This AP wire story sums up what I’ve been reading on a number of political blogs this week, namely that Michigan Senator Carl Levin has proposed a redistribution of the Democratic Party delegates from his state’s invalidated primary. Levin, who was the guy who caused the primary to be invalidated by going against DNC rules and scheduling it too early to try to get ahead of New Hampshire, is now responding to DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s call to wrap this all up by June. (Whether there will be any resolution to the situation with the Florida delegates remains to be seen)

At this stage I am sick to death of both of these two. I wasn’t crazy about either of them in the first place, and now I would sooner write in Zippy The Pinhead’s name than cast a ballot for Clinton or Obama. In the run-up to and subsequent run-away from the Pennsylvania primary, both candidates demonstrated what you might really expect from them as President of the United States. Hillary Clinton continues to position herself closer to John McCain with each passing day, while making use of some of Karl Rove’s shittiest playbook entries. Meanwhile, Obama’s beginning to get hopelessly boggged down in the Jeremiah Wright story, along with the usual racist bullshit about him, and his “exciting rhetoric” and “charisma” aren’t helping him “seal the deal” with voters.

So I guess the only reason to vote for either one of these two is because they “don’t suck as much as McCain.” Swell. That sure is a clarion call to leadership for the troubled times ahead.

I would like to officially send a request to Chairman Dean, Senators Clinton and Obama, and all the other Democratic candidates who “suspended” their campaigns in February: may we please have a do-over? One great big Second Chance Primary in all fifty states (plus Puerto Rico, D.C., Guam, and whoever else gets a shot), where we can wipe out all the delegate counts, skip the interminably stupid debates, forego any advertising or fundraising, and just have a “first-across-the-finish-line” race. Or maybe all of them could go on stage and sing in front of the American Idol judges (just as long as Paula Abdul is sober enough to tell the difference between one and two songs), or even do the Paso Doble on Dancing With The Stars (I would love to see Barack Obama dance with Cheryl Burke, or Dennis Kucinich do the jive with Anna Trebunskaya). Anything, anything, ANYTHING! but make us have to pick one of these two 3-D losers, only to have them lose to John “Batshit Insane” McCain…or worse, beat him.

Of course, it could be even worse…Londoners today have to choose between these two dorks for Mayor

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” — Thomas Jefferson

A Happy May Day, Comrades!

Now more than ever the lie of capitalism reveals itself in the crimes it commits against us all in the name of the Great God, Profit. In the name of profit, millions are deprived of food, reduced even to eating dirt. Meanwhile corporate executives take home bigger and bigger fortunes, even when they mismanage their corporations into ruin, taking thousands of American homeowners with them. Apologists and spin doctors who try to convince the world that insatiable corporate greed is beneficial (or at least benign) are beginning to run out of room for their prevarications and rationalizations. In this country and others, they have inculcated us in a cult of consumerism that has succeeded in turning us into placid, passive cattle who must constantly graze on new pastures to ensure the delusion of ever-increasing returns for investors. The result: a Second Gilded Age not unlike the conditions that existed in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century, with the concomitant results of decreasing life expectancy, reduced access to overpriced health care, and an erosion of the middle class that might yet prove irreversible.

Our government does nothing except abet and assist this. Trillions of dollars have been wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to no effect and for no good reason other than to redirect that money into the pockets of corporations deeply tied to the President and Vice President. For every war crime George Bush and Dick Cheney should be tried for, there is another crime of fraud for which they also should receive swift and harsh justice.

