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For the Spider Lovers. Posted by mojo on 4 November, 2012 http://www.livescience.com/24408-arboreal-tarantulas-new-species.html ? A scientist has discovered nine new species of colorful tree-climbing tarantulas in central and eastern Brazil, including four belonging to a mysterious, old genus and others that are quite picky about which plants to choose as homes. "Instead of the seven species formerly known in the region, we now have sixteen," Rog?rio Bertanim, a researcher at Brazil's Instituto Butantan, said in a statement. So-called arboreal tarantulas previously have been identified in a few tropical places in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and the Caribbean. (The Amazon is their core habitat). These tarantulas have a light, agile build and pads at the end of their legs that make them better equipped to climb over the smooth surfaces of tree branches and plant leaves. This shows the Typhochlaena costae from the Brazilian "cerrado" in the state of Tocantins. "In a resurrected genus ( Typhochlaena) with a mysterious single species known from 1841we have now five species," said Bertanim. "These are the smallest arboreal tarantulas in the world, and their analysis suggests the genus to be very old, so they can be considered relicts of a formerly more widely distributed taxon." Bertanim also described a new species, Pachistopelma bromelicola, that lives only inside bromeliads, a type of flowering plant. "Only a single species had been known to live exclusively inside these plants, and now we have another that specialized in bromeliads as well," Bertanim added. ? ? I love this one. Re-igniting the abortion debate. Posted by mojo on 4 November, 2012 Wasn't sure about re-igniting this debate as it can get pretty emotional but it is important to explore the consequences of what the continual improvements in technology may have. Will the consequence of these advances mean we are closer than ever to designer babies, and will it see an increase in abortions. http://www.livescience.com/24472-fetal-genetic-testing-abortion-wars.html ? Genetic testing is increasingly able to tell parents more about their fetuses with less risk than ever before. But without better regulation, these tests could become the target of anti-abortion groups, a health-law expert says. Writing this week in the journal Nature, Jaime King of the University of California Hastings College of Law warns that early, noninvasive genetic tests for fetuses are becoming increasingly common ? but regulation of these tests isn't keeping up. So far, these noninvasive prenatal tests (NIPTs) are offered for a limited range of genetic diseases under a doctor's supervision, King said. That could soon change. "There are about 50 startups that have been created to look at NIPT technology, and there's nothing that would really prevent them from offering it direct-to-consumer," King told LiveScience. "There's such an interest from prospective parents in knowing as much as they can about their fetus, that if they could do a blood test at home, there would likely be a market for that." ? Noninvasive prenatal tests use maternal blood, not amniotic fluid, to screen for genetic abnormalities. Because tests that use amniotic fluid require puncturing the amniotic sac around the fetus, those methods can increase the risk of miscarriage. Not so for NIPTs, which can also be used earlier in pregnancy. [7 Diseases You Can Learn from a Genetic Test] These technological leaps are occurring at the same time that state legislatures are increasingly pushing anti-abortion laws, creating potential conflict given that news of an untreatable genetic disorder might prompt the choice to abort, King said. Four states have already banned abortion on the grounds of the fetus' sex, and a bill introduced in Missouri would also forbid abortion on the basis of a "genetic abnormality diagnosis." Why we love BEWBS! Posted by mojo on 4 November, 2012 :tits: http://www.livescience.com/23500-why-men-love-breasts.html ? Why do straight men devote so much headspace to those big, bulbous bags of fat drooping from women's chests? Scientists have never satisfactorily explained men's curious breast fixation, but now, a neuroscientist has struck upon an explanation that he says "just makes a lot of sense." ? When a woman's nipples are stimulated during breast-feeding, the neurochemical oxytocin, otherwise known as the "love drug," floods her brain, helping to focus her attention and affection on her baby. But research over the past few years has shown that in humans, this circuitry isn't reserved for exclusive use by infants. Recent studies have found that nipple stimulation enhances sexual arousal in the great majority of women, and it activates the same brain areas as vaginal and clitoral stimulation. When a sexual partner touches, massages or nibbles a woman's breasts, Young said, this triggers the release of oxytocin in the woman's brain, just like what