Stretching for material

In addition to the recent discovery that Cheney can't get support for the Administration's Social Security scam even among hand-picked loyalists, it now seems that the only way that they can show support among the general populace is by taking quotes out of context. Guess these guys just don't know a dead horse when they see one...

(via Atrios)

Scientists get snarky

A great editorial (excerpted extensively here) from the Scientific American editors, in response to criticism of their "unfair biases" in reporting, you know, facts.

We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong.

Wow, that must have been building for a long time. Go, read the rest of it -- it's all that good! Whew!

(via Alas, a blog)

What those pictures are saying

Check out this fascinating site, called BagNewsNotes. They take vivid images from the news -- usually the paradigmatic image of a major story, but sometimes minor pictures from the edges of coverage -- and dissect them in meaningful ways: what is the subtext? what imagery is being chosen, and whose agenda does it implicitly advance? who or what is absent from these images, and what can we tell from things at the margins of the shot? They do a good job, and give readers a lot to think about. Don't be surprised if you find yourself wandering the archives and learning new things about past news stories...

(via fellow Philly blogger, A Tattered Coat)

Sinking like a stone

Apparently Vice President Cheney has taken over from Bush and Santorum on the Social Security schmooze tour. But, despite all the prescreening of "town hall" participants, these meetings aren't going very well. In fact, so badly that the transcripts aren't showing up on the Whitehouse website. hmmm...

(via Atrios)

On the nose

A long but excellent article from Digby today on the culture wars by way of a series of telling examples. He makes a bunch of good points along the way, but probably the take-home message for anybody who wants to push the pendulum the other way is this:

It's just this simple: The Republican party wants to tell you how to live your personal life while they systematically remove all government cooperation in ameliorating the risks this fast paced world creates. The Democrats want the government to leave you to make your own personal decisions while having it help you mitigate the social and economic risk our fast paced world creates. It is a stark choice. There is no reason we cannot begin to make the affirmative case for ourselves on this basis.

Make the time to read the entire piece.

Who will save the children?

Alabama is next in the stupidity parade: the state legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit gays from adopting children. It's likely to pass, but I suppose also likely not to pass muster with the courts.

What bothers me is that children in Alabama already wait an average of almost two years to be adopted -- why would anyone want to make that situation worse? Adoption is about finding loving parents for children, not about placing a societal stamp on couples or fulfilling their family dreams. The right-wing is so busy rushing to judgement of people they don't like that their principles are bouncing out of their pockets.

(via Atrios)

Thought for the day

The conventional thinking we are taught (and conditioned to think) employs what Edward de Bono calls 'rock logic'. Rocks being solid, hard, permanent, inert and unchanging. Like bricks, rocks can be added on top of one another to build structures. However there is also 'water logic'. This is fluid and flows according to gradient (context), and assumes form according to space (circumstance). If you add one rock to another, you get two; if you add water to water, it changes shape. Rocks analogous to a page of accounts and water to a piece of poetry. The former has units which add up to a conclusion, the latter has images which conjure up a perception.

-- Alan Fletcher

(via whiskey river)

Whom will we hold responsible?

Jeanne at Body and Soul has an excellent post about the deaths of detainees in Afghanistan. Not gruesome, but unforgiving in its insistance that we look at the facts. I find the way that our country increasingly sanctions inhumanity leaves me feeling like an open wound, or I might write about this more often. But we can't just sigh and move on; there is no evidence that our policies have changed, and we need to continue to protest what is done in our name.

Whew, I needed that!

You might enjoy it too, if you really enjoy randomness (and nobody does randomness quite as enthusiastically as Fafblog!)...

Instructions

Don't say I never sent you anywhere you didn't understand.

Money really can't buy happiness

Or at least, not a much as love can -- now there's science to prove it. Always good to think about why we drive ourselves so hard at work, given what we do and don't get out of it...

(via PSoTD)

A little distraction

I have no idea why this is so satisfying, but it is:

http://www.netdisaster.com/

You can enter the URL of your favorite (or most hated) website and then inflict any of a variety of destructions upon it. I even subjected this blog to a meteor attack...

(via coworker L.)

Plenty of voices and no microphones

A good piece by Katha Pollitt over at the Washington Monthly about the absence of prominent women in major media outlets. She points out bunches of outstanding writers who have yet to be made permanent staff, and speculates about the mindset that justifies the ridiculous statistics with the claim that women just don't want wider exposure...

(via Atrios)

Welcome to the club

Mainstream conservatives claim shock at disregard for the rules:

"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing," said Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the [Schiavo] bill. "This couldn't be a more classic case of a state responsibility."

Good morning, sane Republicans. Your party has lost its mind and doesn't believe in any law, theory, or other restriction whenever it leads to outcomes they disagree with. Guess you just noticed.

Required to do their job?

Was interested to read a piece about a question currently before the Supreme Court: can police be held accountable for failure to enforce an injunction? The arguments are quite striking -- on the one hand, if police can decide not to enforce a restraining order, then there's no use in getting one (and where does the discretion end?); on the other hand, it's not at all clear whether there are explicit precedents for insisting that the police must intervene in specific circumstances where the possible harm derives from another individual (as opposed to a threat from the state). I didn't realize that our protections were so tenuous!

(via How Appealing)

Finding the dark lining inside every ray of hope

[ahem. Forgive that metaphor slaughter, there.]

But the new mercury regulations, being hailed as an environmental victory by the Bush administration, are only the "best obtainable" if you ignore conflicting data (or, as usual, the scientific consensus, and heck, the EPA's own study).

"They are saying if they fail to regulate mercury from power plants at all, it really wouldn't make a difference," said John Walke, clean air director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. "To acknowledge the real benefits would be to raise the next question: Why didn't you go further?"

For example, the administration's figures chose to ignore the mercury contributions from consumption of salt-water fish (such as tuna), even though that's a source of something like 2/3 of most folks' exposure. You woudn't want to use data in setting policy, or at least not data that weights public health above corporate profits...

(via pandagon)

Update: as usual, The Onion nails this one exactly: EPA to drop 'E,' 'P' from name

Tiny acts of defiance

An amusing piece on how people fight the frustration of their daily lives via small acts of defiance, be it sending weighty response envelopes to junk mailers or insisting on ordering a "small" coffee when Starbucks offers only "medium" and up. I know the feeling! Fun to see creativity being an outlet for stress; seems like a survival mechanism for everyone.

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

About right!

