A blog dedicated entirely to beverages? Yup, and it's good.

When most educated Americans hear the word "Tamil," they think of the Tamil Tigers, originators of suicide bombing, and all around fierce foes. As I contemplated the eternal verities this evening, my mind wandered and I wondered if there existed any Tamil personal ads. But of course.

Ganesh has my favorite line in any personal ad.

hi i am ganesh form tirupur welcome all girlfrineds and i will respect and respond. need girls, lady, aunty for friendship and more

You're probably his type. More discriminating is Sathyamoorthy.

Interests:

Music: songs

Movies: good movies

But he might have self-esteem issues. It's hard to tell.

I am ian interesting guy, I am not a beautifull and smart guy but i feel myself that Iam a such guy

Wait.

I waant to meet the same personellaty as like me

I guess not. But my favorite approach belongs to Muralicovai, who is married, and can afford to be honest.

looking for smart girl for enjoyment and experience

Aren't we all, Murali, aren't we all?

Setting aside the fact that many performance artists do belong in Gitmo, this is pretty brilliant.

He starts by telling us a chilling story - his detention by the INS at Detroit Airport after returning from a trip from overseas. An immigration officer scanned his passport and blanched, then led Elahi through a maze under the airport to an INS detention facility. As a US citizen, this was pretty odd - he tried to talk with the guards to figure out what was going on. But it all became clearer when the man from the FBI in the dark suit came to talk with him.

Elahi’s life for the next few months involved dozens of interviews with the FBI ... every trip Elahi took, he’d call his FBI agent and give the routing, so he didn’t get detained along the way. He realized, after a point - why just tell the FBI - why not tell everyone?

So he hacked his cellphone into a tracking bracelet which he wears on his ankle, reporting his movements on a map - log onto his site and you can see that he’s in Camden. But he’s gone further, trying to document his life in a series of photos: the airports he passes through, the meals he eats, the bathrooms he uses. The result is a photographic record of his daily life which would be very hard to falsify. We all know photos can be digitally altered-but altering as many photos as Elahi puts online would require a whole team trying to build this alternative path through the world.

Elahi also puts other apsects of his life online, including his banking records. This gives a record of his purchases, which complements the photographs. He doesn’t put the phone records online, because it would compromise the privacy of the people he talks with, and some friends have asked him to stop visiting, but he views the self-surveillance both as an art form and as his perpetual alibi for the next time the FBI questions him.

This works as a statement because it's self-evidently absurd, but it's also nothing less than what the government demands when they ask questions like "where were you on the afternoon of...?" and "do you know Mr...?" The fact that they only ask for a piece at a time doesn't mean that they aren't requiring the whole to be available. Of course, I do worry that the fact that it's absurd doesn't mean that it won't serve as a model for what the government will explicitly demand in the future.

Does anyone know how to get rid of these? I accidentally inserted one into a document (I wanted to set aside a block of text by using '***,' which autocorrrect irritatingly turned into a break), and my attempts to delete it just made it reproduce. Now my efforts (I highlight the text on either side of a break, then press 'delete') just move them somewhere else. A little whimsical music in the background and we'd have a charming children's movie about the alienation of modern life.

This is what I mean:

This week's New York magazine has an article on people trying to extend their lives (some hoping to the point of immortality) by eating less. The blurb for the article is:

Is a life lived on the edge of starvation worth living? Our hungry reporter gives the ultra-extreme Calorie Restriction Diet a two-month taste test.

I’ve been starving for the past two months

subsisted on a caloric intake the average sub-Saharan African would find austere

a lifetime lived as close to the brink of starvation as your body can stand

concentration-camp diets

2,000 calories.

The guys featured in this article on "extreme deprivation" (and it's almost all guys) are trying to subsist on 1,800 to 2,000 calories per day. There's an "OMG! How does he do it?!"-style paragraph about a guy who makes sure he doesn't eat more than 639 calories for dinner. I'm sure the women here are all shaking their heads in disbelief.

For the men who might not understand why this is laughable, read any mainstream women's magazine and you'll surely come across an article on food or nutrition that tells women they should be eating 1,200 calories per day and gives you meal plans on how to do it. Sure, men are bigger than women and need more calories but it's pretty laughable that guys who have decided to eat 160% as much as women are told they should all the time warrant a trend piece on how they are starving themselves.

