the potential to seriously disrupt everyday life if mass numbers of people fall sick at the same time. These disruptions could include closures of schools and businesses, interruption of public services and, *cough* indefinite suspension of constitutional government, *cough*– oh no, I think it's starting!

• Prepare backup plans in case public gatherings, such as volunteer meetings and worship services, are canceled. Even if His house is infested with deadly plague, your infinitely perfect, benevolent and rational God will know if you start slacking in your ritual practice of piety.

• Help schools plan for pandemic influenza by talking to administrators and parent-teacher organizations. If they listen to Creationists, they'll listen to anybody.

• Should schools close, plan some home learning activities. Have materials, such as books, on hand. You remember books–those bound things parents used to read to their kids before they handed the task of fostering literacy and love of learning off to digitized snake oils like "Baby Einstein."

• Think about how you can rely less on public transportation during a pandemic. Actually, scratch that one–that's just for poor people whose lives don't matter much anyway.

• If business is disrupted, you may need to find ways to work from home. Just FYI, I'm calling "Avian Flu Strumpet" as my online porn alter ego, so think of something else.

• To build up immunity, start exercising and eating a healthy, balanced diet immediately. Health officials know heart disease, respiratory disease, diabetes, cancer and repugnant aesthetic effects haven't convinced you to do so, but they have to at least toss it out there.

• It is still safe to eat properly cooked poultry, because high temperatures destroy germs, including the bird flu virus. See, tree-huggers, global warming doesn't look so tragic now, does it?

• To keep updated on vital flu information, turn to Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and other ideologically consonant sources, whom government officials will be providing with the best information–your survival dep - er, could depend upon it.

• And finally, set aside any fears spawned by the chaos of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, for the U.S. government is doing many important things to help protect you from avian influenza. Vice President Cheney's "Quail Incident?" Start showing some thanks, ingrates, because that was all for you, America–all for you.

And incense and hallucinogens don't count, hippies

As the third anniversary of the Iraq war arrived, the Bush cabinet went out on a Sunday media blitz tossing up ludicrous historical analogies not worthy of repetition and touting the virtues of staying until we've achieved "victory" (though at this point, anybody who can define what that would look like deserves not just a cookie, but a year's supply of precious Girl Scout Caramel DeLites), apparently forgetting its fearless commander in chief declared it "mission accomplished" less than two months after the war began.

Of course, the anniversary was also met with retrospective graphics and news stories, and the perfunctory anti-war protest in downtown Madison calling for immediate troop withdrawal and seemingly thinking if enough people get together and chant loud enough that this war was unwise, this time, those in power just might admit to that fact and somehow make amends.

It's no secret–but also not something I tend to publicize unless I'm feeling up for taking a lot of crap–that I think in the contemporary political moment, protest is pretty much useless.

To get news coverage, you have to do and say things that media effects research has demonstrated discredit your group and your message. We have lawmakers so caught up in partisan sniping, even if they did happen to listen, it's a wonder they ever get anything done at all, much less things responsive to specific preferences of the people. We also, last but not least, have a presidential administration that brags about ignoring public opinion and press coverage lest it corrupt the "decisive leadership."

I know it runs counter to the spirit so many people my age stoke that doing anything at all short of actively calling for revolution, even if no one listens or cares who doesn't already agree with you, is traitorously aiding and abetting the corrupt status quo–but there is something to be said for trying to change the system from within.

If you stop imagining yourself some kind of ideologically reincarnated '60s radical and look at present reality, perhaps your little snippets of visible, group-sanctioned rebellion allow you to feel better about yourselves, but slapping a sticker on your mode of transport, listening to a particular band or dismissing the president as a terrorist and ignoring everything he ever says isn't going to accomplish much, either.

I've met more than one self-professed "liberal" who is also proud of not following the news–because, you know, it's all lies anyway, and we already know everything anyone in power does is tainted and wrong. Apparently they think they're just going to come up with workable ways to change things in an ethically pristine vacuum and then move the masses by virtue of their claims to self-contained, enlightened truth, which practical experience has proven time and again always rise to the top by merely existing. And if not, at least they can smugly recuse themselves from the entire state of affairs with a tragic sigh and emerge unsullied.

I used to stay it creeped me out to step back and notice my career path seems to be leading toward politics–but the more I keep paying attention, the more going the official route looks like the best bet for accomplishing anything at all, helpful or harmful.

