The other day, Newsbusters proved how out of touch the republicans and Palin supporter are as evidenced by a spaz attack spurred by Andrea Mitchell's comment that only uneducated Hillary Clinton supporters will vote for Sarah Palin. In his post, Warner Todd Huston not only railed against Mitchell for her comment:

So, only the stupid, uneducated, working class ninnies will be somehow fooled into voting for the McCain/Palin ticket, Andrea? Them thar smart, educated, upper class women are too smart for that? Is that what we are saying here, Andrea?

he went on to completely miss Mitchell's point by adding:

So, on top of calling any women who might vote for McCain because of the addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket uneducated, Mitchell needlessly strayed off topic to search for some way to make Republicans look mean.

No Mr. Huston, Andrea Mitchell did not indicate that any woman who voted for Sarah Palin is uneducated, she stated that any Hillary Clinton supporter who voted for Sarah Palin is either woefully uneducated as to what Clinton's candidacy stood for or is so inconsiderate of the state of this nation and her responsibility as a citizen that the sole determinant of who gets her vote is the gender of the candidate. If the republican supporters for the McCain-Palin ticket can not tell the significant difference between Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, one has to wonder why those who were foaming at the mouth to ward off a Hillary Clinton presidency would so readily embrace Ms. Palin.

The only thing I can think of is that, perhaps, the republican party just thinks all women are interchangeable (though, since they tend to think all married women with children should be home raising their babies, one has to wonder why Sarah Palin and the "traditional values" Christotheocracy set would find Palin to be a palatable running mate unless they think the VP actually a queen and that our republic form of government should really be a monarchy).

Yes, Barack Obama is an eloquent and charismatic speaker, and I admit I had goosebumps when I watched his speech at the 2004 DNC convention. At that time I said I thought I had watched a future presidential contender for the 2012 or 2016 elections. As impressed and moved as I was then, I am not naive enough now to think that a couple of years in the Senate is enough for Obama to show he can actually accomplish the change he keeps saying he wants to accomplish (the fact he's spent much of his time in office running for POTUS doesn't make a case for him being a "doer" instead of a talker). Additionally, during his run for POTUS he's done quite a bit of pandering (some of it with questionable timing) that doesn't sit well with me.

It is, however, abundantly clear that the mass media has become deeply infatuated with Prince Charming dubbed Obama the candidate and appears to have absolutely no regard for the views of those whose states still haven't voted. Why should they care? I mean, after all, the DNC and Barack Obama are perfectly content to ignore the voices of Democrats in Michigan and Florida (in all fairness, in such a close election, I'm sure Obama would care if those states had voted for him). Heck, Jonathan Alter from Newsweek thinks Clinton should just crown Obama herself drop out now and get out of Barry's way already.

As a Democrat and as an American, I resent all of this. The DNC is happily planning to ignore certain voters in much the same way as voters were ignored in the 2000 elections. That election lead us to an unfortunate and unnecessary war that further destabilized an unstable region, left us unable & unprepared to address more significant potential threats elsewhere, and that is a constant reminder of the damage we did to our own country over Viet Nam. It also left this country on the verge of a precipitous fall into the dark ages at the behest of those who believe that government and religion should be the same (provided it's their religion that is the government).

The current primary conditions is a phased system that does nothing but empower (and embolden) a two party system, marginalizes those who vote for a candidate who must drop out because s/he doesn't win critical early primaries, weights the votes of citizens based solely on their residence and, worst of all, does nothing to ensure legitimate ideas are thoroughly evaluated. The DNC and the phased primary system have screwed us over and it's high time we have an major overhaul of our election system. In the meantime, I hope to G-d that the candidates can put egos aside and work together to actually make the positive changes we need and undo the damage of Nero W.

