GOP: What is Needed

In my last post, I linked a story outlining just how lost the Republican party has become. To find itself again, it should look to two conservative intellectuals -- not always the oxymoron you'd think -- Mickey Edwards and Ross Douthat. Bill Moyers had these two men on his Journal program last year. The intereview was fascinating. I most certainly don't agree with most of what they believe, but these are thoughtful, sensible men.

You can find links to both the transcript and the video of the interview here.

28 February 2009

GOP: The Week in Review

While he's a bit over the top in places, Paul Jenkins offers a fairly accurate account of the sad, sad week just concluding for the Republican party. Check it out at HuffingtonPost.com.

28 February 2009

03-01-09 Addition: You can read more about the GOP woes, as well as the obstacles facing the president, here in an op-ed by Frank Rich.

Low-Power FM Radio

From FreePress.net comes this Call to Action:

Are you sick of hearing the same talk radio blowhards and cookie-cutter music on the radio in [your town]?

By passing one bill, we can open the radio dial to thousands of stations with fresh new voices and alternative music, ending decades of radio domination by Big Media and their mouthpieces.

The Local Community Radio Act of 2009 (H.R. 1147) was just introduced in the House. The Act nearly passed in the last Congress with the support of more than 100 members.

With just a little urging from you, [your Member of Congress] could be the deciding vote in this Congress and help usher in a new era of better radio:

Tell Congress to Open Up the Radio Dial

This Act would open up the airwaves to more Low Power FM (LPFM) radio stations, creating a megaphone for new bands, fostering more local and independent news and giving people across the country a chance to break into radio. This is how we inject new blood into a radio system that could be better serving all of us.

27 February 2009

Doctors Need Fish School

MSNBC.COM has a fascinating article today about a condition known as ciguatera fish poisoning. From MSNBC.COM:

“It’s horrible, I’m telling you,” said Schroeder, 65, a retired Beaumont, Texas, realtor, who is only now recovering from ciguatera fish poisoning, an exotic foodborne illness that health officials say may be dramatically under-recognized in the United States.

The malady afflicts at least 50,000 people a year worldwide — and the real number may be 100 times that many. While ciguatera fish poisoning is largely unknown in most of the U.S., several recent cases have attracted growing concern, officials say. They hope a greater awareness will help alert consumers and doctors and improve treatment of the incurable illness caused by coral algae toxins that accumulate in large tropical reef fish.

Within hours of the July dinner, Schroeder was stricken not only with typical nasty food poisoning symptoms — diarrhea, vomiting and fatigue — but also with a dangerously slow heart rate and neurological problems that caused her hands and feet to tingle painfully and, oddest of all, reversed her sense of hot and cold. Some patients also say they feel like their teeth are falling out — and the symptoms can linger for years.

...

Ciguatera fish poisoning often is missed, even though it is the most common seafood-toxin illness reported in the world, said Richard Weisman, a toxicologist and director of the Florida Poison Information Center.

“If you go to the Caribbean Islands, you can’t find anybody who hasn’t had it,” he said.

...

The actual toxin is produced by microscopic sea plants, which are eaten by smaller fish that are, in turn, eaten by larger fish such as barracuda, grouper, sea bass and snapper. The toxins become increasingly concentrated as they move up the food chain.

...

Part of the problem is that ciguatera fish poisoning is hard to detect for seafood suppliers and consumers alike, said Melissa Friedman, a neuropsychologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami who studied victims of the illness.

“You can’t tell from the way it looks. You can’t tell from the way it tastes. There’s nothing you can do in terms of storage. There’s nothing you can do in terms of cooking,” she said.

Instead, people simply eat the toxic fish and become ill. Baffled doctors often confuse ciguatera symptoms with those of multiple sclerosis, or else they come away empty-handed, Weisman said.

“There are people having CT scans, MRIs, all these tests.” he said. “They do million-dollar workups, but no test will ever come back positive.”

...

That can delay one of the only treatments for the illness: an intravenous dose of a drug called mannitol, which can reduce or prevent the neurological symptoms. The drug is most effective, however, within the first 72 hours of illness, Weisman said.

