Sunday Brunch: Protein synthesis super hippie freakout!

Oh man, if I had been shown this film when I was studying protein synthesis back in school, I might have been compelled to pay more attention and actually retain the information. Or, it's entirely possible I would have been so distracted by the hilarious hippie science orgy taking place that it would have all gone over my head anyway.

Regardless, it makes me happy to know that this is still shown in some classes, and I am pleased now to present it to you in all its glory: "Protein synthesis: An epic on the cellular level" as produced by the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University in 1971 (featuring, if you can spot him, Frank Zappa!).

Misleading absentee ballots sent by McCain campaign

This smells interesting and potentially ridiculous: reports are coming in from various people, mostly registered Democrats in mostly purple states, it seems, who've been getting absentee ballot registration forms sent to them in the mail by the McCain campaign. Only, all kinds of the information on these applications is wrong and/or misleading.

Here's what we're seeing so far, per Lee Rayburn's show this morning and a few select blogs who've been following the story:

Many people, all registered democrats here in Southern Wisconsin, have been sent a form in the mail from the John McCain campaign, full of "Country First" slogans. It includes 2 requests for absentee ballots in the envelope. It includes an addressed envelope to send it back to the city clerk.

The problem is, that the address of the city clerk is not in the right voting district. For example, the people living in Middleton, Wisconsin (a suburb of Madison) have an envelope to send back to the Madison City Clerk. This, in the best circumstance, would mean an administrative nightmare for the Madison County Clerk, meaning she would have to forward the application to the Middleton City Clerk. At worst, people would either not get their absentee ballot in the mail, or again, would have the wrong city clerk address. If this occurred, the vote, sent to the wrong clerk, would be voided.

And then this, from current.com:

Another caller from Detroit. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida: That's where the absentee ballots are being sent to Obama voters. Add Missouri to that, per one of our commenters.

California caller from registrar's office: McCain should take the application for absentee and submit within 3 days. But the applications will most likely be held for the 3 days and "die". They'll most likely submit the Republican ones, and throw away the Democratic ones.

The return address for the request card goes to the wrong city clerk office address, per Rayburn.

Michigan caller: Wrong home address, and then, wrong city clerk address on the one he got. He donated to Obama, but not a Democrat, so he wonders if that's how they found him.

Voter caging, unfortunately, happens on all sides of the political spectrum, and isn't always directly connected to the candidates themselves. So while I'm absolutely furious that people sent these misleading, potentially harmful ballots out at all--regardless of if it was through malice or incompetence--I will be keeping my nose to the ground in an attempt to find out more about this before passing final judgment on the McCain campaign (for this episode, at least).

At this point, though, this seems like a story worth some media attention, so I'll be curious to see who, if anyone, picks up on it.

More in the comments section here.

If anyone has gotten one of these in the mail, or knows anything about it, please feel free to mention it in the comments or email me at lostalbatross AT gmail.com - thanks!

UPDATE 1: The only mention of this in the regular news that I've been able to find comes from Ohio, where the faulty McCain absentee ballot registration forms have now caused some 750 of them to be deemed invalid by the state. I'm still seeing a lot of people in comments section noting that they got these, and all of them seem to mention something being wrong on the damn thing.

UPDATE 2: It's trickling in from everywhere, but still deserves more coverage, I think - this small story from WDBJ7 in Roanoke, VA mentions that their State Board of Elections "will follow up with the mailer to see if it's an isolated incident." Hit the webs! It's happening all over the place.

UPDATE 3: A tip from a source who wishes to remain unnamed tells me that both she and her husband, registered Democrats each, received these absentee ballot mailers--and that, though they live in Madison, the ballots were addressed to the town clerk of Menomenee. Neither of them have ever "set foot" there, apparently.

Also, got my hands on scans of the mailer itself, for your perusal (thanks GT!):

(click for big)

Journalist shouldn't be a dirty word

I'm an aspiring journalist. You wouldn't necessarily know it if all you read was this blog, seeing as how I use this space primarily for opinion writing, but it's true. So it is that I'm always looking around for reporters that I can look to for inspiration--both people out there doing the hard scrabble investigative journalism that seems so sorely underrepresented in the mainstream media these days, and also those folks just doing the day-to-day work of presenting the facts of any town or city as clearly and thoroughly as possible.

It's an essential job, an integral part of any really democratic society, but very often a somewhat thankless endeavor for those not actively seeking the limelight.

