Franken update

Rasmussen, a pretty shitty polling organization by most accounts, just released these MN Sen 08 numbers. Things not looking that good for ole Al. Losing in the trial heat (or "horse-race") by 10 points (46% to 36%, with an additional 10% saying they'd vote for a third party).

As correctly Rasmussen notes:

Generally speaking, incumbents who poll below 50% are considered potentially vulnerable.

True. However, Franken's favorables don't look too good right now: 39% favorable and 46% unfavorable. I am impressed that 85% of the survey had an opinion of Franken this far out actually, and would be interested in seeing the question ordering on the survey. If they ask the feelings thermometer after the trial heat, where they name the candidates, they bias the results because they give respondents that name and party identification of the candidate, something they might not have known before hearing the trial heat. Anyways, I am not suggesting Rasmussen did this, it just seems odd to me that 18 months away from an election 85% of those polled have formed an opinion on a challenger already. Then again, this is a guy who has been in the public eye for over 20 years now, so maybe it is a special case.

Domestique still withholds judgement on Franken as a candidate, although there is no question Norm fears him already. Check this out. It is a Star Tribune Big Question [politics blog] post about an intercepted fundraising letter sent out from Coleman's camp. I am going to copy and paste the passage from the letter that the Big Question posted, I'd do the whole thing if I had it, but perhaps unsurprisingly I do not receive too many GOP fundraising letters/emails (thank goodness). I'll just put this up and leave the analysis to the BQ blogger Eric Black, because I have nothing to add to his take, and if I just reiterate what he says in my own language, i think that is blog-plagiarism or something...

“Let’s talk politics for a moment because it’s as clear as a bell that I’m the National Democrats’ top target, comedian Al Franken is their likely nominee and with the Senate poised at a 51-49 majority, our success on Election Day is the key to Republicans reclaiming control in 2008.

Comic Franken is rich, glib, famous and nationally-connected. I take him very seriously.

He practices the cynical politics of hate that is petty, bitter, divisive, mean, vicious and cruel. While he lectures us on the conservatism he despises, he embraces an ultra-liberal philosophy that inevitably results in a pandemic of spending, taxing, borrowing and Big Government micromanaging.

Liberalism kills the goose that lays the golden eggs.

But Franken and other DFLers are considering running, too because they figure:

• Minnesota is a very liberal state.
• Amy Klobuchar won a landslide over Mark Kennedy.
• They think they can snap their fingers and defeat me in 2008.

Again, I think they’re missing the point and extracting the wrong lesson for the last election.

I think they’ve dismissed power of our conservative ideals and forgotten that I’ve been tested in close elections before.l They’re failing to recall the strength and intensity of our 87-county grassroots organization.

And most of all… They’re forgetting about good Minnesotans like you…

Bzzzzzz (a.k.a. F**k Monsanto)

Hear that buzzing of busy little bees pollinating the great fields of America? No? Oh, that's because all over the country, entire colonies of bees are dying off en masse. This is a huge problem for our food supply. Turns out, even that extra fancy genetically modified test-tube industrial agricultural corn needs good ole fashioned pollination (i.e., everything needs to get laid sometimes), and bees are the key to this.

Entire colonies of bees are turning up dead or missing in what has been termed Colony Collapse Disorder. No one knows what is going on with the bees or what might be causing this problem. This Pennsylvania bee keeper, John McDonald, offers his hypothesis in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he lays out the theory that it is the genetically modified crops themselves that are causing the bees to die.

Here is his explanation, and surprise, surprise, agri-business is to blame (Monsanto and Cargill being the main culprits here):

The most commonly transplanted segment of transgenic DNA involves genes from a well-known bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which has been used for decades by farmers and gardeners to control butterflies that damage cole crops such as cabbage and broccoli. Instead of the bacterial solution being sprayed on the plant, where it is eaten by the target insect, the genes that contain the insecticidal traits are incorporated into the genome of the farm crop. As the transformed plant grows, these Bt genes are replicated along with the plant genes so that each cell contains its own poison pill that kills the target insect.

