Liz and I were watching the news. The story was about preemptive reduction of cruising in the streets of Milwaukee--stopping it before anything bad actually happens. A police officer intoned seriously into the off-screen microphone, "The problem with cruising is that it leads to stopping."

We looked at each other and burst out laughing. That's sort of like saying, "The problem with life is that it leads to death." It's true, I guess, but what can you do with a comment like that?

 Speaking of death, an Associated Press story being widely disseminated is Soldier son of Dutch defense chief killed (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline). Lieutenant Dennis van Uhm was the victim of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende characterized this loss as "an unprecedented tragedy."

Well, no. It's a very "precedented" tragedy. Van Uhm is the 16th soldier from the Netherlands to die there. Nearly 500 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan, and the death toll for soldiers from the West there is nearly 800--and continuing to rise. In Iraq, 4,000 US soldier deaths have preceded the next one. And the one after that. In war, tragedy is the coin of the realm.

Since my mother's death a couple weeks ago, I've had a harder time than usual listening to pious rhetoric and words that sound like they mean more than they do. Maybe if I'd lost a soldier son, I'd feel differently about the inflated language used to turn a personal loss into a political lever. I'm glad not to know the truth that would come from that experience.

When it comes to political candidates, most of us are pretty clear about what we believe makes a good one. There's really not much variety in those beliefs. They fall into the pot labeled "conservative" or the one labeled "liberal," with a few variants and outliers. 

From my pot, your pot doesn't make any sense at all. You can say the same about me. So we argue back and forth the same old predictable arguments and stay firmly planted wherever we were in the first place.

I'd rather hear how you came to believe what you believe. I'm not talking about books you read or philosophical arguments but the moments that seized your gut and told you "this is true, this is how things should be."

One of my deep beliefs: question everything with courtesy, curiosity, and deep skepticism until you are completely satisfied. Some people call this "negativity," and it makes them wild. I see it as looking for ways to make things better--a positive trait.

I certainly didn't get that idea at home. Mom hated controversy and wanted everything calm and nice. Dad was a dogmatic German--and I welcome you to apply the stereotype liberally in imagining him. His way was the only way, at least until he got old and was blessed with a blossoming of the heart and an opening of the mind.

It was the pastor of our church, William Downey, who set me on that path. He was a charismatic, brilliant man, and no one dared sleep during his sermons. Some resented that, believing that church was a good place to be lulled and soothed. A Lutheran, he'd been raised Catholic, and that complicated his viewpoint considerably. Even as a kid, I sat on the edge of my seat as he afflicted the comfortable in Fox Point.

But never in the front row. When he got brimstoney, you'd be showered with real spittle and metaphorical sparks if you sat there.

He had also been an army chaplain. If you collect WWII memorabilia, you may have heard his prayer for the crew just before the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima.

As my father's daughter, I carry the authoritarian gene, which comes into full expression in adolescence. Church was my first experience with someone who both let you turn things upside down and held you accountable for what fell out. If you were going to dissent, you'd better be able to back up your eccentric positions, and you'd better be prepared to be called on any claims that grew from only hot air and an elastic imagination.

I'm quite sure it was not Bill Downey's intention to raise up little hard-headed liberals who refused to walk the party line. But that was the effect he had on me. I was supposed to learn the catechism. Instead I learned to love questioning, argument, and the rhetoric of shaking things up.

Like too many ministers, this one went down in a sex scandal. Like many churches, ours put considerable effort into vilifying the woman involved. Unlike most ministers, however, this one took full responsibility for his actions. He'd never backed down from truths and right actions that weren't pretty or easy. He kept his family and atoned in a smaller, distant church. I don't know what happened to the woman. We almost never do.

My spiritual meanderings have moved me far from the beautiful Federalist church in North Shore, but never far at all from believing that the Word is supposed to wake you up, not put you to sleep.

Now it's your turn. Tell me one of your core beliefs and how you got there. Please.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, had an embroidered pillow on her settee that said "If you haven't got anything good to say about a person, come sit next to me."

I was going to analyze the candidates' website vision statements. But there are no rewards in blogdom for doing the hard work, so do your own! Plus I'm feeling cross. So tonight is take no prisoners night.

Wauwatosa mayoral candidates Jill Didier and Jerry Stepaniak are both decent and competent people, so the targets and wounds, if any, will be small.

The first clay pigeon: Thursday night's "debate" at Tosa East. Kudos to the students for getting involved and being young and serious and idealistic.

(Pull!) Lukewarms to the others involved in planning the forum. They did a nice job of nurturing the students. But with a few exceptions, the questions asked were the same old questions. The answers were the same old answers. The format was the same old format. No one challenged or pressed the candidates to expand on or clarify earlier statements. There was no debate. Only one audience question was permitted, a snoozer at that.