It would seem, sadly, that these journalists are the exceptions to the rule these days, especially when we cast our critical eye on the major networks and news outlets.

A hot tip lead me over to Salon.com and Glen Greenwald's excellent piece regarding the state of modern journalism, specifically Fox News and their complicity in what appears very much to be a major (and sickening) government propaganda stunt. On August 22, an airstrike by U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan killed a large number of unarmed civilians in the city of Azizabad, including women and children, and this has since been well documented by a number of independent sources. The U.S. conducted an initial inquiry into what happened, and came to the conclusion that only "7 to 9" civilians and a lot of insurgent Taliban fighters had been killed, despite what villagers and other reports were saying.

In coming to that conclusion, the government used an "independent journalist" from (who else) Fox News to verify their version of the story. And who was this beacon of journalistic integrity? None other than Oliver "Iran-Contra" North, who has been working for Fox as a correspondent, despite (or perhaps because of) his nefarious past.

Yeah, not entirely the most trusted name in news.

Thankfully, through the hard, on-the-ground work of reporters like Carlotta Gall and documentary video evidence from the scene, enough pressure has been placed on the U.S. government that they are now going back to "reexamine" their original findings. Hopefully, appropriate restitution for this heinous mistake will be made, but no matter what, it will likely do little to ease the minds of those who suffered as a result of the attack, or to restore any sort of credibility to mainstream media in general.

In addition to this specific incident being a blatant example of the sickening consequences of lazy and/or complicit reporting, it also plays into a much larger debate about the duties of journalists and media networks in general.

Greenwald puts it well:

This is what I found so deeply bothersome and inane about this week's hand-wringing over the oh-so-"undignified" spats between various MSNBC personalities during the Convention and the Threat to the Integrity of American Journalism posed by such squabbling, or by the oh-so-inappropriate placement of "blatant liberals" in the sacred anchor chair. There is an entire cable "news" outlet, the highest-rated one in the country, which exists for little reason other than to amplify and certify false government claims -- it's literally nothing more than an outlet for state-issued propaganda -- and our leading news critics and even other "journalists" praise and treat its "news" anchors as legitimate and credible sources of news...

Way beyond Fox, this is the same thing that our media generally (and with some important exceptions) has been doing for years, at least -- mindlessly repeating and confirming false Government claims. That's what makes Carlotta Gall's on-scene actual investigation of the Pentagon's Afghanistan claims so notable -- it's so unusual. From Jessica Lynch's heroic Rambo-like firefight to Pat Tillman's murder by Al Qaeda monsters to pre-war claims of the Iraqi menace to post-war claims of Glorious Progress to current claims of the Grave Russian and Iranian Threats to the concealment and then justification of virtually every act of government radicalism over the last eight years, our media has, by and large, done what Fox News did in the Azizabad case -- offer itself up as an uncritical conduit for state propaganda.

This is one crucial part of the debate that we (as a country, as a planet) should be having with ourselves. It may be impossible for anything with a human source to ever be completely objective, but that's not to say that we couldn't be doing a whole hell of a lot better when it comes to the standards to which we hold our press and our government.

Do we really care more about lipstick and flag pins than you do about our government killing innocent civilians and lying about reasons for going to war? Good God, I sure hope not. And while those weird little stories have their place, the real estate currently being taken up by them is way out of proportion to what they deserve.

Thankfully, there are still a handful of good, dedicated journalists out there who are working hard to get the pieces of truth out there for all the world to see. What we do with what we're given, however, is up to us.

Van Hollen's Hail Mary

Yesterday, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen decided to file a last-minute suit against the state's elections agency in an effort to get them to force ineligible voters off the rolls. Seems straight-forward enough, right?

Yeah, maybe not.

I have several questions about this move that I'd love to see addressed: first, how many states actually have full compliance with the HAVA law? And what does full compliance mean for voter enfranchisement (let's talk about paperless ballots, shall we)? How long would it take for Wisconsin to conduct this back check of registrations, and would it interfere with the upcoming November elections (something tells me it might)? Are we setting ourselves up to be the next Ohio or Florida because of this?

