Tonight is the first Presidential Debate. I am afraid. Reading this article in the Washington Post only makes me moreso. If this election has really come down to the debate(s), wouldn't we be better off with John Edwards up there instead of John Kerry? He's better in front of a camera, he thinks on his feet, he never missteps, he's got that megawatt smile...

I worry.

Intelligent Republicans or otherwise conservative voters are re-registering as Independents, announcing they will not vote Republican, or out and out saying they will vote for Kerry as the better of two bad (in their view) choices.

Here's who I think are the people still voting for George W. Bush.

People who don't understand finances beyond their own checkbook. People who don't care about any community beyond their own church. People who are not exposed to any culture beyond what they find on TV. People who do not think for themselves. People who have no curiosity, no desire to learn, nothing to reach for, no hope of anything better.

They want a leader who will tell them everything is all right, and will only get better. They want a President who tells them that they don't need to understand the details, because he's taking care of it. When he says, "I'm here to tell you that this country is on the right track," they feel comforted because they don't have to decide for themselves.

Hand them a dollar while you take two away from their schools/firemen/towns and they think they got a good deal. Newcomers, outsiders, people who are _different_ are viewed with suspicion. They do not value diversity, questioning, or intelligence. Instead they value tradition, obedience, and loyalty. And while those are good things, sure, they are not enough to sustain a vibrant, growing, Democratic society.

Do you know some of these people? Get them a vacation to India. Or Brazil. Give their children books for birthdays. Show them pictures of your last trip. Tell them a funny story about your black/white/latino friend. Get them to see that the world is larger than they think, but closer, too.

If you can, ask them why they believe what they do.

Thanks.

I've been meaning to write about this for, like, a year. At least it seems that long. When we had Aidan, I gained the requisite pregnancy pounds along with Tiffany. After he was born, what with the moving, and the thesis, and the moving, and the sleeplessness, and the house selling, and the house buying, and the moving... it kept on going up.

By August of last year, 2003, I weighed about 213 lbs. I'm 6'2", for those of you keeping count, and before then, I had never weighed over 200 lbs. When Tiffany and I were attending regular gym services (before the Life-Destructor came into the picture), I was hovering around 195.

So last year, about this time, we decided to do something about it. I started following the Weight Watchers plan (Tiffany actually attended meetings, I just freeloaded). And I'm a believer. Not in the plan, necessarily, but in the principles behind it. By apportioning "points" to your food, and having a limited number of points you can use in a day, you are forced to think about what you eat. And a little active engagement in their own life never hurt anyone.

Two things I noticed. First, I ate a lot of high-point foods (the usual suspects: Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Arby's, and Hy-Vee deli food). Second, my portions were much bigger than, say the average two-person meal.

I now weigh about 188 lbs. Tiffany is down to below her pre-baby weight, which is awesome. She's been very disciplined, and I only hope I have been helpful.

We stopped tending to our diet early this summer, what with a lot of travelling and the like. At that point I weighed about 185 lbs. While neither of us have really gained back much weight since then, we both agree that we need to get back on the horse here.

The trick at this point is adding exercise to the mix, and neither of us know how we're going to accomplish that. Maybe if I get up at 5:00 am instead of 5:30...

Try spelling mayonnaise five times fast.

Tonight, we had a scrumptious meal from Tiffany's childhood. It started with a hankering for soup. Ham and beans, to be precise. Then she added canned pears with mayonnaise and shredded cheddar on iceberg lettuce, from last Christmas. And finally, our standard cornbread recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook.

We had cornbread fixin's (well, we had to make sour milk to use instead of buttermilk) and mayonnaise, but nothing else, so I was dispatched to the store for provisions. At the store I bought iceberg lettuce (the smallest, cheapest, whitest ball of lettuce I could find. Then I bought the most expensive can of pear halves on the shelf, the ones marked "Lite" and packed in grape juice concentrate, instead of in heavy syrup. Finally, I bought two cans of Campbell's Classic Bean and Bacon condensed soup.

It was simply delicious. The soup may have been a little salty, but Aidan requested two more helpings (and he's getting it for lunch tomorrow, watch out bowels!), and the pears were great. Easy to make and hard to beat.

Tiffany and i were cooking/watching Aidan, listening to the radio. Omaha's local folk show was on (in the 4:00 pm hour on a Sunday, what else would be on?) and they had as a guest a folk singer from Wichita, Kansas. Her name is Piper leigh, and she has a website.

