Olamide Adeyooye, a "gregarious" Illinois State University laboratory sciences major from west suburban Berkeley, age 21. Missing from Normal since last Thursday night. Told her boyfriend (who was on tour with his band) that she was staying in that night.

Lights, television, fan on in her apartment.  Food in the microwave.  Cell phone on the couch. Didn't show up for work the next day, or classes the following Monday.  Never contacted friends.  Still, the police didn't seem to think it was a real problem.

More here and here.  As far as I know, this has really only gotten press in central Illinois and Chicago.  Yes, you know what I'm thinking.  If she were white (and as a bonus, pregnant), her picture would be crowding out Patrick Fitzgerald and Harriet Miers on news channels everywhere.  But, no, for the mainstream media she's barely a blip.  Maybe if the blogosphere makes enough noise, someone out there will pay attention.

It's nothing earthshattering, really, and in some cases the argument--clearly in the apologetics genre--is at time muddled, but it provides another glimpse into the net the Christian Right is constructing to trap and neutralize those members who might attempt to think for themselves and question whether George Bush really has God's approval.  

But please, enough with the OBAMA IN '08, '12, etc. posts.  In '08 he'll have completed four years of the job he was elected to do, which, in case you've forgotten, is representing the state of Illinois. He'll have been the junior senator from Illinois for a total of four years.  And first and foremost, he is our senator.

This poor guy has the whole Democratic Party breathing down his neck.  Yes, he's an electrifying speaker, but he's still relatively inexperienced with the whole national stage thing.   And, with the Democratic Senate minority's pitiful showing, frankly, he's not likely to be real successful getting legislation approved in the near future, no matter how smart and driven and charismatic he is.  If you expect him to singlehandedly save the Democratic Party, you're just going to set him up for failure.  I don't want that to happen to him.

Yeah, I'd rather James Wolcott took a swipe at this instead of me.  But while we wait for him...

From Salon

[Update 8:25 a.m. PDT: Interesting development on this story. Soon after we posted this, we got an e-mail from a Spiegel staffer alerting us to comments Schröder made today that essentially "stuck the fork in," as the staffer put it, Struck's comments. This comes from a Spiegel reporter:

He didn't have to. Kerry's challenge wasn't to put Bush in his place, it was to give us a glimpse of what he will be like as our next President. Bush provided the perfect foil.

Kerry was polite and warm and straightforward with questioners; Bush was condescending and incredulous that ordinary Americans would have the temerity to question him.

Kerry provided intelligent, detailed explanations of his positions in calm, even tones. Bush was by turns defensive and whiny and hostile, even rushing the moderator at one point. He seemed to think that if he only raised his voice he could get his point across.

Kerry was, above all, serious and sympathetic to the audience. He'd done his research and spoke directly to them as Missourians whose situation even he, as someone from an entirely different region of the country and very different circumstances, had taken time and effort to understand. His rare attempts at humor were graceful and self-deprecating. Bush cracked stupid, insensitive jokes that mostly fell flat and made it clear, when he said he was unaware of the $84 he'd made from timber, that he didn't even know anything about his own personal finances.

Kerry did a lot of the same things that Edwards did in the debate on Tuesday night. He didn't bother calling Bush on his lies and exaggerations. He didn't need to. Those things will eventually come out in the wash--that $84 already has.  All he needed to do was show the audience--and us--that there was a perfectly acceptable  alternative.

Kerry movie free and (possibly) legal for download here.

It's good news to anyone who doesn't live near a theatre showing the film, and good news for those of us who don't live in swing states (we don't NEED to see the film, but we hate reading all your good reviews of it).  Via Slashdot.

But if you are near a theatre that is showing it, do go and show your support for the movie and Kerry himself.

Kos is nominated multple times, along with Juan Cole and other favorite reads of yours and mine.  Yeah, it's a popularity contest [insert standard jeremiad about the selling-out of the blogosphere here], but the important thing is to keep Little Green Snotballs or Pansies--I mean, Lileks--from winning anything (I can't believe they're even under consideration).

