Acid Test

Acid Test

I’ve been expecting this. The Administration needs a Really Big distraction before the election from everything that’s boiling over on the back burner. Health care, education, house prices, gas prices, Iraq, and the list goes on. The early stages of a war, the stage when it’s all about bunting and heroic young folks trailing clouds of glory, would be just the thing. But, sadly for them, BushCo has used up its capital. I’m not sure that at this point they could get the military to go along with another shooting war. (Congress probably would, but that’s Congress. Don’t get me started on our People’s Chamber of Deputies.) I’m sure BushCo would be glad to waste other people’s lives and money if they thought they could still get away with it, but from a purely Machiavellian standpoint, it’s a very risky strategy that could backfire badly in Peoria.

Enter Israel. That’s the bit I’ve been expecting. If Israel does the shooting, it solves all the problems. There’s a war, with visuals, but /*cough, cough, cough*/ nobody dies /*cough, cough*/. There’ll be a flare of support, because the US needs to stand by a friend, and BushCo will be kept way in the background. And — icing on the cake! — the price of oil will shoot to $200 a barrel through /*cough*/ nobody’s fault /*cough*/ and Cheney’s investments will do even better.

Right on schedule (i. e. US elections schedule) comes this information from the NYTimes, the outfit that did such a good job feeding us sober news indicating we had to do something about Iraq. U.S. Says Exercise by Israel Seemed Directed at Iran

Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. …

A second, the official said, was to send a clear message to the United States and other countries that Israel was prepared to act militarily if diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from producing bomb-grade uranium continued to falter.

“They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know,” the Pentagon official said. “There’s a lot of signaling going on at different levels.”

Of course, there is the obligatory disclaimer that there’s nothing to see here, which has the added benefit of making it clear that Israel is an independent actor in all this.

Several American officials said they did not believe that the Israeli government had concluded that it must attack Iran and did not think that such a strike was imminent.

Then, just to make sure that the option of sensible shooting war stays open — nothing overhasty, you understand, more in sorrow than in anger, the Iranians made us do it —

Iran is also taking steps to better defend its nuclear facilities. Two sets of advance Russian-made radar systems were recently delivered to Iran. The radar will enhance Iran’s ability to detect planes flying at low altitude. … American military officials said that the deployment of such systems would hamper Israel’s attack planning, putting pressure on Israel to act before the missiles are fielded.

In completely unrelated news, Western oil majors returning to Iraq.

Technorati Tags: Iran, war, Israel, elections, 2008

Barbara Kingsolver in Pigs in Heaven tells a Mayan story about hell and heaven that summarizes what bothers me about the talk of racism and sexism running through this political season.

A group of people sits around a large bowl of soup, but they can’t eat it. The only spoons they can use are magical ones with immensely long handles that can’t be touched anywhere except at the very end. The people try every possible contortion to empty the soup into their mouths, but the handles are just too long. All they accomplish is to spill soup everywhere and slowly starve to death, tantalized by the aroma.

There is also another group of people with the same bowl and the same spoons. But these people are well fed and happy. They’re not even trying to feed themselves. They use the long-handled spoons to feed each other.

Barack doesn’t need to address racism, first and foremost. He’s not a racist, and he’s not the one who needs to change to cure the condition. In this election, whites (of any sex) are the ones who need to understand racism. Hillary shouldn’t be the one addressing sexism. She’s not a sexist, and she’s not the one causing the problem. Men (of any color) are the ones who should be worrying about sexism.

Instead, we’re fighting for ourselves instead of each other. The sad thing is we don’t have any alternative. Once one person starts, everyone else can either settle for being a second priority, or make the mess worse by also fighting for themselves. Once it starts, there are no good choices. That’s got to be the essence of hell.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Clinton, election, racism, sexism, politics, current events

I’m glad Mustang Bobby reads Bloody Woolly Kristol so I don’t have to. But I can just feel a progressive meme building, and that bothers me.

It goes like this. “Some wingnut thinks A. Therefore A is not true.”