Extrapolating from recent trends, Unconfirmed Sources predicts the next forward-looking appointment of the Bush Administration. Digby has a little imagined reaction to the news from prominent legislators here.

The devil is in the details

Is this right? That this crazy legislation about the Schiavo case was passed at a time of night when only a handful of legislators were actually present? The question is raised of whether such legislation is even legitimate -- the Constitution rather likes a quorum, presumably to prevent revolutions staged by a couple of busybodies...

I get through the day in hopes that someday all of this Gogol-worthy craziness will be fodder for humor and wonderment. Please let it be so.

Pretty much whatever we can get away with

On the lying front that is. The Bush Administration is trying to tar the North Koreans with aiding rogue states, but they're doing it with, per usual, misinformation:

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.

Of course, this group is clad in teflon, so probably nobody will even notice this increase in the bs pile...

Another chipper parallel

Recent news has added rapidly to the count of detainees who have died while under U.S. custody -- we don't seem to be such good custodians. More importantly, our statistic are starting to make us look as bad as our onetime villians...

(via Atrios)

Have they no shame?

I find myself sickened by the circus being made around the end-of-life decisions of the Schiavo family, however internally divided -- it reminds me of the hunger of a gladiatorial crowd more than of an ethical debate. But XOverboard really finds the grim politically craven heart of the matter with his excerpts here... Get a grip, guys!

Update: full Republican talking points on the issue here.

Update 2: and it looks like they've misjudged the whole issue badly!

Perhaps yet...

Got my first taste of spring last weekend while in St. Louis, where the season has advanced a bit farther than is evident around home. The shock of actual crocuses! The sharpness of a birdsong! I find myself on a wavelength with Thoreau:

Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening; reminiscences of our sanest hours? The voice of nature is always encouraging.

Thoreau's Journal: March 18, 1858

Thanks, as ever, to Thoreau blog to these transhistoric tidbits...

A little Hullabaloo

Two good posts from Digby yesterday:

• Why on earth is Congress focused on baseball, with all the real issues out there?

  This is America's pastime, not the tobacco industry. It is highly unpleasant to watch a bunch of politicians browbeat famous players and then grill baseball owners as if they are a mafia family --- while we are at war, the treasury is being bankrupted and unprecedented government corruption is happening right before their eyes. Listening to them sanctimoniously lecture baseball about its ethics and practices is just mind boggling.

  It certainly boggles my mind!
  
  
• A recent Iranian case in which a pedophile (I think) was flogged and hung elicited a disturbing level of approval from conservative commentators (and one prominent legal scholar) in this country.

  How long has it been since we were talking about torture for the alleged higher purpose of obtaining information a suspect may or may not have? A couple of months? Yesterday? And now the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment has entered the dialog as well.

  He asks some other good questions -- is this what comes from our increasing attention to the needs of victims? from our comfort with the death penalty (which in the end seems largely to be about revenge)? Certainly hard to argue with this:

  When influential conservative constitutional law professors start giving the Bill of Rights only tepid support then we have to just say no. The Bill of Rights may not be a sacred writ, but it’s the best thing this misbegotten country ever did and it’s the single thing that makes the American system worth a damn.

  There is an increasing feeling of the primal in much current "debate." Kind of makes me want to keep looking over my shoulder...

There's a reason that Digby got a Koufax award for Best Writing in a blog this past year. Always worth catching his latest.

Exactly what scares me

As I've been listening to more and more complaints from conservative students that their liberal professors are trying to indoctrinate them (all that reality and factual stuff, don't you know), I've been reminded again and again of scenes from another time and place. Apparently I'm not alone, to judge by this brilliant (and chilling) series of juxtaposed quotes over at Billmon's Whiskey Bar. Somehow, being in good company isn't as reassuring as I might have hoped...

(via rc3.org)

A little geek humor

Man, there's nothing like a really well done geek parody, such as this Periodic Table of Dessert -- the entries even fall into natural types in vertical rows, like the elements... Beautiful.

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

It's not the position, it's the disrespect

Lots of liberals and bloggers have been railing against Joe Lieberman for regularly voting with the Republicans in the Senate and providing the cover of "bipartisan support" for legislation that the rest of the Democrats clearly oppose. He appears either to think he's immune from consequences or to be planning a move across the aisle.

Supporters say, why pick on Joe? There are other conservative Dems, many of whom have even more positions in common with the Republicans, and yet you pick on this nice guy from CT. Hmmm, I wonder why that could be? Perhaps because he keeps slamming his own leadership in public, and continues to be a public relations drag on a the attempts of Democrats to mount a meaningful Opposition... ?

Update: Another show of blatant symbolic disloyalty.

The funny heart of the DeLay travesty

The best summary of the Tom DeLay story that I've seen, capturing the seediness of the scandal with the cravenness of the attempt to change House ethics rules to cover it up, is captured here (largely via excerpts from the classic Rude Pundit) in a story about what you'd do if Tom Delay were your dog...

The best and the worst of ourselves

Science, ever a mirror reflecting what we bring to it, offers two intriguing tidbits:

• We are more generous when under observation -- even when the "observer" is just a picture of a crude robot. I guess the guilt/social wiring is at a deep enough level that just an approximation of a face reminds us of deeper obligations...
  
  
• On a less happy front, the military appears to be developing a new type of weapon which uses a "pulsed energy projectile" to create intense pain or even death from a substantial distance. Shiver.

(via boing boing)

Bad news for Alaskan wilderness

The current budget in the Senate includes a measure to open the ANWR to drilling -- and the vote to remove that provision was defeated this afternoon. Lorax (nice alias!) at dailyKos offers some alternative routes of action here. This is probably one of the larger environmental issues of this decade, so we shouldn't give up without more of a fight.

From the department of Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

This is a beaut, from the Public Campaign Action Fund (for Tom Delay):


(via kos)

I'll take wide-eyed irony for $200, Alex...

The first line of this article really says it all:

Dillard's has asked the Mississippi Supreme Court today to block a black trial judge from presiding over racial-profiling lawsuits against the department store chain.

Not that we mean anything by it, of course.

(via How Appealing)

Sometimes the best defense...

Senate Democrats aren't sitting around waiting to find out whether Frist will follow through with his threat to eliminate the filibuster (in order to force through the handful of judicial nominees that the minority has blocked in this way). Instead, they're putting the GOP on notice that exercise of the so-called nuclear option will bring an end to Senate business.

