You have to admit that the Russians are good at some things, like making those funny-looking fur hats and drinking vodka. But when it comes to putting down rebel insurrections, they have a poor track record. Anyway, those Chechnyan muslim insurgents are proving to be a handful, so the Russian army is trying something new:

According to the Moskovski Komsomol newspaper, Russian security forces have decided to bury the terrorists from last's week's hostage siege wrapped in pig's skin. The aim is to deter potential Islamic terrorists from future attacks.

Dopplegangers-R-Us

Looking for a job is tough enough, but now you've got to watch out for ID theft, too. Seems that the bad guys have figured out how to leverage monster.com to their advantage by acting as potential employers, who can then snatch an applicant's Social Security number, birthdate, whatever they want. This is clever, since the scammer is posing as someone who wants to give you a job and you want to be helpful, right? The victim interviewed for the article is devastated:

"But it's all out there now. They've got everything, down to my height and weight. I'm just telling you about it so no one else falls for this."

What Were They Thinking? Dept.

Two directors at a St. Louis-based AIDS agency have been fired over their decision to hire a gay-porn movie star at a local safe-sex education event. The idea was that Edgar Gaines (aka: Bobby Blake) would be a big draw for the local gay community, who would show up to see him. And see him they did:

Gaines appeared at the agency-sponsored event wearing a towel and boots. Two former employees of the group also claim Gaines was nude during part of his appearance and allowed some of the two dozen guests to fondle him sexually.

And Now, the Food

In case you didn't notice, we're doing the "sex and food" bit today in order to make everybody happy. We're tossing up this deep-dish story cooking at the NYT today about the various pizza traditions that have risen in America. Talks about the history, the equipment, the recipes, the whole slice. But we're into making our own—and I mean into it. We've been working on getting the crust right for years, and we finally found The Perfect Dough Recipe over at Alton Brown's page. The secret? Rises in the fridge.

6:37:19 PM       

Don't panic. We're not going to get into a whole election wrap-up thing here. Plenty of that going around elsewhere, but still very little is being said about what this means or what sort of conclusions we should draw from the results. Democrats are licking their wounds with the promise of their increased gubernatorial influence being a factor in '06, while the GOP anticipates greased rails and more hands on the ramrod.

The electorate is a predictable organism, however, and none of this came as a surprise. Stimulus, response. In this case the stimuli were largely painful—jobs, security, crime, taxes, the stock market—thus the pain-maddened beast retreated into the safest corner of its cage. The American people get mean when they're angry, and like Philippinos we'll take a Marcos if we think the big stick is going to hurt someone, anyone, for any reason or no reason at all.

But stock prices are looking to surge on these results, and we'll enjoy keeping one eye on our portfolios as they upgrade from "critical" to "guarded" condition. The other half of our attention would be well placed on the rest of the world. We just frightened them a whole lot more. And the War on Drugs appears to be alive and well, shrugging off some intelligent initiatives intended to shut the evil thing down. While the right legislation was on the books in Nevada, Arizona and Ohio, the timing was utterly wrong.

Across the country, there were no viable opposition candidates to the status quo. You had the bastard in office versus the quisling who whined that he'd be "about the same, but maybe better." This strategy doesn't work. Watching George McGovern this morning on NBC giving his views I nearly wept at the memory of what a real alternative used to look like.

What We Can Do

As always, organization is communication. Whether you're a member of the Green Party or Common Cause, you're nothing in a darkened box. You have to get your message out and bring people together. Which is why we were very pleased to see salonblog's own Andrew Bayer get a significant mention on MSNBC's Weblog Central Blogspotting page. I can't overemphasize how important this is.

Andrew Bayer looked at some Scripting News items on this subject and concluded that a bigger deal is being made of campaign blogs than is deserved, in part because none of the "Internet revolution" has changed any of the power hierarchy in America. "The same guys are still on top, and business is still done the same way—just with new tweaks and looks."

We're all participating in a remarkable experiment in self-directed media. Each of us has the potential to write ourselves into a new reality and we make that happen one keystroke at a time. Keep writing.

11:06:15 AM