Not content with stripping Americans of every last dollar, implementing policies that funnel our wealth into the pockets of the rich at the fastest possible pace, it looks like the Bush Administration has now managed to deliver an even more blatant slap in the face to the American citizen.  Yes, our very lives, the value placed on the individual human life by the government, has been reduced by nearly 15%.  The EPA has just declared that an American life has declined in value, to $6.9 million in today's dollars.  This is a decrease of approximately a million dollars from the value previously assigned to a "statistical", or standard, life.

Just some unadulterated good news for Senator Kennedy!

I know this isn't much of a diary, but I keep seeing the story on Yahoo News.  And it's better news than I expected, on a day already full of good news.

The man is made of steel.

Last night after a good dinner and a couple of glasses of wine I started idly pondering what it was that attracted me (a 40ish white woman) to Barack Obama so strongly that I was never able to seriously consider Hillary Clinton as a candidate.  (And also, why I was so sensitive to her RFK comment).  Here's what I came up with.

I was born in November of 1968.  The Summer of Love was over.  The Chicago police had already deployed the tear gas.  And all of the heroes were already dead.

In an article with the hype-free title "Obama warns Republicans about critical ads" the AP reports on the Republicans' failed strategy in recent special elections:

In recent contests in Louisiana and Mississippi, Republicans or their allies ran TV ads linking the Democratic House nominees to Obama, warning that a vote for them was a tacit endorsement of Obama's agenda, which the ads described as very liberal. In Mississippi, ads against Democrat Travis Childers also tied him to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The efforts failed, putting Democrats in House seats the GOP had considered safe, and sending waves of panic through Republican circles nationwide.

I got to the Elizabeth Ave. location at about 6:45 this morning.  The campaign had called me last night to encourage me to arrive before 6:30 a.m. so I could go stand with a group at a busy intersection and jump up and down and wave a sign, but between trying to get some food and medicine into my very sick pootie and being a slacker college professor who isn't used to having to get up real early, I didn't quite make it.  The bouncy little volunteer who has been staying in my house since Friday, was not much earlier than I was, but she had an excuse -- she'd been out until at least nine the previous night.

I just wanted to share a little piece of interesting news that has nothing to do with either Barack Obama (well, almost nothing) or Hillary Clinton.

I just became a member of the SEIU!

I voted today in North Carolina early voting.  There's no secret who I voted for.  So that's one for Team "O".

In line at 2:00 on a sunny Friday afternoon were several older African American voters, me, a nurse from the local hospital, and a very young looking girl who was worried that she might not be allowed to vote because she didn't have a registration card.  We reassured her that it would be OK.  The man in front of me was talking proudly about how North Carolina was going to have better turnout than any other state.  All the voting machines were in use, and they remained in use the entire time I was there.

As a scientist, I've really been hoping that the folks at ScienceDebate2008.com would talk the candidates into holding a discussion on the incredibly important topic of science, the role it plays in our economy and our society, and what should be done about/for science in the future.

However, it seems at this time both Democratic Primary Candidates have blown them off.  From an e-mail I received today:

I just got back from an organizing meeting in Charlotte, NC, that was so mobbed it pretty much thwarted all of the advance team's carefully laid plans for getting the crowd organized into teams.

Inside the meeting as things were heating up

For those looking for a change from the endless Wright vs. Tuzla smackdown, I've got a little bit of good news today.

Charlotte NC Obama HQ is ready to open and it's looking good!

When Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are allowed to snigger triumphantly in the pages of Time about how they are spoiling the Democrats' election, it's time to wrap this thing up:

Meanwhile, Limbaugh opened his program Wednesday with a victory cry: "Operation Chaos is exceeding all objectives...this is just fabulous." Dubbing the Obama-Clinton face-off a "soap opera," Limbaugh says he will carry his campaign through to the final primaries in early June.

"I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose," Limbaugh said. "They're in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch. And it's all going to stop if Hillary loses."

This little snippet of information just rose to the top of Yahoo! News:

The nation's service sector contracted in January for the first time in almost five years, a trade group of purchasing executives said Tuesday.

This little story is destined to disappear into the ether, I'm sure, snuffed out like a brief candle by primary news.

A not-so-lovely person of my acquaintance has just sent out the Obama/madrassa smear to a mailing list of nice people I know who (ironically) are mainly women who participate in middle eastern dance as a hobby.

The person who sent the e-mail is an out-and-out racist and although (full disclosure) I would love for John Edwards to win this primary I would also be happy to see Obama win in part just to know that people like her are having their poisonous ideology ground into the dust.

So...

Apparently this is a highly controversial award, but as someone who has been reading Lessing for years, I couldn't stop smiling when I saw this news.

She was praised by the judges for her "skepticism, fire and visionary power."

Lessing, 11 days short of her 88th birthday, is the oldest choice ever for a prize that usually goes to authors in their 50s and 60s. Although she is widely celebrated for "The Golden Notebook" and other works, she has received little attention in recent years and has been criticized as strident and eccentric.

I'm sitting here in Charlotte, North Carolina.  The weather forecast calls for ten days of "sunny", interspersed with a little "mostly sunny" and a lot of "plenty of sun".  My lawn is dusty and brown, my 60 year old dogwood is dying because I'm not allowed to water it any more, and my major trees are starting to lose their leaves unseasonably early.  It's still 90 degrees in the daytime and 60 at night; a first frost seems like a distant fantasy -- why, then, would the leaves turn color and fall?

Isn't it a bit sleazy for a TV network to attempt to make money off a recent natural disaster that is still un-remediated, un- cleaned up, where people's homes are still broken and the dead are barely two years in the ground?

This press-release from FOX TV came up in my Yahoo entertainment news today, and I had a little of that same nasty frisson that I had when I heard about OJ Simpson's If I Did It.  In OJ's case, readers will be getting a cheap thrill out of a failure of our justice system; in this case Katrina recovery, a massive failure of our emergency management system, becomes the backdrop for banal entertainment.

Sorry if this has been posted previously, I couldn't find it in the past couple of weeks' diaries.  

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

Go watch that and come back and talk about it.

One of my favorite sources for flours, both gluten-free and regular, good organic flour, is Bob's Red Mill.  Their products are available in health food stores and in the baking aisle in fancier mainstream grocery stores (Harris Teeter and Kroger, for sure) -- they make specialty flours, gluten free bread and cake mixes, baking additives, cereals, and more.  

After a lot of discussion here about whether the many gluten-y additives imported from China might be getting into the human food supply, I decided to ask them about their ingredients.