happens when a baby nurses. But in this context, the oxytocin focuses the woman's attention on her sexual partner, strengthening her desire to bond with this person. In other words, men can make themselves more desirable by stimulating a woman's breasts during foreplay and sex. Evolution has, in a sense, made men want to do this. Its not our fault....evolution made us do it!!!!! :lol: ? So, why did this evolutionary change happen in humans, and not in other breast-feeding mammals? Young thinks it's because we form monogamous relationships, whereas 97 percent of mammals do not. "Secondly, it might have to do with the fact that we are upright and have face-to-face sex, which provides more opportunity for nipple stimulation during sex. In monogamous voles, for example, the nipples are hanging toward the ground and the voles mate from behind, so this didn't evolve," he said. "So, maybe the nature of our sexuality has allowed greater access to the breasts." :motorboat: Study: Beautiful people are boring!! Posted by mojo on 4 November, 2012 http://elitedaily.com/elite/2012/study-beautiful-people-boring/ written by a very ugly man ahahahahahaha............... ? A new study published in the Psychological Science journal confirms that beauty and charm are not at all linked. If anything, they seem to have a negative correlation. A group of scientists discovered whether physically attractive people also have appealing character traits and values. According to Lihi Segal-Caspi, who carried out part of the research, "beautiful people tend to focus more on conformity and self-promotion than independence and tolerance". By conformity Segal-Caspi means that they are boring. Beautiful people seem to have a similar sense of style, similar hobbies and like to talk about topics that won?t stimulate the intellect. It is the conformity that makes people lose that something special that makes them seem more interesting. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/wom...-worth-it.html lips !!! Posted by SCREAMMMMMM on 3 November, 2012 Happy 58th Birthday GODZILLA 11/3/1954 Posted by BaltimoreBob on 3 November, 2012 Godzilla (58) 11/3/1954 --------- Born: Tokyo, Japan / 'Godzilla' the creature debuted in 1954. --------- 'Gojira' (1954) Directed by: Ishir? Honda / Writing credits: Ishir? Honda --------- Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi / Drama (more) --------- Tagline: Incredible, unstoppable titan of terror! (more) --------- Plot Outline: American nuclear weapons testing results in the creation of --------- a seemingly unstoppable, dinosaur-like beast. --------- User Rating: 6.9/10 (935 votes) --------- Cast overview, first billed only: --------- Akira Takarada as Hideto Ogata / Momoko Kochi as Emiko Yamane. --------- Actress Momoko Kochi was born on Baltimore Bob's birthday (March 7) but in 1932. --------- Godzilla (1954) born exact same day as singer Adam Ant. Vote BARACK & things will be Bad but Vote MITT(Williard) & things will be Far Worse Posted by BaltimoreBob on 3 November, 2012 So there you go as you won't be much better voting for Obama but things will slide into HELL voting for Mitt Romney. Mitt is a PISCES like myself. And he's Too Old to be President Cut off age should be no older than 60.(35-60) Most 65 year olds are now enjoying Retirement. Mitt Romney (65) 1947 ----------- Born: Detroit, Michigan / Birth Name: Willard Mitt Romney ----------- * George Wilcken Romney (1907-1995) - Died age 88 ----------- * Date of Birth July 8, 1907 in Colonia Dubl?n, Galeana, Chihuahua, Mexico. ----------- * Date of Death July 26, 1995 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. ----------- The son of George W. Romney (the Governor of Michigan) and Lenore Romney, ----------- he was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and during his college years served ----------- as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France. ----------- He married Ann Davies in 1969 and they have five children together. ----------- Spouse: Ann Romney (m. 1969) ----------- Children: Taggart (Tagg) (b. 1970), Matthew (b. 1971), Joshua (b. 1975) ----------- Benjamin (b. 1978) and Craig (b. 1981). ----------- He received an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University, ----------- and then earned a joint JD and MBA from Harvard University. ----------- He entered the management consulting business, ----------- which led to a position at Bain & Company. ----------- American businessman and politician. ----------- He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and he is the ----------- presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for the 2012 presidential election. ----------- 2012 Romney was named to the Times 100 list of most influential people in the world. ----------- Willard (2003) about a RAT. ----------- The Republican candidate for President for 2012 election (2013-2016). ----------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_romney Obama is a LEO and I hate to say