When Ann Coulter said of some of the 9/11 widows that "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Mark Steyn jumped to her defense by writing,

And at that point Senator Clinton jumped in to denounce the incendiary blond commentatrix as (dread word) "mean-spirited." Maybe so. But in 2004, the Jersey Girls publicly endorsed John Kerry's campaign for president: they inserted themselves into the political arena and chose sides. That being so, to demand that they be insulated from the normal rough 'n' tumble of partisan politics merely because of their biography seems absurd.

And Rush Limbaugh, defending his own decision to wonder whether Michael J. Fox was "acting" to play up his Parkinson's symptoms, says,

What's happening here is that Michael Fox has entered the political arena with his attack, which includes false information about Senator Talent and Michael Steele in Maryland. That's fair game, and I am not going to follow the script that says we're not allowed to comment on the things said by participants, "victims," what have you, that the Democrats put forth as infallible in the middle of a political campaign.

They're trying to frame this as the forces of silencing manipulation against the lonely voices of brave truth, but of course the real objection is that the widows and Fox aren't being substantively criticized or disagreed with on the merits, but attacked in ways that are so base and indecent that I think we don't fully register how low they are. And, of course, they're also normalizing just those kind of attacks. "Hey, it's all in the game." But it's not, or shouldn't be.

Another thing to note is how much public reaction depends on who has said something, and the attendant expectations, as opposed to what was said, narrowly construed. Atrios always notes that there seems to be literally nothing Ann Coulter can say that will keep her from being invited to mainstream talk shows, but that's not in spite of the fact that she's always saying horrible things, but because of it. "Oh, that's just Ann being Ann." I don't know whether broader conclusions should be drawn from our tolerance for the Anns, and what it says about us that we want our nastiest id out in the world. More end of civilization stuff, probably.

Mainly, I want to strangle Rush Limbaugh, but since I can't get at him, I was considering a post about how much Elvis Costello sucks, but I don't want to spend all night fielding "yeah, but what about this song?" questions, so let's just agree that this is the lamest bleg ever. Tenure does horrible things to a man. Next week at Drezner's: Should the internal loop of the paper clip be on the front or back of the sheets? Help a brother out.

As I was listening to my new Shortbus soundtrack CD, it struck me that every family has some parts of its history that seem perfectly normal when you are growing up but might seem kind of odd when explained to an outsider or looking back on it as an adult. Like the fact that my father used to sing me "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?" as a lullaby.

In the comments, Dagger Aleph writes,

when I was teaching adults in Cairo, the women were not shy and retiring at all, and would argue pretty strenuously with the men in the class if we were having a debate. The people I taught there with the strongest personalities were women.

This reminded me that though Iranian society is deeply and horribly sexist in a lot of ways (and not only because or since religious people took over the government), in discussions of society or politics (which are pretty standard after-dinner fare), there's something common enough that I think you'd call it a type: the woman who knows it all and monopolizes the discussion. Happens all the time. Watch book events about Iran on C-Span, and I'll bet you'll see it happen there, too. In my experience, in the West, this is an almost exclusively male type.

Something else that's weird is that (again, just in my experience--who knows what those other, bad Iranians do) Iranian men and women seem to have very different argumentative styles, specifically, in that Iranian women will often press a point until you explicitly submit, whereas the men seem as concerned with being deferential and not giving offense as with "winning." They'll concede points all over the place, or not concede with a smile that says, "of course you're right, but I'd rather not admit that right now."

In a lot of ways, the roles of Iranian men and women in argument mirror that of the "respectable" and the "shrill" in American politics. It's hard not to see that, in the Iranian case, as a manifestation of sexism. Much as I love the way Iranian men will argue, with their sly smiles and all the pregnant unsaid, if I were a woman who'd been humored but ultimately blown off that way for centuries, I'd be pretty damn concerned with pinning someone down. Issues matter more to Iranian women, because what's really being discussed when people talk about abstractions like "what's the appropriate role of religion in politics?" is often "how should we make the women act?"

In America, that "mattering to," or "giving a shit" is "shrill." Of course, that's not to say that there's no such thing as "shrill," nor that it isn't very annoying, but it's good to ask whether what you're calling "shrill" is just "caring" or "being directly affected by."

It's been a while since I plugged a blog, but Brad Plumer's wonky blog is very, very good. Here he is on microloans, and here on parole reform. Good stuff.

Same sex marriage is now legal in Jersey. Nice to see some good news for a change.

