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The current state of the race:

If you are Kendrick Meek, that’s not pretty. And Gov. Charlie Crist has deftly (if cynically) moved left to stake out the left of center in his indy bid in this three-way race. In the past few weeks alone, he has vetoed a GOP attempt to break the teacher’s union in Florida, decided to oppose offshore drilling after supporting it, is likely to veto a nasty anti-choice bill passed by the GOP-dominated legislature (despite supposedly being anti-abortion), and just came out for repeal of DADT after long opposing it.

This is all driving Meek bonkers, as Crist’s newfound progressivism merely parrots positions Meek has long held. But it’s hard to argue with the results. Florida Dems and Independents have always given the governor high marks, and these latest moves just aligns him better with the Florida mainstream. And Democrats, unwilling to give teabagger hero Marco Rubio an easy Senate seat, are already abandoning the Democrat for Crist.

So what should Meek do? Well, calls for him to step aside are stupid and premature. There are over five months left in the campaign, and history has plenty of examples of front-runners nuking each other to the benefit of a quiet, lesser-known third candidate. Ask Creigh Deeds about that. (Then again, don’t. I never want to hear from that guy again.)

Running so tightly together, Rubio and Crist have to focus on each other, and it’ll make little sense to spend precious campaign resources hitting the guy with 16% support. This way, Meek can do his own thing, mostly undisturbed, and hope he’s the only palatable choice left after Rubio and Crist have made each other radioactive.

Is this a likely path to victory? Probably not. But it’s certainly plausible.

But here’s the thing — Democrats will have a decision to make when they finally cast their ballots. They’ll have two options to choose from as they try to hand the teabaggers their biggest potential loss of the cycle. By then, Crist will have promised to caucus with the Democrats (mark my words, he’ll need to announce that if he hopes to lock up late Democratic support). The only question will be whether Crist or Rubio Meek is best positioned to deliver that defeat.

But there’s no need to make that call now. Meek is certainly viable, and in a three-way race, anything can happen.

You have to hand it to British Petroleum. Top kill failed, new evidence shows that the company was well warned of the Deepwater Horizon rig’s “serious problems and safety concerns,” and the company’s “systemic failure” now endangers the cleanup workers; but at least it knows how to stage a photo op.

Via Amanda Terkel, of Think Progress, New Orleans NBC affiliate WDSU reports:

Officials from Jefferson Parish claim BP bused 400 cleanup workers into Grand Isle on Friday in time for a visit from President Barack Obama.

Extra workers supposedly were brought in to help, but…

The extra workers were brought in for Friday only, at a rate of an hour, officials told WDSU. They were mostly from Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.

President Obama was visiting Grand Isle, a tourist haven now facing economic destruction as its beaches are soaked in oil and chemical dispersants.

(Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris) Roberts said that since oil started coming ashore in Grand Isle last week, no more than a dozen workers hired by BP have been seen on the beaches in the area, until Friday when the president arrived.

BP is on top of at least one part of the story. The story part of the story.

Memorial Day opinion.

EJ Dionne:

Why is it that Memorial Day, a holiday honoring our war dead, has become an occasion for beach-going, barbecues and baseball?

Greg Jaffe/WaPo: Small talk:

Yanks-Sox border wars, CT

What soldiers really talk about:

Is Connecticut in New England?

The first soldier gamely insisted that Connecticut couldn’t possibly be part of New England because everyone from Connecticut cheers for New York sports teams: the Giants, the Jets, the Mets, the Yankees, etc.

“Do you even [expletive] know where Connecticut is?” the other soldier demanded. “I mean, could you even find it on an [expletive] map?”

The first soldier didn’t answer. It was pretty obvious to all that he couldn’t find Connecticut on an [expletive] map. Instead he reeled off the states that he thought were in New England: Massachusetts, Vermont, New  Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island.

A third voice from the darkness suggested that Long Island is also in New England. But the first two soldiers — both from Boston — told him to shut up, because Long Island is definitely in New York, and New York is not on anybody’s New England list.