it but Leo's are LIAR's My #1 for August 4th is Barack Obama (51) 1961 ? Born on a Friday like Baltimore Bob?s ex-wife Faith Born: Honolulu, Hawaii / Height: 6' 1?" (1.87 m) As of 2007 is the most Famous Person born in Hawaii. Birth Name: Barack Hussein Obama Jr. / Nicknames: Barry, Bama & Rock Born to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936-1982) and Ann Dunham (1942-1995), married from 1960 to 1965. His first name comes from the word that means "blessed by God" in Arabic. In the Kenyan town where his father was born, the long-brewed "Senator" brand of beer has been nicknamed "Obama." Barack Obama was born to a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, who were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for Harvard, she and Barack stayed behind, & his father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. His mother died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at age 53, and Baltimore Bob?s Mom Ann also died of ovarian cancer in 1981 at age 56. 2008: His Grandmother just died recetly in November 2008. The movie he saw on his first date with Michelle Obama was ?Do the Right Thing? (1989). Spouse: Michelle Obama (18 October 1992 - present) 2 children Has two daughters, Malia (born in 1999) and Natasha (born in 2001). U.S. Senator from Illinois since 3 January 2005. On "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (1993), he revealed that President George W. Bush nicknamed him "Bama" and "Rock". Several celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Halle Berry and Macy Gray support his 2008 presidential campaign. At his wife's suggestion, he quit smoking before his campaign to win the Democratic nomination began. Holds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship. His paternal relatives still live in Kenya. One of his ancestors was Mareen Duvall, also an ancestor of actor Robert Duvall. Shares his surname with a small city in western Japan, which means "small shore" in Japanese. Confessed teenage drug experiences in his memoirs "Dreams from My Father". Won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word for the CD version of his autobiography "Dreams From My Father" (2006). Candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 US presidential election. President of the USA from January 2009 to January 2013. Obama was elevated to #1 status replacing MLB 100 Legend Roger Clemens (I) (1962) on Tuesday August 4th 2009. Barack Obama (1961) born exact same day as REGIS Show Michael Gelman Reparations for Vietnam Vets more likely paid by Obama. Righteous Robert Sunday: Remembering Top Banana News Anchor Walter Cronkite (11/4/1916 - 2009) Posted by BaltimoreBob on 3 November, 2012 My #1 Celebrity Birthday Person for November 4th is Walter Cronkite (96) 1916 Born: St. Joseph, Missouri / Nickname: Uncle Walter & Walter Wilcox Baltimore Bob worked for PDS in St. Joseph, Missouri circa 1984. He is an only child / His family heritage is Dutch-Scottish. His mother Helen died in 1993 at the age of 101. The very day he was born, his father immediately left the hospital and went out and voted for President Woodrow Wilson. Betsy Cronkite, his wife, was working as a newspaper journalist when they met. He met his wife Betsy when he was working at a radio station in Kansas City. The two were paired up to do a cosmetics commercial and married a year later. Spouse: Betsy Maxwell (30 March 1940 - present) 3 children His stage name during his days in radio was Walter Wilcox. His first job as a journalist was as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Times. Attended both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1928. The former was on a boy scout field trip and the latter was during a visit to his grandparents in Kansas City. Makes a unique claim about his television career. When he attended 1933 World's Fair, he was present at an exhibit displaying an early example of television. At the exhibit, the attendees were allowed to sit in front of the camera and watch themselves on the screen. When Cronkite sat in front of the camera he did an improptu impression of a man he had seen playing two flutes at once. Therefore, he jokingly claims that he was definitely on television decades before his contemporaries. CBS asked Cronkite to come up with a signature closing line for the evening news. When he came up with "And that's the way it is", CBS was concerned that it would suggest a certain infallability. But Cronkite explained that it would fit any type of story whether it was funny or sad or ironic. In 1964 he was fired from his anchorman duties at the Democratic National Convention. CBS had gotten a new president who had never worked on a presidential campaign and had definite ideas about how CBS would be covering it. It turned out to be a mess and as a result Cronkite got some of the blame so the network executives removed him from the coverage but kept him as the anchorman of the evening news. Jokingly Cronkite became buddies with the