The logic nerd hat envelops me like the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts. Just because a wingnut — Rove for instance — says something does not make it true. The opposite also holds. Just because some wingnut — Kristol for instance — says something does not make it false.

Progressives have been falling into the second fallacy a lot. Wingers make a big deal out of the Middle Eastern mistreatment of women, so it must not be a real problem. (The truthful take would be to agree regarding mistreatment, but to point out that their racist hypocrisy bulges out because that’s the only sexism they ever worry about.) Progressives ridiculed worries about the SPP. As far as I can tell by following Chet Scoville’s links, the SPP had to be okay because the anti-immigrant hysterics didn’t like it. (Again, the truthful take would be to point out the real problems with both the SPP and the anti-immigrant hysteria.) Now it could be Obama’s turn. There must not be anything wrong with him because Kristol says there is.

Yes, Kristol is a whiny little wannabe. But the evidence about Obama is not good. He makes beautiful stirring speeches, and motivating people is an important function of leadership. But what he’s done is work with the coal industry for liquefied coal fuel subsidies, help the insurance industry gut Illinois’ universal health care attempt, used one vote out of dozens to pretend there is a big difference between him and Clinton on Iraq, and so on through a near-endless list. (Actually, maybe there is a big difference between him and Clinton on wars of aggression. I’ve never heard her making off-the-cuff remarks about bombing Pakistan.)

So, sadly, there’s an element of truth to Kristol’s nonsense. Obama is making a lot more out of himself than he should. That’s like saying he’s a politician. The only real thing Kristol punctures is the desire to believe that seems to motivate many Obama fans. No, Obama is not a big change. Yes, he’s a right-of-center Illinois pol. So what? If you feel he’s a better choice than the other pols, then you vote for him. But he is a pol. We’re supposed to be the reality-based community, so let’s face that.

Crossposted to Shakesville, where commentary is accumulating….

Technorati Tags: Obama, Kristol, election, 2008

SurveyUSA poll of Mar 6: Clinton wins against McCain, 276 electoral college votes to 262. (Map below modified from NYTimes report on 2004 election results. Clinton: blues. McCain: reds.) Survey-USA has the best track record this election season of predicting primary results.

One thing that struck me about this is that Obama did well in a number of states which are unlikely to vote Democratic in the general election. Clinton did well in states that have the electoral college votes to win the election. She also has some chance of putting Texas in the Dem column, although I’d consider that a long shot.

But by far the biggest thing that struck me about it is that Clinton and Obama are both more or less even with McCain. It’s mindboggling that so many still want to vote for the anti-people party, but that’s not my point right now. Nor is currently significant whether they’re ten electoral college votes ahead or behind. What’s important is that Obama is in that position after kid gloves treatment in the media. It’s been so over the top, it even made it to Saturday Night Live. Clinton is still beating McCain after a hate-fest.

The BS about how “Hillary can’t win” could have come straight from Rove’s playbook. Attack people on their strengths, and destroy your biggest opponent first. (Notice that they started with Edwards.)

(Click here for larger image. Opens in new window)

—————————————————————————————————
teal: over 10% difference in favor of Clinton, Dem primaries in these states won by Clinton

turquoise: up to 10% difference in favor of Clinton
turquoise: primary won by Clinton (except PA)
bluish: primary won by Obama
PA primary not held yet, polls C:55% O: 36%, in Dem column in survey
WV primary not held yet, in Dem column in survey.
—————————————————————————————————

dark red: over 10% difference in favor of McCain
dark purple: Dem primaries won by Obama
only AZ in this category won by Clinton

lighter red: up to 10% difference in favor of McCain
purplish: Dem primaries won by Obama
grayish red with turquoise square: Dem primaries won by Clinton
grayish red (MT, NE, SD, IN, NC, KY, OR): primaries not held yet
—————————————————————————————————-

ochre: states perfectly tied in the poll. Dem primaries in these states won by Clinton.
—————————————————————————————————-

Crossposted to Shakesville, where there was much commentary….