The correct answer is that eastern CT is part of Red Sox Nation and western CT is an outpost of the Evil Empire (see map.) The guy who didn’t know where Lon Gisland Lawn Guyland was is probably from Arizona.

CS Monitor:

The Gulf oil spill is indeed a Hurricane Katrina-sized public relations disaster for someone. But that someone may be BP, not President Obama…

However, the spill certainly has undercut public support for offshore drilling, at least for the moment. Forty-six percent of respondents to the CBS poll agreed that the risks are now too great for the US to increase offshore oil exploration. Two years ago, only 28 percent of Americans felt that way, according to CBS.

If nothing else, Americans appear to view the BP Deepwater Horizon spill and its aftermath as a defining event. Almost 40 percent feel it will turn out to be the worst environmental disaster in 100 years, according to Gallup. And they are following the story with intensity. Eighty-seven percent of Americans say they are watching Deepwater Horizon disaster’s events “very closely,” according to the recent Gallup poll.

Gallup:

With 87% saying they are following news of the oil spill closely including 47% “very closely,” it ranks among the top 10 most closely followed news stories Gallup has measured since 1991.

But it ranks behind Princess Diana.

Michael T. Klare:

What can be determined from the information available is that the April 20 explosion occurred because BP managers were in a hurry to seal off the well so they could move the rig (which BP leased from Transocean for 0,000 per day) to another drilling location. To speed up the move, BP’s managers evidently approved the risky exit procedure that led to the lethal explosion. At one level, then, responsibility can be laid at the feet of the managers involved in that decision as well as of Cameron International, the manufacturer of the rig’s blowout preventer, which appears to have been defective. These managers operated in a corporate culture that favored productivity and profit over safety and environmental protection.

Paul Krugman:

What’s the greatest threat to our still-fragile economic recovery? Dangers abound, of course. But what I currently find most ominous is the spread of a destructive idea: the view that now, less than a year into a weak recovery from the worst slump since World War II, is the time for policy makers to stop helping the jobless and start inflicting pain.

NY Times on real (not phony baloney political) 9/11 concerns:

Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the chairman and vice chairman of the commission, recently reminded the nation of crucial unfinished business. Perhaps most mind-boggling in these days of relentless communications is the continuing inability of first responders to communicate with each other on common radio frequencies. Police officers and firefighters lost their lives in the attack on New York City precisely because of that.

BBC:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has forced governments to alter their behaviour in the eight years of its existence, the UN chief has said.

Ban Ki-moon told a summit in Uganda discussing the Hague-based court that it had curtailed impunity and had broken new ground on victims’ rights.

But he called on member countries to step up co-operation.

AP – On a weekend dedicated to honoring military service, Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk found himself on the defensive over his past claims that he was named the U.S. Navy’s intelligence officer of the year, an award he never won.

This week’s primary schedule will not draw nearly the media attention that the May 18th primaries did, nor will they draw the attention that next week’s “Super Tuesday” primaries inevitably will.

Political junkies, on the other hand, know better. There is no shortage of worthy and interesting battles heading up the action on Tuesday night, as voters go to the polls in three states: Alabama, Mississippi, and New Mexico.

ALABAMA

Alabama will get the bulk of the attention on Tuesday night, and deservedly so, with big-time battles both on the statewide and the Congressional level.

Alabama’s marquee race in the 2010 election cycle is the battle to be elected the state’s next Governor. Competitive primaries are on the menu on both the Republican and Democratic side.

The Democratic primary is a heads-up battle that has devolved into a fairly bloody campaign. Congressman Artur Davis is trying to follow Douglas Wilder as only the second African-American Southern Governor in the modern era. He is being challenged by state Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks.

