11.23.2004

Dream baby

The other night I dreamed I was walking around an expansive outdoor flea market/rummage sale with Cher, and she wanted to hold my hand. I felt very uncomfortable because I'm a married man, but this was 60s/70s Cher, so what do you do?

Also...

"Live at Leeds" is still a great album.

11.19.2004

Holy moly!

Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" is one heck of an album! And for that matter, so is "Live at Leeds"! Which reminds me, I can never thank my brother enough for the time, some 20 years ago, when he found an excellent original copy of "Live at Leeds" in our alley and gave it to me. Thanks brother!

Toenail Status Report #6: FINAL

The great day has arrived! At 12:38 AM this morning, the toenail was separated from the toe. Throughout the previous evening the nail felt very loose, almost floppy, but I didn't give it much thought as I had almost given up on losing the nail. But an early morning inspection revealed the toenail had only the slightest hold on the tip of the toe. As I had predicted, it pulled away from the left side of the toe, as if hinged like a book. The toe underneath is nothing like I expected. It is not red or raw; rather, there remains a semi-hard layer of nail-like 'skin' up to the toe-tip. This is dry and crusty. At the base of the toe a strange and uneven new nail is beginning its slow march to the top. I embark on this new phase with great eagerness. I have before me the wondrous process of regeneration!

11.11.2004

Jefferson

via Salon.com

By Sidney Blumenthal

Nov. 11, 2004 | The election of 2004 marks the rise of a quasi-clerical party for the first time in the United States. Ecclesiastical organization has become transformed into the sinew and muscle of the Republican Party, essential in George W. Bush's reelection. His narrow margins in the key states of Florida, Iowa and Ohio, and elsewhere, were dependent upon the direct imposition of the churches. None of this occurred suddenly or by happenstance. Nor was this development simply a pleasant surprise for Bush. For years, he has schooled himself in the machinations of the religious right, and Karl Rove has used the command center of the White House as more than its Office of Propaganda.

[...]

"History, I believe," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

But we're not all Jeffersonians now.

I fall to pieces

Last night I noticed every peice of clothing I had on, from head to toe, had a hole in it somewhere. I'm sure that's a metaphor for something, but I'm afraid to know of what.

11.10.2004

Sweet holy crap

via Salon.com

Women wrongly warned cancer, abortion tied

By Laura Meckler

Nov. 10, 2004 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- Women seeking abortions in Mississippi must first sign a form indicating they've been told abortion can increase their risk of breast cancer. They aren't told that scientific reviews have concluded there is no such risk.

Similar information suggesting a cancer link is given to women considering abortion in Texas, Louisiana and Kansas, and legislation to require such notification has been introduced in 14 other states.

Abortion opponents, who are pushing these measures, say they are simply giving women information to consider. But abortion rights supporters see it much differently.

"In my experience, this inaccurate information is going to dissuade few women from going ahead and having the abortion," said Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "What it does do is put a false guilt trip and fear trip on that woman."

More than a year ago, a panel of scientists convened by the National Cancer Institute reviewed available data and concluded there is no link. A scientific review in the Lancet, a British medical journal, came to the same conclusion, questioning the methodology in a few studies that have suggested a link.

Still, information suggesting a link is being given to women to read during mandatory waiting periods before abortions. In some cases, the information is on the states' Web sites.

"We're going to continue to educate the public about this," said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, an anti-abortion group.

The effort to write the issue into state law began in the mid-1990s, when a few studies suggested women who had abortions or miscarriages might be more likely to develop breast cancer. The warnings are now required in Texas and Mississippi, and health officials in Kansas and Louisiana issue them voluntarily.

Minnesota law requires its health department to include this information on its Web site, but the department backed down after an outcry from the state's medical community. Montana law also mandated the warning, but the state Supreme Court struck it down.

The brochures still in circulation tell women the issue "needs further study."

"They can do further research on their own and determine which of those studies they should put most attention on," said Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. "We're just trying to provide all the information it's possible to provide."

Louisiana -- which elected a Democratic governor last year, replacing a Republican -- is going to change its official literature that mentions the cancer link, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the state's Department of Health and Hospitals. He said the department's new director did not know the state pamphlet included such information until contacted this week by The Associated Press.

"If there is scientific evidence, and it certainly appears there now is, we would certainly make the necessary changes in that brochure," he said Tuesday.

The brochure, he said, is a reflection of the "very, very strong pro-family, pro-life leaning" of Louisiana.

"Nonetheless, it's incumbent on us as the health agency to make sure any information is factually correct," he said. "We don't want to be misleading women who are making this important choice."

The issue continues to be debated in state legislatures, with bills considered this year in Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.

On the federal level, several members of Congress complained last year after the NCI Web site included material suggesting a link between breast cancer and abortion or miscarriage. An expert panel that was asked to review the data reported in March 2003 that "well established" evidence shows no link.

Among the studies cited by the NCI expert panel was Danish research that used computerized medical records to compare women who had undergone abortions with that country's cancer registry and found no higher cancer rate.

"The virtually complete consensus was that the studies that purported to show a link were methodologically flawed," said Dr. Martin Abeloff, director of the Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University. Those studies that showed no link, he said, were almost all well done.

Still, anti-abortion activists are unconvinced.

Joel Brind, a biochemist at Baruch College in New York who advises the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, noted that a woman's chances of getting breast cancer go down if she gives birth at a relatively young age. He reasons that those who opt for abortion are giving up a chance of reducing their breast cancer risk.

Therefore, he says, abortion increases the risk of cancer.

He participated in the NCI debate -- filing a minority report -- and dismisses the panel's findings. "It was basically a political exercise," he said, "a charade if you will."

11.04.2004

[T]here were also several dozen voters in six states - particularly Democrats in Florida - who said the wrong candidates appeared on their touch-screen machine's checkout screen, the coalition said.

In many cases, voters said they intended to select John Kerry but when the computer asked them to verify the choice it showed them instead opting for President Bush, the group said.

Holy cow

via Approximately Perfect

[...]

Bush's second term will be the nitro-burnin' funny car of right-wing conservatism, pure and uncompromised.

Mandate my ass

via TPM.com

[...]

This is the touchstone and the sign. A 'broad, nationwide victory'? He must be kidding. Our system is majority rule. And 51% is a win. But he's claiming a mandate.

"A broad, nationwide victory"?

It would almost be comical if it weren't for the seriousness of what it portends. This election cut the nation in two. A single percentage point over 50% is not broad. A victory that carried no states in the Northeast, close to none in the Industrial midwest is not nationwide, and none on the west coast is not nationwide.

And yet he plans to use this narrow victory as though it were a broad mandate, starting right back with the same strategy that has already come near to tearing this country apart.

-- Josh Marshall

11.03.2004

Toenail Status Report #5

How naive I was to think my toenail would fall off last weekend. I have a long, hard slog ahead of me with this nail. Although the bottom of the nail has completely separated from the toe, and I can glimpse the strange landscape beneath the dead nail, it will be some time before that world is fully exposed to me. The tip of the nail is strongly adhered to the toe, and it will not release its grip.