Technorati Tags: Hillary, Clinton, election, 2008

You’ve noticed how the media take out the Democratic candidates, one by one? First Edwards. (Gawd! He gets his hair cut? Who ever heard of such a thing?) Now Clinton. (Such an unfeeling crybaby.) Then Obama. (We really haven’t been fair, have we? We need some balance on Obama. We should really look at his shockingly radical background, shouldn’t we?) Check back in late October, to see whether that last was right.

So I’m depressed. I can’t tell whether I’m seeing the future, or just fearing it. Either way I see McCain, which isn’t easy since the man’s so crooked he can hide behind spiral staircases. (Not my own. Wodehouse.)

Meanwhile, every minute of every day the evidence for getting rid of the rancid Republican greaseballs gets more crushing.

In spring, an old coot’s fancy turns to taxes, so I’ve started looking around for information. And the first thing that clobbers me over the skull is this:

• The tuition and fees deduction. Bummer if you have a kid in college or are doing continuing education for a better degree.
• But the teachers get screwed too. This is the last year for the educator expense deduction, which lets schoolteachers to write off up to $250 in out-of-pocket classroom expenses.
• And this is the last year to claim breaks on home energy improvement purchases. This means more energy efficient windows, water heaters, etc. [Based on an article in the LATimes.]

I’m sure making it harder for underpaid teachers to buy school supplies for their underfunded schools will solve the nation’s fiscal problems.

I didn’t even notice when they slipped in these extra cuts, to join the thousands of others.

I have a confession to make.  I’m moving away from the Democratic dogma that says we have two fine candidates, and either one will be a great President.  I no longer think so.  There’s a disconnect between Obama’s words and deeds that got too big for me.  So I took another look at Clinton.

At first, I didn’t consider her because of her stance on rating video games.  Yes, really.  That goes way back, to before the Iraq war even.  You see, I’m hyperallergic to anything that smacks of pandering to fundies.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for people being able to control what they see. (In fact, I’m such a wild-eyed radical, I think ad blocking is an inalienable right.) But the way she did it felt like a pander to the fundies, and she fell beyond the pale.  (I wasn’t always so intolerant.  Once upon a time, I was a live and let live kind of dreamer, but then Reagan happened, and, well, it’s a long story.)

Okay. Let’s fast forward closer to the present. I’ll recap my thoughts, going back to when I first heard of Obama.

2004, Democratic Convention, and Obama gave a brilliant speech. I thought, “Wow! Next President! Somebody I could really get excited about!”

2006.  When the presidential campaign started (pretty much as soon as the polls closed in 2006, wasn’t it?), and Edwards, Clinton, and Obama were all unofficially running, I was chortling wildly. Three excellent candidates. Three! And I’d be glad to vote for any one of them. As far as I was concerned, the gods, displaying the distorted sense of humor for which they’re so famous, made the best candidate a white male in the first field with some real diversity. But all three were good.

Then the trouble started.

• Mid-2007. It started small. After environmentalists made a noise about it, I heard that Obama had promised the coal industry subsidies for liquefied coal fuel. If that sounds like something Bush would do, it is. The coal industry was all for it, and was throwing money at people, mostly Republicans, who were all for it. (I don’t know if they threw any at Obama.) I was doing a blink-blink-what-is-he-thinking double take. Read more »

eriposte at The Left Coaster has a gut-wrenching list of some of the ways sexism is slathered on Clinton’s campaign. I knew it was bad, but I’ve been trying to maintain my sanity. I didn’t realize it was this bad. Go read the whole thing. Go read it even if you already know we’re nowhere near a post-feminist society. There are some things which have to be repeated until we’re finally so cured we don’t know what they mean.

This was my comment to the post:

Thanks, eriposte. You’ve written the post I haven’t had the stomach to write myself. Carefully collecting all the evidence of hate just hurts too much.

The thing that hurts worst of all: the folks on supposedly “our” side, the “progressives,” who can always find a more “important” battle to fight than sexism.