In the case of field corn, these insects are stem- and root-borers, lepidopterans (butterflies) that, in their larval stage, dine on some region of the corn plant, ingesting the bacterial gene, which eventually causes a crystallization effect in the guts of the borer larvae, thus killing them.

He links this back to bees by saying that many bee keepers have long used a spray version of Bt to help prevent moth infestations in their honeycomb, and lately there have been growing reports of bee keepers not needing the spray. That is, the honeycomb has become resistant on its own. This would signify that something about the bees has changed, and that is probably the presence of Bt in the bees. He theorizes that Bt may be doing other unknown things to the bees, perhaps immuno-suppression for example, that is resulting in CCD.

Just one more example of why we should shun agribusiness at every turn, folks. It has proven to be bad for the environment, bad for the food and those of us who eat it, bad for small farmers and rural America, and bad for bees. Genetically modified foods are creepy, and there is a very good reason why Europeans don't consume them as a general rule (which is, they are creepy and the long term effects of consumption on both humans and the environment are unknown). Luckily for us here in 'Mer'ca, our noble protectors at the FDA are not food experts but political appointees, and have since dubbed not only GM foods as safe, but also, recently, cloned food. See, isn't Democracy wonderful? All you need is a multi-billion dollar mult-national agribusiness firm and some well placed campaign contributions and you too can have a say in your country's public health policy!! Yep, Dolly the lamb may soon appear on your dinner plate at your local Applebees as a delicious roasted chop with a side of GM corn and mashed GM potatoes! Yummm! And ya know what? Maybe for my pals back in Minnesota, this is a good thing. Think about it, eat enough GM insect resistant food and maybe those damn misquitos will stop biting you all summer long!

A little light weekend reading...

Hillary Rodham Clinton. Former first lady. Looking to be first female president. She is the topic of our regular Friday Rant column here at Domestique.

One Sunday afternoon a few weeks back, I had a delicious little brunch with my lovely partner in crime, Misha, at this neighborhood place called Café Luna. I highly recommend it. We were discussing the Domestique’s endorsement of Obama, and how in the comments Mindy asked “No love for Hillary” and I responded with some long-winded explanation of “No.”

Misha, being infinitely more brilliant than even I, saw through my bullshit and started asking tough [actually they were pretty straightforward] questions like “Why do you like Obama?” and “Why don’t you like Hillary?” And they were tough because when I layed out the case against Hillary, I basically just threw out the oft-repeated criticisms of her. Let’s review some of them, before we get too far along:

• She’s a woman and America is not ready for a female president (unelectability, part I)
• She’s too polarizing, another popular strand of the “unelectability” theme
• She wouldn’t be where she is today if she had not been married to a president, AND/OR she doesn’t deserve to be in the position she is in today
• She’s just power hungry, she has no real values and will say/do anything to get elected
• She’s pro-war
• She’s become soft on choice and has made other concessions on issues as part of a move to the middle

Now, two of these arguments are partisan in nature and more or less exclusive to Democrats: pro-war and centrist/triangulator. So let’s leave them aside for now. The rest of the arguments are generally thought of as widely held beliefs about Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC), and are therefore freely and often repeated in the mainstream news media (MSM) when analyzing her candidacy.

Misha essentially rebutted each of theses popular critiques of HRC by showing how they are all inherently sexist, that is, the critique is unfairly leveled against her primarily because of her gender. Some of these critiques get made by people not intending to be sexist, while others are very deliberately doing so. We talked about this a lot and it really got me thinking that she was right. But are all the HRC-haters out there misogynists? Or at the very least, are a lot of people out there unknowingly promulgating sexist biases?

In this post, I’ll do my best here to recount my Sunday morning discussion on gender issues in the context of the 2008 presidential campaign. Remember, the criteria for sexism here is that she is being critiqued solely because of her gender. I will start with the critiques leveled at HRC due to some version of her being unelectable. [Side note: Thank you Howard Dean for shitting the bed in Iowa and creating the myth of unelectability. This will come back to haunt liberal politicians until liberal stops being a bad word.]

• Critique: She’s a woman and America is not ready for a female president (unelectability, part I).

