The chances of Greg Orman defeating Senator Pat Roberts in Kansas just got a whole lot better. A lawsuit which tried to force the Kansas Democratic Party to field a candidate in the race just essentially got laughed out of court, which means there will be no Democrat on the ballot at all. Roberts will be on the ballot as the incumbent Republican, Orman will appear as an Independent, and there will also be a third candidate, Libertarian Randall Batson. But no Democrat will appear.

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As you can tell from that title, today's column is going to be nothing short of nit-pickery. But then my original plan (due to lots of offline stuff that needed doing today) was just to re-run an old column, so at least this way you get to read something new, even if it is nothing more than an extended tangential semantic complaint. But I feel the complaint is a valid one, or to put it another way, I feel this nit needs picking.

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Wars always seem to produce inappropriately cute phrases in American culture. These usually have origins in military shorthand and are then picked up by politicians and pundits and used ad nauseam until everyone just ignores the inherent dehumanization of the language. Examples from the past abound: "domino theory," "Vietnamization," "limited warfare," "surgical bombing," and a more recent example that I always personally objected to (mostly for its "aren't pirates cute" nature) -- "blood and treasure." This time around, of course, the phrase now on everyone's lips is: "boots on the ground."

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Congress followed up their recent five-week vacation with almost two whole weeks of actually doing their jobs, so to reward themselves they're now going to take off on another vacation. Until mid-November. The American people will show their disgust at this pathetic work ethic by returning upwards of ninety percent of them to office, if this year is anything like a typical one. The big question on everyone's mind is whether the Democrats will hold onto control of the Senate, which will mean two years of gridlock with the Republican House, or whether Republicans will gain control of the Senate, which will mean two years of gridlock with both the Tea Party and the president.

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OK, with that out of the way, let's take a look at how President Obama did in job approval polling last month. The results were mixed, but overall fairly positive. Here's the new chart:

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President Barack Obama has always been a reluctant warrior. It is, in fact, one of the big reasons he was elected, since America had turned away from the cowboy swagger of Bush and Cheney by 2008. Tonight, President Obama laid out the case for escalating a war we've already begun, in Iraq and Syria. He presented his plan to the public, and gave his reasons for why America should become more involved in the fight against the Islamic State (or, variously, ISIS or ISIL), and explained what America would and would not be doing in the coming months.

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President Obama gave a press conference recently, and -- since it is still the political Silly Season -- got a lot of media attention. For what he was wearing. No, seriously. Washington was all a-twitter (or even a-Twitter) because Obama wore a suit that was not dark blue or black. While some may smack their heads over the idiocy of what passes as the Washington press corps, the right thing to do is to celebrate how males have finally reached sartorial equality with women, when viewed by political "journalists." This is not a backhanded compliment, I hasten to point out, it is meant as a backhanded insult. Because it is always insulting to a politician to focus on what she (or, now, he) is wearing, instead of reporting on the substance of her words and actions. This has been going on for women in politics for exactly as long as women have been in American politics, right up to Hillary Clinton's pantsuits and Sarah Palin's shopping spree. All women know this -- they will be judged on what they wear, sometimes more than what they say or do. Especially female politicians. President Obama is just getting a tiny taste of what women have had to put up with in the political arena since Day One. So I choose to celebrate this new equality (of the idiocy of the political press), and the closing of this particular part of the gender gap.

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"It's quiet out there... too quiet."

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The national Democratic Party is reluctant to support divisive issues, at times. They drag their feet until pressured by a significant faction within their own base to stop waffling and take a clear progressive stand. This is pretty much common knowledge, and the same can actually be said to a differing extent for the Republican Party (although you'd have to replace the word "progressive" with "conservative" to make it work). What usually pressures the national party enough to act is when large party donors begin to threaten to turn off the spigot, which puts the flow of money to the national party at significant risk. Gay marriage advocates (for example) had gotten a lot of lip service and lukewarm support from Democrats, right up until they started drawing a line in the sand: no marriage equality support, no more donations. Which led to not only President Obama but the entire Democratic Party quickly "evolving" on the issue. This may now be starting to happen on the subject of marijuana.

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This past weekend, in the middle of the night, the San Francisco Bay Area felt the biggest earthquake since that day in '89. Thankfully, though, it was only a 6.0 on the Richter scale (compared to Loma Prieta's 6.9), thankfully it happened in the middle of the night (when few are out on the streets), thankfully the quake's effects were not felt in nearly so wide an area (the worst damage in 1989 -- in San Francisco and Oakland -- was fully eighty miles from the epicenter), and most thankfully it happened in a largely agricultural area without dense urban populations. All of these things combined for a very low casualty rate for such a large quake. Even so, at least one death has been reported, and others were injured by falling debris and fires (gas line ruptures are common in earthquakes). Any quake of 6.0 or greater is powerful enough to cause major damage, especially if it goes on for more than a few seconds. On a personal note, I live far from Napa and didn't even feel this weekend's quake (granted, I was asleep at the time).

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