Airport Twenty-Ten

Here is wishing everyone a New Year of Jurassic-sized felicity. I’ve just returned from Philadelphia, where I spent the weekend. Which means I had to fly since I live nowhere near Pennsylvania. Which means I had the high honor and distinct privilege of experiencing how the authorities dealt with a perceived elevation of the terrorist threat thanks to Christmas Day’s near-disaster.

Lines were at least tolerable, but slower. I arrived at PHL hoping to get an earlier flight. Silly me. By the time I got to the airport around 6:30 a.m., boarding pass in hand, the security line was already very long and not moving very fast. We all know you can’t trust granny with that menacing walker of hers—she just might be al Qaeda. But me they singled out for a patting down. I suspect it was just so they could find an excuse to handle a living fossil, not because they thought I might belong to some radical group. Well, no harm done. At least they didn’t yank my tail and call me “stupid lizard” the way children do.

It’s been well said by others that much of what we do at the airport by way of vigilance is “security theater” rather than genuine protection. I feel neither taught nor delighted, nor rendered safer, by this participatory theater of the absurd. Maybe the title of the play ought to be, after the manner of Luigi Pirandello, Mille personaggi in cerca di buon senso.

The Detroit incident suggests that to a significant extent, safety is in the hands of the passengers. No security regimen – not even the eminently sensible proposal to invest more in intelligence and dot-connecting than in the above-described “theater” – will prove 100% effective. I suppose this just means that if and when someone near us stands up mid-flight and tries to set fire to his shorts, makes as if to light the wick hanging ever so oddly from his snappy new netbook, or begins to carry out some other cartoonish but deadly scheme our adversaries think of next, we are going to find it necessary to take notice. Polite attentiveness should become part of flight culture. Of course, there’s no need for paranoia – the odds of anything bad happening on any given flight (terrorist-induced or otherwise) are low.

Evidently, it is all but impossible to get certain agencies to act with the necessary common sense and alacrity. If a young man’s father walks into your office and says something on the order of, “My mixed-up son is consorting with terrorists and I am convinced he’s going to do something irretrievably awful. We must stop him!” you’d think that you would be able to issue an immediate request to keep that young man off any airplane whatsoever. But even something this obvious only begins to set the creaking wheels of the security apparatus in motion, and evidently requires weeks, if not months, of processing, bethinking, and consideration. I wish I could see it getting better, but it’s just too predictable human behavior to expect improvements with confidence. People dither, and even the authorities, when confronted with the need to act rapidly and boldly, tend to look around and bleat, “why don’t the authorities do something?” Still, the demand for improvement in intelligence connectivity should be made, and followed up on, too.

On a positive note in keeping with the new year, I believe the most important thing we can do to make ourselves safer is to get out of the oil-consumption business as quickly as possible. We are targets at least partly because of our entanglements in the politics of a certain region of the world. That need not be interpreted as “blaming Uncle Sam”; it’s simply to point out that changing our relations with the Middle East to something less complex or high-stakes than they are at present would benefit us, as would finally arriving at a workable solution to the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian tensions. Neither accomplishment would make terrorist outfits regard us kindly, but both might lessen the appeal of their warped, murderous ideology to the lost individuals they turn to their purposes. In the long run, what we have on our hands is a political problem, not a directly military one or even one that can be settled by ever-increasing security measures. I think it's worth keeping that in mind.

Doctor Syntax Returns

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall
The vapors sweep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan

-Tennyson-


Every year at this time I let Doctor Syntax out of the Vicarage and let him raise hell with the way we've ruined the greatest language on Earth: spray painted it like an old abandoned subway car, put it up on blocks and stolen the wheels and made it all but impossible to have an intelligent conversation because, like one of those German Enigma machines, every word seems to change meaning every time it's used.

Every year brings the same references to "language police" because you know it's true and you know we're guilty of polluting the minds of millions with silly, balbative portmanteau words like Ginormous or Sexting, our relentless verbing of nouns like texting and friending and our instant acceptance of every cliche metaphor, metastatic Malapropism, stupid solecism and yes, with every pusillanimous political polemic we pass along.

No, if conservative, liberal, reactionary, fascist, anarchist, Marxist, royalist, and Fascist are all used interchangeably, we might as well stop talking, legislating, voting and adjudicating and take up arms. And we do.