One of the latest causes du jour of the GOP has been voter ID and fraud, and this move only seems to play into their push. Thing is, voter fraud has been shown, time and time again, not to be at all systemic or very problematic. In fact, the vast majority of inconsistencies found in voter rolls by the state board all seem to be minor instances of typos, variations in how names are used, and incompatibilities between state databases. Certainly, it's worth working to streamline and better the registration system so that it's easier to conduct the necessary checks. In fact, since August of this year, we've apparently achieved that ability as required under the law (more importantly, we should work to ensure that everyone who can vote is able to do so without difficulty).

But since this was later than the deadline laid out by HAVA, and since that meant some time wherein new registrations were not run through the more strict background checks, Van Hollen is irritated enough to sue.

The state's election officials are not pleased, and rightfully so, I think. Coming just two months before the presidential elections--likely to be hotly contested in this state--the suit smells a bit like a last-minute hail Mary, something that might help skew results one way or another. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but being that all evidence suggests little real voter fraud in Wisconsin, and being that the elections board did eventually come into compliance with the law, the move seems unnecessary.

At best, it will eliminate a small handful of dodgy registrations. At worst, it might disenfranchise a whole slew of perfectly valid voters. In theory, that's what HAVA was supposed to fix, not contribute to.

But hey, at least we're not Michigan. I hope.

UPDATED TO ADD: Well, turns out Van Hollen is the Wisconsin co-chair of John McCain's campaign. No, that doesn't smack of being a conflict of interest at all.

I'd also like to note that using mismatched address data from WisDOT and voter registrations as reason to bar people from voting is an especially terrible idea when you consider how many people move to new apartments from year to year (students and lower income folks especially). I have some personal experience with this: when you move that often, it's sometimes difficult to remember to update everything, in a timely fashion, with WisDOT. That alone should never lead to someone being prevented from voting, though.

The good news for Sept. 10, 2008

First off, I'd like to take an admittedly somewhat self-referential moment to note that, at some point this evening, this blog will roll over the 20,000 total hits count - and that, frankly, kind of amazes me. I've been up and running for just over a year now, and have a pretty local slant, so enjoying that kind of readership is pretty damn cool. So, thanks very much!

Onward, though: another round-up of the articles and items that have caught my attention today. Captivating! Thrilling! Seriously, though, I think they're worth a read:

• [Architecture 2030] In case you needed further proof that the "Drill, baby, drill!" set are lunatics, here's a handy graph regarding just how much (or in this case, little) impact offshore drilling in the US would have on oil production and usage.
• [New York Times] Speaking of drilling, apparently "Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties improperly engaged in sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them." Yeehaw!
  
• [Business Week] OMG! An article that actually details the candidate's stands on a particular issue, without going into any of the ad hominem nonsense that seems so popular these days.
• [McClatchy] Surprise, surprise, the new McCain ad that attacks Obama for allegedly supporting "explicit sex ed" for kindergarten children is a big fat lie.
• [The Guardian] A really informative and interesting article about how richer countries tend to take terrible advantage of the food resources of those countries most in need.
  

Preserving our history and our parks

James Madison Park, located on Madison's near east side and running along the lovely shores of Lake Mendota, has long been a green gathering space for students playing frisbee or football, families with young children who enjoy the playground equipment, people reading on benches, and folks wishing to rent canoes at the boathouse. It used to be the site of WSUM's Party in the Park, and usually hosts a few other festivals and gatherings throughout the year. It's a great resource, and one example of city ownership of lakeshore land in the interest of keeping it publicly accessible.

The state of the park and the various historic buildings that lie in and around it, however, is somewhat up in the air these days. Mayor Dave and certain development interests appear keen on moving those historic buildings, selling some of the land, and re-purposing sections of the park.

From my admittedly recent browsing (this issue has come up, off-and-on, for decades really), it's hard to really gauge the facts of the matter: why move the houses? how much would that cost the city? is it ever a good idea to sell off publicly held property, especially lakefront land? do the current residents want this?

Currently, a committee of alders and citizens, appointed by the mayor, exists to "report back to the Board of Park Commissioners on a proposal for the properties at 646, 640 and 704 East Gorham and the land under Lincoln School." This ad hoc committee has been mostly favorable to the idea of selling off the land under the Lincoln School, whereas the Madison Parks Commission has voted unanimously, on several occasions apparently, not to do so.

The ultimate decision may end up being left to referendum. According to a recent Capital Times article:

The decision to sell the houses, including the land under the Lincoln School Apartments, would likely be considered a change in the legal status of the park, assistant city attorney Anne Zellhoefer told the James Madison Park Property Planning Committee Thursday night. According to a 1992 city ordinance, changes in legal status as well major construction projects on parks bordering lakes and navigable waters require a referendum.

