(I respect the guy for responding to these questionnaires, and others, in a thoughtful, forthright, and open manner. Such transparency is altogether uncommon in today’s politics. As a voter with a blank slate in Rhode Island politics, I was hoping to find some reason to split my ticket this year. But I saw little on his web site that I could support.)

However, Mr. Anderson has lost any chance of earning my vote with an e-mail message he sent to fellow members of the GOP, in which he said (emphasis added):

For the past three Presidential elections, I have been able to take an active role in the campaigns, but this year is different.

I want to help John McCain, but my own candidacy requires that I stay here where I have a small chance of unseating the Democrat Majority Leader of the House of Representatives.

So my thoughts go to those of you who are near PA and might be able to spend a day or two in PA to help John McCain there.

…

I have never been so worried about a candidate’s experience, honesty, and intentions as I am about Mr. Obama. I think he might win, not based on his platform and record, but on the generosity of voters who think it is time to give a “minority guy a break.” It’s an affirmative action impulse taken too far.

Please pass this along to others as you see fit.

I would like to urge Mr. Anderson to spend some time driving through the district he hopes to represent. I want him to count up all the Obama lawn signs he sees and all the McCain lawn signs he sees. I know from my own experience of getting to know my neighborhood/district, I see far more Obama signs.

And I want Mr. Anderson to ask himself one important question: why does he want to represent a district that he thinks is as naive as this?

And I want Mr. Anderson to know that I am asking myself an important question: why should I vote for a man who thinks his hoped-for constituents are as naive as this?

Exonerated Rapist Reflects on His Ordeal

No one’s ever going to believe this guy was innocent, no matter what the DNA says. Even the press still calls him a rapist.

Edited to add: I sent the Times this letter:

Dear editor,

I don’t know whether this is your headline or the AP’s, but either way, how can Charles Chatman possibly be an exonerated rapist? Is he a rapist or has he been exonerated of those charges? The headline still names him a rapist no matter what his legal status is, so it seems the headline writer’s opinion is clear.

Michael Dietsch
Brooklyn, New York

And a couple of hours later, the Times changes the headline:

Texas Man Freed After 26 Years in Prison

Boy, I’d love to believe that my email helped prompt the Times to rethink the headline, but I know that’s pretty arrogant. Regardless, I’m glad the Times changed the head.

Now, I don’t have a problem with that. He should do whatever the hell he wants to, and it’s probably good, in the scheme of things, to know with some precision what you’re inhaling if you decide to smoke. Informed consent and all that.

The Marriott Marquis, which hosted the event, can do so legally because state law allows tobacco companies to promote their products at such events.

Kathleen Duffy, a spokeswoman for Marriott Hotels, said the company was honoring a longstanding contract with the publisher of Cigar Aficionado, Marvin R. Shanken, and had been the host of the Big Smoke at the Marriott Marquis for at least 10 years….

She said “we tripled our efforts” to keep the smoke contained, banning smoking outside the ballroom and increasing the filtration in the room, so that the smoke was funneled outside the hotel through air vents.

Did these measures work?

Under Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, air with fewer than 15 micrograms per cubic meter is considered good quality; air with more than 251 micrograms per cubic meter is hazardous.

Mr. Kennedy’s preliminary findings showed that the average level of particulate matter in the hotel the day before the event was 8 micrograms per cubic meter, 40 micrograms where he was waiting to get in line for the event and 1,193 micrograms inside the ballroom.

Seems to me that if you didn’t want to be in the ballroom, breathing in the smoke, you were in pretty good shape, then, yeah? Only 40 micrograms outside the ballroom implies that you’re not in much danger of breathing second-hand smoke.

That should settle it then, right? The Marriott has a legal right to host this event, smokers have a legal right to attend, and nonsmoking guests aren’t in any danger.

“The event is really a flagrant contradiction to their commitment to their guests and employees,” said Louise Vetter, president of the American Lung Association of the City of New York and a spokeswoman for the New York City Coalition for a Smoke-Free City. “The dangers of secondhand smoke are indisputable, and in New York City it is law to protect workers from secondhand smoke. We applauded Marriott, but to have this event in New York City and to create an exception — there’s no exception for public health.”

Now, I don’t like whining about “smokers’ rights,” but c’mon. I enjoy a good cigar, and I’d like to attend the Big Smoke some time. As long as the hosting venues are taking such steps to ensure the health of other guests and employees, I don’t see any reason to try to stop it.

Well, I don’t give a shit, really. But day games at Yankee always start at like 1:00 or something, and they end a little after 4. My old job let out at 4:15, dumping me into the Yankee Stadium subway stations at the same goddamn time as 57,000 motherfuckers.

Every day game carried the same hope–extra innings, extra innings, extra innings.

Even now, slacking at the desk of the new job, posting to a blog that was blocked at the old job, I’m feeling some of the old apoplexy as I remember the clogs of pinstriped morons blocking mezzanines, turnstiles, and platforms. Ah, how fun it is to have a drunk from Long Island rocking left and right in the seat beside you, calming himself only upon feeling your elbow in his ribs.

Watching dudes throwing up or starting fights–so classy. Hearing the fans loudly recap the same goddamn game they all just watched. Fun!