Every year, as our vocabularies atrophy, we make up words or as our overuse of superlatives diminishes them, as our misuse erases them, we have to invent new ones. After all, when your skate board or your X-Box is awesome, you simply can't discuss how you felt when you saw that Hubble picture of some distant nebula, now can you? What happens to the real verb "to befriend" when it's more fashionably idiotic to "friend" someone or worse, toBFF them? It dies quickly of course and any real dictionary these days is a virtual Arlington of fallen words.

There's a college up in Michigan, Lake Superior State University, that's been putting out an annual list of words that need to die for 35 years. I'm afraid the school will die before they have any results to show. In fact if we still have universities in 35 years I have to wonder whether they'll be teaching in Standard English in the way medieval Universities taught in Latin, while business and popular pursuits are conducted in some 'consumerized' argot or vulgate designed to boost sales and befuddle customers while the general population can't read Hemingway, much less Tennyson any more.

No, I'm not the language police. The real language police are the people who tell you you're a racist if you call an Asian tiger or bear an Asiatic tiger or bear -- or that you may never end a sentence with a preposition. No, I just love English and as you know I love wordplay and the inventive use of words. In principle I don't object to such silliness as "chillaxin," the compound of two bits of dialect; chillin' and relaxin' but only in principle and never when used by some underage hipster with a two thousand word vocabulary. I even thought the short lived "not so much" routine was cute for a few moments, but that's the thing: with fish, house guests, metaphors and the Macarena; after three days one notices a smell. At least I do. Maybe it's time you did too.

Yes, I agree that "shovel-ready" is shovel ready for burial; I agree that it's time to stop calling every adviser a Czar. I am sick unto death at the "app app app app" that I hear quacked out at the phone store, butLSSU's 15 words are not enough nor does the list expose the inverted elitism behind our linguistic cacophony. We may have majored in English at the best schools, but in our HowdyDoody hearts we know it's bad to be grown up and embarrassing to sound educated and so we try ever so hard to sound like the baggy pants crowd who know just how the really cool kids talk in the penitentiaries and crack houses. We always fail at it of course, because those kids change their jargon faster than we can.

As I said, I only do this once a year and that's because it's useless, of course. It only lets me vent some excess steam pressure, to rant against the dying of the light. I know that "impact" will ever hence mean affect and effect and influence and inform and not be just a carrion metaphor. I know that those words are gone forever from popular parlance and that this little rant will be as hard for my grandchildren to read as Chaucer. Hell, animated video clips may have replaced the written word altogether by then and the University of Wii may be the new Harvard. I don't know. I do know that no one cares how much of value we lose every day or with what dross we replace it. I do know there are still people who can write well and I'm proud to appear here with them. I do also know It's New Year's Eve again and time for old Syntax and me to drown our sorrows -- metaphorically speaking, of course.

Rush lives

Whatever the cause of Rush Limbaugh's chest pains, they haven't been as fatal as some have reported but whether or not angina is involved, we can be sure they weren't pangs of conscience. His web site thanks us for our prayers ( if only he could hear mine) and is, as always, jam packed and bloated with fear mongering, dire predictions and apocalyptic warnings that if we don't "fight like hell" our country will be changed forever.Let's hope.

I recently read that only about 5% of those admitted to hospitals with chest pains die within a year, so one important and very needed change is probably not going to happen -- all the more so since most billionaires can not only afford health insurance but can afford to do without it. If you or I had rendered ourselves uninsurable through a lifetime of belly bustin' burgers, cigars, uppers, downers, pain killers and beer we might have a rather different experience and a bit less cause for optimism.

Yes, we have to fight like hell to stop this "buffoonery" says Rush about Bob Menendez' call to set aside ideology, turn off Limbaugh and pass the legislation that most Americans want. But Congress is ignoring the will of the people -- or at least the minority of the people he represents, says Rush. Public health insurance will change America forever -- forever! Government will "take over" health care just the way it took over all those plans you made for retirement. ( huh?)
Just the way Veteran's benefits took over - well whatever they took over and medicare helped keep exploding profits from eating up every last dime retired people have set aside.

It's a tenet of Buddhism, and a nice bit of wisdom, that change is constant and suffering is universal when we refuse to accept it. It's too bad in this case that Rush's refusal to let go of failed 19th century ideas will cause more suffering for everyone else than it will for him. We have been changing from the outset in terms of making the US a better place to live for more of its people and Rush has been a major clot in the artery of truth and justice and decency.

No, I'm not going to descend to his level and wish him an immediate death, in fact I hope he lives long enough to see that not one dire thing he has predicted has materialized and that he's been pretty much wrong about every thing he's said -- and until that happens, I hope those pains continue to hurt like hell.