(Well, not exactly. I haven't read the opinion yet, but it doesn't hold that same sex marriage is legal, just that the unavailablity of the legal rights associated with marriage to gay couples violates the NJ consititution. The legislature has to do something about this -- pass a same sex marriage law, or civil unions, or something, to get in compliance with the opinion now.)

Herewith a thread for people in Boston and environs to satisfy their lust for fleshy contact.

First, a complaint. Why don't some of the blogs of the bloggers at Chez Bloje have full rss feeds? UberSausage? Feedsmasher? [Update: My bad. Smasher has a full feed.] Yeah, you.

And on a different topic, of course I think Halloween costumes are ridiculous and I hate fun, m- and otherwise, but if you're going to wear a costume, allow me to put in a vote for ones that illustrate a concept, rather than mimic a person. "Rampant consumerism" would be a good costume, as would "our national shame" (for you dreary types, anyway). "Jacksonian democracy" would be tough, but "the lesser of two evils" has a lot of potential.

The Education Department recently announced that they are giving school districts more latitude for implementing single-sex classes and schools. The ACLU and a bunch of feminist organizations are in a huff because they say that it is condoning discrimination and are threatening to sue. I think that's a bad move - I went to a single-sex high school and believe I got far more out of it than I would have in a coeducational setting.

I think a lot of what I gained from the experience ties into LB's post about the lack of female pundits and what m. leblanc had to say about women's comments being ignored. I'd always been outspoken in class but it wasn't until I was at an all-girls school that I felt my comments were heard and challenged. It's one thing to speak up in class with an opinion and have it ignored or dismissed and entirely another to be engaged and forced to defend it.

I also think there is a type of confidence that comes from seeing all of the roles in the traditional high school filled by people of your gender. The class president, star athlete, and valedictorian were all women. And so were the class clown, the weirdo, and the troublemaker always being sent to the Principal's office. It really opened your eyes to all of the options you had in life. And, sure, we dated guys, but unlike our friends at the coed high schools, nobody was defined by who they were dating (e.g., "the girlfriend of the captain of the football team"). You had to claim your own identity.

I think a lot of girls could benefit from an all-girls environment and think it's a shame that that opportunity is currently limited to people who can afford private schools. I know they think they're doing the right thing and that there probably will be some cases where separate is not equal but I hope the ACLU backs the hell off.

UPDATE: Pwned by Alameida sorta kinda. Oh well.

m. leblanc makes an interesting point in the comments to LB's whither whence female pundits post:

Maybe I should comment this over at Ezra's place, since y'all are talking about significantly different things here, but I feel like my political polemic/sparring skills are underdeveloped because I can't find many people to spar with, say, at school. There were comments to this effect over at Ezra's, but I think many men are just unwilling to engage with women. I say provocative comments all the time in class, and they are frequently, if not always, ignored. It could be that what I say is irrelevant, but I don't think that's the case. I see my classmates all the time, going at it with one another, but every time I try to get in on something, it's like I'm fucking invisible. My only real substantive political-type arguments happen with my four female friends, who are totally badass (sadly, none of them ever speak in class, even though they totally kick ass, thus perpetuating the silence of women). For instance, over drinks last night we got into a heated discussion about psychiatrist-patient privilege. But the way that we talk to each other, I literally have never seen it, not in class, not in my friendships with men, not on television.

I think in the grad school seminar there is sometimes a sense that women are too fragile for you to really mix it up with them. Like, they might cry or something. I can remember that when I would give a presentation in a Classics seminar it would actually get properly attacked by dissenting male students, but when other female classmates presented, there were no attacks. This was because the male students knew I didn't care and would be happy to argue with them, but they somehow had the sense that our other female classmates would crumble like so many cookies dissolving in tepid chamomile tea.

This was assholish in many ways, but the thing is, there was some basis for this sense, namely, some of my female classmates would become personally offended if you contradicted them. My sister-in-law, who is in English, feels this way. She thinks it's impolite to flatly contradict someone's view, like it's a personal attack. This is very strange, but it is there. I had female classmates say to me "wow, that guy was really harsh for no reason", when it was clear to me that he had been storing up resentments about theory the whole semester and finally got to let loose on me. I feel that not being willing to go for the jugular in attacking people's ideas is just the same as saying they're not worth bothering with. It's like patting them on the head and saying, "aw, it's so cute that you think that."