We’re not supposed to get into an Olympics of -isms. Nobody’s suffering trumps someone else’s.

That’s true. Totally, entirely, completely true.

It’s true all ways. You have to care as much about my suffering as I do about yours.

If my suffering doesn’t matter to you, you’re just fighting for privilege.

Crossposted to Shakesville

Technorati tags: politics, sexism, Hillary, Clinton

James Surowiecki writes about sovereign wealth funds, which are pots of money used by governments to buy things. Qatar, for instance, thinking of buying the British supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, and Dubai thinking of buying P&O which is a contractor for security in some US harbors.

National security and dislike of foreigners aside, there’s another angle to all this that you won’t see discussed too often in the financial press. Surowiecki mentions:

“The prospect of American companies being sold to foreign states is, to be sure, disconcerting. But it’s a problem of our own making. The reason that sovereign wealth funds are so flush with cash is all the dollars we spend on oil and Asian consumer goods. If we want to consume far beyond our means, then, one way or another we’re going to end up selling off assets to pay for it.”

But what he doesn’t discuss is why those dollars are spent that way. It’s not consuming beyond our means that’s the real root problem — or at least it’s not only that. A big part of it is decades of kleptocratic government policy.
Read more »

We have a year to go, and already I’m tired of noticing how diseased some people are when it comes to women. Something about having to take a woman seriously as candidate for president seems to make these people break out.

Well, fine. I’m a big advocate of letting people do whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes. But when you’re in public, do cover up all the pus-filled boils.

The thing that really gets to me is all the jerks in the public eye — the talking heads, even the candidates themselves — who let the crap come out as if it was something perfectly normal. It means that to them it is perfectly normal. And that’s the most tiring, depressing, and soul-destroying thing of all. It’s not the knowledge that there are all kinds of bigots out there. I know there are. What’s so awful is that sexism is not something they have to hide. What’s so awful is what that means about everybody’s attitudes, not just theirs.

One recent example is the McCain staffer talking about “how to beat the bitch.” Once it got out, did McCain have to fire the person? No, he turned it into a fundraising event.

Imagine the reaction if Obama was the frontrunner, and the staffer had said, “How do we beat the nigger?”

That’s the difference I’m talking about. These days, racism has to be covered up, at least in public. It is Not Okay. But sexism is frivolous to worry about when we have “real problems.” Any women who are offended should lighten up and “get over it.” Or they should “have a sense of humor.”
Read more »

Seriously. I’m beginning to think they’re the source of all evil. Think about it. Insurance companies are at the heart of the US health care disaster. This post is an off-the-cuff rant, so I can’t be arsed to dig up the links, but go read Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum. Even I have a post about it. It’s obvious to the meanest intelligence.

But what brought this on is that my neighbor is cutting his trees to ten feet high. (Pollarding is the technical term.) I like those trees. They’re almost the only trees left on my street. This is a low rent district, full of little, ramshackle houses. With trees, it looked like something out of Harry Potter. Without trees, it looks like a slum. Even more important, the hummingbirds who visit my feeders live in those last few trees. They are currently Not Happy.

Now, my neighbor is a nice guy, so I went out to moan at him about what he was doing.

“It’s the insurance,” he said. “If I don’t cut them shorter, they won’t insure the house.”

What he means, of course, is that they’ll insure it, but they’ll want bags more money in case a branch comes off in a high wind and knocks off a roof tile or two. The trees themselves are too small and too far from any house to fall right over on one.

So, because the few little trees might, someday, cost the insurance company a few hundred dollars, it’ll either jack up premiums to the point where he has to pay hundreds extra every goddamn year, or it wants them gone. The neighborhoods I live in, nobody has an extra few hundred a year, so all the trees disappear, one by one.

This is the third neighborhood I’ve lived in during the last decade or so where I’ve seen this happen. Multiply that times thousands of neighborhoods, because I’m sure it’s the same thing everywhere. Then calculate how much CO2 that residential urban forest could have taken up. Calculate the increased heat island effect because the trees are no longer there to evaporate acres more water. Calculate the increased air conditioning used because there are no trees to throw shade. Calculate everything, and there’s only one conclusion.