Orly Taitz declares war!

-Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.-

Article III

Orly Taitz is calling for armed insurrection against the government of the United States. That's right, the same demented creature who's been thrown out of many courts for trying to prove that Barak Obama wasn't born in the United States is advocating that we take up arms against the government of The United States of America.

"Seeing targeted destruction of our economy, our security, dissipation of American jobs, massive corruption in the Government, Congress Department of Justice and Judiciary, it might be time to start rallies and protests using our second amendment right to bare arms and organise in militias."

Seems to me she her best defense is insanity, since anyone seeing targeted destruction of the economy by those who appear to have saved us from what seemed inevitable destruction wrought by George Bush has a good claim to be a nut job. Illiteracy would be equally as demonstrable (bear Vs. bare) but it's hardly a legal defense.

Sure it's easy to laugh. She makes it so easy, after all, but far less laughable are the millions who essentially agree with her that the damage done by borrow, spend and borrow some more economic policies of the Republicans is proof of Democratic malfeasance. I got another one of those "humorous" tracts this morning: Dems don't pay taxes or work and Republicans have to support them. Right.

No, you can't fix stupid and I fear that you really can't fix insane, particularly when it's pandemic. You can however, begin putting traitors in jail.

HOW CORPORATE AMERICA ENABLES SCAMS, SPAM AND CYBER-CRIME

Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.

- William Butler Yeats -

Your ubiquitous (O)CT(O)PUS is no prude, but I get annoyed when breast and penis enlargement spam invades my e-mail box. Why spam when spammers know nothing about me, least of all my gender, proclivities, or species?

Neither this nor that, I am not a transgender, cross-dressing cephalopod in need of both. I have no interest in privileging one appendage over another and no innate need to preen or primp myself in gaudiness to facilitate naughtiness. In this or that, it seems, human beings are more akin to birds.

Perhaps followers of this forum have noticed: Spam is no longer delivered via e-mail but posted in the comment threads of popular blogs. The logic is simple: Why spam a single reader when you can reach a wider audience; for instance, a forum followed by hundreds or thousands of readers; and spammers have learned to customize their message with charm and inventiveness.

Recently, for instance, I posted this article, A Preoccupation with Rubber Ducks. Last week, one enterprising spammer raised the ante duck for duck and left this comment beneath my post:

While most birds are phallus-free, ducks are oddly endowed - up to 8 inches. Using high-speed video they found that ducks could go from zero to happy in less than half a second … That endowment should give the males an advantage during forced mating but these [editorial note: I eliminated the embedded url address that originally appeared here] free males aren't out of the woods yet … Why Yale decided to study duck penises in the first place I will never know.

The embedded url address links you to an online pharmacy that trades in generic versions of Viagra™, Cialis™, and Levitra™, among other prescription medications. Online pharmacies are illegal in the United States for good reasons.

Generic drugs manufactured offshore violate patents and trademarks, and consumers should be especially wary when purchasing drugs of dubious origin and quality. Furthermore, consumers should never self-administer any prescription drug, especially antibiotics and cardio-vascular drugs, without medical supervision.

Curiously, GeoTrust and McAfee have certified this obviously illegal enterprise as a secure e-commerce site. Furthermore, the horny duck accepts payment from American Express, Diners Club, Visa, MasterCard, and Western Union. American corporations, it seems, employ a double standard. They will litigate any infringements of their own rights yet sell anything to anyone for any purpose with impunity. These days, to make a buck is the most sublime of all virtues ... trumping laws, ethics, even hypocrisy. (O)CT(O)PUS intends to name them and shame them until they clean up their act.

Deja two, Deja three. . .

You probably have heard all about the second nutjob on a plane scare today. Same Amsterdam - Detroit flight, but this time the man did not come out of the toilet with a bomb, but an attitude. Naturally the crew was more than curious as to whether his half hour sojourn suggested criminal intent, but the unnamed man of so far unknown ethnicity became aggressive and abusive when asked and -- once again -- we had a plane sitting on the ground in Detroit while authorities screened all the baggage.

You probably haven't heard about another incident which happened yesterday afternoon at Palm Beach International. Seems someone decided their first class seat wasn't quite classy enough and despite the crew's attempt to make her feel as special as Ivana Trump insists on being made to feel, she launched into a tirade even this old salt would be proud of.

