September 2003 Archives

So, I hadn't really been paying attention, but apparently the New York Times has gone off and hired a conservative columnist. "Conservative" is, of course, a relative term - the gentleman in question has very suspect right-wing credentials (NPR?!?). But David Brooks seems to have a pretty diverse resume - the Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the New Yorker. And he certainly qualifies as conservative (perhaps even fascist) when compared to some of the other long-time denizens of the Op-Ed page.

He first caught my eye on Saturday with his column "Lonely Campus Voices," in which he examines the hostility conservative graduate students can face in pursing the golden "tenure track." Academia is generally characterized as politically left-of-center, and an underlying theme to the piece is, maybe that is at least somewhat by design.

But I also enjoyed today's column quite a bit, "The Presidency Wars." His basic observation is that the prevailing language over how we talk about the President has devolved into base personal hatred. The fury and rage the left directs at Bush as a person is perhaps matched only by the fury and rage the right directed (and continues to direct) at the Clintons.

To bore you with a quote (you really should check out the articles though), "the quintessential new warrior scans the Web for confirmation of the president's villainy. He avoids facts that might complicate his hatred. He doesn't weigh the sins of his friends against the sins of his enemies. But about the president he will believe anything. He believes Ted Kennedy when he says the Iraq war was a fraud cooked up in Texas to benefit the Republicans politically. It feels so delicious to believe it, and even if somewhere in his mind he knows it doesn't quite square with the evidence, it's important to believe it because the other side is vicious, so he must be too.

The fundamental argument in the presidency wars is not that the president is wrong, or is driven by a misguided ideology. That's so 1980's. The fundamental argument now is that he is illegitimate. He is so ruthless, dishonest and corrupt, he undermines the very rules of civilized society. Many conservatives believed this about Clinton. Teddy Kennedy obviously believes it about Bush. Howard Dean declares, "What's at stake in this election is democracy itself."

The plight of those of us in the middle is, of course, the insanity we see on both sides. I don't know if I'll continue to like Mr. Brooks (two columns does not a fan make), but it is nice to see a moderate (oh, I mean conservative) voice on the back page.

The next version of the Internet Protocol will use 128-bit address codes--making possible 670 quadrillion addresses for every square millimeter of Earth's surface. And you think your apartment seems crowded.

Factoid courtesy of Technology Review.

From "Affirmative Action for Whites/The houses that racism built"

A set of New Deal programs led by the Federal Housing Administration allowed millions of average white Americans to own a home for the first time. Down payment requirements were reduced from up to 50 percent to 10 or 20 percent and the time to pay off the remaining mortgage was extended from five years to 30 years. Federal investigators evaluated 239 regions; communities with a mere one or two black families were deemed ipso facto financial risks ineligible for low cost home loans. Government appraisal maps colored those communities red -- hence the term "redlining." Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $ 120 billion of home loans; more than 98 percent went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal support in Northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 went to African Americans.

Today, according to New York University economist Edward Wolff, the typical white family has eight times the net worth of the typical black family. Even when they make the same income, white families have over twice the wealth -- much of that gap due to home equity and family inheritance.

Many whites who grew up middle class in the suburbs like to think we got where we are today on merit -- hard work, intelligence, pluck and maybe a little luck. We wonder why non-white parents didn't just work hard, buy a home and pass on the appreciated value like our parents did. We tend to be blind to how the playing field has been -- and continues to be -- tilted to our advantage.

Dr. Who will be returning to British television !

Here’s what they really say. Thanks to NS for the link.

Jurassic pot plants on sale soon

Cute animated movie from Huffington's campaign. Shows what you can do with flash technology and the Space Ghost method of cutting up speech samples for phonemes and then re-arranging them to generate new speech using an actors real voice. Note also that Arianna never says anything herself here.

As part of a continuing string of posts on hygiene, I bring you the following:

"Apart from Toronto, however, the figures collected by observers in airport bathrooms did not paint a very sanitary picture. In five American cities, only 70 percent of men and 80 percent of women washed their hands. The lowest percentage among men was found in Chicago (38 percent); among women, it was in San Francisco (41 percent)."