Why this is sexist? Ummm, because it says she can’t be president because of her gender. Pretty obvious one, really. The polls do not indicate that the public has a problem with her gender. In the mid-Feburary Gallup/USA Today poll, for example, 88% said they would vote for a woman (78% comfortably, 10% with reservations). That leaves just 12% saying no (11%) or no opinion (1%), who are essentially admitting their own bias. Of course, there is the thing that happens, primarily in the South, where people will say they’ll support a Black candidate or a female candidate in a poll, but only because it’s the polite thing to say, and in reality, when they get to the polls, they vote for ole man Whitey. I am not sure of the prevalence of this, but DC-conventional wisdom generally accepts this happens to some extent in certain parts of the country some of the time. Regardless, those who say America is not ready for a female president are wrong, cynical, and/or just plain sexist (potentially all three).

• Critique: She’s too polarizing (unelectability, part I)

Why is this sexist? This one is sexist because it is misconstrues poll results by only telling half the story. Sure, her unfavorables are high. But ya know what? Her favorables are high too! Let’s take a quick look at some poll results to confirm this. From the March Gallup/USA Today poll:

I included some other top tier candidates for the WH08 race so that we can get a sense of how her fav/unfav ratings compare. At first blush, we see HRC has a 42% unfavorable rating, much higher than her Dem competitors Obama (18%) and Edwards (28%). But just 3% of those surveyed didn’t have an opinion of her (and every single person surveyed was at least familiar with her name). Yet 21% of the survey had never heard of (9%) or had no opinion of (12%) John Edwards, while 24% had never heard of (15%) or had no opinion of (9%) Barack Obama. Point being, HRC’s high unfavorables have a lot to do with the fact that everyone already knows her. They also all know she is a Democrat, which means that every Republican already is unfavorable to her already. Watch, if Edwards/Obama become the eventual Dem nominee, you will see their unfavorables climb somewhere into the mid-30s range as Republicans learn who the hell these guys are and start disliking them too for partisan reasons.

You ever hear that Bill Clinton was so popular he would have been elected to a third term? It’s probably true, but you know what? His unfavorables commonly poll as high or higher than his wife’s, and he’s a “beloved ex-president” to most.

To say that HRC is too polarizing to become president is a shorthand way of saying that either you don’t know enough about polling and are making the mistake of blindly repeating something you heard someone say, and therefore inadvertently being sexist; or you are saying that you do get how polling works, and you are taking advantage of the fact that HRC is a known commodity already you are touting her high unfavorables in order to deceive others, and therefore you are being covertly but undeniably sexist.

Further, some people tout that even Democrats don’t like and won’t get behind HRC. Really? I know a lot of Dems who may be lukewarm on her, but no one in the party hates her (unless Dick Morris is still a registered D somewhere). Yesterday, the NBC/Wall Street Journal released these new poll results that show HRC as the Democratic primary favorite among self-identified Democrats.

Yet, the very next question asks those same self-identified Democrats if there is any Democratic candidate currently running for whom they would NOT vote for in the primary, and HRC wins again, getting 16% to Dennis Kucinich’s 11%, Joe Biden’s 9% and Edwards’/Dodd’s/Obama’s 7%. You are probably saying “Wait a minute, I thought you just said her party liked her?” Well I did and I mean it. I think those 16% are people who for whatever reason believed it when they heard it on the news or read it in the paper that there are doubts that HRC is electable, and Democrats are scared shitless of this electability issue in the post-9/11 world. And you know what else? Dems are not impervious to sexism, most of the parties leaders are old white men, just like the Republicans. But look, the percentage of people who say they’ll vote for HRC is going up over time, not down. Obama saw a big bump, but he still trails HRC considerably. She is the favorite among Democrats, a clear plurality. Look at how Democrats in this February ABC/Washington Post poll rated the three front-runners on a variety of statements:

Clearly, when you look at this table (sorry if it's hard to read, you can find the results here), you can see that Democrats see Hillary as the most viable candidate and the best candidate. She is the closest to Democratic voters on the issues, has the best experience, and is the strongest leader. This is just one example of the numerous polls out there that show the enormous support for HRC as the Democratic nominee for president.