(Pull!) Summing up the candidates in five words each: Didier--passionate; substance not so much. Stepaniak--substance; passionate not so much.

(Pull!) The "vision thing" in three words each: Stepaniak--big, not focused. Didier--small, adjective-dependent. (Hers is a "bright" vision.)

(Pull!) The voters: Conservatives figure people won't bother to check the facts and are seldom wrong about that. Liberals figure people will come to the "right" conclusion if you lay out the facts for them and are usually wrong about that.

(Pull!) What's changed since last month: almost nothing.

• Stepaniak has allowed Didier to frame the issues, placing crime about all. His strength is redevelopment and strategic (and occasionally imaginative) investment for future dividends, not putting on the crime-fighter's cape. I guess many find "crime's our number one priority" comforting--especially if they don't bother too much about the hows of fixing it. (Didier plans to heal all through "communication," while Stepaniak will lean on block watch captain recruits. His strongest idea, camera surveillance, gets no response from the audience.)

• Didier acknowledged that the state needs to take a role in smoking ban legislation to create an even playing field, an idea she previously scoffed at.

(Pull!) A couple weeks ago, I asked both candidates to respond to one question for this blog. It went something like this:

People only remember one or two things about past mayors. At the end of your term in office, what two accomplishments will be your legacy, and how will you have accomplished them? And what two issues that are important today will you be willing to put aside to focus energy and resources on the most important aspects?

Those answers, I figured, would help me understand the candidates' real visions. Thursday, Didier mentioned that she got the question but didn't have time to respond. I appreciate that acknowledgment. Stepaniak never responded in any way. By last week, I was already too bored to follow up. (I also put myself on the mailing lists of both candidates and have received two messages from Didier, none from Stepaniak. What's with that?)

Finally, unasked advice to the candidates:

(Pull!) Jerry, pick your spots and sell 'em! I'm already a believer, but you are making me forget in what!

(Pull!) Jill, if you try to follow through on your promises to listen to everyone all the time, you'll go mad. Plus you'll have to actually do it. Make sure that you listen to people who don't agree with you more than those who do.

There now. A little raw meat and a nap should fix what's ailing me.

If watching political ads makes you feel like you need a shower, we're at the same heath club. It's bad enough on the executive and legislative sides of our government triangle. But when distortions, exaggerations, misrepresentations, and plain old lies come into play for judicial campaigns, the icky-ness factor doubles.

 "Philosopher Robert Anton Wilson defined information as data and ideas that are new to you. If it's something you already know, then it's propaganda or dogma, not information. Philospher Terence McKenna had a similar view. He used the terms 'information' and 'novelty' interchangeably. If you're not surprised, he said, if your curiosity isn't piqued then the messages streaming your way don't qualify as information."

That bit of sage-ery comes from my Free Will Astrology horoscope, not some scholarly text. But it's an intriguing way of looking at the onslaught of facts, contentions, and wishes that come from the mouths of every political candidate. So I'm taking astrologer Rob Brezsney's advice and making that my gold standard in the coming weeks.

If nothing else, it's a great way of cutting to the chase when thinking about the information presented last night at the mayoral candidate forum at Eisenhower school.

• There's no money in the budget for acquiring and developing private land for recreation. (Stepaniak)
• Houses on the west side pay higher taxes than east side properties that are appraised at the same value. (Peter Hart)
• The 50-year-old infrastructure on the west side is deteriorating at a faster rate than the 100-year-old infrastructure on the east side.(Stepaniak)
  
• Tosa paid less in healthcare costs for employees the past year than the year before. (Stepaniak)
• As the rebuilding of the I94 corridor progresses, we have one chance to change the odd connections with Tosa. (Stepaniak)
• The city council originally declined a request from the Friends of Hoyt Park Pool to discuss plans for the private-public partnership. (Didier)
• If the city continues to try to tax not-for-profit senior housing (i.e., San Camillo), it will likely incur substantial litigation costs. (Didier)
• There are 4-5,000 senior citizens in Tosa who live in their homes and pay taxes on the property. (Stepaniak) 
• Burleigh Triangle development plans by Icon have not progressed. (Didier)
• A fund for small business improvement is not being used much. (Didier)
• The city is looking into a test case using outdoor surveillance cameras in high crime areas. (Stepaniak)
• Removing the bonding cap means that technically, major capital projects no longer have to go to referendum. (Didier)
• Two of the current bonding projects are coming to an end, easing somewhat the burden of the new fire station costs. (Stepaniak)
  

With the presidential primary just a day away, I'm still vacillating. Apparently, I'm in good company. Wisconsin, a swing state, likes to keep 'em guessing.

As CNN political analyst Bill Schneider said in the 2004 primary, "They like underdogs and outsiders in Wisconsin. that's why (Howard) Dean put his bets on Wisconsin. . .And just to show in another wildcard, this is an open primary. Anyone can vote. Independents and Republicans can vote. So, they could really stir things up, up there."