Some small children apparently weren't respectful enough so she started calling them "little fuckers" and yelling "fuck you" at their parents. After the plane was forced to return and the police came aboard, she refused to exit and gave the deputies and all within earshot the same carnal advice.

Of course we have flexible standards for terrorism and so Ms. Trump was deemed only terrible and not sufficiently terroristic for the FBI to be interested. I'm quite sure that if she weren't famous and had been wearing a hijab she'd have spent quite some time in custody, but she wasn't of course. She's just another self-important Palm Beach socialite who in a more just world would be another old woman selling fish from a pushcart.

Behind the veil

Legend has it that when the Nazis occupied Denmark, they ordered all the Jews there to wear yellow stars and that the King himself put one on his own clothing in order to show support. Of course it never happened there or anywhere else to my knowledge. Certainly not in France. I'm wondering though, if the draconian ban on wearing any Islamic garb that covers the face will elicit some French resistance to protest what seems to American eyes to be a violation of civil rights. No, I won't bet on it happening.

Although only some 400 women in France wear a Burqa, according to French intelligence services, the fear that Islamic extremists are a growing threat to peace and security in France and the rest of Europe is ever present. France has already passed a law banning the hijab and all other "conspicuous" religious symbols in state schools and the ruling party are proposing to deny citizenship to couples in which the woman wears a burqa.

"There are principles at stake: Extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country,"

says Jean-Francois Cope, the UMP party leader. So is he, I'd have to add, if that old Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité thing still stands taller in French eyes than ethnic purity.


I wouldn't be hard to find sympathy for banning yarmulkes, turbans, or any other religiously unique clothing in the US of A, but as yet, we're still more liberal in that respect than our Gallic brethren. Long may it be so. I make no secret about my distaste for religion and my fear of what happens when religion and government become too close. Yes, I am all too aware that a large number of Muslims hate our country so much that the random slaughter of innocents seems justified in their eyes, but meddling in anyone's right to express themselves by choosing clothing representing an affiliation or a belief is just such a dangerously close relationship and is anathema to me. No, I don't expect to see that happen here any time soon, but if it does, you'll be seeing me wearing anything they're throwing stones at be it monk's robes or djellaba -- and waving the flag.

connecting the dots

When I heard about the failed attempt to blow up an airplane yesterday, my first reaction was "how long will it take the Republicans to blame it on the President and/or Liberals. Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, as if he'd read my mind, stepped right up to the plate with

“People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration.”

Of course he has no way of knowing exactly or even generally what is known by the President, his advisers, the NSA or anyone else for that matter, but by implying that something is obvious and Obama has been oblivious, he wins another point in the fantasy touch football game of insinuational politics. Of course by some rule of the game I've never understood, it's still off-limits to insinuate that the George W. Bush administration ignored the idea that Terrorists could use airplanes and followed some imaginary, if not fraudulent dots straight to Baghdad.

Hoekstra, or Hokey, if you prefer went straight to Twitter and implied to whatever birds of that feather read his bird brained utterances, that the Obama administration had made some sort of outrageous solecism worthy only of an incompetent and coward by calling a failed attempt a failed attempt, which, of course it was.

"Administration says attempted terrorist attack. No. It was a terrorist attack! Just not as successful as they (AQ) planned." tweeted our friend Hokey.

A white House spokesman had been quoted by AP as saying

"We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism."

By that logic, I'd have to say that my tossing a rock in a northerly direction is an actual attack on Atlanta, the importance of which is undiminished by Atlanta being some 500 miles away and my throwing arm no longer what it was.

I'm guessing with some confidence that the correct course of action would, according to Hokey, be to run down Pennsylvania Avenue shrieking "terrorist attack -- terrorist attack" because the panic factor has proved to work in the Republicans' favor often enough to warrant another try.

Unfortunately the determination as to whether we've indeed suffered an official terrorist attack is the job of the Attorney General who may have wanted to take more than 5 minutes to look into the sketchy and ever changing reports coming in from Detroit as to who did it, what was done and with what kind of device.

Of course I continue to assert that if the Republicans can do no more than sift and comb through ever word, action or inaction of the opposition for something that can be twisted, misrepresented or edited into a scandal they can use to bash Obama, they continue to be the worst enemy we have.

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Every year we have all the family in for a Christmas Eve dinner which includes my homemade crab cakes and my husband’s prime rib. And some lovely bottles of wine.

There are all my adult children, parents, even an ex-wife and the grandchildren! The noise and dishes and mess! All is chaos and caphony….It is the best night of the year as all my loved ones are gathered around me.