The reason people say she is polarizing is because she is a woman, and some people are alarmed and put off by the notion of a woman as president. They are saying, “She is polarizing to me, and that is sexism. Moving right along…

• Critique: She wouldn’t be where she is today if she had not been married to a president, AND/OR she doesn’t deserve to be in the position she is in today.

Why this is sexist? It is sexist because we are saying that she does not merit her position today as US Senator and leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president because of the fact that her hubby used to be President, and you are discounting all of her experience, ambition, intelligence, and everything else about her due to her marital status and mate.

Now, this becomes a difficult argument to label sexist, because we use this all the time when we see nepotism in politics. We leveled this charge most recently against Dubya, who really only was in a position to become president because his father was (well, actually because he was the hugely popular governor of our second largest state, but he never would have become that had Rove and his father’s old cronies not pushed him to run back in ‘94). Some other notable people who benefited from nepotism: both Presidents Roosevelt (you didn’t think it was a coincidence they shared the same last name, did you?), the Kennedy family in MA, the Taft family in OH, the Bush family in New England/TX/FL/CA, the Gore family in TN, the Ford family in TN, the Humphrey family in MN… the list is actually endless and goes all the way back our earliest founders, check out all the familiar names here.

So why is it sexist in this case? What is unique about this case is we normally level this critique against the sons of rich/famous/notorious men. Here we are using it against a woman, and saying that had she not married the man that she did, she wouldn’t have achieved all that she has today. Yet, HRC is nothing if not hyper-ambitious. Who are we to say she would not have become a successful politician in her own right, had she married some other dude she met at Yale Law? For chrissakes, she went to Yale Law, people!!! For all we know, she probably had to sacrifice some of her own early career objectives and ambition numerous times to be a supportive wife of a highly public husband (remember that Bill ran for Congress as a carpetbagger in Arkansas back when he was just 28 years old). Had she not married Bill, it is entirely possible that she would have become president already! Maybe. The point is, anytime we say that she does not deserve her current lot in life because she is the wife of a former president, we are not allowing for the merits of her candidacy to come through. We end up not judging her by her words, actions, and deeds, but by her role as a wife… and that is sexist.

• Critique: She’s just power hungry, she has no real values and will say/do anything to get elected.

Why this is sexist? For which politician running for president can we not say this for? Perhaps Obama, who for all intents and purposes is running because he is the most popular kid in class. Don’t get me wrong, a presidential run was always on his mind and on his long term agenda (IMO), I just think he was forced to do it earlier than he had originally intended. Basically, we are accusing HRC of doing something that all presidential candidates do: pander to the people who can get you elected. It is a sad political truth, but it is not an action exclusive to HRC, and when we say it is, we are probably just doing it because we are alarmed at the thought of a female president, and being acknowledgingly or not, being sexist.

The point of this blog post is by no means a defense of HRC as presidential nominee, but rather to say that we need to be very careful when articulating our reasons for not supporting her, because it is too easy to fall into lazy critiques that are based on how well or unwell she fits societal gender roles. Nevertheless, the reason you should not support her is because she is/was/and will continue to be wrong about the war in Iraq. The reason you should support Obama is because he has been right about the war from the start. One last point to make on how the media treats the HRC candidacy… when the MSM refers to her as Hillary Clinton and not Hillary Rodham Clinton, they are being sexist by giving her husband’s last name only. For that reason, I tried to refer to her always as “HRC” in this post.

So there you have it folks. Your Friday Rant. I look forward to your comments.

Berkeley no go

Well folks, here it is, the final judgement. After weeks of waiting in anxious anticipation of any word whatsoever from Berkeley, I just received confirmation that I was not admitted. And I feel fine with this, to be honest. Truth be told, I never had a very compelling reason for wanting to go to Berkeley, other than it being Berkeley. The school is incredible, and going there would have certainly been a good thing both academically and career wise. And they have some of THE top profs in the areas I am interested in (community health). BUT, the program I applied to was not very compelling. It was never the "great-fit" I felt with U-Dub, nor even the "pretty darn good fit" with the U of M. It was always, "well, of the programs I see here, this one looks the best."

Am I rationalizing things here? I don't think so. Yes, I am a little bummed and my ego is a bit shaken. But I am not crushed. I don't feel that bad at all, really. This was my reach school, and I didn't get in. Same thing happened to me in undergrad (fuck you, Princeton), and I wouldn't change my undergrad experience for anything, Ivy league or not.