This campaign season has shown that we're not alone in our independent streak. People just aren't falling in lockstep this year with the old-line opinion leaders in political and religious circles. And that's good for democracy.

Wisconsin primaries in hotly contested elections are vulnerable to tricksterism. People from one party can vote for the other party's least electable candidate. Tomorrow, some conservatives will vote for Clinton because they think McCain can beat her more easily than he could beat Obama. It's legal, but it's a form of false witness. If you care about things like honesty and integrity, I hope you'll stir things up by voting for the candidate you really want in office, not the one you don't want. Clinton, Huckabee, McCain, or Obama--in alphabetical order.

In the past, we've cast our votes in Wisconsin for candidates who appeal to dreamers and those who speak to harder realists ("gritty," in the words of one NPR reporter last week). The split isn't just a matter of personality: the media say it's a socio-economic "thing." The affluent and college educated fall on the dreamy side, while the folks who know that tomorrow, in this case February 19, can make a difference in next month's paycheck, fall on the gritty side.

I feel like a piece of toast that just hit the ground peanut-butter-side down; well-fixed enough to be dreamy, but intimately aware of what it's like down here.

Underwood School, where I vote, usually has a bake sale on election day. The goods are neatly wrapped and haven't touched the floor, I'm sure.  I'm not promising a sale tomorrow--I don't know if they are doing it this year.  But I'll see you at the polls anyway!
 

Not all the way, maybe. But partly.

On February 15, the Bush administration proposed changes to Medicare that have made almost everyone unhappy. Like most legislation, it’s a mixed bag. But two ideas in the plan, already pronounced “dead on arrival,” are no-brainer necessities.

The first: raising the premiums more affluent seniors (those with yearly incomes above $82,000 for an individual, twice that for a couple) pay for Medicare Part D drug coverage. The change would affect about 4.5% of all Medicare beneficiaries.

The second: requiring doctors and hospitals to use electronic medical record systems. This should have been done a long time ago, not only for cost and efficiency, but because it can improve health care and reduce medical errors.

According to AP reports, “The administration's proposal is part of a first-of-its-kind response to a warning about Medicare's strain on the federal treasury.”

Democrat Pete Stark, representative from California, says the proposal is part of “a political ploy to foster a panic that Medicare is unsustainable.” Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt says, "This is an emergency that grows by the day."

Both are probably right. Medicare is a fixable and incredibly successful program. But Medicare spending needs to be held in line, the costs of health care along with it.  When Medicare was signed into law in 1965, the average life expectancy was 67. Now that people live a decade longer, it’s  become an entitlement to support an extended period of healthy “retirement,” an idea that didn’t even exist before the 1950s. What's more, inflation-adjusted costs of medical care  tripled  between 1965 and 2005.

Too many budget policies create a bitter balance, robbing from the poor to pay the rich, a Republican notion; robbing the rich to pay the poor, a Democratic notion; and robbing from children and the future to support older people and the past, a position supported by both parties in their refusal to do the hard work of creating legislation that’s both fair and sustainable.

Something has to give.

Should means testing enter the Medicare equation? Of course.  Should the proven efficiencies of electronic medical records be required practice? Of course.

Now comes the tricky part. The Bush proposal also includes more limits on financial and other punitive measures for medical malpractice and other system abuses. There's plenty of evidence that the carrot doesn't work without a little help from a stick.

Worse, the Administration's cost reforms cut reimbursement from everything but the problem-fraught private Medicare Advantage plans, which are clearly in need of reform. Rewarding what doesn’t work is just bad practice.

Finally, the use of medical records to track “quality” and reward “better” physicians and hospitals, while a good idea, is subject to scary manipulation. I attended a HRSA conference in Washington DC a few years ago. It was clear that Leavitt’s quality measures for outcomes of medical training were all but impossible to demonstrate. That seemed to be the point—not rewarding quality, but making it incredibly difficult to get the money dangling at the end of the stick.

Here’s a Canadian slant on the dilemma: "Democrats also have offered ways to slow Medicare spending. But their preference is to trim payments to private insurers serving the elderly through a program called Medicare Advantage. The administration has opposed any substantial cuts to the insurers, so the two sides are basically at a standstill over how to slow the program's growth."

 
To do it right, we need to draw on all the best ideas out there.

As my son considers going to school at Loyola in Chicago, we’ve developed a routine. I pretend to be horrified and say “Promise me you won’t come home Catholic and Republican,” and Geo replies “I promise I won’t become Catholic.”

In fact, I trust my kids to develop their own thoughtful approach to religion and politics.  We tend to think along similar lines and have shared values when it comes to the big things. One of those is to examine any idea that comes along carefully packaged. 