president of NBC and the people at CBS were horrified that he was being offered a job in the rival network. So when the Republican Convention rolled around Cronkite got to cover it without using the new president's tactics. At the birth of television, he and his team at CBS practically invented the institution of the evening news program. In 1951, one of the stage managers at CBS told him to sit at the desk and do the news. Cronkite asked what he meant and the managers simply said "I don't know just do it". His idea was to first just talk to the camera like another person and organize the news stories in the same vein as the newspaper beginning with the top story and working his way down to human interest stories. Reported on the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals in 1945. Journalist since 1937; with CBS television since 1950 '1950 Baltimore Bob is born.' Was the lead anchor on the CBS Evening News from 16 April 1962 until 6 March 1981. Was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. This is the highest honor a U.S. civilian can receive. ?We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story? (1993) (voice) as Captain Neweyes. 2009 Update: Died at age 92 on 17 July 2009, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA (complications from dementia) Baltimore Bob believes that no one can die from Dementia. Dementia is an illness that strikes every old person at one time or at a later age. Orlando Pace (38) 1974 - Offensive tackle - Born: Sandusky, Ohio / Height: 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) / Weight: 325 lb (147 kg) - Birth Name: Orlando Lamar Pace - NFL Draft: 1997 / Round: 1 / Pick: 1 / St. Louis Rams (1997-2008) - Pace attended Sandusky High School and played for the Blue Streaks, - where he was a two-sport athlete in basketball and football. - He averaged 18 points per game as a center on the Blue Streaks varsity basketball team. - The football team retired his jersey number, - 75, in a ceremony during half time of a game on October 20, 2006. - Pace played college football at Ohio State University, - as only the second true freshman ever to start on opening day for - the prestigious Buckeyes football team. - He won the Outland Trophy in 1996 for the best college football interior lineman. - He won the Lombardi Award for the best college lineman or linebacker - in 1995 and 1996 becoming the only two-time winner of that award. - He is one of only twelve players to have won both the Outland Trophy & the Lombardi Award. - He and Dave Rimington are the only three-time winners in the Outland/Lombardi category. - He was a finalist for the 1996 Heisman Trophy finishing fourth in the voting, the - highest finish for a lineman (offense or defense) since Hugh Green finished second in 1980. - Pace is considered by many to be the top offensive tackle in the history of college football. - He was drafted by the St. Louis Rams first overall in the 1997 NFL Draft. - A five-time All-Pro and seven-time Pro Bowl selection, - Pace earned a Super Bowl ring with the Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV. - Pace was injured during the Rams' 2007 season opener against - the Carolina Panthers on September 9, 2007. - Officials confirmed that Pace would be out for the entire 2007 season, - severely jeopardizing the Rams' potent offense for the remainder of the season. - Pace was released by the St. Louis Rams on March 10, 2009, to save $6 mil. under the salary cap. - 2009: Frere Agent signed by ? - Baltimore Bob added Orlando on Wednesday March 18th 2009. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Pace 2009: 6th Game of the 2009 World Series ? PHILLIES at New York Yankees. Yankees beat Phillies for the 2nd time in a World Series (1st in 1950 in 4 games). Happy 52nd Birthday Volleyball's Best Top Banana Karch Kiraly 11/3/1960 Posted by BaltimoreBob on 3 November, 2012 My #1 Celebrity Birthday Person for November 3rd is Karch Kiraly (52) 1960 Born: Jackson, Mississippi / Height: 188 cm (6 ft 2 in) & Weight: 93 kg (210 lb) Birth Name: Charles Frederick Kiraly At UCLA, Kiraly studied Biochemistry and graduated cum laude in June 1983 with a 3.34 cumulative GPA. Karch retired from the AVP tour at the end of the 2007 season, but as of 2008 still works as a broadcaster for ESPN in addition to continuing color commentary for AVP on NBC broadcasts. Kiraly served as an analyst for NBC Sports coverage of Beach Volleyball at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Kiraly resides in San Clemente, California, with his wife Janna and two sons, Kristian and Kory. His father, Laszlo Kiraly, had played for the Hungarian national volleyball team. * Misty Erie May-Treanor born July 30, 1977 in Los Angeles, CA, USA. He babysat Misty May-Treanor when he was younger. * The Doubles team of Misty & Kerri Walsh probably the #1 Womans Team of All Time. American volleyball player who is the only person to have won Olympic gold medals in both the indoor and beach versions of the sport. 