Though we don't yet have any Iraq war veterans running for office (and being told by Democratic Party leaders, as pissed as you may be about losing those limbs or loved ones, try to tone down the war opposition as not to spook the moderates) this year, Madison is also hosting a referendum on the spring ballot brought by the Bring the Troops Home campaign to declare support for troop withdrawal. (And of course, opposition has sprung up, in the form of the Dane County Republican Party's refreshingly restrained in title "Vote No to Cut and Run" campaign.)

I interviewed one of the referendum organizers for coreweekly back when they started this effort in the fall, and he said then and is still saying now that this is not so much about making a conscience-clearing, symbolic statement against the war, or even trying to make supposed representatives in Washington listen. It's about trying to bring Iraq–not "national security" and not "terrorism"–back onto the list of salient, consequential election-year issues on which candidates will have to state meaningful positions for their political survival.

If the people in power aren't going to start listening, it's time to make it clear we will replace them with people who do–and then actually follow through at the polls despite the inevitable reduction of the entire issue back to the poles of "anti-war, pro-defeat, pro-terrorism" vs. "pro-troops, pro-victory, pro-freedom, pro-security."

The reality is this administration and the national partisan majority are not going to pull out of Iraq unless it will be a guaranteed peaceful, 2008 Republican-vote-getting, extra-shiny banner-worthy, ceremonial masturbatory spectacle. (Or unless something massive, violent and horrible happens that makes it a politically palatable option.)

Iraq's own leaders are calling for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, but of course, that would be merely setting a date for formal "defeat" and handing "victory" to the terrorists, who everyone conveniently neglects to mention weren't active in Iraq until after the United States invaded.

Around the time of the last anniversary of that invasion, I interviewed a then-27-year-old named Joshua Volz who decided to use his decidedly over-achieving education and experience in foreign affairs to go over to Iraq as a civilian worker for the State Department, for a piece (pdf) I did in the Daily Cardinal.

At first, I thought he was just arrogant, opportunistic and overly optimistic. But as I talked to him via cell phone from Baghdad for more than two hours beginning past midnight his time, I began to notice just how much I had become conditioned by my fashionably cynical and world-weary ideological peers to reflexively take those traits as flaws.

That conversation helped me to appreciate a hell of a lot more than I had ever had reason to before just how complicated the situation is in Iraq, and how the right thing to do is not nearly as clear as any of us, on either side, would like to think it is and constantly judge those involved as if it is, mistaking our most realistic champions for our enemies.

As Mr. Volz said, "It's important that the voice of dissent is heard, but while you're dissenting, get up and make the situation better. The situation is what it is. You can light a candle, or curse the darkness."

Rally 'round the flagging leader

In a turn of events bound to make liberals and Wisconsinites alike feel not just dirty but positively filthy, conservatives have apparently begun jumping all over Russ Feingold's proposal to censure President Bush for unwarranted NSA wiretapping, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal editorial page all singing his praises for supposedly playing right into their "agenda." As reported by the New York Times:

With the Republican base demoralized by continued growth in government spending, undiminished violence in Iraq and intramural disputes over immigration, some conservative leaders had already begun rallying their supporters with speculation about a Democratic rebuke to the president even before Mr. Feingold made his proposal.

"Impeachment, coming your way if there are changes in who controls the House eight months from now," Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer, declared last month in an e-mail newsletter.

The threat of impeachment, Mr. Weyrich suggested, was one of the only factors that could inspire the Republican Party's demoralized base to go to the polls. With "impeachment on the horizon," he wrote, "maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all."

OK, first of all, if Republicans are so afraid the president's policies have ruined all the traditional appeals to conservative voters, why would they then try to mobilize voters to protect that very same president, whose latest approval rating, according to CNN/USA Today/Gallup, is 36 percent? (Just for contrast, 38 percent of respondents said they think the war in Iraq is going well.)

Why not distance themselves from Bush's policies and talk about returning to fiscal conservativism and whatnot? (But how cool is the news released today that there's $30,000 worth of national debt for each man, woman and child in this country? I would love to see a breakdown of who actually got most of the benefits from all that spending.)

Besides, the censuring party doesn't emerge particularly refreshed when the public thinks they're in the wrong. Polls found support for impeaching President Clinton to be in the 30s as it was happening. Post-impeachment, Clinton's approval rating hit its career high of 73 percent, and the fraction of Americans reporting a favorable view of the Republican Party dropped to less than a third, according to CNN.