The worst of the illness usually lasts for a week or two, and it's rarely fatal. But in some victims, the effects linger much longer, or never really go away. Many patients find that certain foods such as other fish, nuts or alcohol trigger relapses, and that overexertion can send the symptoms flooding back.

Yikes!

26 February 2009

DC Wired for GOP

There has been a lot written lately by jounalists outside the Beltway about jounalists inside the Beltway basically being in a GOP dominant mindset. The so-called "fourth estate," as it applies to DC political reporting, is very much part of the insiders' game in the national political arena. Journalists see themselves as savy insiders and their connections, both to people and to the current power structures, are what keep them relevant. A change in this dynamic affects them every bit as much as it does those in political power within the government itself. And that is why the political press within DC, whether it be NPR, Newsweek, the New York Times, or Fox News is both fighting the idea of change within Washington and failing to see the raging torrent of antagonism to pre-Obama ideas and methodology that is sweeping the country as a whole.

Josh Marshall at TPM had a short piece on this idea today. Monday, Jane Hamsher had an even more pointed look at the issue on HuffingtonPost.com, which included recent polling data that is squarely at odds with the "news" out of DC. The latter article paints a clear portrait of the problem.

It is an interesting dynamic. Obama has to fight a lot to get through the muck, and the political press as an institution -- for all the pablum spewed on the right -- is very much against any changes he's hoping to make. It will take a critical mass in the general population to overcome that bottleneck. Whether it will surmount that hurdle is anyone's guess right now.

19 February 2009

Prop 8 Goes to the Court

As one of my friends put it so well, "Ken Starr continues to be such a douche bag." She is right. A staunch mover and shaker behind Prop 8, he now is working to have the Supreme Court of California invalidate all of the marriages performed for gay couples within that state. Yep, he wants to initiate a mass divorce. Douche bag.

You can speak out against his motion via this petition. I recommend it. Don't you be a douche bag, too.

9 February 2009

Hudson River Plane Crash, Take 2

I posted last month regarding the US Airways plane crash in the Hudson River. Now, the audio tapes from the incident have been released. It is amazing how calmly both the pilot and the air traffic controllers handle the situation. Most impressive.

Also, an odd little aside to this story is that actor Steve Martin was a passenger on the flight that crashed. Okay, that part isn't true, but it's funny Letterman footage. What is amazing about this story is that it went so well that it can be made the fodder of late-night humor.

5 February 2009

Bats and Snakes

I'm a big fan of bats. Beyond giving us Batman, which is a sure bonus, they are fascinating creatures that benefit humans in a great number of ways. Bats currently face a grave threat, however, and their populations across the US are being decimated. So-called white-nose syndrome is the culprit. Researchers are working on ways to combat the problem, but time is running out.

Scientists have also discovered the fossilized remains of the largest snake ever known to have existed.

A colossal snake about the length of a school bus slithered about South America's rainforests some 60 million years ago, according to an analysis of the skeletal remains of what is now considered the largest snake ever identified.

"It's the biggest snake the world has ever known," said Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga and part of an international team who discovered and identified the snake bones.

He added, "The snake's body was so wide that if it were moving down the hall and decided to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to squeeze through the door."

Fossils of the extinct snake species, now called Titanoboa cerrejonensis, were discovered in the Cerrejon Coal Mine in northern Colombia.

From the fossilized vertebrae, the researchers conservatively estimate the snake weighed about 2,500 pounds and measured nearly 43 feet nose to tail tip.

The giant reptile was a boine snake, a type of non-venomous constrictor that includes anacondas and boas. In the same fossil rainforest, the researchers also found giant sea turtles and crocodile relatives.

In fact, while alive, the snake likely gorged on its crocodilian neighbors.

"We think it was a completely aquatic snake, that it didn't really go out on land except to bask every once in a while," Head told LiveScience.

Yikes... and very cool.

4 February 2009

Molly Ivins

"What would Molly think?"

3 February 2009