Magic Beans

Research shows that coffee can protect the liver against too much partying. It doesn't appear to be the caffeine in coffee, but some other ingredient in java.

This is nature in its truest most beneficial form. A big night out and you naturally need a little more coffee than usual and all that java is making everything all right. It's beautiful in a kind PBS nature special kind of way—except that since the ecological system portrayed is your inner organs, it's even more moving.

And proof positive that those folks juicing on diet Pepsi or Red Bull in the mornings aren't just corroding their taste buds, but are fucking with the natural order of things.

Man, Whatever Happened to "What happens in El Salvador, Stays in El Salvador"

From the Chicago Trib 3/13/2007

Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found naked, bound and drunk, according to Israeli media reports confirmed Monday by a government spokeswoman.

Tsuriel Raphael has been removed from his post and the Foreign Ministry has begun searching for a replacement, ministry spokeswoman Zehavit Ben-Hillel said.

Two weeks ago, El Salvador police found Raphael in the yard of his residence, tied up, gagged with a ball and drunk, Israeli media reported. He was wearing bondage equipment, the media said. After he was untied, Raphael told police he was the ambassador of Israel, the reports said.

Ben-Hillel said the reports were accurate and that Raphael has been recalled, although he did not break any laws.

Republican Fiscal Responsibility

Remember when Republicans, although still not exactly progressive when it came to social issues, were fiscally responsible and generally tight with a buck.

Neither do I.

Still there must have been a time when this was true. All that stuff about tax-and spend Democrats and good steward Republicans.

But check out this table, run in the Chicago Tribune a while back.

The biggest increase occurs because of WW II debt, then a gradual pay down until Reagan takes office and the debt takes off like a shot. Clinton balances the books briefly, then comes Shrub. In all the Republican years of Reagan and the Bushes push the national debt $8,000 higher than it was after WWII.

Yesterday David Walker, the US comptroller general, was on 60 Minutes where he pointed out that this level of debt is unsustainable and added: "We are mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren at record rates, and that is not only an issue of fiscal irresponsibility, it's an issue of immorality."

Maybe tax and spend is better than spend, cut taxes for the mega wealthy and spend.

Immortality

Substance in Red Wine Extends Life"... NY Times 11/1/2006

Man, I am fucking immortal!

Desperate Measures

As reported in Wall Street Journal 10/19/2006 in an article about low poll numbers for Republicans in the November election.

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, yesterday sent an email to the media suggesting House Democrats would "plot to establish a Department of Peace, raise your taxes and minimize penalties for crack dealers.".

So now the Democratic Party is the party of big government, higher taxes and a thriving crack market.

The America I Want To Belong To

Barack Obama gave the commencement speech at NU a few days back. It wasn't Gettysburg address or anything--more of a kind of revamped JFK inauguration speech. But it spoke to things I have not heard this administration which gave us the Abramoff lobbying scandal, the Iraq tragedy/travesty, the antigay marriage amendment, the bullshit flag amendment, and the most divided America I’ve seen since the Viet Nam era, consider, much less address. Obama’s speech is about thinking of others not as people you conquer or ignore, but try to understand.

Some excerpts:

“Cultivate empathy: There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit, the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.

As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You’ll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what’s going on in your own little circle.

Not only do we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses. They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they’re all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools cant learn and won’t learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else’s problem to take care of.

I hope you don’t listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.

It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential and become full-grown.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled. I often think about the young Americans, teenagers and college kids not much older than you from all over the country, watching the Civil Rights Movement unfold before them on their television sets.

I imagine that they would’ve seen the marchers and heard the speeches, but they also probably saw the dogs and the fire hoses, or the footage of innocent people being beaten within an inch of their lives; or heard the news the day those four little girls died when someone threw a bomb into their church.

Instinctively, they knew that it was safer and smarter to stay at home; to watch the movement from afar. But they also understood that these people in Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi were their brothers and sisters; that what was happening was wrong; and that they had an obligation to make it right. When the buses pulled up for a Freedom Ride down South, they got on. They took a risk. And they changed the world.

So don’t let people talk you into doing the safe thing. Listen to what’s inside of you and decide what it is that you care about so much that you’re willing to risk it all.”

I’m not one of those who think Obama should be our next president. Hes too untested, but I like hearing from someone who tells us that we are in deep shit instead of telling us comfortable lies. I like hearing from someone who talks about unifying people instead of characterizing as enemies anyone who disagrees with him.

I want to live in the America the Obama describes, not the America Bush has reduced this country to.

Impeach Bush

Funny but sad. Screw around with an intern and it's impeachment time; screw a country or three and you get off with an attempt at censure.