A Zogby International poll conducted in January found that 52 percent of Americans (including 23 percent of Republicans) surveyed agreed that "If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

Indeed, regardless of all the moralizing and rationalizing the anti-Clinton contingent still indulges in, the fact remains lying about sex with a chubby intern remains decidedly lower on most people's hierarchies of censure-worthy executive offenses than breaking domestic spying laws (or, hell, taking the country wrongly to war).

If the Republicans really think they can win elections by rallying around Dubya and painting Democrats as unpatriotic for failing to do likewise, I certainly hope it comes back to bite them. (The same goes for any Democrats who still think post-2004 that they can go with the "a vote for any of us is a vote against Bush, so vote for us" strategy.)

But I suppose, either way, it's much more difficult to try and clean up your president's mess than either scold him for making it or defend his right to make it worse.

Beat the rush–claim your hermit cave now

There's an interesting (if misguidedly prognosticating) article in this week's Time Magazine about the future of national political campaigns in a media environment in which many potential voters will be using technology to avoid exposure to more traditional means of persuasion like television ads.

Instead, politicos are expected to turn to what some call "targeted" and others call "stealth" marketing. You know those tales of marketers recruiting and paying loud-mouthed everyday citizens with huge circles of contacts to just happen to talk up a particular brand of organic cased meat at the next neighborhood barbecue, or a particular brand of cardiac parasite pills in the veterinarian's waiting room?

Well, in politics they're called "team leaders," and the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign has already put them into practice. According to Time, it recruited 10,000 African American "team leaders" to "voluntarily talk up Republican policies to their friends" in exchange for such lavish perks as getting to shake hands with the president.

Time also quoted RNC Chair Ken Mehlman as saying, "If a fellow member of your PTA tells you that George Bush cares about education, that has credibility that a paid canvasser or ad will never have. You'll see a lot more of that in '08."

Yet according to the article's author, replacing traditional ads with such tactics (which are also projected to include targeting political ads to Web searches and trying to implant "viral" Internet attractions like 2004's "This Land" Flash parody) should make for more meaningful and more democratic campaigns.

Yeah, come to think of it, campaigns could stand to be a bit more democratic. We've wasted far too many election cycles just being suspicious politicians, interest groups and elites were lying to us when we could have been suspicious of absolutely everyone we ever encountered.

In this age of illegal wiretapping, tracking library records and subpoenaing search engines, that's the true American spirit.

Isn't that tragic (and not at all hilarious)

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- The reigning Miss Deaf Texas died after being struck by a train, officials said.

Tara Rose McAvoy, 18, was walking Monday near railroad tracks when she was struck by a Union Pacific train, authorities said.

A witness told Austin television station KTBC the train sounded its horn right up until the accident occurred.

Witchcraft, wizardry and Whitey

If you felt a sudden, eerie chill rattle you down to the capillaries this afternoon, it may have been the wind, or it may have been the fact that Dick "For the love of god, man, hold your fire!" Cheney was in DePere, Wis., speaking at a sold out campaign fundraiser for state Rep. and Assembly Speaker John Gard, R-Peshtigo, who is running for a Congressional seat being vacated by another Republican.

Cheney used part of his 25-minute speech to criticize Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold’s call to censure President Bush for authorizing an eavesdropping program within the National Security Agency in the months following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ...

Cheney called Feingold’s resolution an “outrageous proposition.” Cheney’s first mention of the Democrat drew a chorus of boos.

“Don’t hold back,” Cheney said, smiling.

... menacingly as he pierced a glowing effigy of the one called "Fiengold" and cackled maniacally like some kind of fat grub Harry Potter villain before dissolving into a cloud of phosphorescent ectoplasm. Good god.

Yeah, it is "outrageous" that a member of Congress actually tries to call the president on it when he breaks the laws Congress makes, instead of playing nice with the other senators who are busy trying rewrite the laws in accordance with the president's actions... outrageously AWESOME.

But not according to Cheney, who also passive-aggressively scolded, "Some Democrats in Congress have decided the president is the enemy."

He neglected to mention that so have a lot of Republicans up for re-election this year, who are afraid Dubya's tanking approval ratings are more contagious than bird flu. Like Bill "Persistent Vegetative State Avenger!" Frist, who emerged from the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference poll as the favorite for the party's 2008 presidential nomination after McCain abstained by asking nods for him go symbolically to President Bush as a show of party-whipped patriotic support.