Philosophy departments aren't like that at all, and the norm is furious disagreement and a certain kind of logico-philosophical cock-swinging. I love it, but some people hate it. I would suggest to leblanc that when your male classmates are having some argument you repeatedly come in on one side or the other. Once they know you like that sort of thing they'll be more likely to argue with you. And make your brilliant friends speak up. Or you could just transfer to the philosophy department? It's really not going to be a solution to the problem of having sexist male fellow-students, but you will get lots of practice in arguments.

Coding geeks of the Unfoggetariat, could you direct your attention to the comments in this thread, please, and tell me if you think it's feasible, and whether there exists sufficient altruistic motivation, to bring auto-refreshing ajaxified comments to Unfogged? It would surely be the coolest thing ever, would it not?

I'm sure John Rogers or Scott Lemieux will have something funny to say, but right now all I can think is what the hell is this shit? It's an RNCC ad against Harold Ford that, in the middle of some halfway funny bits of policy-based irony, sticks in a moment of anti-miscegenation assholishness.

You can give Corker and the RNCC the finger here if you'd like. Trust me, it's satisfying.

Glenn Reynolds, whose sister-in-law is black, if I remember right, voted against Ford because the Democrats are the part of "sexual McCarthyism."

Dana Goldstein writes in The American Prospect about the lack of female political journalists; she blames it on the lack of women in political office. Ezra blogs on the article, and attributes it to a socialized lack of confidence among women.

I don't know. These questions depress the hell out of me, because I'm working in a similar field, where the key qualities (beyond, you know, actual competence) are supposed to be aggression and self-confidence, and despite buckets of both (at least, I'm convinced I'm brilliant, and people are generally somewhat frightened of the prospect of disagreeing with me) and uniformly good feedback on the actual competence front, I haven't turned that into being a rising star at the firm where I work. (Yes, yes, I know, the blogging isn't helping. But it's a reaction to feeling deadended rather than the source of the problem.) There's some personal quality beyond confidence that you need in a law firm to get the kind of experience that moves your career forward that I lack: I think it's a willingness to make demands of people. "Them that asks, gets."

If what I'm describing is what keeps women out of punditry, I don't know what to do about it. But it's not a lack of confidence in my own abilities, and I think it's a mistake to confuse the two things.

Update: Check out M. Leblanc musing on the same issues, and suggesting that men don't want to compete against women because they don't see us as participating in the same hierarchy they do, so the competition is meaningless.

1a. When my effin phone spontaneously reboots.

1b. Having an oh so rare landline to landline conversation, and actually hearing everything the other person says, and knowing that it's oh so rare.

2. All the effin icons appended to some people's blog entries. Fugly. And half of those sites will be out of business in a year.

Yes, it's Yglesias Day on Unfogged, folks. This time he's taking the words out of my mouth by wondering what the hell we're doing telling other countries that they can't militarize space. I mean, the hell? With what authority are we making these unilateral decisions? And what a great way to alienate other countries and feed right into accusations that the U.S. thinks it can just dictate policy to the rest of the world. Sheesh.

For being faster than I am. I had wanted to post on this story; a typical piece on "Huh. How come the Republicans aren't getting any political credit for the strength of the economy? I mean, wages haven't gone up, and economic insecurity is up, but the economy is doing great! There must be some arcane reason that voters won't give the administration credit for it." But Yglesias beat me to it, pointing out that:

Yes, yes, shocking but true -- typical people's perceptions of the economy are driven more by the well-being of typical people than on aggregate macroeconomic indicators. Who'd a thunk it?

To repeat what he said, louder and slower: voters who are swayed by economic issues aren't voting on the basis of whether conventional economic indicators are strong. They're swayed by whether their own personal economic states, or future economic prospects, are good. This isn't silly or shortsighted of them; the national economy isn't realer, or more important to each voter, than their own particular pocketbooks are. Macroeconomic indicators like GDP growth are useful for predicting voting behavior only insofar as they're associated with economic good fortune for individual voters. Where the macroeconomic indicators are strong, but the economic welfare of individual voters is not, there is nothing even remotely surprising about voting behavior failing to follow the economic indicators.

Part of the mental problem the Times is having here is the tendency to use "the economy" as if it were a synonym of "aggregate macroeconomic indicators". If the indicators are up, the economy is strong. It's not that this is insane; it's reasonable shorthand. But it's incomplete. An economy is a complicated thing that can't be reduced to one number, and it's perfectly possible to have a 'strong economy' in which a whole lot of voters feel economically pinched and afraid. "It's the economy, stupid" is still true; you just need not to be stupid about oversimplifying what 'the economy' is.

