(This began as a never-posted comment in response to part of this good comment by Catrina):

I am listening to the news now. Osama has obliged the Republicans with a few more videos, to add to the impact of this piece of garbage propaganda.

Does Osama work for Bush and the Republicans?  Good question, but it's odd how each time they are threatened by the democratic process, Osama is right there, helping him out.

To tell you the truth, I think it would be conspiratorial NOT to be suspicious of these coincidental election reappearances of Osama Bin Laden, son of one Bush Sr.'s friends and business associates.

Osama hearts Bush, who has advanced Al Qaeda's agenda. The attacks five years ago were designed to elicit an American overreaction. The more the US overreacted, the better from bin Laden's point of view.

The NYT is reporting that the latest Pew Research Center survey of international opinion found that America's standing is in free fall again after a brief upturn following the tsunami aid.

US favorability fell by 18% in Spain and to (to!) 12% in Turkey. More people around the world see the US in Iraq as a greater threat to peace that Iran's nuclear 'ambitions' and in Russia that sentiment prevailed by two to one.

However the most horrifying thing in the entire article was this:

Only 75 percent of Americans had heard reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while 90 percent of Western Europeans and Japanese had heard about them.

(Emphasis mine). That right wing noise machine is awfully effective.

It is a fraught time for me. My mother is going in for her second hip replacement operation, my job may cease to exist on Friday and the mother of someone I like has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Yet, I still find myself thinking about world politics. I've always been a politics junkie but when my father died the in '99 the world was in good enough shape that I did not need to pay attention.

Now though I am so worried I can not make the politics move to the back burner.

The  troll pointed out that several other presidents have committed heinous acts. This particular troll neglected to include any recent Republican presidents thereby providing the main clue towards its trollhood.

It is still a fair question though. Is W really the worst of them all, so far?

Yes, because the whole is greater that the sum of the parts. Join me on the flip.

A quick glance at various stories that seemed to slide by over the last few days would suggest that we are not. By "we" I mean more than the usual suspects in this worst of all administrations. I also mean all the rest of us, from corrections officers in the US to poachers in Congo.

In the US, we are going to wreck the bi-partisan anti-proliferation policy of the last three decades, start closing our eyes in space, keep letting the rich get richer while shackling imprisoned women during childbirth.

In the Congo, we are eating our closest cousins to extinction.

To top it all off, a cabbie suggested to me that if the only way to contain bird flu was to kill all the birds then we should do it.

Links and excepts below the fold.

The New York Times is reporting (registration required) today:

In a study released yesterday, two of those lawyers said Pentagon documents indicated that the military had determined that only 45 percent of the detainees had committed some hostile act against the United States or its allies and that only 8 percent were fighters for Al Qaeda.

Two science stories caught my attention today which are potentially VERY good news. They suggest that AIDS may be preventable and that quality of life may be improved and prolonged in the elderly.

An injection of two drugs normally used to treat HIV patients completely protected monkeys from becoming infected with the AIDS virus, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

 Reuters

and

Resveratrol appears to be the first molecule to consistently cause life extension across very different animal groups such as worms, insects, and fish, and it could become the starting molecule for the design drugs for the prevention of human aging-related diseases.

Natural Compound Prolongs Lifespan And Delays Onset Of Aging-related Traits In A Short-lived Vertebrate

 

Thank you Mr Brooks (Times Select). I had been wondering why republicans would put up with the antics of the most simian president and you have answered my queries. The previous president, despite problems with a nearly prehensile appendage, had come perilously close to restoring people's faith in the power of various institutions, including the US, its' government, armed forces, diplomatic corps as well as other bodies such as the UN.

When I load this site and I see a vacancy in the Rec list indicated by a lonely "by" with empty space above and below or I click on a diary and get a blank page, I get this strange, unpleasant feeling. In the case of the lonely 'by,' one can hunt back through recent open threads to unearth the title of the offending diary. It reminds me of graffiti that has been painted over but which is legible from a certain angle.

One way in which this is irritating is that the slot in the Rec list remains taken, just like the diaries which get frontpaged. The worse part is that it is anonymous and unexplained. When a diary gets frontpaged the editorial staff indicate who did it and, if necessary, why. When something gets wiped, there is no signature, no explanation, just a gap.

The last link I clicked on claimed to be a diary about how Al Qaeda was a Republican creation. Such a title could cover a range of opinions, some of which would be beyond the pale. Still, there should not have been a blank page, even if the diarist pulled the story themselves. It is too easy to airbrush history in cyberspace.