But I digress. The reason I had to mention this particular Cheney speech was that in involves John Gard, and thereby gives me an excuse to share a little story from my time spent interning at the state Supreme Court.

You see, I once passed Mr. Gard in a Capitol hallway (now, I know you think this sentence is going to end with "and promptly swooned in the accompanying haze of dreamy conservative pheromones, cracking my head on the decorative marble but not caring one bit," but just wait it out) and was stunned and amused to discover that not only is he every bit the perfect instantiation of the smarmy Republican pretty-boy archetype he appears to be on camera, but he is also quite short, and therefore also an exemplar of the fabled "short man syndrome," when men of below average height have to overcompensate in other areas, like being hopped-up Republican tools, for instance.

I guess there's no real point to this except to say that a) I'm taller than John Gard and b) the highest is the best, so therefore c), though he may try to control me with his paternalizing legislation and sicken me with his phony, camera-slut personality, I am cooler than John Gard.

And right now, as my spring break is finally officially beginning through a haze of holy-crap-I've-been-awake-far-too-many-of-the- past-48-hours, that's enough to make me happy.

That and this delightful site my dear friend Deputy McTwitch alerted me to–go get your very own squirrel name! Mine's General McNutty. Rock.

Are we sure this isn't a "red state?"

Seven teenagers from Kiel, Wis., in Marquette County are facing 25 charges of illegal hunting for "thrill killing" small game in a decidedly, shall we say, unrefined activity they apparently refer to as "critter beating."

According to reports, this entails going out shining for raccoons or possums on country roads, stunning them with the light, then beating them to death with golf clubs, baseball bats, garden tools, hockey sticks or metal pipes.

OK, I'll admit it, when I heard that on the local news just now, I laughed. And I just laughed again.

But good god, bludgeoning small mammals for fun and sport? When I was a teenager in a dull little town, all we did by way of vehicular shenanigans was go "breading:" buy three-for-a-dollar loaves of bread at Kwik Trip, then drive around town trying to toss the slices frisbee-style onto the windshields of parked cars or into pickup truck beds from the moving car. (Trust me, it's more challenging than it sounds.) Get some imagination, boys.

But it's not their faults, I'm sure. This deviance probably began where so many modern societal ills find their geneses: violent video games.

Oh yes, you know what I'm talking about–it's quite plainly time to ban Whack-a-Mole.

The fairer sex gets one whole day

Two interesting bits of news came to my attention on this fine "International Women's Day: "

First off, the United Nations Children's Fund has decided that the three most shining specimens of model humanity working to right the plights of suffering women–in this case by educating girls in Afghanistan–this country has to offer are the unlikely triad of Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice and actor Michael Douglas.

OK, seriously–people of the UN, are you all high? Or have you just given up and resigned yourselves to the fact that you've become irrelevant in global politics and lost your international clout?

Yes, let's honor Condi with a "public service award," just setting aside the number of people across the globe the policies she's helped concoct and enact as part of the Bush cabinet flock of hawks have killed, maimed or traumatized. I realize she's the only woman with any executive authority in this country, but that's no valid reason to praise whatever work she does as good for women or the masses.

Similarly, Laura Bush's most salient claim to greatness is being married to the president, but that's apparently enough to earn her an international "humanitarian award." An award for self-sacrifice, maybe, but humanitarianism? That just doesn't seem part of the Bush way, for it requires not hating, ignoring or exploiting everyone different from yourselves.

And come on, Michael Douglas? If UNICEF is suffering from Bono fatigue and insists on giving someone relatively famous its "citizen award," how about Nicholas Kristof, for using his New York Times column to travel the third world and attempt to bring all sorts of horrors propagated against women, from sex slavery to genocide, to the attention of those with the power to intervene?

Still, I know for a fact there are lesser known but much more accomplished women in this country who devote every day of their lives to trying to help people hurt by the policies and actions of those who hold power over them, on any scale.

Even in my lowly hometown there's a woman who started up and directs PAVE, an organization to help victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by operating a shelter and doing all sorts of things. Yet, in typical American spirit, she tends to get passed over for community honors in favor of dead native soldiers killed in Iraq.

And in particularly ironic discord with all the "Women's Day" articles floating about today, I also came across this one, about some "men's rights group" (because lord knows they need to organize to protect the few they have and fight tooth and nail for more) arguing that since women have the right to end unwanted pregnancies, men should be granted the right to refuse to pay child support on children they co-conceived but don't want.