I knew my new coffee guy was too good to be true. We had something special that doesn't come along very often -- the perfect mixture of good coffee, friendly banter, and non-creepiness. But, alas, I think our time together is over. I went to get my coffee this morning and after mixing together a perfect coffee-with-milk-and-two-sugars, he juicily blew his nose into his hand, wiped it on his pants, and then put the lid on my cup and handed it to me.

Sorry, dude. I think that's a dealbreaker.

Most of you are asleep anyway, right? So here's a heartbreaking series of self-portraits by an artist as he slipped into Alzheimer's. Accompanying story here.

Then:

45 minutes at 250 watts. Heartrate at finish: ~175 bpm.

Now:

4 minutes at 95 watts. Heartrate at finish: ~170 bpm.

(People deriding ellipticals as being for "poofs" will have their asses kicked, though probably not for several months.)

Our desperation-fueled dedicated host contract with Pair is coming to a close soon so we're going to be taking steps over the next few weeks to prepare for a move to a new hosting company. We're hoping to avoid the expense of a dedicated server so we're going to try out this shiny new thing called a grid server over at Media Temple. It's supposed to reduce the shared-server "bad neighbor" effect where sites that get spikes in their load (*cough*) degrade other users on the same box, resulting in (I've heard) bitchy emails from their hosts and an upgrade extortion racket.

This shouldn't affect anything on the site in near term but we thought you might want to know what was on the horizon and that the days of the Unfogged Happy Fun Page (and random outages, like today's) are hopefully numbered. And if this grid server thing works out, we won't have to sell another Unfogged blogger into slavery to pay for the hosting fees, like dear sweet Bob.

Unrelatedly, there will be some hiccups on the site tomorrow around 11 AM EST to swap out the bad hard drive that caused today's problems.

Or at least being ridiculously, recklessly careless about the accusations they make. I've been following all the back and forth about the Lancet study of excess deaths in Iraq (which I should refer to as the Burnham study, I suppose. It's not as if the journal's editors wrote the paper), mostly by reading Tim Lambert's posts, given that he's been all over it. Most of the criticisms looked like nonsense, but one bit from an article in Science, (the link is to quotes from the article at Lambert's -- the article itself is subscription only), had me worried. The claim in Science was that the Burnham study was biased because only households on streets crossing main streets were surveyed, and that such streets would be more dangerous than streets not crossing main streets. The basic criticism struck me as nonsense -- people don't necessarily die where they live, after all -- but this passage from the article troubled me:

Neil Johnson and Sean Gourley, physicists at Oxford University in the U.K. who have been analyzing Iraqi casualty data for a separate study, also question whether the sample is representative. The paper indicates that the survey team avoided small back alleys for safety reasons. But this could bias the data because deaths from car bombs, street-market explosions, and shootings from vehicles should be more likely on larger streets, says Johnson. Burnham counters that such streets were included and that the methods section of the published paper is oversimplified. He also told Science that he does not know exactly how the Iraqi team conducted its survey; the details about neighborhoods surveyed were destroyed "in case they fell into the wrong hands and could increase the risks to residents." These explanations have infuriated the study's critics. Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who specializes in civil conflicts, says the scientific community should call for an in-depth investigation into the researchers' procedures. "It is almost a crime to let it go unchallenged," adds Johnson.

Destroying your data is bizarre. While there might be good reasons to keep it confidential (as in this case, the risk that informants will be killed for cooperating), destroying the data that establishes the validity of how a study was conducted gives a great deal of credibility to critics' claims that it was not done properly. I read that, clearly stating that Burnham had himself said that the data was destroyed, and started to think that perhaps the study was fraudulent.

Or, of course, that John Bohannon, the writer of the article in Science, was lying, or horrendously reckless about accuracy. Burnham flatly denies having told Bohannon that the methodological data was destroyed:

I did not ever tell the writer from Science that the raw data have been destroyed. Absolutely NOT! It is sitting right here! What I did say is that our Iraqi colleagues are very concerned about security, not just theirs but the neighborhoods they surveyed. They have asked us for the moment not to release the data to others as there might be some identifiers there. I am sure that we can remove any unique identifiers, but I am bound to honor their requests, as they have staked so much in collecting the data. We will be discussing this over time with our Iraqi colleagues, and I would imagine that in due course we can make it available to those interested. ...