Michael Ignatieff's piece in the New York Times titled Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?  is second on the list of most emailed articles, i.e. high on their Recommended List. While it contains some stuff that is a joy to read, Mr Ignatieff asks several wrong questions which of course lead to wrong answers.

He begins by quoting Jefferson's letter for the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

''To some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,'' he wrote, the American form of republican self-government would become every nation's birthright. Democracy's worldwide triumph was assured, he went on to say, because ''the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion'' would soon convince all men that they were born not to be ruled but to rule themselves in freedom.

Powerful words. However, Ignatieff seems to think that W is a "gambler from Texas" who has bet his presidency on the Iraq war:

No attacks have occurred in the United States since September 11, 2001.

Osama bin Laden arguably helped the President's reelection campaign.

Most of us were convinced that Al Qaeda was in favor of a Bush victory.

Why?

By YUIS JUTEPOIER

Printer-friendly page.

The mothership was spotted a couple years out. The aliens claimed to be friends of humanity, their only beef was with the United States. Claiming that the United States possessed Weapons of Interstellar Destruction and therefore threatened them directly, the Arcturans took their case to the United Nations. While informed observers doubted that the star-bound Pioneer and Voyager probes constituted WIDs, many were convinced by Ambassador Vader's report.

Knowing full-well that UN inspections would uncover, at best, under-funded long-range plans for interstellar telescopes the Arcturan viceroy preempted their report by launching his invasion of the United States. His Excellency, Faud Reid Ratha III, however, had studied human history and was not about to repeat the mistakes he felt the Americans should have learned in Iraq, if not Vietnam.

A man is slated to be murdered by the state in revenge for the killing of an old woman. His sister has liver disease and he applied for some extra time in order to donate part of his own liver to her. This might seem like a reasonable request. Most people spend years and even decades on Death Row, what's a few extra months, especially when it might save an innocent life. Not to the Indiana Parole Board, according to this Reuters story, appearing, appropriately, in the Oddly Enough section.

 

Last spring apprehension gripped the citizens of this small country. The long ruling Socialists had just been voted out of power leaving the untested center-right New Democracy party to face the incredible challenge of hosting the first Olympics to be held in Greece for 108 years.
The Greeks are famously ill-organized procrastinators whose saving grace is their pride. The country was fearful that the last-minute way of doing things was not going to be good enough this time. As we walked through the construction site that our city had been for so long and we saw how much remained to be done on this day last year, we despaired. We compared the whole enterprise to a slow motion train wreck and feared the worst.

And then the gods of Olympus intervened.  

Tonight, take a few minutes, pull back from the computer, find a window or a balcony and gaze upwards. The mistress of the hunt, Artemis or Diana will be hosting a visit from her father, Zeus or Dias or Jupiter. Here they are about to set though I know night has not yet fallen for most of you. I see another bright planet a hand's breadth behind them and I believe it to be Saturn or Kronos (old man Time).

I envy those of you who will have clear sky and I am sorry for all of you who live under perpetual smog. A year and a half ago when a friend of mine and I stayed up all night we caught the pre-dawn show of the century. All five of the classical planets were visible, including elusive Mercury and rare Saturn.

more...

Cross posted from Booman Tribune

According to this Associated Press story (via Yahoo):

Most Americans surveyed in a poll say they do not think any country, including the United States, should have nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War, I would have disagreed strongly with such a sentiment. Without the threat of mutually assured destruction it would have been much more likely that the United States and the Soviet Union would have fought World War Three with advanced conventional arms. Given that WWII killed some 100 million people, a hot war between the two superpowers would have been devastating, not to mention that there is no guarantee that the West would have won.

However, that is not what really caught my attention and what I want to ask all of you about.

You are blessed. You live in the most promising time ever. You even have a chance at immortality.

 You are cursed. You live in the most dangerous time ever. Your species may even become extinct.

 Sometime in the late fifties, early sixties, the human race acquired the capacity to commit suicide. Sputnik showed the way out. As long as we are confined to the surface of a single planet, we are supremely vulnerable.

Sometime before November 7th, 2000, the decision of a single electron split the universe in two. This happens all the time. There are an infinity of universes and, paradoxically, they are increasing all the time. Every time an electron has a choice, a universe is born.

In the universe we are not in, a database eliminating voters from Florida rolls rejected 50,134 voters instead of 67,172. Of these 17,038 people some 20% actually voted; less than three and a half thousand. They broke for Gore by 66%.

Here there was no recount. Al Gore was duly sworn in on January 20, 2001. President Gore immediately persuaded Congress to pass his emergency fiscal stimulus/tax cut package, using part of Clinton's enormous surplus to stimulate middle class demand and infrastructure construction while still paying down the national debt.