I’ve said goodnight and Merry Christmas at least a hundred times as one by one, they have filed out the door. Admonished all to be careful and watch for ice and to call when they get home.

The dishes are piled in the sink the trash is full and the dog looks sick; might be all those scraps the kids snuck her under the table.

I still have to make the stuffing for the turkey we’ll have tomorrow and sort all those dishes and maybe a quick mop of the floors. It will be a late night, but we’ve had many late nights on Christmas Eve, my husband and I, wrapping gifts and putting together various toys or bikes. I was younger then.

There will be no little kids jumping on my bed and yelling, “Get up, Santa Claus came!” Those days are long gone but as the kids have grown up, we have developed new traditions.

But as much as things change, there remains enduring love and gratitude that we have each other. I don’t need a special day of the year to recognize that, but I am happy for this season in the dark dreary dead of winter to enjoy good company and all the pretty lights.

And I want to wish all my fellow Zoners and Swash Zone visitors a very Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, if not, I wish you a safe and peaceful evening.

Peace! Rocky

Noam Chomsky: America Is Not a Democracy

This brief lecture, from 2007, seems appropriate to revisit today:



Merry Christmas to all.

The plain sense of things

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

-Wallace Stevens-
___________________________

Remember when Obama was "the most liberal Senator" in the whole, wide world and we were supposed to tremble at the thought of his limitless liberalness making Capitalism illegal while the Government Printing office was strained to its limit printing little red books? Wasn't long ago.

Now what seems like a majority of those who voted for him are asking what things would be like if he really were a liberal. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi -- they don't seem much like the little red " far left liberal" devils we were warned about. In fact, with a health care bill that seems to have been written by the Health Care corporations and the anti-abortion Religious Right, some are asking if this isn't indeed a country for old men; the same old men whose exclusive country club it's been all along.

No, it's not like the crazy bastards we had for the last 8 years are back and in fact I think we'd have been far worse off had the Republicans won the White House once again, but still. It's like we had come to an end of the imagination -- a fantastic effort has failed, a repetition in a repetitiousness of men and lies.

How The Swash Zone Saved Christmas

Ramona came home today, two days before the doctors originally planned. She's happy and exhausted and getting used to the new "boot" on her leg that replaced the cast this morning. But the best part, the part I need to share with all of you here at THE SWASH ZONE, is that I got to tell her what I found when I checked my PayPal account Sunday night.

Ramona was agape. That complete strangers would reach through the intertubes and lend so much help was...well, it was incomprehensible to her. She doesn't have an internet connection and has never "surfed." Times are hard, and who is she to think the world might return even a tiny portion of what she has earned in sacrifices through the years? Karma is foreign to her Baptist upbringing; goodness was its own reward.

But here was a group of nearly two dozen strangers saving Christmas, and I do not exaggerate.

One of the great ironies of the accident that nearly killed her was that her family was required to recover several unwrapped Christmas presents from the car. She had come to the sad conclusion she would need to return the gifts they had already seen and held -- an even harder task, given they were bought in Chicago. Her mind was running out of things to liquidate and she was trying very hard not to let despair win when suddenly...Christmas was saved.

But by whom? Who were these virtual Santas, she wondered? It just did not calculate. I explained twice, and though she was lucid and used to her medication by now I still don't think she could fully comprehend it.

I have a list of email addresses to give her. Everyone that helped can expect a thank-you note as soon as her wrist is well enough to write one. The denizens of the Zone saved Christmas, and you will never know how deep that joy has reached.

You're all heroes tonight. I love each and every one of you -- God bless and keep you all.

Republicans for rape

I'd say they had some explaining to do, but perhaps it isn't necessary. There's enough in the fact that 30 Republican Senators thought that legalized gang rape was preferable to "government interference" and punishing it is an offense against the sanctity of the employment contract, particularly those of government contractors owned by prominent Republicans.

30 Republican Senators voted against Senator Al Franken's "anti-rape" amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. We have no way of explaining, other than to assume these Senators owe more to KBR than to their constituents or to their sense of morality, because they won't tell us why.

I don't think we need an explanation. I think we can assume that if we allow employees of KBR, for instance, to sue their employers if they are raped on the job, by company employees in company facilities. it might cost the owners of Senators too much money.