That's just amazingly bad journalism. If you think someone has told you they did something incredibly shady, you check that you've understood them before you print it. I sincerely hope that Bohannon is being pressed to provide an explanation for how he made the 'mistake'. This sort of thing is incredibly damaging -- it's fairly easy to correct for spin, or biased interpretations, but I still have a tendency to assume that things reported as fact, and known first-hand to the writer, are going to be true. And I don't know how to avoid making that assumption most of the time and still get anything useful out of reading journalism.

I don't want to steer anyone wrong, so now that I've been using Feedlounge for a little while, let me revise my recommendations. If you want an online news reader, Google Reader is very good and free. It's not perfect (it doesn't have search yet, for example), but it certainly gets the job done. But despite really really wanting to use an online reader, I've decided to stick with Great News for now. The online sites just don't update quickly and consistently enough for me. If you check feeds two or three times a day, an online reader will be fine, but if you want to know what's going on right now on all the blogs you track, the online readers aren't yet updated frequently enough.

So you know what to do here.

I miss coming up with coherent, interesting (for so I flatter myself) playlists. But, on the hand, I have no interest in doing that just for my own diversion. So, does anyone want a CD? If more than one person does, I'll even send different CDs to different people.

Ladies and gentlemen, Slut-O-Ween has gone too far.

In August 2004, I linked to a post about a thread on christian-forums.com where people were discussing, literally and in all seriousness, their concerns that Barack Obama might be the antichrist. Over the past couple years, it has sporadically gotten comments from folks expressing the same worries. A flurry arrived in the past few days, all from different IP addresses, including the following highlights:

Hey, I have given prophesy before and I truly beleive that Obama will be the Beast who makes everyone else worship that other funky creature. He will give His power up to this other creature( S) This other creature could be all those Seven or Eight really wealthy people who like own the World and not want everyone's heart and souls and now they are going to use Obama -his kindess and meekness his sincerity-to gain everyone's trust. Beleive me Obama is prolly sincere about his intentions to some extant but He may come to power and realize how good that is to such an extant that he will sell US out-to the more powerful beast. Obama will be the bridge between the average Jo Schmo who just wants the world a better place to the Anti-Christ who will take these souls away. Scripture will be fulfilled. I promise you and if they ever trace me back to this URL I am doomed. Also because BArack comes from such a multi-cultural liberal background he may turn into a Muslim or something...and we will die by the sword as SCripture mandates, now these final thoughts are my own...

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i have to admit i have been getting a little spooked about this rising star from the middle east. it just seems to cap off all the other things that have been spooking me as well such as digital angel ("mark of the beast"), these wars in the middle east, this modern day rome that seems to be happening, the weather, these past natural disasters, etc. etc. etc. hope the best for all of you.

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Did anyone read the TIME Magazine article on Obama? It really creeped me out. At one of Obama's speaking engagements he was introduced in the following way: "He's all of us! He's not black! He's not white! He's not ..." The speaker then faltered and realized that she was about to say that He's not male or female. This kind of a description for anyone is worrysome. I believe that this is exactly how antichrist will be. Also, Obama announced today that he will be considering a run for president in '08. This going back on past statements that he was not interested in running. Not to mention that everything seems to be falling into place for end-times events to occur. Just my humble opinion.

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Yes, I believe he will win in 08 and we will be finished by 012. I feel in my soul that he is the AntiChrist. He's too good to believe. Where did he come from? Where did his name come from? What evil forces are behind him?

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If Barack Obama runs and wins in 08' It will truely spell the doom for America as we know it. He truely is evil. We all know this and can feel it in our bones. Shame on Time Magazine and shame on Illinois.

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i wouldnt be suprised if he wins in 2008 and i wouldnt be suprised if he gets killed and comes back to life

Really, WTF? Is it the funny name? Does he bear some resemblance to a Left Behind character? I mean, I understand that demonizing the opposition is standard operating procedure, but it's usually a figurative demonization.

Even though I've voted absentee in every election in which I've ever voted, I was pretty surprised to read that nationwide more than 20% of voters will vote absentee in the upcoming election. That seems like a really high number to me. If I had been asked to guess, I would have thought it would be more of a fringe thing, maybe 2-3%, 5% at the most.

The death of innocence, the birth of macho.