From today's NYT

Yet another chilling interview with Bev Harris about Diebold. Read all about it at Salon: An open invitation to election fraud

"according to Bev Harris, a writer who has spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of the elections equipment industry, the replacement technologies the court cited may be worse -- much worse -- than the zany punch-card systems it finds so abhorrent. Specifically, Harris' research into Diebold, one of the largest providers of the new touch-screen systems, ought to give elections officials pause about mandating an all-electronic vote.

Harris has discovered that Diebold's voting software is so flawed that anyone with access to the system's computer can change the votes without leaving any record. On top of that, she's uncovered internal Diebold memos in which employees seem to suggest that the vulnerabilities are no big deal. The memos appear to be authentic -- Diebold even sent Harris a notice warning her that by posting the documents on the Web, she was infringing upon the company's intellectual property. Diebold did not return several calls for comment.

The High Holy Days are approaching, and I'd like to make a heartfelt plea to everyone on this board.

What's that you say? Rosh Hashanah? No, no, no! That's not what I'm talking about! It is Premiere Week for your favorite network shows! Award-winning episodes of "Everybody Loves Raymond!" Conservative politics on "The West Wing!" Survivor goes pantsless! Rosh Hashanah, indeed!

But if you only watch one show this year, make it Smallville on the WB. Smallville is a retelling of the Superman myth, focusing on his high-school years (when he was friends with Lex Luthor). It isn't as sassy as Buffy, it is a pretty good show, with lots of good weekly stand-alone episodes and a large over-arching season long plot arc. Last season's cliffhanger left a lot of threads dangling, so I'm guessing season premiere is probably a little dense for first-timers, but give it a chance (especially if you are a Neilson family)! You need something, now that Buffy is gone!

Net-Powered Naming.

Britney goes bhangra for comeback. Really.

That, friends, is a member of the Carroll Gardens community board, speaking just minutes after another member derided the press for accusing opponents of a proposed battered women's shelter of intimidation. Sure, he was technically talking about writing letters to the New York Asian Women's Center (the agency planning to open the shelter). But I'm not sure that's the sentiment that was being so loudly applauded.

Tonight's meeting about the issue--the third--excluded the agency and all community members who are in favor of, or merely not opposed to, the shelter from speaking. So I sat silently in the back and took notes. The ralliers insist that they feel sorry for the battered Asian women and their children, that they are not racist, and that they have not engaged in intimidation. All they want, they say, is for the shelter to go somewhere else. The problem is, all of their posters prominently display the shelter's address--a dangerous no-no when women are trying to hide from dogged abusers--and much of their rhetoric is tinged with NIMBYism and even racism. Consider these choice statements:

"This community is different . . . it just doesn't make sense [to have the shelter here]."
"It's not consistent with the character of our neighborhood."
"We are going to do our darnedest to make sure this shelter does not open and become operational."
"They [the children] are just going to play out here all day long--it's a disgrace."

It's not that I am all eager to live around the corner from a shelter. I just think the women have enough problems without these unnecessary cruelties. Slowly, some of us are realizing that inaction is inadequate to express our lack of opposition and are organizing. I know well that Brooklyn is a blog nation. Please help me get the word out; feel free to publicize my hotmail address. I've also started a forum for news on Blogger.

Ping-Pong, Matrix Style. Thanks to our resident puppeteer, Chris G., for the link.

What? They didn't include the dianoga creature from the Death Star Trash Compactor set from Episode IV?? Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.

Further proof of my theory that the Palm is the geek's cigarette, a British researcher has figured out how blinking dots on your PDA can help you quite smoking. Found on URLDJ.

Our 2,500th comment. I guess I should send myself a toaster this time?

The Apostle takes a nuanced view of religion -- Duvall's preacher is complicated, not just painted as a hypocrite despite his flaws. But it takes a not-so-suprisingly Hollywood take on race. Duvall's redemption comes from his acceptance by a rural black community and his building of an integrated church. It's the old "black people are the source of authenticity" trope. My Son the Fanatic, on the other hand, takes a nuanced view of race/ethnicity -- Om Puri masterfully plays a Pakistani taxi driver in a UK town who's truly a man without a place. However, it takes a standard movie line that religion is equal parts fanaticism and hypocrisy. I'd pick MSTF, if only for Puri's performance.