I think not. Generally, it takes two people acting stupidly to produce an unintended pregnancy. And regardless of which you support, all of a woman's options for dealing with it involve taking responsibility for the situation and incurring costs not merely financial. Men should just get to walk away with zero obligation, even mere inconvenience? Pshaw.

Though just a couple weeks ago I read another piece arguing for laws to make the man's approval mandatory before a woman gets an abortion, or even to force a woman to have a child she doesn't want if the man does, all in the name of "equal rights." You obviously can't have it both ways, gentlemen, so it seems you should just stay out of it.

None of you should probably be reproducing anyway.

Yeah, that's exactly what you're doing

Is this picture of President Bush signing the "USA Patriot Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005" just plain disturbing or what? Not just for the subject matter, name change and facial expression, but now he's rolling out tacky, propagandistic bill-signing desk banners? What next, neckties?

Executive privileges

President Bush did his civic duty Tuesday by voting in the Texas primary election–but because of a staff "error" in getting him an absentee ballot, he flew on taxpayer-funded fuel to Crawford on Air Force One to cast his vote in person, along with the first lady.

Though I suppose he should be applauded for at least purporting to work within the system of law and order for once, something about this is fishy.

But of course the president couldn't be expected to vote via absentee ballot, even in a gerrymandered Texas district–his ballot deserves to actually be counted.

I got a new crustacean!

It's not every day we discover a new species of hairy, eyeless invertebrates the size of salad plates. Cool.

OK, fine, I just wanted to use that headline. Back to work.

Memo from the reality-based community, feel free to discard

Remember that Zogby International poll of U.S. troops in Iraq reported on last week that revealed 72 percent of respondents wanted U.S. forces out within a year?

This week's issue of Time magazine revealed another tidbit from that poll that, for some inconceivable reason, did not make for lead material in the immediate reporting: 85 percent of U.S. troops surveyed said the main mission in Iraq was retaliation for Saddam Hussein's role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Eighty-five! That's more than the percentage of the civilian public that believed that at the legendary height of the Fox News drumbeat of misleading post-invasion coverage. At last count, in a poll conducted by Harris Interactive in December 2005, only 22 percent of the U.S. adults surveyed reported believing Saddam had any role in the attacks, and 24 percent reported believing several of the hijackers were from Iraq.

Now, anyone who has dabbled at all in political science or journalism will tell you that the political and current events ignorance of the general American public has been shown to be consistently, depressingly, perhaps-authoritarianism-isn't-such-a-bad-idea profound, but this makes ours look like a model democratic citizenry.

This is just disturbing–as if we needed any more support for the notion that the leaders of the new American "empire" really do invent whatever reality suits their ends and mobilizes their means.

Beware the Uggs of March

In these dreary days of gloom and converging midterms, the little bits of visual delight are sometimes all that pull you through. That and Girl Scout cookies.

But then it snows and immediately turns to a slushy mess, drastically cutting your own shoe options and forcing you to dodge flying muck tossed up by the dreaded Ugg boots corrupting about eight out of every ten female forms you pass (and even a smattering of the male ones).

I know it's been complained about to death, but there is nothing formally redeeming in footwear shaped in right angles with what looks like poorly groomed rodents nesting around their tops, sometimes dangling on strings. Seriously, ladies, there is a reason you don't see many Yetis featured in the pages of Vogue. (Though I hear their spring line of engorged ticks is quite fetching.)

Indeed, there comes a point when the sight of one more pair of Ugg boots with stretch pants stretched to their physical limits tucked into them, filtered through the customary week-before-spring-break haze of caffeine, overwork and fatigue, just might come perilously close to driving one to despair or destruction.

But then, the aesthetic luminary that is Cate Blanchett comes along in the latest issue of British Harper's Bazaar to remind us all that style has not, in fact, crawled off to die a furry, disproportioned, unflattering death. Oh, Cate, my pale, bony heroine, you keep me believing...

The self-esteem madness continues

The same movement that in the past made headlines for replacing red pens with "friendlier" purple ones in correcting–oops, I mean "participating in a conversation on"–elementary students' homework assignments is now aiming to do away with another malicious destroyer of student self worth that dares to suggest that not everyone is equally accomplished by simple virtue of showing up: high school class rankings.

