http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5155_52.htm A few days ago, the Anti-Defamation League expressed displeasure with former Arkansas' governor Mike Huckabee's use of the term "holocaust" in conjunction with abortions in the United States. While I agree with the League that using "holocaust" in conjunction with anything other than the Holocaust is insensitive and should be discouraged, this issue is larger than one speech by a conservative Presidential candidate. Huckabee is not the first to equate abortion and genocide. In fact, among Southern Baptists, Huckabee's denomination, this rhetorical device has been employed for as long as I can remember. Although they may not be able to give a reason other than an appeal to the book of Psalms as to why abortion is wrong, they feel that it is murder on a large scale. The fact that Huckabee is parroting this phrase to a group that sympathizes with it is no surprise. I'm sure that any who truly believe that abortion is murder feel that it compares with genocide, but I know that there are also those who use inflamatory terms like this to capitalize on the knee-jerk reactions that will follow. Huckabee most likely feels that we as a nation are allowing mass murder on a daily basis. I honestly hope that he will find a way to balance his emotions about this issue with the need to keep from trivializing the most evil act in recent (if not all of human) history.

BartCop.com Volume 2061 - Seriously... In Today's Tequila Treehouse...

	Bush's Free-Fire Zones
	Rudy & Waterboarding
	San Diego Top Ten
	Rudy Awakening
	Mishandled Torture
	Wars cost: $2.4 trillion
	Armenian Genocide
	Left-Stopping Hillary
	Alba's Eva Crush

The 2008 election is turning out to be a contest of candidates that no one seems to be able to get behind. Given the huge issues that face the United States from Iraq and terrorism to the economy you would have thought we would have gotten a better group of candidates that the two parties could support. There are national polls that show that each party has one candidate that is polling well ahead of the rest. The problem with the two so called front runners is that not too many people in their respective parties actually like them. When examining more localized polls they show a much tighter race. Even in a tighter race the negatives for the top tier candidates outweigh the positives. Looking at the Republicans one has too wonder what the GOP is thinking. Their current front runner Rudi Guiliani is demonized by the Christian right for his liberal views on gays, guns and abortion. It is wondered aloud how Guiliani could possibly win the GOP nomination and the general election without the support of this crucial voting block. On the Democratic side its not much better. Hillary Clinton as front runner is demonized by much of the left wing of the Democrats for her hawkish views on Iraq and Iran.Without the support of this wing of the party how does Clinton expect to win the nomination and then the general election. All this mess with parties doesn't even include the input of independents who are sure to swing this election. A recent poll of independents revealed that most independents are not impressed with any of the major candidates but do seem to swing more left than right in this election cycle. Unfortunately for the electorate the alternative to Guiliani and Clinton are not offering much more than the front runners. On the right you have Romney and McCain and on the left you have Obama and Edwards. None of the four has mustered enough support among their own parties to even make a dent in the world of independents. This election, one that is of crucial importance to the United States and its allies could unfortunately come down to the lesser of two evils. The question is what are those two evils.

Michael Cooper, The New York Times, October 25, 2007 DAVENPORT, Iowa - At a town hall meeting here last night, Rudolph W. Giuliani expanded upon his views of torture. Here is a transcript of the exchange. Linda Gustitus, who is the president of a group called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, began her question by saying that President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey (who happens to be an old friend of Mr. Giuliani’s) had “fudged” on the question of whether waterboarding is toture. “I wanted to ask you two questions,’’ she said. “One, do you think waterboarding is torture? And two, do you think the president can order something like waterboarding even though it’s against U.S. and international law?’’ Mr. Giuliani responded: “Okay. First of all, I don’t believe the attorney general designate in any way was unclear on torture. I think Democrats said that; I don’t think he was.’’ Ms. Gustitus said: “He said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.” Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is. Because I’ve learned something being in public life as long as I have. And I hate to shock anybody with this, but the newspapers don’t always describe it accurately.” (Applause) Read More Here

Justin Juozapavicius, The Associated Press, October 24, 2007 TULSA, Okla. -- Oral Roberts University, which has been engulfed in accusations of lavish spending by its president, faces a crippling debt load, the evangelical school's board of regents chairman disclosed Wednesday. Regents Chairman George Pearsons told The Associated Press that ongoing maintenance costs and low financial support from donors have put Oral Roberts University $55 million in debt. University spokesman Jeremy Burton said Wednesday evening the actual debt figure is actually $52.5 million. "Honestly, we've been struggling financially," Pearsons said. "Really my goal  and it's a big one  my goal is to obliterate the debt. "It is the desire of the board to be able to manage our finances in such a way that we can start chopping off debt here and there." University president Richard Roberts has taken a temporary leave of absence while fighting a lawsuit claiming out-of-control spending, and his father, Oral Roberts, has returned to Oklahoma from California to take a greater role in guiding the school he founded in 1963. The 5,700-student university is a product of Oral Roberts' ministry, which grew from Southern tent revivals to one of the most successful evangelical empires in the country. The university reported nearly $76 million in revenue in 2005, according to the Internal Revenue Service, and one former regent said its endowment once approached $60 million. Its endowment today exceeds $34 million, a university spokesman said. Its operating budget for 2007-2008 was more than $82 million. Read More Here