x-posted at The Disenchanted Forest

Every day, thousands of kids are getting pharmacologic treatment with psychotropic drugs they probably don't benefit from and that may well endanger them. New Jersey, like other states, has formed a task force to probe the use of antipychotics in children. Until very recently, these drugs were not evaluated with adequate and well controlled trials in children or approved for use in the pediatric population. To make matters worse, it appears as though children may have been prescribed these medications to treat indications that weren't even studied or approved for adults. It's most likely a majority of these kids may have been given these meds to treat ADHD and the prescriptions were not given by psychiatrists treating significant and/or moderate to severe mental health disorders. I am not a Xenu-phobe, I do not think that psychotropic drugs are evil or should be banned and I am fully aware that there are many people, including some children, that have significant and severe mental health disorders that warrant psychological and pharmacological intervention. I also know that there are some kids whose inability to concentrate/focus is so far from the norm of his/her age group that it is and should be treated as pathological in order to try to get the child back on track - but this is not true for all children diagnosed and treated with ADHD.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this is not a problem with psychiatry or even a problem with the Pharmaceutical Industry (though Pharma takes great advantage of it). This excess, injudicious use of medications is a problem with our society.

I don't know why pediatricians and GPs/FPs are willing to capitulate on prescribing these drugs to appease people instead of trying to determine which child really has a significant problem (and then probably turfing them for a psych/neuro consult) and which have the immature frontal lobes that leads to poor impulse control because, as children, their neurological development is ongoing.

Unfortunately, doctors don't seem to be willing to say no to patient/parent demand for a pill to cure our ills (real or imagined). Two things need to happen to rectify this situation:

1. Physicians need to stop treating patients/parents as clients and start evaluating them clinically to treat them as patients
2. We, as a society, accept that children are children and that means they will act like children (poor impulse control and all), we will continue drugging those who do not need and are unlikely to benefit from these medications.

Both of the above will have to occur to make any real change, our children and our society will be stuck between the extremes of those who do not want to acknowledge or treat any mental health disorders and those who are too willing to drug others to control them.

I had hoped that the story about the Dobriches, a Jewish family essentially forced to flee their Sussex County (Delaware) home because they had the audacity to remind the folks in Indian River School District that the US is not a theocracy, would have gotten some local main stream media attention in the area after it was announced they'd felt the need to move to Wilmington but I still haven't heard much about it up here. My friends, who only keep me around because they need someone to explain all those holidays, were shocked when I made a comment about it tonight - they hadn't heard a word, and some them spend an awful lot of time in the Delmarva area. While the ACLU has told Jesus' General that they don't agree with his likening the situation to a pogrom, I have to admit that each year, with each passing story that shows incremental increase in this sort of behavior, I start to feel that sick feeling that lead my grandparents to leave Russia so their descendents would only know of it as some sort of ancient history. This is, after all, America and we have rights and religious freedoms those in theocratic nations could only fantasize about.

The minimum wage in the US has been set at $5.15/hr since 1997. In that time, Congress has voted to give themselves a raise 9 times which have totaled more than 3 times a 40-hour/week FT salary of the minimum wage earner. In contrast, the $10,700 a minimum wage worker earns for a full year of 40-hour work weeks is $5,000 less than the official poverty line for a family of 3.

To put this into perspective, Senator Rick Santorum not only had to suck it up and let his wife do some work not related to keeping his house and raising his children to add another much needed $4,000/month to his then measly $162K/year salary but he also admits to occasionally accepting a bit of financial help from his retired parents to help keep the family from debtors prison (maybe he should pretend to be a resident of FL instead PA in order to keep the homestead if he has to file for bankruptcy).

It's well past time for a raise in the minimum wage. Senator Kennedy has recently introduced an ammendment to raise the minimum wage to $7.25/hr (that's still barely over $15K/year) and a vote on the matter could happen as soon as this Wednesday.

In an email interview Anne "I can't define what Christianity is, but I know it when I see it" Coulter has gone on to show yet another example of her religiously correct moral superiority by implying that anyone who has served their time in the US military during wartime but don't support the war in Iraq should be killed.