Still, I’ll admit to being irritated while listening to Wisconsin Public Radio’s show this morning on parents “party training” their kids. One guest, psychologist Christine Hamilton, maintained that it was a terrible thing to do.  But I wondered, aren’t parents supposed to teach their children the things they believe most deeply?

That topic, parents teaching (or brainwashing) young children to consider themselves members of one political party or other, is a hot one on the Net this week. Someone’s making buckets of money selling baby onesies emblazoned with “Weepublican” and “My Mama’s for Obama.”

For once, the Democrats have an edge on cutesy slogans. “Mom and Me for Hillary” has a nice beat and you can sing along with it. “Romney is My Homeboy”. . . doesn’t.  It’s just hard to use the name Huckabee without sounding derisive. And McCain doesn’t only rhyme with “gain.”

Anyone who’s taught kids knows that they are walking iPods loaded with the refrains of their parents’ conversations. And not just the ones we want them to have. They mimic what they hear and see. The problem is that when it comes to politics, and maybe religion too, what they hear is not usually deep and thoughtful. More often, it’s simplified. Especially with politics, it tends to be harsh and rigid, dismissive of all other ideas that don’t fit into black and white categories. Right and wrong, good and evil.

Political rhetoric isn’t the word of God handed down on stone tablets. It’s all about control, compromise, and manipulation. So shouldn’t we protect our kids from it? Better yet, teach them how to deconstruct it and figure where it fits in a greater scheme of things.

As a little kid, I eavesdroped on my parents and their friends as they watched the returns from the Nixon-Kennedy election in 1960. It was a close battle, and when it looked like things were going toward Kennedy, all the assembled Republicans grew louder. “If Kennedy gets in, we’re doomed,” they said.  I believed them, and I was terrified.

Of course they were wrong. Extreme partisan statements nearly always are. Some things changed, some stayed the same, and we were not destroyed.

So I’m back onboard with Hamilton’s idea.  Little kids shouldn’t be Republicans or Democrats. When we talk about how wonderful things will be with President X, how terrible things will be with President Y, we aren’t telling the truth. We are just scaring ourselves. And them.

 If my kids were little now, I’d buy them both Why Mommy is a Democrat and Help, Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed.  Then we’d discuss the differences between indoctrination and education and try to figure out what truths, if any, lie in among the simplifications and distortions.

Seniors have a reputation for being, well, peaceful. Maybe not Uncle Buster, but most. That's one reason aging communities like Wauwatosa are eager to develop housing for seniors—especially the kind of seniors who not only don’t have axes to grind but have lots of home equity to reinvest.

But there's a much bigger political and social context behind the value of aging societies, an upside that most of us haven’t much thought about. According to information from The Gerontological Society of America published January 25 in ScienceDaily, as a society ages, it loses the taste--and the opportunity--for political violence. (World's Aging Population to Defuse War on Terrorism)

If you look at the Mideast, Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, you’ll see what happens with “youth bulges” in which there are proportionately more young people than usual. The youth bulge creates lots of people with “strong grievances against current political conditions and little stake in society.”

I’m guessing that inner cities with high proportions of young and impoverished no-stakes people suffer from the same kind of increases in violence. Milwaukee is a case in point.

Population age cycles. In about 20 years, an aging, invested population creates political stability and economic development. Think about the US during—and 20 years after—the Vietnam war. You get the picture.

When the population continues to age and stops working, the period of economic development can slow or stop. Then a developed country will likely have to choose between accepting a high level of poverty among the old—or diverting money from military spending to avoid that poverty.

I will leave you to draw your own inferences. But I for one prefer the second option.

Author Mark Haas of Duquesne University says that the aging trend is starting to affect all the most powerful nations. By 2050, Russia’s working age population will shrink by 34%, and China’s median age will be almost 45. Will they choose impoverished old people or reduced military spending?

Apparently, the US will be less affected than China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. “In 2050, this country’s median age will be the lowest of any of the great powers,” ScienceDaily reports. At the same time, “the working age population in the US is expected to increase by 31%.”

While the article doesn’t mention it, I bet that the “youthing” of the US depends partly on immigration.

Makes you look at politics, the future, the economy, and aging a little differently.

A slightly different version of this blog appears at Aging Maven.

Needing a new fire station and wanting a new fire station may be two very separate things. That we need a new fire station is pretty clear to me, based on the data that have been presented, checked, and presented again. The endless squabbles that have gotten in the way pretty much boil down to:

• Where will it be?
  
• How stripped down a place can we get away with?

But now the when and if are creeping back into the discussion. Blogger Tom Gaertner, for one, is fed up with the Council dragging their feet, this time by putting off placing the question before the voters as a binding referendum. He's too polite to tell you, but I'm not: voting against were Alders Birschel, Didier, Donegan, Ewerdt, and Hanson: Minnear, Herzog, and Krill were not present. The rest voted aye.