According to an article in today's New York Times, nearly 40 percent of the nation's high schools have either stopped calculating class rankings based on grades or have stopped reporting their rankings to colleges, on the grounds that they could "harm the chances of their very good, but not best, students" of getting accepted.

From the sound of it, basically, this is an issue of great concern to tiny, wealthy private schools where the entire senior class is oh so much more advanced than anyone in a lowly public school, it would be unjust to judge them on the same ranking scale when it comes to admissions.

But of course, it can't just be about numerical fairness and catering to wealthy, connected elites who can probably get in to any school they would like regardless of rank–it's also got to be about the all important self-esteem:

"The day that we handed out numerical rank was one of the worst days in my professional life," said Margaret Loonam, a co-principal and director of guidance at Ridgewood High School, a public school in northern New Jersey that stopped telling students and colleges about class rank a decade ago. "They were sobbing. Only one person is happy when you hand out rank: the person who is No. 1."

And how dare that person be happy–it's not like he or she might deserve to be at the top.

If I may descend into existential snobbery for a moment, our good friend Nietzsche had a bit to say on this that is rather fitting here:

Basically, most people (in his example, Christians specifically) are mediocre or worse, so they get together and tout a doctrine of egalitarianism in order to rationalize their "plebian weakness" and their resentment of those who work hard, develop their talents or exercise their gifts and thereby rise above the common lot. They make such people feel guilty for their accomplishments and attempt to keep them suppressed to safeguard their own fantasy world of equal merit for merely existing.

Thereby, egalitarianism, be it a belief in equal love in the eyes of God or safeguarding self-esteem by doing away with class grades, actually destroys justice–if you hold that justice rightly conceived is "equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal."

But I suppose, that's easy for me to say–I was No. 1.

Neuphemisms of the day

In a pair of particularly delightful and morbidly humorous neuphemisms that probably apply to you or someone you know, the Ohio Supreme Court brings us "wrongful birth" and an even better corollary, "wrongful life."

The Court ruled 4-3 Friday that parents can sue doctors if genetic screening done on their foeti is inaccurate and fails to spot disabling conditions that would have compelled them to abort had they been indicated, according to an Associated Press account. But they can only sue for the costs associated with the "wrongful birth" of the disabled child and not for the costs and "pain and suffering" of raising it, because bringing into existence a child without a disability was never possible in such a case.

"Wrongful life," suits, however are still not cool in Ohio and elsewhere–they're basically the same thing, only turned even more tactless by making the "damaged" child the plaintiff seeking compensation for its wretched, mistaken existence.

Pity, there goes another hypothetical option for taking care of my student loans, gone before I even knew it existed.

Oh I'll disrupt YOUR filming

Not only is the fact that Adrien Brody is playing a matador in his next film pretty much the hottest thing ever, now said film is pissing off PETA to boot:

Penelope Cruz and Adrien Brody's new bullfighting film has incurred the wrath of animal rights activists, who are furious after hearing reports about potential on-set animal slaughter. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) h[as] instructed supporters to disrupt filming on the set of "Manolete" unless movie-makers agree to use computer technology instead of harming real bulls.

I'm so very sure they're going to kill animals on camera, as PETA is such a reputable source that never, ever spreads self-serving hyperbole. Besides, its kind should love this movie–the story ends with a bull fatally goring the hot man. Don't they find that sort of thing downright uplifting?

But seriously, though I don't give a crap about the bulls, if they need someone to help protect the innocent wittle aminals by taking the leading man down with a poison dart and "detaining" him for a while, I might be able to pretend to care. I'll even furnish my own supplies.

And because what's a post about Mr. Brody without visual accompaniment, enjoy this shot from Men's Health magazine in which his freakishly sculpted abs are, according to reports, being accused of helping turn young men to bulimia. Oh, my fandom is fabulous.

What happened to "staying the course"?

There was an amusing article in today's New York Times about how the Republican swift boat crew has apparently been slacking off at the helm in the race to challenge the alternately "angry" and "brittle" Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for her seat:

To put it nicely, the Republican game plan is nowhere after a year of strategizing and overtures to at least six potential challengers. One of those challengers even calls the selection process "a Keystone Kops operation," and the only Republican now running, John Spencer, denounces "party elitists" who are against him.

Even Captain Karl "Eats babies and questions their patriotism post-mortem" Rove seems to be steering his attention in other directions:

"Karl would love to see Hillary defeated, but is that the best use of time and money?" said one strategist who described a conversation with Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, and was granted anonymity in exchange for recounting a private conservation. "It doesn't help matters that New York Republicans can't figure out who to run against Senator Clinton."