I belieave this calls for a new Domestique Poll: Who's got the better mascot?

In this corner, we've got Goldy and a big maroon "M" with gold piping.

Pluses: Goldy is very familair to me, I grew up with him at the old Marriucci and Willaims arenas. Already know the fight song (ra-ra-sis-koom-bah or something)

Minuses: Not very intimidating. Seriously, Gophers? Even the neighboring Badgers have a more fierce vermin as a mascot. At least the Gophs can rest well knowing they can outwit a drug-addled Bill Murray.

In the other corner, we've got Spirit, and a big purple "W" with gold piping.

Pluses: Live, actual dog. Fierce. Grrrr!

Minuses: Live, actual dog. These things are liable to be stolen by some stupid frat, or some stupid frat from Idaho. They also die, which could induce some serious separation anxiety with the fan base. And the last thing I want are fans crying for a dog when they should be cheering a touchdown or basket or something.

Also, there is this stylized version of the mascot:

Sorta lame in that way that all new age stylized sports logos are (see MN Wild for prime example), but again, we're competing against afriggin' GOPHER here! All in all, not that bad, and really they seem to rely on the big W over this version of the husky.

I can take or leave both these big letters, I guess it just comes down to which color combo you like better...

Your Friday Public Health Supplemental (Rant )

So I'm looking at these grad shools, trying to figure out which one to go to, trying to figure out how to pay for that shit, and trying to more earnestly think about what I might want to study.

My nascent interests in public health lie in the intersection of health and food, or, healthy food, I guess. Not "health food" like spelt soy granola tofu scramble or something (YUM!). I am interested in healthy food, that is, fruits and vegetables that are grown in accordance with healthy farming techniques and are healthy themselves... by which I mean they have all their naturally occuring nutrients, genes, etc; and are not chalk-full of all sorts of nastiness. So much of the food we produce and consume today is artificial. It's not even food, as your great-grandma would recognize it.*

[If you are in the dark about how preverse argribusiness is, and how the apple you eat from the chain grocery store (e.g., Safeway) is not the same thing as the apple from your local farmers' market, you are not alone. Most people have no idea of the amount of genetically modified foods we eat. Most people have no idea the amount of chemicals are in the "simple" foods like vegetables and meats we eat, from pesticides to herbicides to antiobiotics. And guess what? All this shit is killing us! It's giving us cancers and diabetes and other diseases. Healthy foods lead to healthy people. Unhealthy foods lead us to a state of nutritional disarray that we currently have here in the United States of Obesity. Your local farmer's apple? That is a healthy apple. Your local safeway's apple? That is an articificial apple. Note, all apples are better than Snickers bars and McDonalds. Both of which I love and I am not advocating that people to stop eating junk food. In fact, I am off on a tangent at this point and am going to have to save the rest of this line of arguing for a different post, someday down the road.]

So, back to my interest in public health and what got me writing this damn post in the first place... You are reading this and saying to yourself, "Self, WTF is he rambling about? Why doesn't he just go to Whole Foods and be done with it."

To which I would reply, "Thank you reader, I am glad you asked about Whole Foods. What a nice segue you make into: Your Friday Public Health Supplemental (Rant)."

I was reading the ole NYTimes.com the other day when I should have been working when this article caught my eye. It discusses how Whole Foods, or as many of us call it, Whole Paycheck, is not living up to its own mission and standards these days in many locations. The article points out that Whole Foods claims to be selling wholesome fresh goodnees while in reality is purchasing much of its food from giant agribusiness companies who do just the bare minimum in order to get "certified organic," and making little or no progress with regard to promoting locally grown produce. (Note, this label "certified organic" is largely a crock of shit, especially if you see it on pre-packaged or produced food that comes in a box on your local grocer's shelves, for more on this, see this blog called Organic Schmorganic.) The article talks about this as a function of WF's growth in the market, and how it is upsetting many.