Fortunately a majority of us voted for Democrats last year - not that they're all saintly Senators either - but at least they weren't ready to support the validity of employment contracts wherein a 19 year old like Jamie Leigh Jones can inadvertently sign away her body for the recreational use of criminals. Perhaps some of them just have daughters, but in any event, a somewhat watered down version of the amendment was passed and signed into law by President Obama in what will surely be explained, like everything he does, as an act of Kenyan Marxist Fascism worthy of Pol Pot and Adolph Hitler.

The 30 Republicans who want to kidnap and rape your daughters is a group with many familiar names. We've all heard them tell us all about morality and family values and our Christian heritage. If you're a Republican, perhaps that won't puzzle you. If you have however, some basic respect for morality and law and any kind of human values, you'll want to look at the list and remember when it comes time for that grand reconquista in 2010 they're pretending is a sure thing.

Rep. Anthony Weiner Wants To Chat

Or so he says, and you betcha (thanks, Sarah) I'm not going to miss the opportunity. Thought you may want to take advantage of it, too. The man wants to know how I/we feel -- so let's tell him.

Here is his message:

Dear Elizabeth,

I am deeply disappointed with the lost opportunities and capitulation in the health care bill the Senate will vote on later this week. And I know we are all upset with the Senate proposal.

I believe that we have a real chance to curb health care costs and provide affordable coverage to everyone. And we're all frustrated that the Senate has chosen not to act boldly, but to instead bend to the will of a small minority who do not want to see real reform.

As I wrote you last week, it's important to me to hear directly from you during this frustrating time. Please join me for a live online chat on Tuesday, December 22nd, at 7:00 PM EST at countdowntohealthcare.com/chat/.

We can discuss what's happening in the Senate and talk about what the rest of the process will look like, from a full Senate vote, to the conference committee that will reconcile the House and Senate bills.

I want to answer your questions, but I also want to know how you feel. I still believe that we should remain at the table until this process is over, but it's important to me to hear what you think.

I know that many of us are upset that just a few senators have managed to stand in the way of real progress on health care. But now is a time for us to talk, keep the conversation alive, and figure out what we can do to help advance the cause of quality, affordable health care in America.

I look forward to chatting with you on Tuesday, December 22nd at 7:00 PM EST at countdowntohealthcare.com/chat/.

Thanks,
Anthony.

Misinformer Of The Year

Media Matters names Glenn Beck "misinformer of the year:"

Tweet Tweet

In the winter, Florida sees countless twittering things with small brains, perching on power lines and trees, circling overhead and grazing my lawn looking for lizards and bugs. Of course, even a hundred years ago there were so many they would darken the sky, but we've hunted some to extinction, rendered many species endangered by draining the everglades to grow sugar and by poisoning the waters with pesticides, fertilizers, oil and heavy metals. All over the world, nature as we once knew it is in retreat, from the rain forests of the Amazon to the melting tundra and retreating glaciers. Even the birds know it and we all know who's to blame. It's not the birds.

Well, not all of us. Sarah Palin insults the intelligence of most twittering things by claiming that man can't influence or change "nature's ways" and is arrogant to think so. Yes, that's OK, speechlessness is a normal reaction to such idiocy. What can you call it but idiocy and what can you call it but arrogance to assert that the magical powers of God will steadily restore the countless square miles of ocean bottom scraped bare by drag nets, restore the countless miles of coral bleached by growing acidity and reanimate the countless species disappearing at an accelerating rate? And what is arrogance, after all, but making grand statements about nature without any knowledge whatever having to do with atmospheric and oceanographic sciences, geology, physics, chemistry or in fact, any damned thing but talking in tongues and burning witches?

"arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature" tweets the idiot Palin.

The painful irony of course, is not that man is part of nature and man is changing the world in many, many obvious and quantifiable ways. It's not just that we've disassembled the building blocks of matter, decoded the blueprints for life, unravelled the history of the universe -- the irony is that it may be arrogant to say that we can ever overpower stupidity, cupidity, stone age superstition and the crackpot politics that eats away at America like a cancer.

Worthwhile perspectives on the Senate bill

Professor Jacob Hacker, the "godfather of the public option", and Senator Al Franken explain why they support passage of the Senate bill, even weakened as it is. Both found via Oliver Willis, who has consistently been a good source of blogger coverage and analysis on this issue -- Liberal Values has been another. And don't forget Paul Krugman. Update: The AMA comes out in support too.

Hey, all forty Republicans still voted against the thing -- there must be some good in it!

(Cross-posted from my home blog.)