"After harmlessly dismissing former Ambassador Joseph Wilson as the "World's most intensely private exhibitionist," she said of Rep. John Murtha, the hawkish ex-Marine and now antiwar congressman: "The reason soldiers invented 'fragging.'" [Editor & Publisher]

I wonder if her next step will be to say amnesty should be granted to insurgents who have attacked/killed US troops in Iraq because those injured and killed were flaming liberals who deserved to be attacked for not supporting our troops in Iraq. After all, those who serve in and survive the Iraq war may be the next group of un-Patriotic ingrates that speak out against the Repubevangelical Empire.

cross-posted at The Disenchanted Forest

There's a fire brewing between Pennsylvania law-makers as the PA Senate passed a version of the state's No Mo Marriage constitutional amendment that *gasp* allows municipalities to recognize and grant rights to people living in sin by registering as domestic partners. The lone dissenter in the senate, Jane Orie (R-Allegheny), decried the senate version for "defeating the purpose" of the amendment by not making it clear that traditional marriage is the only acceptable for people in a relationship to have any legal rights or responsibilities for adults in a romantic relationship, and that municipalities that recognize domestic partnerships undermine the safety of children and threaten to destroy the institution of marriage. After all, if two adults can register as domestic partnership the state no longer has the privelige of preventing people living in sin from obtaining benefits from companies that offer benefits to domestic partners.

More at The Disenchanted Forest

Donald Wildmon, Grand Poobah of the AFA, urged me to contact my senators about the plan to take a wiz on the US Constitution and enact the mis-named "Marriage Protection Amendment", so I did. By way of the AFA web-site, I sent emails to that guy who doesn't really qualify for PA state residency and Arlen Specter to let them know how utterly disgusted I am with the idea of this amendment that isn't doing anything to protect the institution of marriage:

I had to point out this post at Pam's House Blend, not because Rick Santorum is so very entertaining, but because of his astounding level of idiocy. In short, lil Ricky is now blaming the National Weather Service for providing insufficent warning of Katrina (ostensibly because they're too busy providing data to other sources at no additional charge).

U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is suggesting that early mistakes in predicting the path of Hurricane Katrina may be a symptom of lost focus at the National Weather Service. Santorum, who introduced legislation earlier this year to curb the output of government weather forecasters, says tracking life-threatening weather must be central to what the agency is doing.

Asked about Katrina by WITF, Santorum described weather service warnings for Florida, where the storm first made landfall, as “not sufficient." Santorum’s bill instructs the government to abandon weather prediction and data reporting efforts that duplicate private-sector activity. He came under fire when it was revealed that the head of State College-based AccuWeather, which would benefit, has given his campaigns thousands of dollars.

An example of an NWS insufficient warning for Katrina:

Lil Ricky has a big heart (pity it's black).

And an adult will cry when she reads about it

BATON ROUGE, La. — In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love. [LA Times]

Gives ya the warm fuzzies, doesn't it? Go read the whole thing

cross-posted @ The Disenchanted Forest

Rehnquist is dead.

Hip-Hop/Rap are extremely popular but they're also known for a level of negativity and antagonistic behavior towards society at large. Hip-Hop culture glorifies crime, is derisive towards homosexuality and degrades women. Kanye West has recently decided that, since he has a gay cousin he loves, it's none too cool to dis the 'mos. West has even addressed the issue on by telling his colleagues and fans "Yo stop it".

Sometimes what you don't say is a important as what you do say.

Compare and contrast

While the nation was transfixed on the discovery that "Runaway Bride" Jennifer Wilbanks was only the victim parental overindulgence to the point she was incapable of making rational decisions in the face of stress, another Philadelphia woman disappeared. That woman is Ta-neke Daniels of South Philly, a 27-year old mother of three boys ages 2 - 10, who was last seen leaving her boyfriend's house May 12th. Her boyfriend, who is currently not a suspect and is reported to be cooperationg with police, was due in court to face charges of abusing against Daniels.

The Philadelphia Daily News ran articles about her June 30th and another on August 3rd, neither article appears to have a picture of Daniels (though, granted, they were archive pieces by the time I saw them) - a critical element to any missing persons story. I first heard about Daniels in an email from Tulin last week (he'd picked up the story and posted in August). Thanks to the lovely and talented DeJuana Price, we now have a face a put with the name.

If you have any information about Ta-neke's whereabouts and/or what's hapenned to her, please call Philly PD's South Division at 215-686-3013/3014.