I asked Tom whether a referendum was required. If not, solid leadership and personal bravery would let the Council do the right thing right away. That would be to build a new fire house good enough and big enough to last for at least 50 years. I don't want to think what a "do-over" in 20 years will cost if we don't do it right this time.

While I still don't know the answer to whether this question must go to referendum, Fire Chief Dean Redman sent me a note with his perspective that it should:

"I would welcome updated comments since the public input has been limited.  It is hard to know what that means.  Does the public not support the need and are just waiting to vote it down, or do they accept the need and are waiting to support it?  The real way to find out is to have it on the ballot."

Having raised at least one reader’s ire by pointing out that the Republican candidates at the last debate looked old – really old, and tired, and, had I been even more honest, waspish, and, well, not very healthy—I’m in a mood to re-offend.

By 8:30 am, I was already fed up with hearing the pundits analyze Hillary Clinton’s unexpected triumph in New Hampshire.

It’s the tears, they said, to a man or woman. The main bone of contention: did that wateryness work for her or against her? With this, Hillary finally bested Britney Spears in the circle of unfathomable public interest.

For a brief while, Hillary got emotional enough to mist over and say “Ain’t I a woman too. . .? “ oh wait: that was Sojourner Truth. Clinton said, through exhaustion and frustration, of course I care, and I’m afraid of our country losing ground. (Close enough, anyway.)

Criminal psychology professor Aubrey Immelman told WPR listeners this morning that Clinton’s personality profile showed her to be high on domination, narcissism, and something else related to taking personal responsibility—all characteristics that normally are considered positive in a president. But not, apparently, if he’s a she.

The tears came from her being thwarted, the professor assured the audience.

A listener chimed in to rant about Clinton’s mood swings and how, well, you really can’t trust this woman to do the hard work on account of those mood swings. Those of you who've heard Clinton faulted for being rock steady, or who have heard something like this before about any generic woman, will shake your heads.

“Really, she shows no emotionality on our scales,” Immelman responded. “Actually, George Bush had the highest rating there.” But no matter: the damage of the mood swing label was done.

Maureen Dowd brought to bear all her own amateur high school psychologist credentials in today’s "Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?"

She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite. All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?

For the first time, I find myself longing for some pure, unadulterated, Ann Coulter mean-girl nastiness, uncouched in psychobabble. It's always worse when the bad behavior comes from your side.

For clearer heads, it often helps to head across the pond. Michael Tomasky of the Guardian Unlimited provides the best analysis of what happened in New Hampshire:

Clinton won by a little more than 6,000. So - again, in the space of just 24 hours - a huge number of voters, thousands of them, changed their minds. Why?

I think it was mostly a rebellion by women voters against the media. Most major media outlets had written Clinton's obituary and could barely conceal their joy in doing so. And voters, especially women voters, said: not so fast.

I've seen this happen before. In the fall of 2000, she debated her opponent in the race for the New York senate seat she won that year. The opponent, Rick Lazio, strode over to her podium and wagged his finger in her face. The media loved the moment, thought Lazio looked tough and declared him the winner.

But over the next couple days, it emerged in polling that people, especially women, thought Clinton had won the debate. The media missed what had really happened, and reported with glee on Clinton's alleged comeuppance. And they helped drive voters, mostly but not wholly women, into Clinton's camp. She took a lead in the polls after that debate that she never relinquished.

Yep. That’s about it. If you don’t want to be surprised, you might stop underestimating women. We just might know where the biggest manipulation is coming from.

Even those of us on the Obamarama just might get so tired of the stupidity and nastiness that we start thinking again about what really makes someone an insider.

I’m probably not the only person who thinks she votes from reason but really votes, at least sometimes, from a deeper, maybe more primitive place.

That’s why I can’t get behind Hillary Clinton, who is much “better” on most issues I care about, but am ready to join the Barack Obama snowball.

This really hit me over the head yesterday when I was researching candidate positions on issues related to aging. If  you want to read the responses to the Leadership Council on Aging questions, to which only three candidates bothered to respond, all of them Democrats, go here.

The bottom line: Clinton’s ideas and plans are richer, deeper, more specific, more nuanced, and altogether better.

And I still can’t bring myself to support her. Like many Democrats, she believes that logic will lead us to a better future. Her appraisal of Obama’s campaign as too much about words is quite accurate. And yet, it’s Obama who inspires faith and hope.  Part of that faith and hope is that he -- and other candidates--will put some real plans behind those promises of  "change" they're all making.

I’m still interested in using real information and good evidence to inform my decisions. Suddenly, that’s gotten a lot easier. If you haven't heard about Project Vote Smart, you should.

The Downtown Rotary is hearing about this “mammoth research organization” and database  as I write. And the Vote Smart bus is parked at the War Memorial Center today only. If you get down there before 4 pm, you’ll have a chance to test one of the most important tools for democracy we’ve had in a long time.