John Woo + Chow Yun-Fat + a nursery full of babies = pure comedy gold! Yeah, there's some actions sequences too.

Starting from: Bag End, Hobbiton, The Shire. Arriving at: The Cracks of Doom, Mordor..

While waiting for my muffler to get fixed (ain't adult life romantic?), I wandered the nearby shops, and happened to stumble into "Fat Moose Comics," run by the Comic Book Store Guy from The Simpsons (who, apparently, runs all of the Comic Book Stores in America). I wandered the aisles, wistfully recalling the days when Spider Man only had two comics ("The Amazing Spider Man" and "Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider Man") and the X-Men but one ("The Uncanny X-Men"). I remembered when "The Watchmen" was being sold in single issues, and when "The Sandman" was the new hot thing.

Noting the nostalgia in my eyes (and no doubt surmising the higher disposable income a 35-year old is likely to have, compared to the typical pre-teen consumer), Comic Book Store guy struck up a conversation . . . which led to more nostalgia . . . which led to some friendly recommendations about what's hot these days . . . which led to about $15 of my money being spent to resurrect what was once a very bad habit.

At the risk of stealing NS's thunder (but really, NS, you've been promising a Comic Book posting for so long now), here are some recent recommendations you may want to pick up from your local comic book store guy . . .

"1602" - an eight part limited series, written by Neil Gaiman and inked by Andy Kubert. The basic concept is placing heroes from the Marvel Universe back in the times of the Spanish Inquisition. Dr. Strange is "court magician" to the Queen, Nick Fury is the head of intelligence, etc. Very nice visually, and I'm always a sucker for Neil Gaiman writing.

"JLA and the Avengers" - my god, they were talking about this back when I was eight years old. I can't believe it never happened - but it is finally here. Four part series.

"Astro City" - A different take on the Superhero genre. The stories are told from the perspective of the inhabitants who live in a city full of superheros. Ordinary joes who have to go about their lives, dealing with the hassles and implications of living amongst the super-powered. The first issue focuses on the doorman of a hotel that hosts visitors to the city (who mostly come to try to catch a glimpse of the superheroes).

I'm going to take Harry there this weekend. Never too young to start reading. Yeah, that's my excuse for going back. Harry.

... from rebecca's pocket: testing the 5-second rule; harnessing germ power for electricity.

an online comicabout an alternative Afghanistan. Via Objectionable Content.

Found at robot filter: absurd reviews for The Best of David Hasselhoff. The song "Hot Shot City" is particularly good.

Liz L sent me the link to ETCHED IN TIME.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the gubernatorial recall election must last "until the end of the universe, or the destruction of the human race, whichever comes first." The three-judge panel noted that a significant portion of the electorate would be disenfranchised by not being able to run for Governor themselves.

Zug pulls another prank -- this time, he's trying to actually pay for the songs he stole:

Germany worries about a resurgence in Neo-Nazi terrorism after a suspected plot to bomb a Jewish center in Munich on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. They had a longer list of planned targets, including Mosques, and Greek and Italian cultural targets.

Couldn't happen here you say ? Well, think hard about Steven J Hatfill, the "person of interest" in the Anthrax investigation. He's a man who used to brag about "his exploits as a member of the Selous Scouts, an elite counterinsurgency unit of Rhodesia's white supremacist army that became notorious for brutality during that country's civil war" and that was even suspected of having used Anthrax as a weapon against Zimbabwean independence fighters.

Or how about Leo Felton, the white supremacist who was tried for plotting to blow up targets in Boston and ignite a "Racial Holy War". People have paid alot of attention to the twist (Felton had one black parent and one white parent), but little to the threat posed.

[There are other examples which have come and gone in the media without much notice. However, rather than writing the rest of the argument, which I've been carrying around in my head for a week, I'll leave you this quote taken from a panel discussion involving Jessica Stern, one of the best experts on terrorism I know, and somebody who has spent time interviewing terrorists all over the world, 1-on-1, unlike most of the armchair pundits who are just blowing smoke]

Al Qaeda, she [Jessica Stern] said, has shifted its mission, even aligning itself with neo-Nazis and white supremacists who are sympathetic to its new focus of fighting a "new world order."