Reid and his fellow Democrats, in effect, called Frist's bluff on Tuesday by issuing a preemptive strike, saying that Democrats would respond to any Frist action by continuing to work with Republicans only on matters that affected U.S. troops or that ensured the continuity of government operations.

"Beyond that, we will be reluctant to enter into any consent agreement that facilitates Senate activities, even on routine matters," Reid said in a letter to Frist. Nearly all Senate business requires unanimous consent; for example, one senator can prevent committee meetings from taking place simply by objecting.

Frist's response? "To shut down the Senate would be irresponsible and partisan." Well, yes. Think twice before making it happen.

(via How Appealing)

Side note: There is a strange secondary dynamic at work here. Senate Republicans are in a bit of a panic over the President's hugely unpopular Social Security proposal, which most of them oppose but would prefer not to have to openly vote down. If Senate business grinds to a halt, it ironically lets them off the hook. Both the SS plan and the possibility of ending legislative progress are likely to make the GOP look bad, so this is some high-stakes calculation...

Amazing (and yet, so unsurprising)

As though it's not enough that we give Haliburton choice opportunities in Iraq with no competition, and then look the other way as they and their subsidiaries squander billions to up their profits, now we're apparently trying to help them hide their mistakes from an audit by the UN board charged with oversight of Iraqi reconstruction. It's downright embarrassing.

(via Atrios at Eschaton)

Anticipation

Today's post at Paula's House of Toast is a photographic (and linguistic) poem about trembling anticipation of spring, which is just out of sight around the corner.

It's the dun calm before the greenstorm.

Yes, quite.

Round and round we go...

...but I focus on the good news as it comes by. A California judge has just ruled the state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

Judge Richard Kramer of San Francisco County's trial-level Superior Court likened the ban to laws requiring racial segregation in schools, and said there appears to be "no rational purpose" for denying marriage to gay couples.

It's interesting to note that the judge cited Brown v. Board of Education for his ruling, in effect saying that civil unions were an unacceptable attempt to make a type of second-class public rights.

"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts — separate but equal," the judge wrote.

Of course, there will be appeals, and in fact there is a marriage amendment to the CA constitution in the pipeline, but still, a moment of thoughtfulness amidst the storm.

(via Fables of the Reconstruction)

This Modern World

Tom Tomorrow has a typically pithy take on the bankrupcy bill and, you know, the state of things generally...

Moral Bankruptcy

(thanks to Working Assets for making these cartoons freely available)

Anagram of the week (year?)

Arnold Schwarzenegger = He's grown large 'n' crazed

(via Drinking Liberally)

Quip of the week

My favorite take on the self-ironizing nomination of John Bolton as UN Ambassador came from this week's installment of the NPR program "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me":

After hearing about all the undiplomatic qualities of John Bolton, it occurred to us that maybe the President just got confused, as he sometimes does; maybe he meant to nominate Michael Bolton...

(They even compare some, uh, quotes from the two Boltons.)

Periscope up!

Coldblue Steele over at dailyKos has a useful list of upcoming Senate bills that should concern progressives, so that we can avoid a replay of the useless last-minute-frenzy about the bankruptcy bill (that should have been crushed by public opinion, if the public had known anything about it). All across the spectrum of topics, as the GOP flexes its legislative muscles...

A tiny glint...

...into the murky land that is the Battle for the Soul of Christianity, comes via this article at the Utne Reader. He crystallizes the division of the Christian community in a way that seems very truthful and perhaps even useful:

Americans who consider themselves Christian tend to think about the New Testament's central character in one of two distinct ways. For many, what matters most is that Jesus was a divine spirit who died for their sins. To accept him as your savior is to be saved, and the pursuit of that salvation is paramount. For a smaller percentage of believers, Jesus is a peasant revolutionary who lived by example and died for it. To model your behavior after his is to bring earth closer to heaven.

Yes, this feels right to me, and you can see the outlines there of the separation between fundamentalists who focus on salvation (and on condemning those who might lead them farther from it) and those who focus on, say, the Beatitudes (and thus on serving the poorest and welcoming the unwelcome, whether they be sinners or "saved"). This is a formulation that could almost bring the two groups to grounds for discussion, as is apparent in the author's experience of an interview on Christian radio.

I went on to explain that while I appreciated his preoccupation with salvation, my main concern was good works. That the Jesus I met in the Bible would be more concerned about curing AIDs than outlawing homosexual marriage, more troubled by world hunger and violence than an erosion of "family values."

I don't know what to do with this new insight right now, but I think it can be powerful, especially as progressives increasingly try to make themselves understood to groups who don't see what could be the broad common ground...

(furled by Medley)

First they came for the smokers...

I'm not usually a defender of cigarette smoking -- I think and feel better in a smoke-free environment, and I generally choose my haunts accordingly. But I am downright creeped out by the degree to which societal scorn for smoking and its health effects has led to a willingness to treat smokers as somehow lesser citizens. First it was private employers firing smokers who wouldn't quit (smoking on their own time, mind you). And academic employers were close behind. And now a county government is considering eliminating smokers from their payroll.

Two things creep me here. First, aren't there other ways to handle the costs and risks inherent in having employees with risky behaviors? Insurance companies charge them higher premiums; if these workers are willing to pay more into their company plans, aren't they already covering those costs? (Or is this a secret campaign against excessive smoking breaks?) And second, does anybody really think that if these policies survive court challenge, policies regarding weight won't be close behind? Some of these companies have openly stated that intent. What will be next after that? Eeesh!

You gotta start 'em young

This is a pretty creepy profile of a college-age conservative prodigy, which reveals a lot about how the up and coming right wing is trained -- not by discussing ideas but by drilling on talking points. Made me shiver.

The Message Machine

(via Follow Me Here)

If you can't control your dogs...

...then don't be suprised when the neighbors intervene. Or rather, if your CIA agents appear to be kidnapping foreign nationals and shipping them off to nations that practice torture, you perhaps shouldn't be surprised when other governments start to investigate the practice.

The Italian probe is one of three official investigations that have surfaced in the past year into renditions believed to have taken place in Western Europe. Although the CIA usually carries out the operations with the help or blessing of friendly local intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities in Italy, Germany and Sweden are examining whether U.S. agents may have broken local laws by detaining terrorist suspects on European soil and subjecting them to abuse or maltreatment.

As more and more accounts are confirmed of their citizens being detained, tortured, and then cleared, European leaders are withdrawing their willing cooperation. Score another one for our reputation as international bully.