How fondly I remember the day some dingbat chick and her friends were goofing around on the platform. She stepped backward directly into my path while I was walking to the end of the platform–since of course the fans all thronged the middle section. I had a wall to the left of me, a crowd to the right, fifty people on my heels, and suddenly a feathered-hair bimbo directly in front of me. What do you do? I said, “Excuse me, please,” while I reached up, placed my left hand on the back of her shoulder, and nudged her to the right. She got the hint and apologized.

Happy Opening Day, Yankees. You won your opener, but I hope you finish at the bottom of your division. You’re just one more thing I don’t miss about the old job.

Hundreds are dead, hundreds more wounded, and all the fundies can say is .

And people wonder why I’m a misanthrope.

UPDATE: They yanked the thread down, owing to all the attention it’s getting. You’d almost think they were ashamed to see their Lord’s return!

So this afternoon, I took some bags of trash and recycling out to the curb. In our nabe, the stuff gets picked up Monday morning, so you take it out on Sunday. As I was hauling the bags out, up comes this guy with a granny cart. “Yo! You always drink the imports! Why’s that?!”

“Uh…”

Granny man: “Where you get ‘em? Where you get those imports?”

“Uh, well, FreshDirect, usually, but…”

Granny man: “Who’s the distributor? Reason I ask is, distributors ain’t always takin’ back the import bottles. If they distribute the Buds and the Coors, they ain’t takin’ back the imports. Why you gettin’ imports, man? I can’t do nothin’ with them bottles! I have to pick through, and leave the imports here!”

“Hey, listen. I already separate the returnables from the non-returnables. You want me to separate the imports from the domestics as well? No way I’m doing that.”

Granny man: “Hey, man, it’s cool. Someone else’ll come along and pick them up.”

So, here’s the future face of recycling in NYC: paper in one bin, plastic in another (but only the 1′s and 2′s ferchristsake! no 5′s or 6′s!), cans in a third, non-returnable brown glass in a fourth, nonreturnable green glass in a fifth, returnable domestics in a sixth bin, returnable imports in a seventh….

Bullshit.

“They hung me up across an iron gate, then they yanked open the gate and my whole body lifted until my chest nearly split in two. I hung like that for four hours.”

[BBC News]

Anti-Christian persecution in Saudi Arabia:

Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah showed up at President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, to declare that “tolerance must extend to those of all faiths and practices,” Saudi police stormed a clandestine church in a suburb of Riyadh and arrested 40 Christians for proselytizing.

[New York Sun]

Anti-Christian persecution in Sudan:

Sudan’s militant Muslim regime is slaughtering Christians who refuse to convert to Islam, according to the head of an aid group who recently returned from the African nation.

[WorldNetDaily]

Anti-Christian persecution in the United States of America:

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether this is sinister — it’s the purging of Christ from Christmas — or whether it’s just political correctness run amok,” he said. “I think in the case of the White House, it’s just political correctness.”

Wildmon does not give retailers the same benefit of the doubt. This year, he has called for a consumer boycott of Target stores because the chain issued a holiday advertising circular that did not mention Christmas. Last year, he aimed a similar boycott at Macy’s Inc., which averted a repeat this December by proclaiming “Merry Christmas” in its advertising and in-store displays.

[WaPo]

Ironically, one of the whiners that the Post quotes is the editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily, who, having published the story about Sudanese Christians, should really know better than to give a shit about such piss-ant complaints.

Item 2: Ikea is the new Wal-Mart:

Ikea had not predicted that up to 6,000 people would descend on the new store, in Edmonton, with a stampede to get in resulting in a frightening crush….

The chaos meant the new store – the 12th and biggest to open in the UK – had to close just over 40 minutes after opening because of what Ikea described as the “unforeseen numbers”.

Congratulations, consumer America Britain, this is the life you deserve.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Next up on Ayad Allawi’s agenda: gassing the Kurds.

Jen forwarded me a piece from the Detroit Free Press columnist Susan Ager, who writes:

I heard from Lori Stuit of Royal Oak, who wrote: “God did not cause the recent tsunami to occur. Satan did. While there is an all-good, all-powerful God, there is also a god of this world, a god who is all evil: Satan. I am always surprised at how many people don’t take the time to think about this. I feel bad for people who are lost and confused.”

Lori, I’m surprised you didn’t take the time to think about this: Under this form of theodicy, your God is either impotent to contain Satan or indifferent to Satan’s machinations. Either way, your God is a douchebag.

Another reader who did not sign his or her name wrote: “The Bible tells us that countries who forget God will pay a price. These countries that just got hit are almost exclusively Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu, religions that worship pagan gods and ignore the one true God. … It won’t be long until this country pays a price as well, and we will have people like you to thank.

Good one, anonymous coward, blame the victim. If your children contract leukemia, as I hope they will, will you have the moral conviction to stand up and say, “God hates me, too.”

I don’t mean to imply that all Christians are ignorant, compassionless bigots, because I certainly know that such isn’t the case. I do think, however, it’s time for those Christians who do try to practice the humility and love of Jesus to stand up and tell their self-righteous brethren to shut the fuck up. Otherwise, it’ll be the lions for the lot of you.