"We know that Al Qaeda is very, very good at finding people who have the right passport and speak the right language" to facilitate a terrorist attack, she said. "They are finding new allies and new sources of recruits."

My point is that we're focusing on the terrorist groups that we're comfortable with (brown skinned baddies) and ignoring those that look "like our neighbors". If we're really trying to strengthen homeland security, we should be attentive to terrorism, no matter what label is attached to it. To do otherwise is to be vulnerable to further attack by our enemies.

Remember the Seinfield show about "Poppie" ? Well, the same goes for London bartenders too.

Found on Blogdex: Ordering of letters don't matter.

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Udpate: Now you can sbrlamce any txet, tnhaks to tihs wtsbeie!

Make Your Own Bayeux Tapestry!

Could be useful.

[In an attempt to post occassionally on the popular culture topics that once were the mainstay of Ishbadiddle, I bring you R. Kelly's latest reflections on the state of the world]

"People can say whatever they want about you without knowing the facts," Mr Kelly tells Blender magazine.

"They can criticise you without even knowing you, and hate you when they don't even know you. All of a sudden, you're, like, the Bin Laden of America.

"Osama bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through," he added.

from the BBC

[Yeah, I know. I'm still not getting away from politics. I'll work on it]

Lets face it, we all have a list of books we think our friends should read. Share your "essential" reads in Liz's book club, cause she's a good person, and well, she needs the content. The list can be as long or as short as you want. (Here's the list that I gave her.)

Oh, and give Liz a small bio to post -- so folks know who the heck you are. Send contributions to essentialreads -at- ashidome.com. Liz will love you, and stop harrassing me about this.

Hey! Ish is the 2nd hit on a Google search for maniacal laughter clown doll. This is what I get for looking at my referral log.

A photoblog about fonts, courtesy of Trip.

The Falling Man. If you read anything today, read this.

I can't let today go by. Not unwritten, not unmarked, not unlived.

This is a bit of very disturbing flash animation that makes the point that Bush failed to respond in a timely fashion to the news of the hijackings and the first crash. It's an important point since the recent Showtime movie creates an image of Bush as the man in charge, but the timeline really questions this, and makes one wonder whether lives could have been saved through prompt action.

It's also criticism from 20/20 hindsight, and done in an extremely partisan and unecessarily gruesome way, but their main point about the timeline is intriguing.

Also -- what are your feelings about the legitimacy of this kind of visual language ? Would it be effective as an attack ad if it was ever aired (which I seriously doubt). It pushes the bounds of good taste in a significant fashion, and might be more effective if some of the more gruesome bits were written in text rather than shown. At the same time, that's the point of the ad, to juxtapose the President's inaction w/ the unfolding tragedy.

Apologies if this is too in your face when many of us (myself included) are gingerly nursing ourself through they day.

Thanks to Chris G. for sending this one in.

Not 'an' Old Dirty Bastard, mind you, the Ol' Dirty Bastard aka Dirt McGirt aka Big Baby Jesus. I would never have expected to be asked that question in anything other than the hypothetical mode, but New York's a funny place.

A rental agent held an open house for our upstairs apartment in Brooklyn, and called us to say that Russell Jones, a rapper recently signed to Roc-a-Fella, was interested in our place (he must like parquet floors, I guess). She wanted to know if we would be willing to meet with him, his manager, his parole officer (!) and a VH1 camera crew to discuss terms. The only catches were that he needed to have an answer that night and he had to meet before his 9PM curfew. She emphasized that he was intent on straightening out his life and knew that the slightest violation of his parole (i.e. drinking, failing a drug test, skipping curfew) would return him to the criminal justice system. In addition, his mother would sign the lease and he'd pay a year's rent in advance. Really, she said, he's just a guy looking for a second chance.

I'll let you know what we did in the comments, but first I'd like to hear from the collective Ish as to what you would do in such a hypothetical (to you) situation.

Dictionaraoke.org. No cover of Kratwerk's ''Computer Words'', sadly. Found on Static Ephemera.