Insurance companies (help) cause global warming.

Why aren’t we regulating the piss out of these bastards, and making it impossible for them to aid and abet the murder of trees?

Crossposted to Shakesville

Everyone’s heard the falafel story by now:

The FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

However, as the astute commenter, r@d@r points out on Krugman’s blog:

interesting assumption, considering the fact that one of the more prominent brands of falafel in this town is a kosher one, made by israeli immigrants.

Maybe if They hadn’t abbreviated it to “humint,” there would still be some humans in the system who could apply some intelligence to the ill-gotten garbage coming in.

cross-posted to Shakesville

Talking Points Memo is one of the best sources for US political news. I’m not aware of anything that even comes close (but then again there are rafts of things I’m unaware of).

They generally do a fine job of avoiding bias … and yet when it come to Hillary Clinton there’s an undertow, all the more noticeable for its absence otherwise.

Commenting on how the news media couldn’t stop criticizing her laugh, and then began criticizing the lack of it:

Yes, we’ve apparently reached a point in the media’s coverage of the campaign in which news outlets find it noteworthy when they don’t notice anything unusual about Sen. Clinton’s laugh.

As Greg Sargent put it, “We’ve come full circle: Damned if you do cackle; damned if you don’t.”

Indeed. That’s the normal operating procedure for discrimination: you’re never good enough, you’re too fat, too thin, too dumb, too smart, too soft, too bitchy, etc. etc. etc. It’s refreshing that they recognize it and expose it to daylight.

And then they make fun of how ridiculous the media focus is:

In related news, Rudy Giuliani delivered a speech yesterday in which he didn’t answer his cell phone; Mitt Romney answered questions without abandoning a position he held five minutes prior; John McCain hosted a town-hall forum in which he did not refer to anyone as a “little jerk”; and Fred Thompson went the whole day without responding to a reporter’s question with, “I don’t know anything about that.”

They’re right that the media are making drooling fools of themselves. However, note the examples. Clinton’s laugh is being compared to evidence of manipulative boorishness, pandering, lack of impulse control, and stupidity. But a laugh is like a person’s gait or breathing. It can be consciously controlled, but it doesn’t say anything about one’s morals, maturity, or intelligence.

What’s going on with Clinton is even worse than what TPM realizes. The real parallels would be to say, “In other news, Rudy Giuliani delivered a speech yesterday during which he was still bald; Mitt Romney answered questions without wrinkling his forehead; John McCain hosted a town-hall forum in which he gestured sometimes; and Fred Thompson went the whole day with bags under his eyes.”

That’s so bad, it’s not funny. That’s what Clinton is putting up with.

Not by much, admittedly, and not by choice, but still, there it is.

From a BBC report on the Taleban-controlled northwest frontier of Pakistan, this image bowled me over.

“The Taleban take advantage of solar energy,” says the caption.

Used to be, we didn’t have to worry about being outclassed by the likes of them on anything.

Although, really, I guess that would depend on how you define their work. Let me put it this way: the government is continuing not to protect and help the citizens who pay the government to help and protect them.

Via Shaker Nik E. Poo, another depressing bit of news.

Despite the protests of more than 50 scientists, including five Nobel laureates in chemistry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday approved use of a new, highly toxic fumigant, mainly for strawberry fields.

The new pesticide, methyl iodide, is designed for growers, mainly in California and Florida, who need to replace methyl bromide, which has been banned under an international treaty because it damages the Earth’s ozone layer.

I happen to live a few miles away from some of the strawberry fields in question. (Upwind, luckily.) The procedure when they’re fumigating the fields is to cover them in acres of plastic. Great rolls of white stuff, about six feet wide, are rolled out and taped at the seams. Then a couple of guys dressed in white moon suits show up. These are the full biohazard overalls, with their heads completely enclosed in a gas mask sort of thing. They pace around, doing something obscure with hoses and stuff. They have a pickup-sized truck with a metal tank. Once they start pumping the gas under the plastic it billows in a dreamy way. It continues billowing for a few days. Anything alive under there is killed. I drive by with my windows rolled up, wondering how well those seams are holding up.