Health Insurance Reform Winners and Losers

Who wins, who loses in Senate health bill

By Erica Werner, AP

WASHINGTON – The little town of Libby, Mont., isn't mentioned by name in the Senate's mammoth health care bill, but its 2,900 citizens are big winners in the legislation, thanks to the influence of Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

After pushing for years for help for residents, many of whom suffer from asbestos-related illnesses from a now-closed mineral mining operation, Baucus inserted language in a package of last-minute amendments that grants them access to Medicare benefits.

He didn't advertise the change, and it takes a close read of the bill to find it. It's just one example of how the sweeping legislation designed to remake the U.S. health care system and extend coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans also helps and hurts more narrow interests, often thanks to one lawmaker with influence or bargaining power.

Continue.

====

How outrageous is it that Baucus et al. deemed all citizens of that small town worthy of Medicare benefits, but not the rest of us? Are some people better than others? More deserving of affordable health care than others?

Read the whole piece -- it's pretty disturbing, even though it's only a glimpse of the winners and losers in this debacle. Without a doubt, there are more eyebrow-raising revelations included in the bill. Like insurance coverage for prayer.

It also shows that -- surprise, surprise -- if there is a will, there is a way. If an obstinate senator wants to squeeze favorable provisions for his "special interests," it can be done, even if it flies in the face of decency, equality, and/or common sense.

So why can't the so-called progressives insist on such concessions on behalf of ALL American people?

Is this really too much to ask?

HARASSED WOMEN

There is an insidious and dangerous pattern of harassment against women in the Middle East that is reaching critical proportions, mostly because:

“…that harassment was unchecked across the region because laws don't punish it, women don't report it and the authorities ignore it.”

That is the conclusion from a panel of activists after a 2 day conference in Cairo to discuss this alarming trend. The full article is HERE.

No matter how demurely they are dressed or whether they have children in tow, women who venture into the streets are subjected to sexual harassment, including groping and verbal abuse.

The problem seems to encompass most nations of the Middle East, including Syria, Yemen and Egypt.

“Participants at the conference said men are threatened by an increasingly active female labor force, with conservatives laying the blame for harassment on women's dress and behavior.”

“In Yemen, where nearly all women are covered from head to toe, activist Amal Basha said 90 percent of women in a published study reported harassment, specifically pinching.”

"The religious leaders are always blaming the women, making them live in a constant state of fear because out there, someone is following them," she said.”

“If a harassment case is reported in Yemen, Basha added, traditional leaders interfere to cover it up, remove the evidence or terrorize the victim.”

There is a campaign of systematic terrorizing and unrelenting harassment aimed against Arab women that has largely been ignored or covered up for years.

Women have had no place to turn, no one to help them. But that is changing with the formation of The Alliance For Arab Women which is spearheading projects to change the course of women’s lives in Arab nations.

We need to let these women know we support them and that they will not be forgotten by drawing attention to their plight every chance we get.

Would You Vote For This Bill?

That's the question Bill Moyers poses to Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner on his "Journal."

Taibbi answers "No." Kuttner says, "I would hold my nose and pass it."

Watch the video (and weep -- and/or bang your head against the wall).

The Bill

If you haven't seen Keith Olbermann's recent interview with Wendell Potter, discussing the benefits for the medical-insurance industry coming from the current Senate health care bill, here it is.

Informative and worth watching:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Only in America -- or, "I Told You So!"

On PBS News last night, Mr. The-Strangest-Name-Outside-of-Porn-Business Axelrod (and doesn't he look the part, too?) waxed semi-poetic on the virtues of the health care reform bill that is going to be (i.e., may be) voted on before Christmas. Axelrod assured us so.

And he added, causing a massive jaw drop in yours truly, that this is the most progressive piece of legislation -- I'm not sure if he said in a long time, or ever, because at that very moment the downward pull of my jaw created an unbearable pressure in my ears, which resulted in a deafening POP! Thus I missed the Axelrod's qualifer for his self-serving assertion.

As I was picking my jaw off the floor and trying to jump on one foot to restore my hearing (an old Polish folk remedy), I pondered, as it's customary during such complex acrobatics, the sad absurdity of his statement.

Only in America this colossal transfer of the poor, huddled masses to the greedy paws of the private insurance cartel could be called the most progressive piece of legislation, whether in the recent years, or ever.

Only in this world, where rabid capitalism defines who we are and how we treat each other, we can have a presidential adviser state with a straight face that this is something we should all look forward to and be proud of.

