Fatigue, news, and news fatigue

I woke up this morning to a beeping sound, and performed my usual routine of sitting up, hitting snooze and rolling back to bed. But the beeping didn't stop. I looked at my nightstand and realized that another alarm clock had gone off and just plain turned it off. But the beeping continued. Looking around, I saw eight alarm clocks on my nightstand and as I tried desperately to identify which was beeping it slowly occured to me that the nightstand didn't really look like my nightstand. And then I woke up for real.

I hate it when my subconscious fucks with me.

Anyway, I struggled through the day and managed not to screw up any experiments, got home and took a three hour nap. The nightly girlfriend call woke me up, followed by a desire to pee, followed in turn by a drink of water. Now that I'm awake and refreshed from my nap, it seems too early to go to bed.

All of which serves as a decent intro to my past few months of blogging. I feel like lately I've been snoozing, not really responding as quickly or deeply as I should, and sometimes keying into the wrong stories or avoiding ones that would be too rigorous to write. I've had news fatigue and blogging fatigue, I confess it freely. So tonight I'm going to clean house a little with the two-bit version of 3 posts I need to write.

First, having grown up in CT, I was going to contribute to the now lengthy debate on Joe Lieberman. I think I voted for Lieberman based on my parent's advice in 1994. That would have been my first year of voting (also the election before I began voting Libertarian). So while I have stuff to say, I'm going to start with the opinion that this discussion should be spearheaded by current CT residents (ie. not me). I'm all for homegrown dissent and bloodletting, but national movements to oust a candidate at a primary don't sit well with me. I didn't like it when the conservatives went after Specter with Toomey and turned him into a Bush lapdog (albeit a yippy one), and I'm not too sure how the CT situation is different. I don't have any objections to pointing out that Joe is a git. But when people start funneling in money to other state's primary races...it's gone a little far. Yes, in the big picture we all have a horse in this race, but it's CT's horse, so let them decide. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were a Democrat.

Some final tidbits on the post I'm still never going to write: First, while I wouldn't vote for Joe (anymore) I'd have serious reservations about voting for a Greenwich millionaire. He might be the darling of the liberal internet now, but he's gonna need a solid voting record before I endorse a background like that. Second, the allegations of anti-semitism were not only inevitable, they also have some limited validity in this discussion. The popular opinion in CT is that the Iraq War was a foolish expensive waste, and in the best case is bad for US interests. Joe doesn't have that opinion. I've heard actual CT residents express concern that Joe might be voting in Israel's best interests rather than theirs. I'm not of the opinion that's "anti-semitic" so much as a concern that a Senator has become subordinate to a special interest like any other. But Israel isn't just an interest like any other, it's special and has special rules. Anyway non-electorate advocacies are a genuine source of resentment in CT, and people are talking about it amongst themselves. I think playing the "anti-semite" card stifles those voices and is good damage control.

Other things I haven't written about but promise to someday: stem cells. It happens that I work with stem cells in my research, though not human ones. (oh, before I forget...check out this link at the NIH. It's really good stem cell info from a mostly unbiased source.) Anyway, I support stem cell research (surprise surprise) even though I'm just Catholic enough to not want to conduct it myself. Stem cells are big news today because George Bush used his veto power for the first time! I imagine someone's put together a list of all the shitty bills, the pork barrel projects, and special interest sell-outs that Bush was happy to sign into law, while saving his first veto for preventing health research. I'll link to it when I see it. The whole issue makes me sick. I thought the whole reluctance to veto thing was infantile, but to blow your veto-virginity on the one of the few truly bipartisan bills designed to help people is just...words fail me. Hey! Good thing we didn't elect a flip-flopper! I think this one's only a matter of time though. It will pass the next president (or, dare I dream, the next Congress?) In the interim, the Republicans have announced to the electorate that the best way to get medical research funded is to vote Democrat. The best way to get money spent on munitions is to vote Republican. It's a culture-of-life thing.

And last, I hope to at some future date blog about how the Middle East has gone to Hell in a handbasket. Eight days into the War in Lebanon the US has evacuated 1,500 of the 25,000 Americans trapped there. The media has siezed on this story for a number of reasons. First, taking a full week to evac 10% of the people is kinda like a Katrina situation. Second we care a lot more about the few Americans over there than we do about Lebanon being reduced to this:

(link credit to Angelica) It's an ugly scene. Among other things we don't care about is the risk of this bringing Hezbollah to power over Lebanon's budding democracy and the general philosophy that it's ok to destroy a neighboring state over the capture of two soldiers. Yes I know Israel is an ally (ie "good guy") and Hezbollah is terrorist organization (thus a "bad guy"). But let's see how this behavior stacks up elsewhere. The most evil fucking terrorists I know are the Chechnyan rebels who shot those poor schoolchildren a few years back. It doesn't get more "bad guy" than that. But if they'd kidnapped two Russian soldiers and Russia responded by blowing up airports, power-plants, and infrastructure (again see photo for what "targeting infrastructure" means) throughout Chechnya, if Putin killed hundreds of civilians simply because they were from the same state as the terrorists, don't you think people would cry out that Putin's response was excessive? Yeah, we'd say the man's a menace to society. There's no difference in the quality of the "bad guy" in that hypothetical, only in the role of the "good guy". I may have mentioned Israel has special rules. As a last point, I want to mention that the most vocal proponents of Israel's new war are the exact same cheerleaders who promoted our Iraqi adventure. Our neocon brethren don't exactly have a history of being able to tell their heads from their ass. So let's not listen to them now. The Middle East is spiraling out of control and these guys want to invade Iran.

So I haven't been blogging much lately, but this strikes me as a good time to wake up. It's probably a good time for the whole country to wake up.