Meanwhile, a couple fields away, dozens of farmworkers are bent over, picking celery, or cabbages, or carefully hand-weeding a sod farm. When they’ve finished picking a box load, they run to the collecting truck. Then they run back. It’s not easy work, they do it for at least eight hours, and there’s probably scarcely a minute when they’re not breathing hard.

I can hear people sputtering, “Why the HELL don’t the farms just go organic!”

They can’t. If they tried to, it would take about three years before the soil microbiology and organisms built up to the point where something besides pests could live in those fields. Three years of paying taxes on the land and no income to show the shareholders is not something any agribusiness wants any part of. It’s not that they’re against organic farming as such. (Really. Organic farms are often more profitable after the transition period.) It’s that they can’t stand not making money all the time.

So they have to keep killing everything that moves. But life is very adaptable, especially pestiferous life, and there aren’t many poisons that will do that. Methyl bromide was a fumigant that did. It’s a very light molecule that went floating straight up into the stratosphere where it destroyed ozone. Bad for the planet.

But the farms that need a fumigant couldn’t function without it, so even though the stuff was outlawed years ago, it continues to be used with “exemptions” in quantities of thousands of pounds. (When an exemption is a continual thing, is it still an exemption?)

Now, I guess, the EPA has decided it has to get serious about stopping the use of methyl bromide. If you look at that column of elements in the periodic table, you see fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine. All truly vicious toxins, which is why they work as disinfectants. Iodine is a bigger atom than bromine, so when it’s attached to a methyl group, you have a heavier compound. Methyl iodide does not go straight to the stratosphere. It hangs around where we are and gets into the groundwater. Bad for people.

So that’s the choice the “hydroponic” model of agriculture has given us. Kill the planet (and us, eventually), or kill (some of) us now.

There’s an interesting twist at the end of the LATimes article:

The manufacturer [of methyl iodide fumigant], Arysta, has spent eight years and more than $11 million collecting toxicological and environmental data to persuade the EPA to register methyl iodide as a pesticide.

Arysta’s former chief executive, Elin Miller, is now a top official at the EPA and was appointed administrator of its northwest region last year.

Look, I try not to blog about stuff that’s silly and insignificant. Honest, I do. But I have to share a major “Aha!” moment with you.

Way back in the 1970s, Republicans fought like demons against the Amendment for equal rights for both genders. It seems like an obvious Mom and apple pie issue. Like being against war and poverty.

But the Republicans couldn’t stand it. Their big issue? It would lead to unisex toilets! That would be the worst thing in the world.

Even more amazing was how many people agreed with them.

But now, suddenly, it all makes sense.

First link not completely work safe….

Technorati tags: Craig, Allen, Republican, hypocrisy

You’d think a bunch of biblical literalists, or whatever the hell they are, would have at least read the book they’re always swearing by. Haven’t they heard about “sowing the wind, and reaping the whirlwind”?

Words fail me, and the information really needs to go viral, so I’ll just quote Andrew Heavens mindboggling post:

August 29, 2007

the scariest headline of the week award goes to … today’s Khartoum Monitor:

DRIVE FOR NUCLEAR REACTORS POSSESSION

In a scientific symposium yesterday at the Islamic Jurisprudence complex, participants said it is essential to establish research centres and installations in the fields of physics, chemistry and physical engineering which will enhance atomic and nuclear research…

Scientists recommended a drive to obtain mass destruction weapons and that if the enemy is suspected to be in possession of these weapons, we must get prepared and be trained in their use.

Just what Sudan needs. And who is “the enemy”?

The point is not that terrorists could get at these weapons. The point is not even that Sudan will waste resources getting a nuke or two. (Although both are big issues.) The point is that they want nukes.