She introduced one of her songs, "You Left Too Soon", and we missed the part where she either did or did not say that she'd written it. On her web site it does distinctly say, "by Piper Leigh." It also, handily enough, provides the lyrics, reprinted below, just in case, and a Real Audio file of the song. (Unfortunately, the ram file seems to be broken.)

As we half-listened to the song, we both did a double-take. "Didn't that sound like the Indigo Girls?" I asked. Tiffany agreed. So we paid more attention, and she did it again. A little incredulous, we kept listening, but after the song she never made any mention of the Indigo Girls. So we dragged out our CDs (how quaint, a fixed medium!) and qeued up Love's Recovery.

And sure enough. Somebody copied somebody. And since all over it says that Emily Saliers wrote the song, I'm guessing she's not the one that ripped it off. Even the melody is a direct rip-off, where the words are the same.

Does this burn anybody else? 'Cause it pisses me off.

For your perusal, the lyrics, emphasis mine, hover your mouse over the linked lyrics to see what the other one sings...

You Left Too Soon, by Piper Leigh

Oh how I wish we had a second chance
So that we could change our circumstance
Put some happier words to this tune
But nobody gets a lifetime rehearsal
Our decisions become universal
The knowledge we have now is what we already knew
Baby, you just left too soon

Insecurity is the wall I hide behind
To let it fall would hurt your pride and mine
How could I show my face beyond this room
Guilt is the cancer of my intellect
The act of love is soon neglected
And lays dying in the strength of its cocoon
Baby, you just left too soon

Chorus
You left too soon to know the wonder that your life would be
The prophecy of God's will come alive
You left too soon to know the thousand things that make your life unique
The harmony that heart and beat combine
You left too soon to know that you were mine

I see myself in younger days
Counting the stars and mapping the ways
My life and love would be
Watching for curves and misdirection
I put my faith in love's perfection
But there's no future in a past that wasn't meant to be…baby

Chorus

and

Love's Recovery by Emily Saliers

During the time of which I speak
It was hard to turn the other cheek
To the blows of insecurity
Feeding the cancer of my intellect
The blood of love soon neglected
Lay dying in the strength of it’s impurity
Meanwhile our friends we thought were so together
They’ve all gone and left each other
In search of fairer weather
And we sit here in our storm and drink a toast
To the slim chance of love’s recovery

There I am in younger days, star gazing
Painting picture perfect maps
Of how my life and love would be
Not counting the unmarked paths of misdirection
My compass, faith in love’s perfection
I missed ten million miles of road I should have seen
Meanwhile our friends we thought were so together
Left each other one by one on the road to fairer weather
And we sit here in our storm and drink a toast
To the slim chance of love’s recovery

Rain soaked and voice choked
Like silent screaming in a dream
I search for our absolute distinction
Not content to bow and bend
To the whims of culture that swoop like vultures
Eating us away, eating us away
Eating us away to our extinction

Oh how I wish I were a trinity
So if I lost a part of me
I’d still have two of the same to live
But nobody gets a lifetime rehearsal
As specks of dust we’re universal
To let this love survive
Would be the greatest gift that we could give
Tell all the friends who think they’re so together
That these are ghosts and mirages
All these thoughts of fairer weather
Though it’s storming out I feel safe within the arms
Of love’s discovery

The sheer, unmitigated gall. Does she think she made it better? Did she think nobody would notice? That someone in a creative profession would take another's work and call it their own... it just floors me.

We just watched our TiVo'ed copy of Meet the Press, and boy, am I floored. Who was that guy masquerading as Pat Buchanan? Bob Graham (D-FL), sitting next to him, could hardly believe it. He kept adding in, "Pat's exactly right..." or "I agree with Pat..." Will Alan Keyes start sounding reasonable next?

Most shocking to me was when Pat made the point Tiffany and I have railed against for years. The Bush Administration consistently plays on the fears of Americans by saying that Muslim extremists kill us because they hate our freedoms, and the American way of life.

BUCHANAN: "I believe it is our policies, not our principles that are causing these attacks.  Osama bin Laden wasn't sitting in some cave in Afghanistan and stumble on the Bill of Rights and go bananas.  It is because of what we are doing.

They attack us because of what we have done, not what we represent. Maybe we support those policies, maybe we don't. But the Administration argues that we don't reason with terrorists because they are crazy, not because their demands are unreasonable. That is the height of irresponsible."

Anyway, I was left kind of speechless by Buchanan's arguments. If that really was Pat Buchanan.