My gripe in all this is that I am paying a premium for good produce, and I am getting something only marginally better than Safeway? No thanks, I would rather go to the local farmers market. And I am not alone. From the article:

For some current and former customers, complaints about the prices and quality at Whole Foods are a staple of conversation. The store often comes up on a mothers’ blog in an area south of San Francisco, said Caryn Coleman, a stay-at-home mother of two in Mountain View, Calif.

“Produce is no longer consistently good,” Ms. Coleman said. “I can no longer count on it. Because I feel I pay more there I really expect it to be as good as a farmer’s market but sometimes it’s mushy, sometimes it’s old and sometimes it’s good. I think I use organic as proxy for a bunch of other things, like locally grown and fresher, but I’m just beginning to find out I really need to go to farmers’ markets if I want these things. I only go to Whole Foods when I can’t find a product anywhere else.”

And apparently, as the critics grow louder, Whole Foods appears to be listening. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the guy you are most likely to see discussing this type of stuff on Oprah or writing about it in the NYTs, recently called WF hypocritcal for its practices, which lead to dialogue between he and the CEO of WF on what WF could do to improve.

One big thing they could do is to stock their produce isles with locally grown food. And look at what John Mackey (CEO and co-founder) says in the article:

“Whole Foods needs to do a better job of helping local growers sell directly to our stores without going through our distribution center,” he wrote, and he said he was making it a priority.

Signs have gone up in the company’s markets extolling the virtues of locally grown produce; foragers have been hired to seek out local farmers; the company has offered $10 million a year in low-interest loans to help small farmers produce more and stand-alone stores will open their parking lots to farmers’ markets on Sundays.

That's progress, folks! So now all of us priveleged enough to be able to afford shopping at WF can do so and rest a little better knowing we'll be getting healthier local food, or at least some movement towards that, in the near future. (Of course, if it's an option, you should definitely still go to your local farmers' market.)

Of course, this doesn't get at the real crux of the issue for me, which is access to healthy food, not just that rich people like me aren't getting the healthy food as advertised. Whole Foods and higher end grocery shopping is something for a more priveleged segment of society. What I really want to do in public health is to devise ways (be it policies, programs, campaigns, dunno what it'll take yet and it will probably vary from community to community) to bring healthy food to the masses. But its quittin' time on a Friday afternoon, so we'll save that discussion for a later date...

Have a good weekend!

* See Michale Pollan's amazing article on the age of nutritionalism, from NYT Sun-Mag, and how we should really be thinking about our food. Pollan is something of an inspiration for me I guess, he's talking about the things I am thinking about. Anyways he has this test for whether something is actually food or not: would your great-grandma recognize it as food? If its something highly procesed, chances are no.

To all my peeps in Minny

Here ya go, good luck with that evening commute, you're gonna need this...

So happy for Marty

OH MY GOD, DID YOU SEE THE OSCARS LAST NIGHT?!?!!?

No? Neither did I.

I did tune in briefly, and caught the Al Gore and Leo bit, which was amusing. That Gore sure can act.

I think the Hollywood let out a collective sigh of relief after seeing Martin Scorcese finally get his best director award. He was basically turning into the Dan Marino of directors.

I thought Departed was good 'n' all, I mean it was "great" even--I loved it... but best picure and best director? Really? Just seems a little lofty for your standard Scorcese flick. I mean, what made The Departed any better, than say, any of his previous 6 snubs? (Which were in reverse chrono: The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Casino, Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Raging Bull). And was The Departed even all that different from any of these other films in which the protagonists are tormented Northeastern males who act a lot like antagonists and generally follow a life of ups and downs before dramatically dying (via murder, usually) in the films final 30 minutes? No, you could argue this was maybe the third best of these (behind Raging Bull and Goodfellas), but certainly no higher than that. So what was the difference? The movies this year sucked.

I didn't see Babel, but wanted to. Didn't see Queen, didn't care to. Didn't see Letters from Iwo Jima, but probably should. I did see Little Miss Sunshine and loved every minute of it. Laughed so hard I cried about 4 times (all related to Alan Arkin's amazing junky granpda character). But really, BEST PICTURE nominee?

Here is what I am saying folks: bad year in movies.

Or, if you disagree with that statement, lets try: DC Josh needs to get out and see more movies in 2007.