Good commentary on the use of “fascism” and “theocracy” as scare words since the election. I didn’t like the outcome much myself, but I’ve been surprised by how fragile folks seem to think our Republic is. America as we know it will change — it always is changing — and perhaps become something we cannot stand, but I personally doubt we’ve reached a point where drastic change can come in with a bang, rather than sneaking slowly past with a whimper. ...

…and right in the middle of the famed Cyprus Triangle, too. I’ll have to admit, the evidence of the three-kilometer wall sounds pretty good, but I won’t believe it until someone finds the mystical crystal power source, or just asks Aquaman about it. :) Courtesy of Reuters, via Yahoo! News

In today’s email haul: Re: [Anabaptists] 75% off Vicodin. bodyweight tail

Wow…uh…just wow. Don’t even know the words to write about it, particulary given the whole Bloomberg/Giuliani thing. Update: “Particulary,” there’s a new word. :) Courtesy of The New York Times (free registration required)

Everyone but you, Mr. Keyes, everyone but you… Keyes Blames Media, GOP for Loss in Ill. - Yahoo! News BTW, did 1.3 million people really vote for him because they were all single-issue pro-life, or did folks just not pay attention to the race? And if they weren’t paying attention to a race that involved a sex scandal involving Jack Ryan, the first candidate, and Jeri Ryan, his actress ex-wife and Borg-turned-school-teacher; Mike Ditka; and the sheer entertainment of Alan Keyes, what would get people to pay attention to it? ...

It’s interesting, in so many of the election post-mortems, how it is blithely assumed that part of the country has grown more conservative, more separated from the Enlightened parts. (Check out the RSS feed from the New York Times referenced here.) Very strange, given just how liberal the U.S. would look today to visitors from times only decades in the past. I’m from North Carolina, a Red state with Blue cities. I was born in the rural Red part, and I remember something about the state where I grew up and still live. No matter where what political color you were, what mattered in such important factors as where you went to school — just back three decades ago — was the color of your skin. (That’s still true in a lot of ways, thanks to neighborhood schools, magnets, school transfers, white flight, and a million other reasons, but it isn’t explicitly a legal matter anymore.) ...

Senator-elect Barack Obama, then a State Senator in Illinois, addresses the Democratic National Convention with a speech that would resonate with Americans no matter what party had hosted it: On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me express my deep gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant. ...

sigh…

Born on this day: Christopher Wren Arthur Rimbaud John Dewey Bela Lugosi Art Buchwald Mickey Mantle Tom Petty Viggo Mortensen Snoop Dogg and me… My Geek Horoscope: Libra - Despite all your lobbying efforts you won’t be able to convince Apple to release OS X for the Commodore 64.

Oh, good. Our administration has protected Iraq, and by extension the world, from the danger of a small Islamic peacekeeping force under the command of the UN. I’m sure our troops are grateful to our government for saving them from a slightly increased likelihood for peace, free elections, and UN involvement. Yep, busy with such problems as this, it is no wonder the administration’s thought capacity has become so dangerously overextended. ...