(via Follow Me Here)

Chewy thoughts for a long (for me) weekend

To be what you are is in itself very arduous without trying to become something, which is not difficult. You can always pretend, put on a mask, but to be what you are is an extremely complex affair; because you are always changing; you are never the same and each moment reveals a new facet, a new depth, a new surface. You can't be all this at one moment for each moment brings its own change. So if you are intelligent, you give up being anything.

-- J. Krishnamurti

The hardest state to be in is one in which you keep your heart open to the suffering that exists around you, and simultaneously keep your discriminative wisdom. It's far easier to do one or the other; to keep your heart open and get lost in pity, empathetic suffering, righteous indignation, etc.; or remain remotely detached as a witness to it all. Once you understand that true compassion is the blending of the open heart and the quiet mind, it is still difficult to find the balance. Most often we start out doing these things sequentially. We open our hearts and get lost in the melodramas, then we meditate and regain our quiet center by pulling back in from so much openness. Then we once again open and get sucked back into the dance. So it goes cycle after cycle. It takes a good while to get the balance. For at first the discriminative awareness part of the cycle makes you feel rather like a cold fish. You feel as if you have lost your tenderness and caring. And yet each time you open again to the tender emotions, you get lost in the drama and see your predicament: if you really want to help others who are suffering, you just have to develop the balance between heart and mind such that you remain soft and flowing yet simultaneously clear and spacious. You have to stay right on the edge of that balance. It seems impossible, but you do it. At first, when you achieve this balance, it is self-consciously maintained. Ultimately, however, you merely become the statement of the amalgam of the open heart and quiet mind. Then there is no more struggle; it's just the way you are.

-- Ram Dass

(via whiskey river)

Excuse me?!?

In their next foray into Orwellian space, the Department of Homeland Security is trying out a new system in which immigrants and asylum-seekers are given electronic monitoring ankle bracelets to wear 24 hours per day, like convicts under house arrest. I guess we want to make sure they think twice about their desire to stay...

(via WTF)

Update: In related news, foreign applications to US graduate schools continues decline...

(via Liberal Malcontents)

Reading the tea leaves in murky times

First you have this news, which has Republican triumphalism at new heights and liberals full of ambivalence and self-doubt. Then, after we've barely adapted, we get this. Not the stuff of liberal triumpalism, but perhaps some Republicans can discover the merits of self-examination . . .

Strange bedfellows

Well, well, this bankruptcy bill isn't really looking good to anybody these days -- even the Instapundit has qualms (along with many conservative commenters there), and nobody seems to be able to figure out what the arguments in support of this legislation might be. It's easy to see that the credit card companies hope to profit, and that any number of regular folks with decent money sense will get burned, but where's the drive coming from?

(via kos)

Terri Schiavo and "medical experts"

A great post by Ampersand today (at Alas, a Blog), dissecting the medical testimony in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case and really getting at what it means to claim "expert consensus" (or a lack thereof). Basically, all of the doctors testifying for the parents' claims simply don't address the fundamental issues and arguments of their opponents. You can't claim to be winning an argument in which you're not actually participating.

Very very busy!

That seems to be my constant state these days, and it's partly true, partly the illusion created by the myriad ways in which I can waste time (on seemingly substantive pursuits). All the more reason to value the occasional reality-check, such as this one from the inestimable Bill Watterson:



(click to enlarge)

Update: Sorry! they just changed their policy such that you can't look back more than two weeks. You'll have to squint at my shrunken version, since the blow-up is no longer available...

Once-in-a-lifetime in the true sense

There have been record rains in the last two months in California, causing any number of problems and grousing. But meantime Death Valley is abloom with flowers and other life forms that may flourish here only once a century...

(via Suburban Guerilla)

Apropos of nothing

It turns out that those "low-low" Walmart prices are just an illusion. In fact, they offer cut prices on a handful of things that people buy frequently enough that they know a discount when they see it, and then the rest of the stuff they sell at average or higher prices (and you just extrapolate from, say, the cheap milk to the assumption that "everything is cheap here"). So it's not just the employees getting screwed...

Sure, why not...

Via The Rittenhouse Review, this latest installment of lunacy:

President Bush has chosen Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, a longtime critic of the United Nations and a hard-liner on arms control, to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, according to government officials.

(emphasis mine)
We don't even try to hide our scorn for the rest of the world anymore...

Update: MyDD has more on the absurdity here, including some anti-UN Bolton quotes.

Because it didn't explain anything then either

Via R, a short Inquirer opinion piece pointing out that the tenets of Intelligent Design (very trendy in, say, York, PA just now) were debunked a couple of centuries ago by none other than David Hume.

(Of course, this requires that you be interested in Enlightenment philosophy and its logic of rationality. Not much evidence for that these days.)

Bankruptcy bill play-by-play

Hunter at dailyKos provides an excellent summary of the tragic bankruptcy bill that seems on its way to approval in Congress -- no only of what the bill itself does (stripping away protections offered by consumer bankrupcty filings while exempting corporate bankruptcy), but of the host of very reasonable-seeming amendments proposed and rejected (complete with notes on Democrats who voted with the Republican bloc on thse matters). Among these squelched amendments were protections for people whose problems were caused by identity theft, as well as those crushed by medical bills, and others to discourage predatory lending practices or help elderly people keep their homes.

How inhumane does a result have to be before it elicits sympathy from these Values Republicans?? And yet most of this seems to be below the national radar . . .

Update: Hunter further suggests viewing this legislation in the context of a larger GOP legislative war on the middle class. He's brainstorming ideas for how to make this point to the American public.

Just how easy is it to get a press pass?

Fishbowl DC spent a frustrating week (see links to each day's story) trying to get a pass but never even getting their calls returned. It appears now that they have actually been cleared for a one-day visit to the pressroom today (nothing like Gannon/Guckert's multi-year daily wavers, but hey). After that, actually getting to ask a question would almost be anticlimactic. Good luck, guys!

Update: Hah! anticlimactic was exactly their description, as well as "meta," as he found himself being interviewed about being the first blogger in the pressroom (almost more than he was interviewing the others there). Too silly. The day's experience is summarized in several posts there.

Santorum goes after the working stiff

Santorum is pushing some new legislation on minimum wage, which appears to raise the base rate substantially, but actually radically decreases the number of companies who are required to pay their workers at minimum wage, and also loosens workplace protections and requirements for overtime pay.