Contrary to what might be expected in a Southern primary featuring a white Democrat versus an African-American Democrat, Davis is actually running to the right of Sparks. Race has largely been below the surface in the race, but came to the forefront at the last second, with an ad from Davis alleging lax enforcement against racial discrimination in Sparks’ Ag Department. Davis, ironically, has some racial problems of his own, losing the endorsement of a handful of leading African-American political groups in the state to Sparks. That might have been owed partly to the high-profile snub of President Obama by Davis, who voted against the President’s health care initiative. It was also owed, in part, to the snub of these groups by Davis, who may have been seeking some distance from the traditional African-American political power centers. Sparks has led in the late fundraising game, but Davis has held a modest lead in the public polling to date.

On the Republican side, there are more than a half-dozen Republicans vying for the nomination, but most of the attention has fallen on a quartet of GOP contenders. The most well-known of the foursome is Roy Moore, who became a household name seven years ago when he was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for defying a judge’s order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments he erected. Not surprisingly, he is running a pretty strident anti-government campaign emanating from the far right. Of course, in the Alabama GOP, he is going to have some company out there on the far right. Indeed, the most well-funded man in the field, Bradley Byrne, got jumped earlier in the campaign for his possible acceptance of evolution. This, of course, led Byrne to denounce the ad, and reaffirm his faith in biblical literalism and inerrancy. That might not have even been the strangest moment of the campaign. That honor goes to Auburn grad Tim James (the son of 90s-era Gov. Fob James), who has had to beat down a mini-scandal where he allegedly criticized Alabama football coach Nick Saban. That compelled James to make the ultimate pander for an Auburn grad–wearing a “Saban Rules” baseball cap. Robert Bentley completes the quartet.

Other statewide races to keep an eye on are a Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate between William Barnes and Simone de Moore for the right to lose to Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, and an explosive race for Attorney General between Republican incumbent Troy King and challenger Luther Strange.

At the House level, there are a trio of districts that will have primaries worth watching. A quartet of Republlicans are taking aim at Democratic freshman Bobby Bright in AL-02. The establishment pick is Montgomery councilwoman Martha Roby, but she has company in the form of tea party activist Rick Barber and state Board of Education member Stephanie Bell. Meanwhile, there are interesting primaries on both sides of the aisle in AL-05. Newly-minted Republican incumbent Parker Griffith is getting shelled from the right by a pair of challengers: Les Phillip and Mo Brooks. Unless Griffith can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can be in deep trouble. After all, Alabama is a runoff state, meaning that the anti-Parker Griffith vote will be allowed to be consolidated during the July 13th runoff. Therefore, if Griffith can’t get to 50% on Tuesday, it is hard to imagine him doing so six weeks later. On the Democratic side, four candidates are battling for the right to reclaim this seat for the Democrats. The two most well-funded contenders going into the primary were Steve Taby and Taze Shepard. Finally, a runoff will almost certainly determine the Democratic successor to Artur Davis in AL-07. The three frontrunners are attorney Terri Sewell, Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Smoot, and state legislator Earl Hilliard Jr., the son of the longtime former Congressman.

MISSISSIPPI

By way of comparison to active Alabama, Mississippi’s primary night is a comparative snoozer. While there are primaries on tap in all four Congressional districts (no statewides are on the ballot), only one of them is drawing a lot of attention. That is the race in MS-01, in the state’s northernmost counties. Republicans are convinced they can reclaim this district from Democrat Travis Childers, who claimed it in a special election in 2008. They have an interesting trio of leading candidates. Former Fox News analyst Angela McGlowan came into the race with a ton of hype, but has raised little money and is unlikely to be a big factor on Tuesday. The battle is essentially down to state Senator Alan Nunnelee, who was recruited to run by national Republicans. He is not a lock, however, as he is being pursued by local mayor Henry Ross, a favorite of the teabaggers. After the primary initially looked like a Nunnelee coronation, this race could well go to a June 22nd runoff, an outcome that Ross says would be owed to the Tea Party movement.