May Day exists not to glorify the equally criminal Soviet system that hijacked Russia and Eastern Europe for generations, but to say to the world that the workers of the world, who are the bulk of humanity itself, deserve the recognition and implementation of their unalienable rights and redress for the inequalities that over-reward a tiny few at their terrible expense.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who has worked to bring equality and democracy to his own country since his surprising electoral victory in 2005, offers a sort of “Ten Commandments” for a better world:

1. Put an end to the capitalist system
2. Renounce wars
3. End imperialism and colonialism
4. Protect the right to clean water
5. Promote the development of clean energies
6. Respect Mother Earth
7. Treat basic human services as basic human rights
8. Fight inequalities
9. Promote diversity of cultures and economies
10. Live well, don’t live better at the expense of others

(via)

Okay, seriously, is there ANYBODY left on the Internet who HASN’T heard about Kopi Luwak coffee by now? I mean, it seems like this particular item makes the go-round at least once a year, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s been an Internet Classic since my first year as a blogger.

And yet, here it is AGAIN! The British press have all had this particular story about the London restaurant serving Kopi Luwak for £50 a cup (the beans alone retail for about $400/lb). Now link-blog Neatorama’s caught on to this, which means that it will spread around the rest of the “blogosphere” faster than you can say “cat shit coffee”. (Ugh, plus I had to use the word “blogosphere”. Now I have to go wash my hands…)

What IS the fascination here? They feed the whole coffee berries to a small wild cat called a civet, which shits the beans out intact because it can’t digest them, and the act of passing through the cat’s intestines supposedly improves the quality of the final product. Okay, we get it now! We don’t need to be told this over and over again just because the average attention span on the Internet is a microsecond.

I suspect that if you knew how a lot of foods are processed you wouldn’t find them any more appealing than coffee beans pooped out by a civet.

Science Daily reports that a new survey by a group at University of Wisconsin found that 70% of Americans consider nanotechnology research to be “morally objectionable”.  And it’s not because they’re too stupid to know the difference between nanotech and biotechnology research such as stem-cell work or cloning:

The moral qualms people of faith express about nanotechnology is not a question of ignorance of the technology, says Scheufele, explaining that survey respondents are well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits.

“They still oppose it,” he says. “They are rejecting it based on religious beliefs. The issue isn’t about informing these people. They are informed.”

Time to go smack my head against the wall for a while.

There are valid reasons to have qualms about nanotechnology.  Many safety concerns remain unaddressed, and quite a bit is still not known about how the small scale of the chemical changes being made actually impacts the properties and behaviors of materials (although I did read recently that a new study shows that nanotubes are not toxic to mice).  But being opposed to this sort of research because your giant invisible grandpa wouldn’t like it is just plain stupid.

Our national tradition of anti-intellectualism is starting to get in the way of keeping things running.  Last week in Salon, Laura Miller wrote about Susan Jacoby’s new book “The Age Of American Unreason” and Jacoby’s claim that fundamentalist religion in the United States is directly responsible for what Jacoby calls “junk thought”, epitomized by the “intelligent design” debate.  Erich Vieth, posting at Dangerous Intersection, also writes about Jacoby, pointing out some factoids which should sound familiar to people reading here: 50% of Americans do not believe in evolution, 50% of Americans believe in ghosts, 15% of Americans do not know that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Stupidity and religious faith walk hand in hand.  We’ve got a Presidential candidate who will pray to end the budget deficit, schools that pray for good grades for their kids, people who believe in miracles, and a President who says God tells him to start wars.  I’ve had people ask me why I can’t just “live and let live” with regard to fundamentalists, and all I have to say is that it’s because these people imperil us all with their appalling combination of stupidity and willful ignorance.  I can’t write this sort of stuff off with a blithe “oh, ha ha, silly fundies” anymore because they are contributing directly to the rapid demise of not just social and political institutions but of enlightened civilization itself.  And they don’t care, because, in their world-view, they’re all going to fucking Disneyland when the Apocalypse comes.

You can’t make people who are willfully and deliberately opposed to knowledge and reason turn around and accept those things by sheer force of will.  I’ve mentioned Nietsche’s words before: “Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”  And consequently nothing will stop them, not even acceptance.  Maybe through resistance it might be possible to get the fence-sitters and the “live and let live” types to see the danger these people pose and convince them to take up the cause.