It's not the best use of their time and money to boot Hillary Clinton out of the Senate and challenge her presidential hopes? Does that mean they're crafting their entire 2008 presidential slime campaign around Hillary being the Democratic nominee? (If so, I'm thinking it's going to be versus John "Dirty Republican pretending to have a rational soul" McCain, or Condoleezza "Check out my shiny blue ball gown, starving, destitute Indian peons!" Rice.)

Well, even though this may be just a bit premature, it's clear what the Dems have to do–dump the shrew and nominate Russ! Feingold, D-Wis., that is. Reading the entire Constitution on the Senate floor to protest limiting debate on the Patriot Act renewal bill... now that's just plain dreamy.

Passing notes under the bench

According to one of Christian conservative blowhard Dr. James Dobson’s recent radio broadcasts, he received a lovely little thank-you note from new Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, saying “as long as I serve on the Supreme Court, I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me.”

As reported by the New York Times, Alito wrote, "I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people from all parts of the country who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me and for my family.”

And while it’s no Brownie “fashion god” e-mail or Harriet Miers “you’re the best governor ever” belated birthday card to George W. Bush, that’s making some people a little uneasy–both because it hints at complicity in some religious conservative agenda, and because it suggests our newest Justice may be both inarticulate and unaware of the fact that he is supposed to remain an apolitical, secular figure in performing his job.

But, as usual, that seems a bit alarmist.

Sending thank-you notes after judicial confirmations is relatively common, but Stephen Gillers, a law professor and ethics expert at New York University, said the note's wording was surprisingly ambiguous for a letter from a Supreme Court justice.

"It is inartful, it is clumsy, it is a poor choice of language, it is unfortunate, but I think we have to give Justice Alito the benefit of the doubt," Professor Gillers said.

Indeed, this isn’t even dramatic. Maybe I could see an uproar if the note had said something like: “Thanks for mobalizing you're fundamentalist nutjobs in my support, I’ll get right to work on returning the faver by enshrineing our faith in civic institutions, my great and wise ideologicel and spiritual leader. Your the coolest, we’ll have to go catch – I mean, picket - ‘Brokeback Mountain’ sometime. Jesus 4ever! BFF, Sam.”

Oh, that pained me.

I can't wait for the yard signs

Well, kids, now that the second session of the Wisconsin Legislature has passed the "traditional marriage amendment," it now goes to a voter referendum on the November ballot.

So mark the date and turn out to keep those gays from marrying–we wouldn't want our fine state going down the same path as Massachusetts, which plunged into eternal hellfire when it legalized gay marriage several years ago. Remember, there was all that wailing and gnashing of teeth?

Sorry to disappoint activists on either side, but this amendment is neither about upholding values nor writing discrimination, bigotry and hatred into the constitution–those considerations are mobilizing accessories to the underlying and much more mundane political maneuvering. Besides, the discrimination is already codified in state law.

Mike Prentiss, spokesman for the pillar of honesty that is state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau (whose brother and fellow legislator Rep. Jeff, R-Beaver Dam, certainly never stiffed my poor single mother out of a bill for an illustration she did of one of their family's fine estates–he must have just mistaken it for a campaign contribution or a gift for being such a swell guy), told the Daily Cardinal:

"When this idea came forward it was not designed first and foremost to affect the 2006 race for governor," Prentiss said. "It was designed to put in place, in the constitution, protection of the definition of marriage that Wisconsin voters want and has been on the books statutorily in Wisconsin for years."

So, it's designed to reiterate existing laws, meaning it pretty much serves no practical purpose. (Lawmakers are saying it won't impact domestic partner benefits, either, though others disagree.) But its inclusion on the November ballot–which also just happens to offer a chance to oust Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, whose veto pen is about the only thing thwarting one-party rule at state level–also isn't a political move. Right.

Its proponents are basically admitting this proposed amendment has no substance. Therefore, rational voters who are not socially conservative ideologues who actually give a crap about enshrining "traditional marriage values" into the constitution have no policy-oriented reason to show up and vote for it.

Instead, in the true spirit of democracy, they will have to show up to make a socially liberal statement, feel good about themselves (or maintain being able to live with themselves) and cancel out the corresponding gubernatorial votes of the morons who want to turn our blue state red.

Seriously, when can we move to rule by enlightened philosopher kings?