For 16 years, this organization has been developing information delivery platforms and databases that are non-partisan, thorough, and easy to use. The project got its start with the help of William Proxmire and Barry Goldwater, among others.

So for the real poop, go to votesmart.org. Sniff around: you’ll be amazed at what you can learn about the more than 100 presidential candidates--and local elected officials as well. And if you don’t like computers, you can telephone and ask your questions of a living, breathing researcher. Call 1-888-VOTE-SMART (1-888-868-3762). All you’ll need is your nine digit ZIP code. Don’t know it? Find out here.

President George W. Bush believes that the safety of the United States depends on "preventing (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

It's an extraordinary idea, this "knowlege prevention." Google doesn't even recognize the term. Anything you find with both "knowledge" and "prevention" is about avoiding losing knowledge.

The first time I heard the expression "preventing . . .knowledge" in October, I wrote it off as more language blundering. But with the new National Intelligence Estimates-fueled debate about whether Iran really has stopped pursuing nuclear weapons, the phrase is being used with the frequency of propaganda.

I'm not sure how you enforce ignorance. Shut down the schools? Burn the books? Imprison the scientists? The knowledge in question doesn't belong to the United States. It belongs to those who can discover and apply it.

This isn't to say that Iran isn't dangerous. It certainly is. Whatever National Intelligence Estimates show, it seems reasonable to assume that if Iran isn't pursuing nuclear weapons at the moment, it will. Knowledge, after all, is power--nuclear or otherwise.

The work of someone who calls himself the leader of the free world isn't to prevent people from having knowledge. It's to persuade them not to use it badly--the work of diplomacy.

Sometimes, force is needed to prevent bad acts. But not to prevent knowledge.

President Bush is mumbling about World War III. 3,000 Wisconsin National Guard Soldiers have been alerted for service in Iraq. Republicans are leaning toward jovial Mike Huckabee, whose middle eastern solution is "just win it." And everyone's starting to get a glimmer of how deep the financial crisis goes into the banking industry.

So what's the big news story of the day? Some 291 articles' worth?

Jennifer Love Hewitt's butt.

I'm not going to show you the image. Apparently it's too horrifying for the American public. But I'll show you how she looked from the front the same day the butt picture was taken. 

For those who need a guide to the female body, let me elucidate. Those gentle protuberances  below her waist are called "curves." Hips. A tummy. (I can't figure out what to call that part that doesn't involve a childish euphemism, so I'm stuck.)

At 28, the actress has a body that displays a classic small waist to larger hip ratio that shows she has sufficient body fat to conceive and carry a child. That includes some cellulite, which most healthy 15 year old girls have as well. She's come forward to say "enough!" to the negative comments about women's body "imperfections."

Especially when the imperfections in question aren't imperfect. Whether she's a size 0, apparently the ideal; a size 2, as she says she is; or a size 6, she's normal. And like many of us, she's tired of being held to abnormal standards.

My guess is that most men reading this blog are not repulsed by Hewitt's body. Some may even thank me for using her image here, for purely educational purposes of course. After all, she's beautiful.

Some research suggests that social body-type preferences change as times change. In good times, the Marilyn Monroe/Jennifer Love Hewitt type that promises reproductive abundance is popular. But "when times are difficult, reproductive fitness may be less important and the ability to acquire resources and be productive may become more important," according to Pettijohn and Jungeberg's quite respectable Playboy Playmate Curves study.

And that means favoring women who look more like, well, men. Hollywood ups the ante by adding impossibly buoyant large breasts.

Fifty two years ago today, Rosa Parks stayed seated on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and the world changed.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. And it wasn’t a random act. Parks, a seamstress, was active in the voter registration movement for who were then called Negroes. She’d attended a desegregation workshop as a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

“(There) I found out for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society…I gained there the strength to persevere in my work for freedom not just for blacks, but for all oppressed people."

The bus event wasn’t planned, but you might say Parks was primed. Still, it was a signal moment in a struggle for human equality that goes on today.

I remember learning in school about this tired and dignified little old lady who had “spoken” truth to power against the wrong of segregation. Somehow, that image made her arrest more worthy of indignation. Nobody likes the idea of big scary police putting their hands on tiny little old ladies.

But today, I am reminded that Rosa Parks was 42 at the time. Martin Luther King Jr. was 26.

In 1955, 42-year-olds were not old but certainly were considered mature. And that was a good thing. There was work to do: families to raise, mortgages to pay off, business to be done, freedom to be won.

Parks went on to co-found with her husband the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development to help young people pursue education, register to vote and work toward racial peace.

In searching the Net for news about  women around Parks’ age at the time, I found Sarah Jessica Parker and Teri Hatcher. Google links led to “Older women having babies,” “Hottest women over 40,” “Fashion don’ts for women over 40,” “Older women and younger men.”

