The new national security threat: global warming

Here's a conundrum for the handful of far-right flat-earthers who are still trying to deny the existence and/or significance of global warming. What to do when that most rational and conservative group of institutions -- the Bush Administration's own intelligence agencies -- collectively comes to the conclusion that global warming poses a major threat to national security. It's the sort of news that makes you worry about certain peoples' heads exploding...

Of religion and sports bras

I suppose it's part of the nature of blogging that items sometimes catch my eye that might seem on the surface to have no logical relationship to one another. But sometimes they just call out to me, and at least my chosen title is more thoughtful than my second choice: Americans -- Smarter Than We Look.

• The more religious leaders try to narrow our minds to accept only their view of the universe, it seems, the more Americans cling to our tradition of stubborn individualism. MSNBC reports this afternoon that "a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise." Maybe the most startling finding: "57 percent of evangelical church attendees said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life," in direct contradiction to the teaching of most of their church leaders. Thinking for yourself -- there's just no substitute.
  
  
• All this second one really needs is the headline: "Sports bra saves U.S. hiker trapped in Alps." But will she send a thank you note to Brandi Chastain?

The Bush Administration's war crimes

I admit, I have been known to roll my eyes when friends on the left begin frothing at the mouth at all that has been wrought by the dastardly Bush Administration. Yes, it's been a horrible eight years. Yes, the country is crying out for change. But no, verbal bomb-throwing is not going to get us anywhere. The more spittle that apoplectic liberals spray in the general direction of the nation's moderate swing voters in this country, the more likely we are to be watching John McCain's inauguration next January. The best thing we can do, folks, is simply to remain calm and keep pointing out the facts.

There are two reasons for this. One is that yelling and screaming and name-calling doesn't get you anywhere. The other is that it's so unnecessary. One more left-wing flamethrower calling George Bush a war criminal is not news -- hell, at this point, it's practically satire. What's news is when one of Bush's own generals accuses his Administration of war crimes. Now we're getting somewhere!

Tim Russert 1950-2008

One of the strange truths of post-modern America is that people on television sometimes come to feel like part of your family. Even as technology isolates us into individual information cocoons, it brings us into daily contact with certain people, so much so that you can come to feel like you know them.

I never met Tim Russert, who died at 58 today after being stricken at NBC News studios in New York, but that didn't stop him from feeling like family. Insightful, tenacious, balanced, intellectually curious and blessed with a warm wit, he was one of those people I found myself more than once putting on the imaginary list of ten famous people I'd like to have over for dinner. In fact, my lists rarely filled all ten seats; most celebrities seem so insufferably full of themselves that I couldn't imagine their heads fitting in my door.

Russert, by contrast, always seemed so approachable, so human, so real. He was like the neighbor you'd strike up a conversation with in line at the hardware store, and keep it up all the way out into the parking lot because he just had so damn many interesting things to say, and said them with such a unique combination of conviction and affability.

Russert leaves behind a wife and son and a studio full of heartbroken colleagues who have been, somehow, broadcasting all day about the friend they lost quite literally from their midst. After my daughter came in to see if I'd heard the news, she talked about how he'd been NBC's chief political reporter for her entire life. She's thinking of majoring in political science. I like to think I had something to do with that, but Tim probably did, too. His enthusiasm for the political world was contagious. He could make it seem entertaining, yes, but mostly he made it seem like it mattered, like it was a subject worthy of every ounce of the enthusiasm and precision he poured into his work.

Condolences to his family and colleagues on this huge loss. And Godspeed, Tim.

Cell phone nation

The fact that Obama leads McCain 47-41 in the national popular vote in latest post-primary polling is mildly interesting to me at best. After all, it’s five months until the election and we don’t even elect presidents by popular vote. In our system, which awards electoral votes on a state-by-state, winner-take-all basis with just a couple of exceptions (Maine and Nebraska award them according to the winner of the vote in each congressional district), the state polls are the ones the campaigns will be watching.

What I found fascinating about this Mark Blumenthal column about the latest polling is the emergence of a new phenomenon in the polling world – the cell-phone-only household. Pollsters have historically used the phone book to reach prospective voters, but “(a)s of late 2007, one in six American households had wireless service only (no landline) and would thus be missing from traditional telephone samples.” That’s right, more than 16% of American households today don't bother with a standard wired telephone, and the number is growing.

"It ain't over 'til.. " well, Saturday

I met Congressman Charlie Rangel many years ago in Washington D.C. He's a friendly, plain-spoken man of strong beliefs and loyalties who doesn't hesitate to tell it like it is. You've gotta love it when someone inside the Beltway breaks through the haze of rhetoric and spin and offers a dash of uncensored truth:

Mrs. Clinton had initially said she wanted to wait before making any decision, but her aides said that in conversations, some of her closest supporters said it was urgent that she step aside... "We pledged to support her to the end,” said Representative Charles W. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”

The end, Senator Clinton and her backers now agree, is Saturday, when she will formally suspend her campaign a la Mitt Romney. Not giving up those delegates just yet, but no longer pretending she can do anything but harm her own party by continuing to campaign. Thanks for doing the right thing, Senator.

Obama: "America, this is our moment"

Ted Williams and his speechwriter had a heck of a night last night.

As someone who's written a few speeches in my time, I have a keen appreciation for the fine art of it. It might look easy to some on the outside, but it's not. You have to not just cover the subject matter in a comprehensive, detailed and imaginative way, but also capture the voice and character and cadence of the speaker in such a way that the speech comes out of their mouth as naturally as if the entire thing had been delivered spontaneously.

Barack Obama's whiz-kid head speechwriter Jon Favreau -- who earlier this year described his job as like being “Ted Williams’s batting coach” -- and his candidate hit a home run last night. If you didn't see the speech, it's well worth reading the text here, or watching the video here. It was gracious, statesmanlike, visionary, inspiring, powerful and the adjectives go on and on.