2012: Karch as assistant coach helped lead the USA Women's Volleyball team to the Silver Medal at London in the 2012 Olympics as the Brazil team won their 2nd straight Olympics and Karch was named the Head Coach for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Baltimore Bob says ?the 'Greatest Living' Volleyball player.? He was inducted into UCLA's Hall of Fame in 1993. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karch_Kiraly 1978: 11/3/1978: Day of the Woman (1978) Release Date: 3 November 1978 (USA) & Baltimore Bob was 28 years old. 3 days later-11/6/1978 was the 22nd Birthday of Marge who BB met on 3/15/1978. Actress Camille Keaton born 20 July 1950, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, played Jennifer Hills. Roger Ebert film critic born 18 June 1942, Urbana, Illinois called this the Worst Film he has ever seen and he states he saw about 10,000. 2010: 11/3/2010: Last time in space for the Shuttle Discovery: Lift off on Wednesday 11/3/2010 at 3:52 p.m. EDT (1952 GMT) on a mission to the International Space Station. It will be the 133rd shuttle mission, as well as the 39th and last flight of Discovery ? NASA's oldest orbiter currently in service. The shuttle will be retired after this voyage as the space agency winds down its shuttle program in 2011 after 30 years. Flight was postponed from Monday November 1st 2010. 2011: 30th Anniversary of PHILLY?s CITY PAPER: Baltimore Bob on this Date in 1981 was living in PHILADELPHIA area 1909 Humphrey Merry Way in Elkins Park, PA just a few miles north of Philly. overheard in a diner... Posted by Cogburn on 3 November, 2012 "I think Obama was born in the United States but he originated in Africa." WITS? Who lost the world? Posted by bitdrops on 3 November, 2012 Who lost the world? By Ira Chernus, Nov 1, 2012 Who lost Libya? Indeed, who lost the entire Middle East? Those are the questions lurking behind the endless stream of headlines about "Benghazi-gate". Here's the question we should really ask, though: How did a tragic but isolated incident at a US consulate, in a place few Americans had ever heard of, get blown up into a pivotal issue in a too-close-to-call presidential contest? My short answer: the enduring power of a foreign policy myth that will not die, the decades-old idea that America has an inalienable right to "own" the world and control every place in it. I mean, you can't lose what you never had. This campaign season teaches us how little has changed since the early Cold War days when Republican stalwarts screamed, "Who lost China?" More than six decades later, it's still surprisingly easy to fill the political air with anxiety by charging that we've "lost" a country or, worse yet, a whole region that we were somehow supposed to "have". The "Who lost ...?" formula is something like a magic trick. There's no way to grasp how it works until you take your eyes away from those who are shouting alarms and look at what's going on behind the scenes. Who's in charge here? The curious case of the incident in Benghazi was full of surprises from the beginning. It was the rare pundit who didn't assure us that voters wouldn't care a whit about foreign affairs this year. It was all going to be "the economy, stupid", 24/7. And if foreign issues did create a brief stir, surely the questions would be about Afghanistan, Pakistan, or China. Yet for weeks, the deaths of the US ambassador to Libya, J Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans became the rallying cry of the campaign to unseat Barack Obama. What made this even more surprising: when news of the tragedy first broke, it appeared to be stillborn as a political issue. The day after the attack on the consulate, as the news about the killings was just coming out, Mitt Romney rushed to blast his opponent: "American leadership is necessary to ensure that events in the region don't spin out of control." A president must show "resolve in our might" and a readiness to use "overwhelming force". Barack Obama had failed on all these counts, Romney charged, and the deaths in Benghazi proved it. The Republican presidential candidate was duly blasted in return for "politicizing" the incident. It seemed like almost everyone chimed in critically. Even longtime Republican stalwart Ed Rogers wrote that "Romney stumbled", while "the president said the right things and had the right tone". Romney never retracted anything he said on that first day - and somehow the same words, once scorned as unfitting and "unpresidential", were mysteriously transformed into powerful arguments against re-electing the incumbent. A month later, a new story dominated the headlines: Romney's criticisms on Libya were now said to be hitting the target, changing the dynamic, playing a major role in his campaign's resurgence. This change of tune surely reflected in part the media's primal need for a close presidential contest to keep the public's interest. At the time of the Libyan incident, it was generally agreed that Obama was