The upshot: while 1.2 million workers could qualify for a minimum wage increase, another 6.8 million workers, who work in companies with revenues between $500,000 and $1,000,000 per year, would lose their current minimum wage protection.

And an even larger number of businesses, those with revenues under $7 million, would be exempt from fines under a range of other safety, health, pension and other labor laws. Essentially, the realm of unregulated sweatshops would be expanded and legalized under Santorum's bill. . . .

Amazing. PA is one of the states considering raising its minimum wage above the federal minimum, something Santorum's bill would also disallow. I hope that this will be another prime weapon to turn back against him in 2006! He may be winning love in DC, but I don't think he's warming hearts at home...

(via dailyKos)

Yeowch!

It's no-rhetorical-holds-barred as former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy writes an open letter to Condoleeza Rice about her recent tantrum-related decisions cancelling visits to Canada (and then rescheduling them later, etc.):

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.
...
Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defence can be made openly.

Wow! I don't think there are even many wacky tabloid editorialists in this country who would sling the verbiage that freely. Could it be that our peace-loving northern friends are self-righteously pissed?!

(It does calm down as it goes along, but is making no bones about the need to "speak truth to power." If only power were interested!)

(via boing boing, of all places)

No really, looks are just a side benefit

Apparently nutter Senator Tom Coburn is up to more wacky fun, this time opining on the health benefits of breast implants. I'll just let fellow Philly-blogger Noblesse Oblog give you the highlights...

More from Reid, the unexpected bulldog

This time it's a slam on Alan Greenspan, who looks less an less like a wise nonpartisan financial czar and more and more like a politician with every passing cycle.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generally gets accolades for his public pronouncements. Yesterday he got a brickbat from Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who blasted Greenspan as "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington."

Reid ripped Greenspan during an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." He said the Fed chairman has given President Bush a pass on deficits that have built up in the past four years and should be challenging Republicans on their fiscal policies, rather than promoting Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts into Social Security.

About right. For more on Greenspan's hackery, see this bit from Krugman.

. . . Until the 1970's conservatives tended to be open about their disdain for Social Security and Medicare. But honesty was bad politics, because voters value those programs. So conservative intellectuals proposed a bait-and-switch strategy: First, advocate tax cuts, using whatever tactics you think may work - supply-side economics, inflated budget projections, whatever. Then use the resulting deficits to argue for slashing government spending.

And that's the story of the last four years. In 2001, President Bush and Mr. Greenspan justified tax cuts with sunny predictions that the budget would remain comfortably in surplus. But Mr. Bush's advisers knew that the tax cuts would probably cause budget problems, and welcomed the prospect. In fact, Mr. Bush celebrated the budget's initial slide into deficit. In the summer of 2001 he called plunging federal revenue "incredibly positive news" because it would "put a straitjacket" on federal spending.

To keep that straitjacket on, however, those who sold tax cuts with the assurance that they were easily affordable must convince the public that the cuts can't be reversed now that those assurances have proved false. And Mr. Greenspan has once again tried to come to the president's aid, insisting this week that we should deal with deficits "primarily, if not wholly," by slashing Social Security and Medicare because tax increases would "pose significant risks to economic growth." Really?

Keep tellin' it, boys!

More signs of the witch-hunt

In addition to a generally crazy cultural misunderstanding of academic freedom (exchange of ideas, anyone?), there are increasing signs of efforts by the right to muzzle liberal professors or subject them to some sort of standard of what can and can't be taught (or required of students; see the rantings at SAF). The latest development is a series of threats based on accusations of communism.

The way this was done, with stealth at first and with the star so prominent, was very much in the brownshirt tradition of the last century. A lot of things come to mind when walking down a corridor of academic offices and seeing 'stigma' postings on individual doors identifying Heretics.

Yeah, and most of them make my skin crawl . . .

Who's calling the shots?

The New York Times is reporting new poll numbers that indicate that a significant majority of Americans no longer think that Bush shares their priorities, either domestically or in foreign policy. Strangely, these sentiments have yet to change his approval rating -- I guess that "he's our President, so we have to support him" thing must have real legs.

For just the highlights of this story (or to avoid NYT registration), see the excerpts over at dailyKos. But there are all kinds of interesting tidbits throughout the original piece.

For now I see in a glass darkly

Kermit the Blog points up an intriguing essay about American "self-certainty" and the real message of Christianity. It is a good call to self-re-examination, particularly for people of faith (and even more particularly for Christians)...

When the Bible is viewed primarily as a collection of devotional thoughts, its status as the most devastating work of social criticism in history is forgotten. Once we've taken it off its pedestal long enough to actually read what it says, how does the principality called America interpret the gospel? In an age when many churchgoing Americans appear to view the purposes of the coming kingdom of God and the perceived self-interests of the United States as indistinguishable, what does faithful witness look like?

I recommend the original essay (which is a longish exerpt from a book called The Gospel of America) to anybody who wrestles with these issues. It has a kind of rhetorical earnestness that will probably put off those with no background in the pews, but it's the voice of the liberal church trying to be heard in the storm.

As Karl Barth noted, applying the gospel to our vision of the worlds unfolding before us will involve a yes and a no. Yes to the hope of a new day coming and the watchfulness required to see it. No to the suggestion, sometimes only dimly hinted at even to ourselves, that our own good intentions or pure hearts will hasten its coming or that we are knowers (rather than learners) of the Creator's good purposes.

(via the Daou Report)

A little mid-week randomness

Via boing boing, this delightful tale of a wiseacre who bent the brains of some state employees by testing the limits of what he could pass off in place of normal payment for his $1 toll (say, two pictures of rapper Fifty Cent. or an array of not-explicitly-banned foreign currency). tee hee

Update: also worth checking out are his experiments with varying his signature on credit card slips -- not just the style, but the language (pictographs?), the name, and more . . .

Another reminder that hate often wears our faces

Not all terrorists are from overseas -- you'd think Oklahoma City would be demonstration enough of that, but I think it's too easy to forget our homegrown brand of crazies. Not so easy for Joan Lefkow, who became a target of white supremacists when she (a federal judge) was assigned a case having to do with a lawsuit against them. First one of them plotted to kill her (but was caught first), and now her husband and mother were shot to death in her home. Terrible.

Original story at the Times (registration required) here, or read the summary over at dailyKos.

Update: via mimi smartypants, we find that somebody else killed the judge's family. A different brand of crazy, but no less terrorizing...

