Baby boomers feeling after-effects of rock lifestyle

That is, they appear to be going deaf at an alarming rate:

About one in six boomers have hearing loss, according to the Better Hearing Institute, a nonprofit educational group. The AARP has reported that there are more people age 45 to 64 with hearing loss (10 million) than there are people over 65 with hearing loss (9 million). And more people are losing their hearing earlier in life, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health.

One positive outcome of all this is that hearing aids are going more stylish than the bubble-gum-wads of yore. Sadly, I fear that the generation *after* the boomers, which pretty much grew up with headphones on, may have even starker effects; we'll have to see if they're any wiser than their parents. Earplugs, anybody?

(via Follow Me Here)

Cuteness break

Beware the wiles of the adorable daschund puppy!
You have been warned!!!!

Republicans show where they stand

The NAACP hosts a forum for Republican Presidential candidates (to match a Democratic one held previously) and only one of the candidates attends, standing in a forest of empty podiums. That's pretty much the whole story in a nutshell, and it's hard to imagine that those in attendance missed the implications for civil rights and race relations . . .

(via dailyKos)

What does progress look like?

Two takes:

1. Oliver Willis traces the citations of "progress in Iraq" over the last four years, despite, you know, any evidence of improvement there. But here comes another corner! sigh.
   (via XOverboard)
   
   
2. An article at Slate looks at this most recent that Iraq has met half of its 18 benchmarks, showing how little it took to get a "thumbs-up" (and yet how few benchmarks met even that low bar)...
   (via Talking Points Memo)

Boy, our leaders sure inspire confidence!!

Update: well this is sure to help! Iraqi parliament will take the month of August off to escape the heat...

Quote of the day

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

(via A.W.A.D.)

Just another day in the new lawless America

Bush tells Harriet Miers to ignore Congressional subpoena because of some sort of miasma of executive privilege that engulfs all his closest pets. Some note that this is obstruction, and hence a felony. Oh, if only our governmental system had checks and balances!!

(See some interesting options for a Constitutional show-down here.)

These two stories have nothing whatsoever to do with each other

1. Chertoff warns of a climate of increased threat from Al Quaeda while making no mention of the fact that we've stopped looking for Bin Laden and that he's found a new home base for his troublemaking.
   
   
2. The Washington press corp stands amusedly by while President Bush cuts the ribbon on their new briefing room but refuses to answer any questions.

Just who's running this thing

More Congressional hearings, which I'm not mentioning (although I am watching) -- an interesting exchange from today's notes that many members of the Bush Administration have some lack of clarity about their oaths of office: specifically that they swear to serve the Constitution, and not the President . . . (oh these tiny, tiny, critical distinctions!)

Pasted-on smiles

The Bag does a great job of catching an example of how the media cherry-picks images to give a misleading impression of public sentiment. Here we see the rosy-cheeked smiling crowds as the President jokes, while images from the video while he was talking about Iraq paint quite a different picture of how even inside loyalists feel about Bush leadership...

Today's gizmos

Philadelphia has been all a-flurry over new parking meter technology of the 5-10-year-old variety (you pay at the end of the row or something), but that development has nothing on the magic being tried out in Vancouver and Niagara Falls: meters that call your cell phone when your time is about to run out. Brilliant or freaky? or both?

(via GirlHacker)

Decider blog

Beautiful.
(sigh)

Ouch

Talking Points Memo does a great job of showing just what a heap of crap Tony Snow spews everyday, by intercutting his latest press briefing with the actual Congressional testimony being discussed, showing that virtually every claim by Snow is a distortion of what was said by (Republican) Senator Lugar. Wow! shameless.

It's ok if you're a Republican (installment 7429801)

The filibuster is now so common that essentially no legislation, even the most unobtrusive, can pass the Senate without a 60% supermajority of support. Where's the outrage? The firey media coverage? (The education of the public?)

Sigh.

(via Medley)

Feeling safer every day!

That is, the Bush Administration is being so careless about open posts at the Department of Homeland Security that nearly 25% of top positions currently empty and experts worried about the organization's ability to do its job. There's also discussion here about over-politicization of appointments, and we know how well that's played out in other agencies...

(via Medley)

Friday miscellania

Have been collecting links all day, but apparently not posting, so here they are in a heap...

• A new study puts an end to the image of women as chatterboxes, showing that men and women talk almost identical amounts every day. (Note that the closest thing to a source of the other belief is attributed to James Dobson!)
  
  
• Terrorism doesn't work -- it can create terror, but has essentially no effect in bringing about the purported political aims of the perpetrators. (That is, unless you count the way that Osama has pulled W's strings for several years.)
  
  
• Speaking of which, it looks like Iraqi deaths since we took over their country number close to a million by best estimates (whereas most Americans guess about 1000-fold fewer than that).
  
  
• Whitehouse spokesman summarizes their stance on the state of justice in the United States.
  
  
• A surprising number of Americans are in favor of impeachment proceedings, especially for Vice President Cheney.
  (via Atrios)
  
  
• An amusing photographic demonstration of the obscene building craze that has ahold of Dubai. It's like FutureWorld!
  (via Follow Me Here)
  
  
• Finally, a tired kitten to foreshadow my expected plans for the weekend...

Quote of the day

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

- Erich Fromm (1900 – 1980)

(via wood s lot)

Exceeding my capacity for schadenfreude

I think it's absurd that the US government has spent nearly $600 million on a compound in Baghdad (through a company with Cheney connections), and even more absurd that it's a compound on the scale of an imperial village (see previous here), and yet it merely makes my head hurt that the thing has been so badly built that it cannot be occupied by its intended military and diplomatic residents. Electrical fires, slowly emitted chloroform gas -- you couldn't make this stuff up!

Update: Waxman to investigate, everything from the coerced labor to the resulting problems...

Speaking up for our independent nation

Olberman's latest commentary is a good one, however much he may be shouting into the wind . . .

"clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences"

That's from John Edwards' response to the appalling commutation of Libby's sentence by President Bush yesterday -- see the rest as all the Democratic candidates weigh in here. I also think it's worth noting that this move could be seen as further butt-covering (giving Libby no incentive to make a deal to keep himself out of jail, while not actually pardoning him and setting him free to air his thoughts that way) -- the proper response to such flagrant obstruction seems obvious...

Dispensable

Isn't it interesting that all the crises of conscience that trouble healthcare providers come at the expense of women? Their health, their safety, their options, in a variety of situations. I agree with the commenter who suggests requiring that emergency personnel be prepared either to do their jobs or find another provider right away -- a shrug is not acceptable health care! (And you can see how the moralistic fervor over, say, emergency contraception is bleeding ever wider into all sorts of nonsensical medical decisions...) grrrr....

(via Medley)