beginning to pull ahead in the race, potentially decisively, and anything that might boost Romney's chance was undoubtedly welcome on an editor's desk. No matter how hard editors try, though, some stories just don't stick. But the Libya story stuck. It struck a chord somewhere in the hearts and minds of a lot of Americans. You have to wonder why. A big part of the answer lies in the power of the key words in Romney's first statement: "might" and "control". His strategists grasped a fundamental truth of American politics: the public has an endless appetite for gripping stories about challenges to America's global might and its right to control the world. So they doubled down and sent their man out to tell the story again. In his first major foreign policy speech, Romney absolved his opponent of any direct responsibility for the four American deaths, but he pilloried Obama for a far more grievous sin. By a wild leap of imagination, he turned this one incident into the spearhead of a vast assault on America: "Our embassies have been attacked. Our flag has been burned... Our nation was attacked." The president's job is to protect us by dominating our enemies, the challenger proclaimed. It's our consistent record of victory as well as our values that make America "exceptional" - and on Obama's watch, as the incident in Benghazi proved, America and its exceptionalism had gone down for the count. This was not simply an exaggerated indictment of presidential "weakness". As he had on that first day, Romney was again raising a question even more crucial to any popular narrative of American foreign policy: Who's in charge here? After all, what's the point of being the global superpower if not to keep control of events around the world? As Romney put it succinctly: "It is the responsibility of our president to use America's great power to shape history." And on that most crucial count, he insisted, Obama had failed dismally and a US ambassador had paid for that failing with his life. A bipartisan mythology The debates gave Romney a chance to sharpen his attack. In the second of them, Obama deftly deflected the charges about Libya (though he never actually answered them). By the time the third debate rolled around, Romney's strategists apparently saw no benefit and lots of risk in pressing the Libyan question. But they still saw plenty of benefit in keeping the broader issue alive. So Romney rushed past Libya, saying, "We've seen in nation after nation a number of disturbing events." He built his case using fearful images: "I see the Middle East with a rising tide of violence, chaos, tumult... You see al-Qaeda rushing in." Power in Washington needed to be restored to the right hands so that, wearing "the mantle of leadership", the US could "help the Middle East" turn back "the rising tide of tumult and confusion" and subdue the terrorists. Translation: for decades nearly all the governments in the Middle East, the energy heartland of the planet, were our allies (more precisely, our clients, though that word was never used in polite company). We could build up their militaries, support their autocratic regimes, and count on them to quell any expressions of anti-American sentiment. Now, under Obama, this crucial area of the world, once well under our thumb, was spinning out of control. Lose control by failing to exercise our might and we lose our safety. Strength, control, and national security are all parts of the same package; nothing matters more to America - and Obama was letting it all go down the drain. So the Republican story went (with copious document leaks on the Libyan "cover-up" and the like from congress). What had been considered an Obama strong suit - he was, after all, the man who took out Osama bin Laden - suddenly seemed to have been trumped. The Democrats actually responded by putting out a remarkably similar story about (as the president termed it in the third debate) "strong, steady leadership", which, they claimed, was preventing the Middle East from spinning out of control. In other words, we hadn't really lost Libya at all. But that was the only point in dispute. The debate between Republicans and Democrats wasn't about goals in the Middle East, where support for autocratic friends like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain is assumed, and both sides agree on the need for democratic elections, religious pluralism, a free press, empowering women, strengthening free enterprise capitalism, and destroying Islamist terrorists. More broadly, both sides agree, as they have for decades, that Washington's overriding foreign policy goal must be to shape history, control the world, and make it mirror American values and serve American interests. This mythic vision of American foreign policy is a rare example of long-term bipartisan consensus. When I call it myth, I don't mean it's a lie. I mean it's a foundational narrative of American power that expresses our most basic assumptions about the world, a story in which