Hanging on hints of spring

Between the weather and the flu, February felt like it was sucking the life out of me, and I take the arrival of March as a sign of hope. This is perhaps a universal sentiment...

We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-maying. There may be a month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet, plenty of ice and good sleighing. We may not even see the bare ground, and hardly the water, and yet we sit down and warm our spirits annually with distant prospect of spring. As if a man were to warm his hands by stretching them toward the rising sun and rubbing them.

-- Henry David Thoreau
March 2, 1859

(from The Thoreau Blog)

No more youths on death row

The Supreme Court has just abolished the death penalty for those under 18, ending a practice in 19 states.

The ruling continues the court's practice of narrowing the scope of the death penalty, which justices reinstated in 1976. Executions for those 15 and younger when they committed their crimes were outlawed in 1988. Three years ago justices banned death sentences for the mentally retarded.

Tuesday's ruling prevents states from making 16- and 17-year-olds eligible for execution.

Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision (which differs from the ruling 16 years ago that juvenile capital punishment was *not* cruel and unusual punishment).

Juvenile offenders have been put to death in recent years in only a few other countries, including Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia. Kennedy cited international opposition to the practice.

"It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime," he wrote.

The dissenters deny the presence of a trend in public opinion, and say that the issue should be left to the states. Victims rights decry the limitation of their options for revenge justice. I think that's everybody.

Except me. This seems like a blow in favor of civilization to me. I feel for the prosecutors (and victims) faced with seeming child psychopaths, but I'm not convinced that killing them is really getting to the root of the problem. (For that matter, I'm not convinced that killing anybody improves any measurable outcome, except perhaps the size of the stick that prosecutors bring to plea bargains. There are just too many examples of the wrong person ending up on death row for me to sleep well supporting our government's putting a permanent end to their appeals...)

Like an infection

Looks like Der Gropenfuhrer has taken a move right from the Administration handbook, taping a political ad that looked like news.

This advertisement is filmed to look like a real news report. It’s narrated by an actual former TV reporter who, no longer a journalist, now works for the state. The ad pushes a new, government-backed, corporation-friendly proposal which would kill mandatory lunch hours. California workers - construction workers, waitresses, nurses, farm workers and a forklift operator - are shown in “interviews,” extolling the benefits of the proposal.

You'd think this would be transparent, but history shows we don't like to have to fact-check the evening news. Anchors for these stories even used the promo points provided with the footage...

A collection of quotes for grey days

"My heart is afraid it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

--Paulo Coelho,
The Alchemist

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.

--Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Do not wait to strike
till the iron is hot;
but make it hot
by striking.

--William Butler Yeats

I like Lech Walesa's answer to the question "How did Solidarity start?"
"By talking loud at the bus stop."

(first three via A Mindful Life; last from a comment at Body and Soul)

Matters of conscience

Jeanne at Body and Soul has a good piece on words and actions and how we recognize moral clarity. It is not always clear which actions are "brave" versus "cowardly" when we speak of abstractions (and I am reminded of the great scene in Tim O'Brian's The Things They Carried in which he sits on a boat just off the Canadian coast and faces up to what it would mean to go to war or to refuse to go to war). We all have to keep our eyes open for moments when principle and reality meet in the flesh.

She can take it

A great story over at XOverboard about this year's Razzies -- awards for the worst movies and performances of the year. Top prize this year went to Halle Barry for Catwoman, and she actually turned up and showed herself to be a good sport.

She thanked everyone involved in "Catwoman," a film she said took her from the top of her profession to the bottom.

Tee hee. Read the rest.

Repressed intelligence?

A bit of a grim post by Hunter at dailyKos about more invisible maneouverings with regard to the flow of intelligence information to and within the Administration, the tendency to condone torture, and the muzzling of the CIA (and any other source of dissent). The pattern is getting harder and harder to ignore.

[I]ntelligence information originating from the CIA is now going to be filtered, before reaching the President, by not one but two deeply questionable Bush appointments. Porter Goss, who has sought to "purge" the intelligence agency of undesirable opinions, and Iran-Contra figure John Negroponte, who has an explicit previous record of ignoring intelligence on horrific human rights abuses in order to further administration goals. It's a safe bet that Bush will hear only what he wishes to hear, and that CIA analyses contradicting neocon "beliefs" will either be silently ignored (by Negroponte), or actively punished (by Goss).

If this doesn't worry you, it should. Far from being appalled at the increasing evidence of poor intelligence and systemic abuses, the Bush folk are seeking to make those problems permanent. Choosing to make important decisions in a fact vacuum can be nothing but foolhardy for the long term.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

-- Thomas Carlyle, writer
(1795-1881)

(quote via A Word A Day)

Who gets access?

For the most part I haven't covered the blogger-frenzy or media cold-shoulder that are the Jeff Gannon scandal (uh, fake reporter for a fake news agency getting hard-to-come-by daily access to Whitehouse briefings, and using that access to lob softball propaganda-push questions). But I do find the story disturbing, less for its circus-like collapse than for what it further reveals about the Administration's ongoing interest in misleading the public. Echidne does a good job of summarizing some related news and also getting at my underlying discomfort in her post on Eberle and Gannon.

I believe that there is a clear ethical problem in letting political activists infiltrate the press corps for the purpose of asking planted questions or steering the questioning into a safer direction. This makes the White House press conferences into total farces. It is also an attempt to manipulate public opinion in ways that are at least sneaky if not outright nasty.

Other problems with careless screening of journalists should be obvious to even the White House. For example, a terrorist could get in on a day-pass.

Yes. These are the two parts of the real story. Lascivious photos lead to a snarky feeling of triumphalism, but in the end they distract from the real meat. Is this a government that belongs to its citizens or not?

Chipper Iraq update

Jeanne over at Body and soul sums up the latest bad news from Iraq, including the rumor that Chalabi withdrew from candidacy for President because he was offered more lucrative pastures as head of oil, finance, and other trade...

The Fascist Eye

By which I mean, the eye into every woman's bedroom and life, as demanded by Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline -- he wants the complete medical files of all women who've had late-term abortions, so that he can track down possible criminal cases that need prosecuting.

Mr. Kline emphasized statutory rape at a news conference here but also spoke obliquely of other crimes that court documents suggest could include doctors' providing illegal late-term abortions and health professionals' failing to heed a state law that requires the reporting of suspected child sexual abuse.

Heck, why doesn't he just demand access to all medical records in the state, so that he's aware of every possible abuse, gunshot, or other crime that needs a bloodhound? Confidentiality, anyone? Oh, do you think this could be related to his anti-abortion pogrom? hmmm...