It doesn't take a lot of extrapolation to figure out what they're trying to imply--Daddies are the rational and intelligent parental half who supposedly impose discipline and standards when needed and provide financial support and protection for the family against external threats, while Mommies are supposedly soft and compassionate and lenient.  You know, the old "Just Wait Till Your Father Gets Home" paradigm.

These days, though, the metaphor needs a little updating.  Sure, maybe the Republicans are the Daddy Party.  But--and I speak from personal experience--what happens when Daddy turns out to be a deadbeat loser who can't keep a job, runs up enormous amounts of debt, lies to, manipulates, and abuses Mommy and the children physically and verbally, and puts the external interests of wealthy sluts who can advance his personal standing above the interests of his own family?  

I'd say it's time for a divorce.  And despite what all the men in the Daddy Party would like you to think, after thirty-some years of feminism, Mommy's pretty damn capable of taking care of the family on her own.

Somali Charged with Plotting to Blow Up Ohio Mall

How long you think they've been saving that one up for?  And how much substance do you think there really is to it?

Dear Sir/Madam:

I live about ten minutes from the XXXXX ## in XXXXX, IL, just south of XXXXX.  Although we have a choice of three or four theatres in XXXXX, yours is the one my husband and I regularly attend when we want to see a movie on the big screen, and we've been generally pleased with the choices available.  If I recall correctly, we went to see Michael Moore's last, Oscar-award-winning film at your theatre a couple years ago.

I understand that you are still making up your minds about whether or not to show Fahrenheit 9/11.  I'm asking, as a regular patron, that you do so.  Not only would your decision to do so strengthen our loyalty as your customers, but you will also earn our respect; this is an important film, and according to a number of well-respected reviewers, including Roger Ebert, a very good one.  

If I recall correctly, you also showed Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, which was equally controversial, and about which a number of similar objections could be made.  Although some groups were highly critical of this film, it drew enormous crowds.  Michael Moore's film's critics are different, and the film may draw a different audience, but its size will very likely be comparable.

If you show this film, my husband and I will be there on opening night, and so will many of our friends in this university town.  We're looking forward to it.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely yours,
Tully Monster

Nothing really significant; I was just always kind of curious about what she looked like and figured other people might be, too.  

And you know what?  I'm not going to dance around it and play nice just to appease the wingnuts.  Because no matter what we say, no matter how reasonable and polite we try to be, they're going to twist everything we say into something unrecognizable anyhow.

So I'm glad Reagan died.  And while Alzheimer's is an awful disease that runs in my family and stole away some of my wonderful older relatives, I'd say it was a fitting end for a man who LIED to Congress and then claimed not to be able to remember anything...Let's tell it like it is.  Let's not let them canonize him without a fight.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry launched his new campaign plane Tuesday and poked fun at himself, joking that "in the event of an emergency, my hair can be used as a flotation device."

Heh, no comment:

Some 72 seats are reserved for the media.

"That means we have about 23, 24 parachutes on board. We're going to hand them out according to good stories, bad stories," Kerry joked.

It's called the Freedom Bird.  Here's why:

Launching the plane, which has his name and "President" emblazoned on its side, Kerry reminisced about watching airplanes ferrying U.S. troops during the Vietnam War.

"We looked at those planes, and they gained a nickname. They were called freedom birds, and everybody counted the days until we got to get on our freedom bird," he said. "This is my freedom bird."

I know some of you guys say you're settling for the guy who will win, but I really, really like John Kerry.

From the article:

Most big political campaigns these days do employ so-called trackers. They videotape the opponents' speeches at news conferences so they can immediately react to a flip-flop and inconsistency or attack. But the tracker hired by the Jack Ryan campaign has been behaving more like a stalker, who got so up close and personal the Ryan campaign is offering an apology and ordering the tracker to back off.

When I first posted about the stalking this morning, some folks believed that Warfel's behavior was to be expected.  I know that the public words and behavior of candidates are closely examined--that's to be expected--but this really chilled me through and through.