NEW MEXICO

With no Senate races on tap statewide this year, all eyes on Tuesday will be on the Republican Party’s big battle to find a nominee to challenge Democrat Diane Denish in the race for Governor. The man with all the early hype was attorney Pete Domenici Jr, the son of the longtime former U.S. Senator. But his candidacy has been a non-starter, and he is no better than a distant third in the primary field. The race has become a two-candidate shootout between Dona Ana County (Las Cruces) District Attorney Susana Martinez and former state party chairman Allen Weh. Both of the frontrunners are topping off their warchests at the last minute. Martinez got a strong six-figure check from Swift Boat financier Bob Perry. Weh, meanwhile, cut his own check (to the tune of six hundred grand), which brings his investment in his own campaign up to the neighborhood of .6 million. Martinez has led the polling in the GOP primary over the final days, but there was a handful of undecideds to be claimed as they race to the line.

In the trio of House seats in the Land of Enchantment, the most competitive primary may well be in the least competitive district for the general election: NM-03. In that district, you get an intriguing contrast between Tom Mullins (an engineer who is a pretty standard-issue Republican) and Adam Kokesh, who is an acolyte of Ron Paul. Kokesh has raised more cash (perhaps not surprisingly), although a mid-February PPP poll (PDF file) showed Mullins to have more general election upside. Steve Pearce (NM-02) has a tea-party affiliated primary challenger, but should be safe.

If Pearce struggles at all, that might prove to be another telling sign of the lack of cohesion on the Republican side of the aisle.

Darrel Issa’s typically inane attempt to create an impeachable offense where there isn’t even a scandal should serve notice to Democrats and all who care about responsible governance. Because if the Republicans retake the House, this November, you can be certain that they will begin a slew of wasteful and distracting investigations into every concocted Obama Administration outrage of their fevered imagining. Not only will they likely demand the original birth certificate, but they will just as likely demand forensic analysis to make sure that neither the paper stock nor ink originated in Kenya.

• The first arrests, in the aftermath of the BP Oil Spill: Greenpeace protesters.
• The new Sex In The City movie is getting dreadful reviews, but Wajahat Ali says it’s also culturally offensive.
• Just when you think it can’t get worse, this headline in The Guardian proves otherwise:

  UN says case for saving species ‘more powerful than climate change’

• Last weekend, the DOJ dropped its investigation of AIG. William D. Cohan:

  This is simply incomprehensible.

• With the NOAA predicting a stronger than usual hurricane season, Science Daily reports:
  

  Hurricanes could snap offshore oil pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and other hurricane-prone areas, since the storms whip up strong underwater currents, a new study suggests.

  These pipelines could crack or rupture unless they are buried or their supporting foundations are built to withstand these hurricane-induced currents. “Major oil leaks from damaged pipelines could have irreversible impacts on the ocean environment,” the researchers warn in their study, to be published on 10 June in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

• A mobile phone number is suspended after three of its owners die, in ten years.
• Joe Garagiola, the former pro baseball player and legendary broadcaster, warns about the dangers of chewing tobacco.
• If Californians want more of Arnold Schwarzenegger, they can get it with Meg Whitman or Steve Poizner.

On a weekend dedicated to honoring military service, Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk has acknowledged he claimed he was named the U.S. Navy’s intelligence officer of the year, an award he never won.

A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts.

The Evolution of Everything: How Selection Shapes Culture, Commerce, and Nature
Author Mark Sumner AKA DevilsTower
Publisher PoliPointPress
220 Pages; About .00 New

Today we review and interview a book and an author that need no introduction. He’s written 32 books and his writing has been gracing this site since 2007. I’m talking of course about the talented Mark Sumner. I’ve read his latest book and, trust me, like everything else Mark writes, it’s just a joy to read. The Evolution of Everything is absolutely written for the layperson and still a delight for the scientifically inclined, stuffed full of great analogies, unexpected anecdotes, and thoughtful comparisons. And you can win a free signed copy in comments below.

DarkSyde: The title is the evolution of everything, what’s that mean?

