. . . er, I mean American.

• “Managed withdrawal“–not to be confused with “cut and run.”
• Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) provides another example of what GOP personal responsibility is all about.
• Some religious rightists are distressed about the “deferential treatment” a homosexual appointee and his partner received at the State Department swearing in ceremony. I guess they wanted him to be publicly flogged, or something.
• Viewers watched 88 million video clips at MSNBC.com in September. Too bad the TV network probably didn’t have 8 million viewers all month.
• As if the Saturday night’s footbrawl between Miami and Florida International wasn’t bad enough, here’s what the CSS color analyst said during the broadcast:
  

  “Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” [Lamar] Thomas said as the brawl raged out of control. “You come into our house, you should get your behind kicked. You don’t come into the OB playing that stuff. You’re across the ocean over there. You’re across the city. You can’t come over to our place talking noise like that. You’ll get your butt beat. I was about to go down the elevator to get in that thing.”
  . . .
  “I say, why don’t they just meet outside in the tunnel after the ball game and get it on some more? You don’t come into the OB, baby,” Thomas said. “We’ve had a down couple years but you don’t come in here talking smack. Not in our house.”

  Mr. Thomas has since been fired.

The fact that these kind of comments constitute “news” is a story in itself:

Two leading Republican senators called Sunday for a new strategy in Iraq, saying the situation in getting worse and leaving the United States with few options.
Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John Warner of Virginia are part of the growing list of Republicans who are speaking out against President Bush’s current plan for Iraq as U.S. casualties rise.
. . .
“We need to find a new strategy, a way out of Iraq, because the entire Middle East is more combustible than it’s been probably since 1948, and more dangerous,” Hagel said. “And we’re in the middle of it.”

Apparently these guys must have missed President Bush’s memo that the U.S. operation is constantly adopting its tactics to conditions on the ground.

Recently former House Majority Leader Dick Armey has taken some shots at the religious right (e.g., calling Dr. James Dobson a “bully”). In a statement published yesterday, Armey elaborates on his concern with power-hungry “religious” activists.”
In this passage, Armey explains one of the problems he has with religious movements becoming politically entangled:

Freedom works. Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. Just look at Europe, where decades of nanny-state activism– including taxpayer support for churches and for religious political parties– have severely eroded the faith. In America today, too many of our Christian leaders fail to recognize the temptation to power and the danger it holds for our society and our faith.

I don’t share many policy positions with Mr. Armey, but I do agree with what he says here.
I wonder if after seeing this, coupled with the revelations in David Kuo’s new book, it might finally dawn on some rightists that perhaps a church/government alliance isn’t best for our society. One can hope.

• Cool pictures of Saturn.
• Freedom on the march: Steve Howards was arrested for saying, “Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible” to Vice President Cheney. The Secret Service claimed this was an “assault.”
• Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner will not run for president in 2008. That’s too bad; I’ve considered him a candidate of interest. From a distance, he appeared like a moderate, results-oriented candidate who has proven he can win in the South.
• Glenn Greenwald questions the Department of Justice’s first treason indictment in 50 years. Politics at play behind the scenes? Perish the thought.
• A USA Today poll found that 42% of respondents believe there’s a political component to plummeting gas prices. A more recent Washington Post/ABC News poll says it’s 32%. Whatever the case, it’s a sizable number of Americans.
  Anyone who knows much about oil markets realizes that the president has little influence over market supply and demand, which supposedly dictates price (though frankly it doesn’t satisfactorily explain the recent price volatility). So I don’t believe President Bush has been engineering the $20/barrel drop in oil.
  However, I am a little suspicious in this regard: during the surge in oil prices, traders said a few dollars of the price was attributable to geo-political tensions. I found it quite curious that during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when the rightist noise machine was ramping up the march toward World War III, that the White House suddenly came out in favor of a truce (after it had been condemning prior “fake” peace deals). And since then, we’ve heard very little hawkish rhetoric from the White House–you know, those statements which would cause concern in the oil market.
  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chávez give inflammatory speeches at the UN? The White House choses not to dignify them with a response. North Korea claims to hold a nuclear test? This isn’t something diplomacy can’t fix.
  Call me suspicious, but it seems that Operation Don’t Rock The Oil Markets Until After November 7 is in effect.

Another sign the American educational system is being flushed down the drain.
“Cursive writing becomes passé”
Or not. In short, schools are devoting less and less time teaching students to write, particularly in cursive. Many students and teachers don’t care:

“I can’t think of any other place you need cursive as an adult other than to sign your name,” she [teacher Debbie Mattocks] said. “Cursive — that is so low on the priority list, we really could care less. We are much more concerned that these kids pass their SOLs [standardized tests], and that doesn’t require a bit of cursive.”
Older students who never mastered handwriting say it doesn’t affect their grades. “A lot of kids have just awful handwriting. . . . Teachers don’t take off points for poor handwriting,” said Matt Paragamian, a 10th-grader at St. Albans School in Northwest Washington. Many of his classmates take notes in class on their own laptops and do homework on computers.

Unfortunately, I came of age in an era when there wasn’t laptops and we did have handwriting class. It’s not a memory I’m fond of. Usually, once the teacher issued an assignment, my classmates and I raced to see who finish first. I almost always lost. And since I was trying to write too fast, developed bad handwriting in the process.
Then it got worse; in addition to print we were required to start writing in cursive. I’ve never liked cursive and have never used it unless required to do so. I never got the point: if cursive is supposed to look nicer or more stylish, well, mine doesn’t. My loops and curls are irregular and jagged. And if you’re supposed to write faster in cursive than print, I don’t.
So although I agree students should spend enough time in penmanship so they can read cursive, I frankly don’t see the point in going further than that. There are more relevant things to learn.