[M]any here on both sides of the abortion debate said they suspected that his real target was doctors who provide late-term abortions.

Bingo. And there's even some political payback blended in:

Kansas has become a national magnet for late-term abortions because of a doctor in Wichita who performs hundreds of them each year. The doctor, George Tiller, funneled at least $150,000 through political action committees to Mr. Kline's opponent in the attorney general's race in 2002, and his clinic, Women's Health Care Services, is one of the two whose records are being subpoenaed.

This whole idea is unacceptable on many levels, but enhancing your job security at the expense of your citizens' privacy is a really stomach-turning spectacle.

Update: Atrios weighs in with some additional good points about the hypocrisy in this story. If the subpoenas were all about catching statutory rape crimes, then the net should widen to maternity wards and STD clinics (where any underage boy showing up would be an automatic crime victim). Yeah, right. Your privacy is of course sacrosanct unless you are making a decision of which Mr. Kline disapproves.

The best of the left

The year's funniest post by a lefty blogger went to Poker with Dick Cheney, an inspired one-act play at The Poor Man. Go have a giggle if you missed it the first time (in June).

For those in need of more excuses for high-brow procrastination, you can see the whole array of 2004 Koufax Award winners, from Best Blog to Most Deserving of More Recognition. Congrats to all.

More secret agendas

The renomination of unreasonable judges and the frontal assault on Social Security may have something in common: a theory called "The Constitution in Exile," which is based on a belief that The New Deal (and much social-protection legislation right down to minimum wages) survives because of a judicial "revolution" in 1937. This is another quiet and creepy motivating philosophy for right-wingers of various stripes, and is well described in this essay. All of this is part of a radical agenda that the right is foisting on most of America while they're not looking...

The economic role of the federal government is now deeply in question, and the Constitution in Exile judges, just like the Social Security privatizers, want to roll back the clock a lot futher than 1973 or 1961.

Wake up, wake up!

A cartoon worth some large number of words

About the recent move by Bush to renominate a bunch of judicial prospects previously rejected: Hats off to Tom Toles for this pithy take. (Washington Post; registration probably required)

(via The Return of Ignatz)

Modern-day cecession

Apparently many GOP wackos think that another way to help take over the nation (what, three branches of government aren't enough?) is to subdivide battleground states such as Washington so that narrowly blue states could be changed into one each red and blue state (with ta da! two new red-state senators). Subtle stuff, modern-day politics!

A pip if ever there was one

Happy birthday to my grandmother Eloise,
who turns 99 today.



May I take from life even half the joy she's found,
and give back to those around me
a fraction of what she shares every day.

My last post about The Gates

I saw them live, but missed the further opportunity to see them in the black-and-white setting of Central Park after snow. Bare trees in fresh snowfall are already a photographer's dream, but they make the orange apparitions all the more surreal. Thanks, Internet, for vicarious experience!

Life in Iraq

Lots of rather dismal reading out there about how life has changed in Iraq in the new post-Saddam era. The consensus seems to be that life for women is much worse than before. Barry at Alas has a good summary with related links in two posts here and here.

Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality but the subjugation of women was never a Baath Party goal. What we are seeing is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection taking Iraq into a new dark age.
(secondary pull-quote from Media Girl)

A little chilling to hit his summary rumination:

Increasingly, when I hear people saying we’ve “liberated the people of Iraq,” I have to wonder if by people they mean men.

It makes me shiver.

Very thematic

This is a very interesting site, especially for Just Between Strangers communication: PostSecret, a collection of secrets (and confessions) shared anonymously -- I guess it's an ongoing performance art project, as well as a fascinating blog. They distribute the postcards all over the place and people can send in their secrets anytime...

(via coworker L)

Playing to the folks at home

I did wonder, when I heard clips from Bush's victory lap diplomatic tour of Europe, whether anybody was being convinced. I mean, when a reporter asked whether he would be inviting Chirac to his ranch soon, his laugh almost made the hair stand up on the back of my neck -- no disguising the "I'm playing nice for mom, but I wouldn't let that guy touch my toys" tone there. Apparently, nobody in the EU is being fooled either.

Javier Solana [EU foreign policy chief] disputed the American view that last month's elections in Iraq had vindicated the U.S. decision to invade and questioned whether the Bush administration's promises of a new era in relations with Europe meant anything.

He's not so dumb, I guess. I also liked this Rumsfieldian jab:

Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, said European leaders realize that Mr. Bush "is the president Europe has to deal with, rather than the one it might want to deal with."

Yeah, I know how you feel.

(via Sisyphus Shrugged)

Update: apparently a classic-Bush-style "town hall meeting" with German citizens has been cancelled because die Deutscher are unwilling to play to a script (or sign loyalty oaths, who knows which).

Because it explains nothing, that's why

Well, that's not the author's argument, really, but this New York Times Magizine article does one of the best jobs I've seen of succinctly explaining why Intelligent Design fails as a scientific explanation and offers nothing substantive to a theist either.

From a scientific perspective, one of the most frustrating things about intelligent design is that (unlike Darwinism) it is virtually impossible to test. Old-fashioned biblical creationism at least risked making some hard factual claims -- that the earth was created before the sun, for example. Intelligent design, by contrast, leaves the purposes of the designer wholly mysterious.
. . .
But if we can't infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock's tail or the human male's nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. ... If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Stephen J. Gould did a pretty good job of explaining how many "mistakes" and other design oddities fit well into evolutionary theory, provide evidence for it rather than undermining it (see The Panda's Thumb, for instance). A bit of humor is found in the current article from the notion that an intelligent agent would sow similar chaos...

(apologies to my referer; flu grogginess caught up with me just in time to erase all traces of who you were...)

Thought for the day

Can one know one's self? Is one ever somebody? I don't know anything about it any more. It now seems to me that one changes from day to day and that every few years one becomes a new being.

-- George Sand

The Intimate Journal of George Sand
September 1868 entry

(via whiskey river)

You gotta' be kidding!

Just when you think that the uber-secretiveness (and carefully crafted misinformation) of the Bush Administration can't get any thicker, new heights of the absurd:

ATTORNEYS FOR the Justice Department appeared before a federal judge in Washington this month and asked him to dismiss a lawsuit over the detention of a U.S. citizen, basing their request not merely on secret evidence but also on secret legal arguments. The government contends that the legal theory by which it would defend its behavior should be immune from debate in court. This position is alien to the history and premise of Anglo-American jurisprudence, which assumes that opposing lawyers will challenge one another's arguments.