Mark Sumner: When I first started writing about evolution, one of the things that was frustrating was that a lot of people seemed to have a very vague idea of how it happens. Which is odd, because the principle that Darwin and Wallace discovered — natural selection — may be the simplest, most straightforward idea in science. One of the things that made it hard for people seemed to be the great spans of time involved. Once you start talking about millions or billions of years, people’s eyes roll up. Then it struck me that while natural selection operates over generations, there are other kinds of selective pressure that operate much more quickly. Look at the smart phone market as an example. There’s been an explosion of variety and steady growth in capability just in the last few years. Those changes, like changes in the natural world, have come in response to changes in the environment, only that environment isn’t the Serengeti, it’s customers and carriers.

Yes, consumer pressure and changes in the marketplace are only a metaphor for natural selection — but I think it’s a good one. And this idea goes both ways. Not only can we learn about evolution using the products around us as examples, we can look at evolution for lessons in areas outside of biology. People want to draw a bright line between things we do and things that are “natural,” but there is no line. It’s all the natural world.

DS: What’s gave you the idea to write about a book about everything evolving?

MS: I think it was the Ford Mustang idea that came up first. I was researching an article on the evolution of horses and looking for something to give the piece a little color. A 1973 Mustang (351 Cobra Jet black & gold for those that like old Mustangs) was the first car I ever owned, and I thought it would be fun to talk about the Mustang just to ease into 3,000 words on fossil toe bones and teeth. I was only looking for just a few lines of material, but what I found was a really interesting story. The Mustang II — the one that Mustang lovers are supposed to hate — actually turned out to be a hero of the first oil crisis. It was one of the first American cars built to very high quality standards, and it got decent mileage at a time when other cars really didn’t. Sales of that first Mustang II were actually higher than the original car. It was one of the few success stories of that time when a lot of cars, and car companies, were floundering. The Mustang II practically saved Ford and it’s definitely the reason that the Mustang is the only “pony car” that has been in continuous production since the 1960s.

Once I had that story, it was fun to fit it together with events in natural history. The oil crisis became an “extinction event” and the Mustang II — like the real horses that outlived a lot of their Ice Age competitors — became the thrifty little generalist that outlived all the big, bulky specialists.

DS: What’s the difference between everything evolving, and the social & market Darwinism used or misused by various ideologies, from free market fundamentalists to fascists, and the specific cultural or commercial items in your book?

MS: In the essays I wrote for Daily Kos, I spent a lot of time on the product comparisons — how sea cows are like hardware stores, what extinct Mammoths can tell us about one hour TV dramas. But when I wrote the book I felt compelled to go back and fill in some of the gaps. Why do people have such odd ideas about evolution? Why are reporters still asking about a “missing link,” when that idea comes from Medieval folklore? Why are so many people quick to associate Darwin with everything from ruthless business practices to the Nazis? Why is “Social Darwinism” based on ideas that Darwin wouldn’t recognize? I didn’t know the answers to those questions myself, which meant I got the chance to spend several months digging through 19th century journals, 1920s newspapers, and books that went back to the 1500s. Which is my idea of fun.

What I found was that those who scream out against Darwin and those that distort his ideas to support their own agendas are really working for the same thing: preservation of the social hierarchy. What makes Darwin’s idea dangerous isn’t so much that things change, People realized that long before Darwin. What makes Darwin scary, then and now, is that his idea is so simple. So easily understood. So obvious. So egalitarian. On both sides of the aisle, what people are really saying is “there has to be more to it than that. After all,  I’m important and whatever brought me here has to have been designed especially with me in mind.” But, errr… no. No it doesn’t. And wasn’t. And isn’t.

It seems like every year in physics brings with it more complexity. That “standard model” I was taught as a kid looked simple enough, but now it’s crowded with strange quarks and tau neutrinos and gauge bosons. On a larger scale, most of the matter and energy in the universe is invisible to us, and the resolution of basic forces doesn’t look a lot closer than it did decades ago. I like the fact that biology, in some ways the most complex of physical sciences, is driven by one of the simplest ideas. An idea that kids can grasp in an afternoon. A hundred and fifty years of trying to disprove evolution, conducted at great expense by dedicated opposition, has proven that Darwin was not only right, but more right than he knew. Evolution by natural selection is, by an overwhelming degree, the origin of new species in the natural world.