Pages and pages of diet, exercise, and skin care. Articles about women’s desire to be thinner, sleeker, hotter.

Nothing much about being grown up and taking responsibility for the world.

I don’t know what’s wrong with this picture.

Nearly everyone "frames" what they report, putting it in a particular context of belief that favors their own viewpoint.

For example, a tax that only affects the very rich sounds like a good idea for the rest of us when it's called "the estate tax." Call it the "death tax," however, and we're all against it because, well, it sounds like those taxes are going to hit the rest of us just like death will.

The big buzz around a new health science report published Nov. 7 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that suggests that Vitamin D may slow aging and prevent aging related diseases is a case study in framing.

“These results are exciting because they demonstrate for the first time that people who have higher levels of vitamin D may age more slowly than people with lower levels of vitamin D,” says team leader Brent Richards, an endocrinologist. “This could help explain how vitamin D has a protective effect on many age-related diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. What's interesting is that there's a huge body of evidence that shows sunshine ages your skin—but it also increases your vitamin D levels. So, like many times in medicine, we find there's a trade-off.”

Dozens of sources reported the study this weekend, and nearly all reports clearly come from the same original source, probably a wire service, and included the paragraph above. But however similar the words may be, the headlines make us see different meanings and implications.

The most neutral headline from a Google search came from France, where Food Navigator.com (Europe)  proclaimed:
Live longer with vitamin D, study says

Most reports from the US and England jumped on a weird take best exemplified by Fox News:
Women Who Spend Time in the Sun May Age More Slowly, Study Says. (No mention that the researchers are talking about 10-15 minutes only of direct sun exposure.)

The American FoodConsumer.org missed a bet when they delivered this pitch:
Wanna live longer? Take vitamin D pills

Fortunately, the Times of India got the Wisconsin frame right:
Milk may provide aging benefits

Now you know why so many scientists hate the news media: they just can't avoid the sexy frame that distorts the facts.

However, I'm sure the Times of India, my new source for all information, is the absolutely objective and just plain. . .right. Here's another health story they report, this time from the Universities of Pittsburgh and California:

Curvy women are cleverer, too: study

Curvy women have been admired for their sensual figures. But, a new study has found that ladies with large hips and small waists are cleverer too, than those with apple-shaped bodies. In fact, according to international researchers, women with an hourglass figure are not only intelligent, they also give birth to brighter children, The Sunday Times reported in London on Sunday.

"The fat around fuller hips and thighs holds higher levels of omega3 fatty acids which are essential for the growth of the brain during pregnancy," the researchers were quoted as saying.

Sometimes, they just get it right!

Yesterday (November 6), someone told me that my county supervisor, Jim “Luigi” Schmidt, voted against restoring some budget cuts for human services because Tosans, unlike people in other districts, only care about no new taxes.

I contacted Luigi, who clarified the misperception and his position. People in his district, he said, will accept some tax increases for good reasons—just not as many as the majority of supervisors were willing to vote for. Thee percent is one thing. More than that is another. His moderate position reflects this understanding of the will of his constituents.

He also told me that most of the people he hears from are the no-tax-increasers, not people like me whose bottom line is investing in people, services, and infrastructure to strengthen communities for the long-run.

I’m not sure the supervisors who voted to restore more cuts were voting at the behest of their constituents. A number of them will be punished for doing “the right thing” for the county, as well as for voting for pay increases for themselves.

Those who knew the risk and took it anyway may be heroes, and they may be out of jobs.

In The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, author Bryan Caplan says that it’s not special interests that keep us from developing good economic policies. It’s the voters’ misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and biases that lead us to elect (and re-elect) politicians who create the bad policies we demand.

This raises so many questions.

• What kind of society do we want?
• Do most Tosans prefer no tax increases over anything else?
• How rational and well-informed are our preferences? Do they get us what we really want? How do we know? How do we decide what’s most important when we have a menu of important things?
• When people see the same thing so differently, who is right?
• What kind of voters are we?

Yesterday daughter Liz and I spent a couple hours on the lakefront. But we weren't there to watch the kites. We were there to join an interfaith community's silent demonstration against the violence and repression in Myanmar.

Joining the Buddhist Peace Fellowship of Milwaukee were Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, the whole gamut of Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Jews, believers in peace but not God -- and a few Tosans, too.

It was an unusual event: a couple hundred people walking silently in single file procession from the marina toward the War Memorial. Some carried signs with pictures of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Buddhist monks, Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar opposition leader), simple words. Many in the procession wore red, as had the Buddhist monks who protested peacefully in Burma and were met with violence by the military junta.

We were met by smiles, curious stares, ignoring. But no weapons or even rude remarks.

The wind blew warm and hard, the sky and lake were brilliant, and inline skaters kept rolling by.

You won't find any coverage of this event in the Milwaukee media. I guess it's not as newsworthy as a local women's fantasy football league.

