Jon’s Corner of the Whirled

I’ve been trying to follow the Democractic Presidential Debates when I can. There have been so many of them, it is difficult, but I’ve managed to see a few, hear a few, and read snippets from a lot of them. One thing that is apparent to me is that Dennis Kucinich doesn’t get the respect that he deserves. The debates seem to center around Hillary, Edwards and Obama. They all seem to have similar views on the world, with Hillary coming out in the slighly more conservative camp of the three. The most sane voice seems to be Dennis Kucinich. His list of issues on his website, and the summary of his positions on Wikipedia seem to mesh best with my own ideals, and I would think, a lot of the American people. His oratory skills rival that of Obama, and in the debates I’ve seen he and Biden are the most “Presidential” in demeanor.

Why doesn’t he get more respect?

Take, for example, this article over at the Washington Post. He gets a mention in the last two sentences in the article. I heard the debate the article refers to, he said a whole lot more than just that.

I don’t know if a direct correlation can be drawn, but the three democratic candidates that get most of the exposure are also the three biggest fundraisers.

According to this article at Time, McDonalds is lobbying dictionary companies to redefine the term “McJob” because it reflects poorly on the company.

I think it is a great idea. Perhaps we can redefine other terms that reflect poorly on the US to better improve our image.

For example, we could redefine “unconstitutional” to mean something that inspires a happy warm happy feeling. That would solve a lot of problems. For example the sentence: “The White House policies toward enemy combatants is unconstitutional.” has a much more pleasant meaning, and would change the nature of the discussions happening today.

I’m sure there are other terms that would benefit from redefinition. Perhaps “sarcasm” is a good candidate.

Read this article over at the Washington Post.

The first sentence of the article:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

Who in their right mind would consider the untimely death of 655,000 people a good idea? For a little personal perspective, this is more than the population of Portland, Oregon, where I live.

I work with Erik, who has been getting some press recently for creating some signs for his yard. Odd how this stuff happens. The reclassification of Pluto got me to thinking about the past. I had worked with David Levy on a software project many years ago based on his book Skywatching. Levy had a personal relationship with the discoverer of Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh.

I hadn’t thought about all this in quite a while. It is odd how seemingly random events can cause you to remember things that had been forgotten.