This seems reasonable to me, especially in light of the many passionate testimonials from residents regarding their feelings about the park and the historic buildings. You can read several of them in the meeting minutes from a public hearing held back in June. The overwhelming consensus, with which I pretty much agree, is that selling the historic houses is a good idea, but moving them is not. As for whether or not to sell the land under the Lincoln School, opinion seems fairly split down the middle--and for how little information I can find regarding what a sale like this would actually mean, I can understand why that is.

Selling the historic homes appears to be a good idea because the city has done a sub par job of maintaining them up to this point, and having private parties interested in historical preservation and good use would mean both preserving these places and saving the city a lot of money. In fact, the city would likely take in revenue from the sale of the homes and leasing of the land under them. You can read the original draft proposal relating to this here (click on "Conditions for JMP" link).

However, moving the homes would cost the city a great deal of money, and, in my opinion (and that of many others) take away from the historic character of the neighborhood. All designed by the same architects, they provide a great, cohesive corridor through a historic area of town that would be lost if jumbled around to different locations. Mayor Dave and his committee seem to be arguing that moving them would make for a better sight line between E. Gorham and the lake, but at present, I don't find anything aesthetically displeasing about their location. In fact, I would contend that it adds to the beauty of the park and the area, and encourages people to actually get out of their cars and walk around.

As for the Lincoln School plans, things get a bit more complicated. The current landlord of the building, ULI, has proposed buying the land under the school for a minimum of $600,000 or, if the number is higher, the appraised value (which we don't yet seem to have). Their designs for the site, though restricted from changing the exterior of the building, include turning the apartments into condominiums - something that (rightfully, I think) irks current residents and advocates of affordable housing like the area's alder, Brenda Konkel. The argument is that most of the folks now living in the building would not be able to afford the condos, and installing yet more of the buggers would only contribute to a growing income disparity on the isthmus.

ULI, it's worth noting, are apparently the same folks that wanted to demolish historic capitol square buildings (like L'Etoile and the Old Fashioned) in order to put in a nearly block-sized new development.

Plus, there's the issue of whether or not it's a good idea to sell off public, lakefront land at all. Currently, ULI holds a long-term lease on the land which, I can only assume, limits their ability to alter the use of the building. As far as I can tell, buying the land would allow them to make whatever changes they so wished to the interior, and certain city officials would then plan to use money made from the sale to, depending on what you read, plug holes in the operating budget or improve/expand the park.

But really, I have no idea what pro-selling advocates want to do with the park. That's never been made particularly clear, and that's what has most caught my attention.

It's important to balance historic and parkland preservation with responsible economic development. Finding private parties to maintain the homes seems like a sound choice, all around - but moving them, or selling the land underneath them, strikes me as a poor decision that would likely come back to haunt those who make it in the future.

I think the mayor, the committee, the alders, and the developers owe it to the community--especially the residents who actually live in the neighborhood--to be as open and honest about their plans as possible. We need to make an informed decision about these proposals, and it's understandably difficult to do so when there's so much stalling and lack of details.

The good news for Sept. 9, 2008

I've decided to start another semi-regular feature, "The Good News", on this here blog (in addition to my sporadic Sunday Brunches): a couple posts each week that list news, commentary, and other goodies around the web that I've been reading and want to spotlight in some way, just with less of my own two cents than a normal post. Sound good? Feel free to skip 'em if not, but I hope they're somewhat informative.

Anyway, I've got a few up my sleeve for you now:

• [The Capital Times] The League of American Bicyclists has ranked Wisconsin as #2 in the nation for best bicycling environment. Certainly we still have improvements to be made, but I agree that Wisconsin (Madison specifically) is one heck of a good place to ride a bike.
• [Religion Clause] Madison's own cantankerous bishop, Robert Morlino, is angry at Joe Biden for daring to keep his personal religious beliefs separate from how he legislates when it comes to abortion.
• [NPR - Fresh Air] New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wants Green to be the new Red, White & Blue - and he's pissed off at those who can't/won't see the necessity of environmental revolution. I can't say I blame him.
• [Chicago Tribune] Former Lt. Governor of Wisconsin, Margaret Farrow, has been brought on by the McCain campaign as part of their "Palin Truth Squad." Good luck with that.