They're no longer content with keeping all of their "facts" secret (because, you know, by the light of day they might not look so great), but now even their lines of reasoning are too much for the public to handle. Kafka has nothing on these guys.

It should be noted that the case in question here involves a U.S. citizen. None of us can afford to be complacent about these antics!

(via kos)

If it's good enough for Syria...

Yes, unsurprisingly if tragically, there's now evidence of torture taking place here at home...

Defense attorneys call it Brooklyn's Abu Ghraib. On the ninth floor of the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, terrorism suspects swept off the streets after the Sept. 11 attacks were repeatedly stripped naked and frequently were physically abused, the Justice Department's inspector general has found.

I'm with Rafe, whose response to this was "Can the shame go much deeper?"

Artistic visions

Ok, I really liked the Christo gates, but that makes these parodies all the more amusing:

1. The Somerville Gates, a miniature version running "around the house"...
   
2. The Crackers, more of an in situ reflection...

(via boing boing)

Well said

Peggy Noonon exactly describes the blogosphere as I experience it -- sometimes hyper, mostly self-correcting, and driven by a commerce in reliable facts and insightful thinking. So much coverage of blogging either is fawning or completely misses the point. This does neither. I recommend the whole thing.

(via The Daou Report)

The magic of everyday things

Via wood s lot, as ever, another wonderful collection of photographs, this time by Anita Rust at the aptly named "weeds, weeds, weeds." She has many months of work there, each a little trip into the backyard or down a city street...

In the company of thieves, part next

Continuing the tradition of promoting thugs, Bush names as the first national intelligence czar none other than John Negroponte. Jeesh, they really love these appointments via disinterrment.

I really can't add any comment better stated than this response by The Rittenhouse Review. I mean, the mind reels...

Funny with that familiar pang

Another brilliant bit of randomness from McSweeney's:

Things I'd Probably Say If the Bush Administration Were Just a Weekly TV Show and I Were a Regular Viewer.

(Jeez, I couldn't even keep watching beloved West Wing when Sorkin left; you think I'd still be watching this mess if I weren't transfixed with horror? sigh.)

Tangible results

Here's an online actuarial calculator that lets you forecast your Social Security benefits under the current plan versus Bush's plan. The difference for me? About -$3700 per month. Try it for yourself. I'm sure this won't be the last of these that appears...

(via Talking Points Memo)

Painful

A father describes the torment of watching his son struggle with methamphetamine addiction (NYT link; registration required). It's hard to read, leaves little room for optimism. There are people who can try a drug once and then steer clear of it, a rarer few who can maintain a "recreational" relationship to heavy drugs over time, and all too many who quickly become a statistic, like the high percentage of meth users who relapse after quitting. Reading a story like this, I think I'd rather it were me than one of my children -- I'm too susceptible to heartbreak on behalf of those I love.

Drug-and-alcohol counselors, most of them former addicts, tell fathers like me it's not our fault. They preach ''the Three C's'': ''You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it.'' But who among us doesn't believe that we could have done something differently that would have helped?

(via Follow Me Here)

Another blessing from Thoreau

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own. The hen-hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly shelter and support of the pine. It will not consent to walk in the barn-yard, but it loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful, when we would fain subject it to our will. So any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as genius itself. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution.

--Henry David Thoreau,
16-Feb-1859

The more I read, the more I wish I'd known ya', man.

Another highpoint

Yes, the world officially watches the Kyoto treaty take effect today, pledging all the major economies (well, except its biggest) to reducing green-house gasses gradually over the coming decades.

``The Kyoto Protocol is an urgently needed first step on a long path to reach climate stability,'' said Germany's Environment Minister Juergen Trittin in an e-mailed statement today. Germany, whose target set by Kyoto is an 8 percent emissions cut, has set itself a national target of reducing greenhouse gases by 21 percent by 2012, the highest reduction target of all industrialized nations. It has already cut emissions by about 18 percent from 1990 levels.

It's good to see that somebody is taking the lead in these matters. I guess the moral highground no longer interests the US.

(referring link lost -- sorry!)

More disillusioned conservatives

Many from the organizations and government agencies that had hoped to benefit from Bush's "values" emphasis are now facing the sad reality that the President often speaks with good intentions, but lets his evil minions set actual policy priorities (as well as disperse or withold promised funds). The latest victim of credulousness? David Kuo, former deputy director of the President’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who moans

From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants. It never really wanted the ‘poor people stuff.’

A Whitehouse spokesman counters that the President has mentioned his anti-poverty initiative in every State of the Union Address. Clearly poor Kuo just missed the key lesson of the first Bush Administration: that Words Speak Louder Than Actions.

Why should we care about Bush's crazy judges?

Well, if the issues that they're bound to rule on don't convince you, maybe you'll look askance at the folks doing the blind supporting...

Asked during an appearance at the National Press Club to name his top three moral issues, [Pat] Robertson said, "Judges, judges, judges."

Robertson is threatening any Democratic opponents with a backlash during the next elections.

Robertson said the re-election loss in November by former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota senator who led the earlier fight against Bush's nominees, should serve as a warning.

Well, they're already after Reid, so no surprises there. Still, always good to know that these Christian Conservatives can produce a good froth on demand.

(via Craig's BookNotes)

Sometimes it feels good to let go

Kat at Breaching the Web finds herself unexpectedly caught up in a military homecoming and maybe reminds us all a little about letting go of cynicism and remembering our connections to one another. Thanks.

An invention of color

Despite the fact that I've felt entirely under the weather for more than a week, my spouse and I made the train trip to New York to (see some old friends and) take in the installation "The Gates" by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Central Park (there for only another two weeks). It's thousands of saffron-colored gates, each supporting a billowing orange curtain, winding their way along the paths and byways of the park, putting a torch to the winter-dark trees and dead grass. Amazing in many ways. We were lucky to have such a sun-filled day Sunday for our visit, as the fabric really comes most to life as the light comes through it from behind...


click the photo for a short slideshow of the spectacle...
For some "before" pictures of the stanchions in piles and the curtains still furled, along with some philosophical reflections on the project, see The Gates -- but only until the actual installation ends, as the author of the blog wishes to respect the transience of the project...

Also, don't miss this great arial shot, credited to the New York Times, which makes the whole display look like a molten river...