every nation on the planet is, theoretically, ours to lose. To most Americans (though not to much of the rest of the world), this narrative does not reflect sheer hubris and intoxication with imperial power. It's just good common sense. Throughout our history, at the heart of the dominant national mythology has been the assumption that the US should be the world's "locomotive" and all the other nations "the caboose" (as president Harry Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once said). The reason for this was simple (at least to Americans): we were the first and greatest nation founded on the universal moral truths that are supposedly self-evident to any reasonable person. Sure, controlling the world would serve our self-interest in all sorts of tangible ways. However, our primary self-interest, so the myth maintains, always was and always will be the moral improvement - perhaps even perfection - of the entire world. By serving ourselves we serve all humanity. The fiercest political battle of all The only question worth debating, then, is how we can use our preponderant power and wealth most shrewdly to maintain effective control. Most Americans expect their president to know the answer. At the same time, most Americans worry that he might not. A more recent pillar of the bipartisan narrative, the myth of homeland insecurity, suggests the opposite. According to that myth, no matter how much military strength we have or control we exert, there is always "a rising tide of tumult" somewhere that threatens our national security. At every moment, somewhere in the world, we have something crucial to lose. The name of the threat can change with surprising ease. But the peril must always be there. It's essential to the story. And that story, in turn, is now essential to every presidential contest. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd once wrote, "Every election has the same narrative: Can the strong father protect the house from invaders?" (Think of Ronald Reagan and the Iran captivity tale or George W Bush and 9/11.) If one candidate is the incumbent, the question becomes: has he been a strong enough father to control the world and thereby protect the house? Every challenger plays on that anxiety, picking the most obvious or convenient example of the day as a hook on which to hang the perennial charges of weakness and peril. Since the "Who lost China?" days, Republicans have played this card especially skillfully. This year it seemed that a Democrat who "surged" in Afghanistan, killed bin Laden, and personally ran a drone assassination campaign from the White House had, for once, successfully protected his right flank against the predictable GOP attack. Then fate sent the Libyan killings to the Romney campaign, the newsrooms, and a big portion of the American public. Give Romney's people credit: they sensed the opportunity from day one. Mitt had to demand "Who lost Libya?" and then transform it into "Who lost the Middle East?" - not merely to boost his chances but because a big slice of the public yearns for such a "debate". After all, every time the question of "Who lost [fill in the blank]?" arises, it reaffirms both the reassuring promise that we deserve to control the world and the disturbing anxiety that we might lose what is rightly ours. What was, for all its tragic dimensions, a minor event in Libya became a central campaign issue because it proved to be this season's code word for the whole mythological package. For many Americans, the deepest reassurance may come simply from sensing that our traditional mythology - the familiar lens through which we view our nation and its role in the world - is still intact. On the horizon, though, we can dimly see a new question rising: how much longer can this mythology survive? It suffered a major wound in the Vietnam War era, when the fantasy of global control was rudely punctured by reality. That wound has been ripped open again by fruitless wars and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Now, there are so many unsettling changes around the world that we can't predict, much less control, them. Soon enough - perhaps by 2020, or even 2016 - the political battle cry may be: "Who lost the world?" It's even possible to imagine that, some day, Americans will engage in the debate we really need - about choosing a new paradigm for foreign policy that fits today's world, where the fantasy of global control has become irrelevant because the facts so obviously contradict it, as American power declines while other nations steadily gain strength. Don't expect the old mythology to disappear quietly, though. Old myth versus new myth is the fiercest political battle of all. Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a TomDispatch regular, and author of Mythic America: Essays. He blogs at MythicAmerica.us.

Source: http://freedomroad2012.blogspot.com/2012/11/amerikan-konspiracy-free-speech_3.html

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