But what's not interesting here, where we often take for granted the great freedoms we have of speech and assembly, is interesting in Myanmar/Burma. Images of the Milwaukee march are being smuggled into that country. Just knowing that people in such distant places are watching and caring might give a little strength to the people there. And a little discomfort to the junta: repression thrives where no one's watching.

We may not be as important as the UN, finally calling for the release of political prisoners, or Japan, beginning to impose economic pressure. But the power of witness is great, and political action doesn't happen without it.

Witnessing and telling what you've seen. . .sounds like a good job for a journalist. . .

 

 If you stop in at the Town Square, you'll find more than one discussion clearly dividing members of one church against members of another.

 I'm talking about the Church of Global Warming versus the Church of Free Enterprise. I wish I could claim credit for that idea, but it belongs to conservative columnist Cal Thomas, who says they are both cults. And "Cultists," he reminds us, "never allow contrary evidence to challenge their beliefs."

 Thomas thinks Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize is a bit of a mockery, if not an abomination. For one thing, Gore violates his own small carbon footprint ideas through extravagant personal use of fuels for transportation. The global warming fundamentalists, Thomas says, want to control others through the power of government. And the science is off as well, he claims, citing a British court finding of nine scientific errors in the film "An Inconvenient Truth."

 That's sounding a little religious, too. The 12 Apostles. The 95 Theses. The 10 Commandments. The 7 Deadly Sins. The 9 Egregious Errors.

 But I digress.  In the Town Square discussion are a few true believers in the Gospel According to Gore. There are a few true believers in the Gospel of Rush Limbaugh.

 You've all heard the basic arguments on both sides. One side warns the end of the earth's climate is at hand, the other warns that the end of personal freedom looms. Those farthest out on the Limbaugh Limb actually argue that global warming is not only the law of Nature or God, but it's a Good Thing. After all, it allows late backyard barbecue and may turn Tosa into the next winter leisure frontier.

 Thomas doesn't tip his hat to the conservatives, however. He says that members of that church missing a great opportunity to join forces to fight a battle against a more universally acknowledged evil: reliance on foreign oil.
 
If we would launch an energy independence program with the intensity of a Marshall Plan for Europe, or a man-on-the-moon project, to liberate ourselves from the petroleum despots by developing synthetic fuels and finding new energy sources closer to home -- especially nuclear power -- we could strike a blow against the Islamofascists more damaging than bombs and bullets.

This will require leadership at the highest level, and it will require a conservative of sufficient stature not to be labeled a compromiser or a fool. Anyone out there who meets the test? And would Al Gore bring his legions with him to the table?

 Most liberals will balk at the nuclear power notion, and maybe even synthetic fuels. But those aren't the only options. What a great thing it would be to come together to find a few big steps we could all take together.

 Meanwhile, the Town Square discussion has a number of moderate voices. JiveTurkey wrote: 

I think whether global warming is man made or natural is a debate that will go one forever. But it is an issue that we and more importantly our kids are going to need to deal with. If it is just some sort of natural cycle that's fine, but so was the ice age and look what that did. It's an issue that the whole world will have to deal with and I do believe that Al Gore did raise people's awareness that there is a global issue at hand.

 Sometimes we talk about meeting face-to-face across a table with coffee and donuts. Anyone interested in a sort of ecumenical council to talk about common ground on big issues?

 No food fights allowed.

After spending Thursday with the County Board Audit and Finance Committee in hopes of overriding the county executive's transit budget, it seemed a little odd to spend the lunch hour today with Scott Walker.

The event was a leader's lunch sponsored by the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee and hosted by the Milwaukee Center for Independence. Walker discussed transit, mental health, and the parks. Then he took questions from the audience. The first was about the Bucks--a way to touch on enhancing trade relations with China.

Then Dick Vogel, executive director of Kathy's House on 103rd Street, raised the issue of Wauwatosa's taxing of nonprofit communities for older adults such as San Camillo. Kathy's House offers a place to stay for families of adults receiving treatment at the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center. It rents the building from St. Camillus, and it too will be affected by tax increases there. That doesn't seem right.

Walker expressed sympathy and said he preferred finding other ways for a city to get revenue from non-profits. But it isn't his issue to solve. 

Just as transit needs to find a new approach that's neither the city's nor the county's but something that works for both, it seems that this tax issue needs to find an approach that's not all or nothing. Parts of continuing care communities serve different functions and can be treated differently. The fairest solutions don't usually lie on either extreme of the spectrum.

I hope Walker's proposal for an independent Parks Board goes through. It seems like a solution, not just a partisan posture.

And though I don't like many of his other ideas, they are at least logical. He's smart, hires good people, and seems to be an honorable man. And he's much more circumspect about slamming the board than they are about slamming him.

You learn a lot more listening to both sides than you do seeking the comfort of the one you think you're on.