Well, the comments are back up, after a week off-line. I use an outside service (YACCS) which, while impressive in its functionality, hasn't always been reliable. The good news is, this has prompted me to start the long-awaited move from Blogger to the far-more-powerful Movable Type, which has comments built in. Trip has been working on the backend stuff, for which I owe him bigtime. Then you'll see some real changes around here... but still the quality Ish content you love so much!

One of the most interesting things about taxes (in my boring and geeky opinion), is that self-interest is so correlated to wealth.

In other words, if you offer a tax law that is beneficial to the upper class and irrelevant to the lower and middle classes (like capital gains tax cuts, dividend tax cuts, etc.), everyone will vote for it. Easy to understand for the upper class - they are voting their interests (and for purposes of this post, I'm not delving into "long-term societal good" interests, I mean their immediate and direct financial interests). The middle class can be sort of be explained as voting their aspirations - they hope to move up and get the benefit someday soon (of course, that explanation makes them look a little stupid, because class mobility is much lower than they imagine, but at least it is a semi-coherent rationale). The lower class support can't really be explained at all (unless you dramatically expand the aspiration argument, with a corresponding increase in the stupidity correlary).

The photo below has the following caption:
"Maninder Singh Bitta, leader of the All India Anti-Terrorist Front, presents a ceremonial sword to a turbaned Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yossef Lepip."

Then, there's Carol Lay's guide to Turbans, her response to feedback from an earlier cartoon she did:

Wow -- two in one day !

[Apologies if this is self-indulgent. I know that Ish is supposed to be a group blog, run by the master of the sandbox, ME-L. However, since I have no blog of my own, I sometimes use it for more selfish reasons, such as that I want to blog something, somewhere]

that even her pets are fat !

[I keep expecting Schwartzenegger to advocate the use of "Yo Mama is so fat" jokes as a way to combat America's problems with obesity.]

T3 did everything the third act of a trilogy should do: become self-aware (Terminator as Tom of Finland icon, for instance), up the stakes (end of the world and all that), plus huge fights, car chases, etc. And Claire Danes was great in the 'I'm really acting in this movie' role formerly played by Linda Hamilton. Pirates of the Caribbean was a perfect blend of Bruckheimer (big action and effects) and Disney (minor characters who almost steal the movie). Major points for Depp's hilarious role.

Sobig may have been just the beginning: Superworm To Storm The Net On 9/11. That's some scary shit.

Rumsfeld said:
""We know for a fact . . . that terrorists studied Somalia and they studied instances where the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in and persuaded themselves they could, in fact, cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted us to do," (From the Washington Post's article entitled:
Rumsfeld: Criticism at Home, Abroad Harms War on Terrorism)

So this is where he loses me. Why isn't he out there criticizing all of the Republicans who were busy jumping on Clinton and who clearly, from his statement, were responsible for encouraging Bin Laden ? And why does he think that trying to modify our current policy is going to be a help rather than a hindrance to terrorists ? Perhaps the terrorists are hoping that we'll stay the course without any changes, and are discouraged by the bi-partisan criticism the administration is receiving.

Bush administration logic. It's a confusing thing. But don't criticize it !

by Michael Frayn. I needed something slim; this epistlatory book about the literal (in both senses) marriage of author and critic made me laugh. Cf. The Last Rock Star Book and Pale Fire.

. I first heard of The Gormenghast Novels on this list of strange books. One of the most densely visual books I've ever read; grotesque characters struggle for power and life in a castle that feels part Camelot, part Morpheus' castle in the heart of the Dreaming.

The more I learn about the nuclear power industry, the more scared I get. A virus was able to infect the computers controlling a nuclear power plant. Who owned said power plant ? First Energy, the same power company that most likely brought us the Big Blackout. And get this "experts in running nuclear plants aren't necessarily going to be experts in security" Well, why not ? Have none of these guys seen War Games ?

In theory, such a problem should not affect utilities, transportation and other essential services because vital systems should never be linked to the Internet. But an incident in January at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, run by the FirstEnergy Corporation outside Toledo, Ohio, showed that this was not always the case. The nuclear plant has not been generating power since early 2002, but a computer system there that was not supposed to be linked to the Internet was invaded by a worm known as Slammer, causing the system to shut down for five hours. The event was not made public until Kevin Poulsen reported it on Aug. 20 on SecurityFocus .com, an information-security news site.

