A headline on the front page of today’s Arizona Daily Star caught my attention: a man died while waiting over 8 hours in the emergency room. It was shocking but inevitable. Emergency room care is so bad here in Tucson that I can’t believe it took this long for it to happen. At least now everyone is talking about it, and that’s important.

Is it manic depression? Blackmail? Is it perhaps a hoax, or an extended piece of performance art? Something doesn’t add up here.

At the time of this writing it is starting to seem probable, at least to me, that this November’s presidential race might come down to McCain vs. Obama. Now that’s an election I can smile about.

This made the rounds of the Internet some time ago but it’s worth remembering. Upon Bush’s election, satirical online newspaper The Onion wrote a piece called “Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over”. They published it on January 17th, 2001. In the Onion’s typical style, over the top with a straight face, it was supposed to come across as humorously cynical, like most of their pieces. Instead it turned out to be more prescient than provocative.

I’m talking, of course, about our preparations and response to Hurricane Katrina. It has been and continues to be a national disgrace. This disaster has shaken me up more than I would have expected, and I was further surprised (though relieved) to discover that several of my friends and colleagues felt the same way. It’s a humiliating feeling that we quietly stopped being a first world country some time ago and this is the first major indication.

Recently I stumbled across Orson Scott Card’s blog, and have enjoyed reading what he has to say. He’s the author of Ender’s Game, most famously, but for the purposes of his “WorldWatch” blog he’s simply an accessible thinker and writer. This post on the history and meaning of the Gaza pullout is worth reading, especially by anyone who feels like the Mideast an opaque and unfixable mess.

So I’m paying for my groceries at Basha’s the other night, and while I’m standing there, hypnotized by the bleeping of the barcode scanner, my glazed stare drifts down to the countertop where a neat green sign informs me that if I purchase more than four boxes of products containing pseudoephedrine, they will be obligated to report my name and address to the Department of Public Safety. It’s at times like this that I wonder whether or not I’m the narrator in a piece of speculative short fiction about a country preparing to wig out spectacularly.

The familiar “face” of the geographic United States map is often used to illustrate what goes on inside it. But all that a geographic map ever shows is acreage, and if you’re interested in some other quantity on such a map, that acreage distorts or obscures the data you’re looking for. Here are some alternative, and more accurate, maps for viewing and understanding the 2004 election results.

I’ve just finished reading this fascinating article describing one person’s political/philosophical journey out from what I would call leftist fundamentalism. It’s a long article but worth reading.

Check out The World’s Shortest Political Quiz. This was made by a guy who believes (correctly) that the left-right political spectrum is too limiting. Instead he’s made a 2-D political map, with 10 questions to show where you fit on it. The left side is still traditional left-liberal, and the right side is traditional right-conservative. After the quiz, each of the five political positions is summarized, and it’s that summary which has had me thinking about the current left-right divide and what might be going on behind it.

I ran across this link the other day shortly after seeing coverage of the crisis in Darfur on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The upshot is that tens of thousands of “demonstrators say they are willing to die in a holy war if the international community sends troops to Darfur.” What’s happening in Darfur is systematic genocide (ethnic cleansing) perpetrated by Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.

I don’t usually post a quick link without much else in this blog, but you ought to read this: Ron Reagan Jr. ranting in Esquire about the Bush administration.

There are a lot of people supporting Bush now, and supporting him vociferously, for what I think are the wrong reasons. I think they want someone to venerate as God’s steward of the Earth and he’s handy. But no matter how hungry you are, you should watch what you eat, and the same goes for a worshipful impulse and the object of worship.