What do you do if you are a Michigan Republican't who's concerned that your long-time comfortably incumbent Congresscritter appears to be headed for a tough election? Why, you harrass his potential opponents:

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - A politically conservative student armed with a video camera and a Web site is trying to force a Democratic congressional candidate out of his teaching job at Central Michigan University. Dennis Lennox, a 23-year-old junior, has posted videos on YouTube of himself questioning assistant professor Gary Peters about campaigning for office while holding a prestigious position at the university. Some say Lennox is persistent. Others accuse him of pandering for attention. "What I'm doing isn't about getting media attention," said Lennox, a political science major. "I'm speaking for the hundreds of students, alumni, taxpayers and even legislators who have complained because Gary Peters won't pick between Congress and campus." In one video Lennox posted online, Peters is seen walking to his car while Lennox asks him several questions, including whether he is angry about his campaign not getting "positive press." Peters doesn't respond. Peters said in an interview this week with The Associated Press that his university position is part-time and privately funded. "The bottom line is that people who run for public office still need to pay the bills and still need to work," he said. He drives 130 miles from a Detroit suburb to Mount Pleasant to teach class once a week. Peters, 48, is seeking the Democratic nomination to face Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg in Oakland County, one of the top congressional targets for Democrats nationally in 2008. "If I was running for Congress in a seat where I had no chance of winning, I probably wouldn't have any attention put on me at all," said Peters, a former state senator who lost a close race for Michigan attorney general in 2002. He acknowledges it would be difficult to keep his $65,000-a-year job at the university if he gets elected to Congress, but says he will worry about that if he wins. Peters holds the Griffin Endowed Chair in American Government — named for a former Republican U.S. senator and Michigan Supreme Court justice. Lennox helped start the group Students Against Gary Peters and created a Web site for what he calls "Petersgate." He insists that he isn't targeting Peters because he's a Democrat. [snip]

Go read the whole thing. There's a followup to the original report, which doesn't really say a lot about the he said/she said going on between this student and the dean of the university in question - he wants to troll through Peters' emails looking for impropriety, and is video taping Peters everywhere he goes (which is against school policy) - and she took a swipe at the camera when he shoved it in her face in her office while asking about his FOIA request for the emails, according to what I can make out in the articles I can get to (note to Freep/DetNews: don't try and make me pay for online archives of articles you published last week). Now, I'm not sure how I feel about this situation. If there is some validity to the accusations of this student, then some investigation should be done by journalists (preferrably professionals) - and the student is within the bounds of reasonable discourse in asking the questions he is asking. On the other hand, if this is a Stalkin' Malkin acolyte looking for smear and deflect material to put a stop to an opponent who might be able to beat the incumbent Republican't candidate (and/or become the next Scaife bonus baby), all of the sludge he spews should be dropped back in the sewers that are current Republican't political strategery machinations. It certainly does smell somewhat like gotcha journalism, what with the ambushing of the target on a constant basis (bordering on stalking/harrassment), the apparent disdain for even asking the target for permission to engage in this behavior, and the refusal to abide by university policy while on campus. Anyone who can shed more light on this story would be welcome to give me the low down in the comments. For now, the jury's still out on this one...

The Science They Hate Proves the 'Doors' of Perception are Shut to the Neocon's 'Stone Age Brains' The sub-head of The Telegraph (UK) article "Did You See the Gorilla?" reads: "Our Stone Age brains may simply be unable to cope with the pace of modern life..." But not all of us have 'Stone Age brains' as the article goes on to elucidate. In the various university experiments testing human perception, about half failed to notice what was going on, roughly similar to the Duke University experiments conducted decades ago to show the weakness of eyewitness testimony. In one experiment, a stranger entered a classroom, did something rude and unexpected, then exited, all within about fifteen seconds. The surprised students in the class were asked to record details of the man's appearance, his clothing, his race and any other identifying characteristics. About one-half of the students got important details wrong, the kind of details police would need to identify a suspect, such as the color of his clothing or his hair, or his height and weight. Twenty percent of the students, all of them white, claimed he was a black man when he was white. In the updated experiment mentioned in the article, conducted by Dr. Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois and Dr. Daniel Levin of Vanderbilt University, people strolling across a college campus were asked for directions by a stranger. While they are talking, two men carrying a door pass between the stranger and the subjects. As the article notes:

"Half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger had been substituted with a man who was of different height, of different build and who sounded different. He was also wearing different clothes. "Despite the fact that the subjects had talked to the stranger for 10-15 seconds before the swap, half of them did not detect that, after the passing of the door, they had ended up speaking to a different person. This phenomenon, called change blindness, highlights how we see much less than we think we do."