Richard Wilkins, a FirstEnergy spokesman, said the company realized after the worm struck that it did not have a firewall isolating its corporate computers from the computers controlling the reactors, but that it now had such a safety precaution in place.

SIX months after the Davis-Besse problem, the North American Electric Reliability Council, the industry group overseeing the electrical grid, announced that there were "documented cases in which bulk electric system control was impaired" by the same worm. It recommended that utility companies separate the computers running their power grids from their corporate networks.

It is important to keep vital systems isolated, said Stuart Staniford, president of Silicon Defense, a security company based in Eureka, Calif. But experts in running nuclear plants "aren't necessarily going to be experts in security," he said, adding: "They connect up all their machines so they can easily control and administer their infrastructure. And now all of a sudden, all their machines are vulnerable to the same inherent security risks."

From the NYT

A Glossary of Scots terms.

Last week I took Liz's challenge and answered her five useless questions. Andrea and Bud responded with questions of their own; herewith my answers:

''pay your student loan resist imperialism'' -- it's kind of hard to do both at once, isn't it?

The Book of Chronicles. Funny! Found on Cardhouse.

Cao Xueqin. Sort of a Remembrance of Things Past of the Chinese aristocracy, wrapped inside a magical framework. The Stone of the title is a magical item, the soul of the protagonist, and the text of the story itself.

From CBC news...

Chemists in Britain are looking for photos of colourful and creepy coffee moulds to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin.

To commemorate the discovery, Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) wants people to e-mail photographs of furry coffee cups from their offices and factories.

McNish said he is looking for thick, furry coffee mould. The colour doesn't matter, but green would be nice and entrants will receive extra points for pink mould, which he says is rare on coffee.

People can include comments describing the depth, smell and age of the mould in their e-mail....

Liz IM'd me the Monkey Shakespeare Simulator. So far I've got 5 letters from Hamlet.

Blecch.

IRS employees at tax help centers gave correct answers to just 57 percent of tax law questions asked by Treasury Department investigators posing as taxpayers.

The investigators concluded that approximately 500,000 taxpayers who visited the centers during the course of the study, from July to December 2002, could have received incorrect responses to their tax law questions.

IRS employees provided complete and correct answers to 45 percent of the questions asked by auditors, and correct but incomplete answers in 12 percent of the cases.

IRS employees told the auditors to do their own research in IRS publications to find the answers in response to 12 percent of the questions, despite an IRS policy banning the practice.

Incorrect answers were given to 28 percent of the questions. The questions most commonly answered incorrectly dealt with the earned income tax credit, education credit and dependents.

This is why I am in favor of a radical simplification of the tax code, even if it means giving up socially beneficial subsidies. I remember when Money Magazine used to hold a tax contest, and many of the nations largest tax preparers would compete. One year in particular, none of the entries were within the range of permissible answers. Not one. If teams of tax preparation experts couldn't get the answers right, what hope does your average family have ?

I'd be willing to bet that poor people pay far more than their share, and that a complicated tax code acts in practice like a regressive tax. There should be a few tax brackets, and a handful of deductions, and that's it. Heck, with all the money we'd save from having a smaller IRS, and the increased money we could get out of enforcing a reasonable tax code, we might well increase national revenue.

Ah, Labor Day. The traditional start to election season. And so begins the 400-day campaign against what will probably be the best-funded sitting President in the history of American government. Like most years, it starts off with a bang - why, some people can even name at least a single Democratic candidate. Not most people, of course, but a few.

Howard Dean remains the candidate of choice for, as the New York Times calls them, "Birkenstock liberals, whose loudest ovations always followed Dr. Dean's antiwar riff," but critics note that his "Sleepless Summer" rallies feature "few union members, African-Americans, or immigrants." Joe Lieberman remains the most popular Dem, with a whopping 14% support. Kerry, who announced his formal candidacy today, has dropped from double digit support to a meager 5%.

(sigh). Here's to hoping things start coming together soon . . . .