]"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
- Charlie Brown, Peanuts, Charles Schulz
muckinger: A pocket handkerchief.
blackwork: An undertaker's business.
]
I take a slightly different tack on the analysis than this Discovery News article about how political parties flip in their hold of power in D.C. at a very consistent rate. Seems the rate is somewhere around 12-15 years per flip. 
There is a new baby Kiwi at the Smithsonian National Zoo -- born March 7. Always good news to hear of endangered species births. Check this Livescience.com post for more info. ....these high velocities make the atom appear as a rigid sphere, just as a fast rotating propeller appears as a disc. It is very difficult to compress atoms any further, and thus they give matter its familiar solid aspect.
p. 58
Breaking the Final Rule
By Gary Hart
The Huffington Post
Friday 07 March 2008
It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.
By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party's nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.
As a veteran of red telephone ads and "where's the beef" cleverness, I am keenly aware that sharp elbows get thrown by those trailing in the fourth quarter (and sometimes even earlier). "Politics ain't beanbag," is the old slogan. But that does not mean that it must also be rule-or-ruin, me-first-and-only-me, my way or the highway. That is not politics. That is raw, unrestrained ambition for power that cannot accept the will of the voters.
Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington. If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition.
callipygian -- Of or pertaining to, or having well-shaped or finely developed buttocks. The name of a famous statue of Venus. From Greek kallos, beauty, and pyg, buttocks.
]...secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything-- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
cabal \kuh-BAHL; kuh-BAL\, noun:
1. A secret, conspiratorial association of plotters or intriguers whose purpose is usually to bring about an overturn especially in public affairs.
2. The schemes or plots of such an association.
3. To form a cabal; to conspire; to intrigue; to plot.
But by taking the political path of least resistance - by condemning the Iraq war as unwinnable instead of inherently wrong - more restrained foes of the war helped to prolong the occupation that has inflicted and catalyzed so much carnage.
The Colorado State Department of Fish and Wildlife is advising hikers, hunters and golfers to take extra precautions and keep alert for bears while in the area.
We advise that people wear noise producing devies such as little bells on their clothing to alert but not startle the bears unexpectedly. We also advise you to carry pepper spray in case of an encounter with a bear.
It is also a good idea to watch for fresh signs of bear activity. People should recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear droppings. The black bear droppings are smaller and contain berries and possibly squirrel fur. Grizzly bear droppings have little bells in them and smell like pepper.
, so I asked her what she thought of the book. She said his writing was very approachable, and interesting, yet still chock full of facts and figures. I hadn't realized that this was the same author as the high-on-my-reading-list book The Omnivore's Dilemna. I'm definitely looking forward to spring break or summer vacation to get reading on this stuff. 
