Miscellany

Lots of open Explorer windows on my computer today: There's an interesting piece in the latest issue of Rolling Stone about the draft. Will it happen? I dunno. I'm 26, so if it goes down, I'm relatively safe. My wife may not be, although fortunately she'd be of more use to the armed forces as a psychologist than a soldier. She's got a bad knee, too, from her days in fast pitch softball. If Bush is foolish enough to start a war with Iran, though, we probably haven't seen the end of this draft business. There aren't too many countries out there that would have come to the defense of Iraq. But if China and Russia feel that the U.S. threatens their oil supply in Iran, we may be fucked. Speaking of Iraq, in today's elections apparently some Baghdad voters were told that food rations would be withheld from them if they didn't vote. Didn't Republicans get pissed off when Michael Moore offered Ramen noodles to college students in exchange for votes? I'm sure the corporate media will be all over this one. Speaking of freedom of speech, between a third and half of high school students polled recently by MSNBC just don't give a shit about it. This is very, very scary. Also out this week is a new issue of Time Magazine featuring "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America." Not surprisingly, the list has some people I'd never heard of, as well as some puzzling omissions. For instance, there's no Jerry Falwell. Admittedly, Falwell may not have be able to persuade Christians to do his bidding as well as James Dobson. But when Falwell says something stupid, the press is there to report it. I don't have that kind of influence. And neither do a lot of the other white men on this list. (Hey, there is one black guy). Incidentally, Sojourners editor Jim Wallis is also missing in action. Guess Time didn't do its homework on this one. And finally, underground rapper Sage Francis has a new disc coming out in about a week. You've probably never heard of him, but I predict that's going to change. If you thought Eminem was the only white emcee that could make you repeatedly hit the rewind button, you haven't heard anything yet. Listen to streaming audio of several songs from the new album here.