In another classic experiment the piece covered, Christopher Chabris at Harvard University and Dr. Simons showed a videotape of two teams playing basketball to a random group of subjects. The subjects were asked to count the number of passes made by one of the teams. As the article adds:

"Around half failed to spot a woman dressed in a gorilla suit who walked slowly across the scene for nine seconds, even though this hairy interloper had passed between the players and stopped to face the camera and thump her chest."

They just didn't see the gorilla in the background as they focused on the players and the ball. Imagine this sort of 'change blindness' affecting the abstract thought processes needed to choose a candidate or political ideology in today's 'information overload' world. Further imagine that there are groups of well-paid people like Frank Luntz dedicated to telling you that no such gorilla exists, reinforcing their already inadequate perception of reality. Later, were the viewers who saw no gorilla to hear that the gorilla robbed, killed and ate the basketball players, and that they had witnessed the beginnings of a crime, this same well-paid Fox Newsy 'reinforcing group' would continue to reassure them that they saw nothing; the gorilla must be innocent, since there was no gorilla. (Of course, this reinforcing group is being paid by the gorilla.) Many Americans seem to spend less time deciding whom to vote for than they do shopping for cuts of meat at the supermarket. Only recently, because the presence of 'the gorilla' has affected meat prices, are a majority questioning the faulty perceptions easily sold to them in the past. Still, about 20 percent, the hardcore neocons, persist in believing there is no gorilla in the background that robbed and devoured the team, no doubt the same type who, at Duke, misidentified the white thief as being black. In short: Neocons can't deal with reality because they can't adequately perceive reality, and they can never change because they're afflicted with 'change blindness.' And that large pile of elephant excrement in the middle of the room? Why, that's our Beloved Leader.

Before I even start, I would like to say that I have absolutely nothing against breast cancer survivors. I also think that the groups that support awareness of breast cancer are doing a good thing. I'm not trying to say that any of these people are evil, malicious, or just out for sympathy, so please don't think that this is what I am trying to say. However, I have noticed lately that every time I turn on the television, I see an ad about breast cancer -- Susan G. Komen Foundation, doing self exams on the eleventh of every month, and even (shudder) being someone's bra. Given the amount of attention that breast cancer receives, one would think that it strikes at least half, if not more, of the female population. The problem is, breast cancer strikes only 12.7% of American women (according to the National Cancer Institute). According to the American Heart Association, twice as many women die of strokes and heart attacks than die from all forms of cancer. This leads to the question, "Why have women focused on a disease that is less likely to kill them than their trans-fat eating, sedentary ways?" I honestly think that the reason why breast cancer is such a popular cause among women is because it is a women's disease (even though some men do get it) and because talking to survivors leads to uplifting stories about their faith and the support of their families. There is another issue in the United States that affects many more women than men, but it receives almost no television advertising: domestic abuse. According to www.endabuse.org, 31% of women are physically or sexually abused by a partner during their lives. Putting the spotlight on domestic abuse would make a huge impact on the lives of American women. If domestic abuse received the same attention as breast cancer, no man in his right mind would abuse a woman, as everyone would know risk factors and signs of abuse and women would know that they are not alone and would no longer be ashamed to step forward and admit that they are being put through hell. I think that there are several reasons that domestic abuse has not received this level of attention. The first is that we, as Americans, respect each other's privacy and are hesitant to pry into other's business. Another is that organizations dedicated to assisting victims of domestic abuse have to allocate their funding towards projects that better benefit survivors (such as shelters, counseling, and legal assistance) instead of towards awareness and prevention. Sadly enough, I really do feel that the lack of inspiring stories of survival also plays a part in this. Listening to the recollections of a domestic abuse victim is a horrific experience. Not only is it disturbing, but it also brings out such a profound pity for the victim that it is almost unbearable. It is well and good to focus attention on breast cancer and even heart disease, but we need to remember that 1/3 of the women in our nation are surviving abuse. That is the women's issue that we need never forget.