Only in this strange country of ours, up is down and black is white. I thought I've seen everything under the communism, where the propagandist double-speak ruled the day and we learned early on to make fun of anything coming out of the politicians' mouths (because whatever it was, it had zero resemblance to reality). That was before I moved to USA where the wonders of absurdity never cease to amaze me. Commies had nothing on the corporatist propaganda -- the pinkos' attempts at shaping the minds and hearts, that was a child's play. This, here, in the US, this is the real mind-boggling (literally) deal.

But back to the miracle at hand, a.k.a. this most progressive piece of propag... I mean, legislation. Let's take a quick stroll down the memory lane.

First, Barack Obama said that a single-payer health care is the best solution to our health care woes. He was right, of course, but that was years ago, before he ran for President and he could afford to both say the truth and be right. Then, as the candidate-Obama, he insisted that a robust public option and drug price controls would be necessary to introduce any meaningful changes to this broken system.

Next, he started to remind us not to get our panties in a bunch over such an insignificant sliver of the health care reform as the public option, and he struck a quiet, behind closed doors deal with PhRMA promising them not to touch their God-given right to super duper profits garnered from the Americans' suffering. That was when he was already President. At the same time, he and his people told us that things will be just fine, not to worry. He said that we will have a uniquely American health care system.

Little we knew then what he meant, but, as I (and others) frantically kept pointing out, the signs of things to come were already there, for all to see (should all wanted to keep their eyes open). One of the sure giveaways about the real scope of this "reform" was the change of language: some time in the summer, the White House talk switched from discussing health care reform to health insurance reform. Yes, we've noticed and we told you so. (I told you so is the phrase my husband uses with abandon when I rant about the "reform." I'm just passing it on, is all. Call it the giving spirit of Christmas, or something.)

(BTW, if you'd like to take a moment to bang your head against the wall at any time, please feel free to do so. It is the only thing any rational person would be expected to do in these circumstances.)

As of today, there is no public option, the Medicare expansion plan was killed (thanks, pouty Joe), no drug price controls in sight, no cost controls to speak of, and, of course, no competition for the private insurance companies who are also exempt from antitrust laws. And as if that was not enough, there is an extra slap in the progressive faces coming in the form of the scrapped abortion provision in the bill. So is this the most progressive piece of legislation or what?

Sorry, Mr. Axelrod, it's not even close -- unless you redefine progressive ASAP (preferably while jumping on one foot and banging your head against the wall; harder, please).

But not all is grim news. There is a bright side: Christmas arrived early for the medical-insurance cartel this year. Can you hear the bells ringing? It's Santa Claus coming to Cigna, Wellpoint, United Healthcare and all the naughty boys and girls from The Outfit, bearing things glittery and nice -- and lots of them, too, something like 30+ million. Oh, and the insurance stocks are soaring.

So rejoice, all ye faithful -- joyful and triumphant, The Outfit will show us the way, first to servitude, and then to bankruptcy, or maybe the other way around, not that it matters.

Merry... whatever.

Cross-posted at The Middle of Nowhere.

ANNOUNCEMENT

(O)CT(O)PUS will be away for the rest of the month … visiting my cephalopod brood and celebrating Fishmas.

Bloggingdino gave me permission to open my presents early, and this is what I got. It means I will be able to keep in touch while away, although posting and comments will be light.

Since I am pressed for time (packing the OctoMobile and getting ready to leave), here is a brief message from MoveOn.Org:

Jesus laughed

"How dangerous it is in sensible things to use metaphorical expressions unto the people, and what absurd conceits they will swallow in their literals."

-Thomas Browne - Pseudoxia Epidemica-

Making sense out of someone else's religion is a bit like looking at a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't all fit and some are taped in place or hidden under others. Take the Mary and Joseph story. We're supposed to believe that since Joseph was too old to have sex with his obscenely young bride Mary, her pregnancy was a bit of a surprise - until of course she told him that God, in the form of a bird, did the deed. The subsequent pregnancies resulting in brothers and sisters might have been harder to explain, unless the bird left some blue pills for the old man -- or unless we ignore old Occam: "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" which means don't make shit up just so people won't laugh at your bogus story.

That of course would have Jesus' brother Jacob the true heir to the throne of David, making him the Messiah; because after all, Joseph, from whose family the title was inherited, wasn't his real father. OK, so we don't ask and we just tape that piece in place and ignore what is underneath.

Anyway, one can choose to treat the alleged divinity of Jesus as a metaphor, which makes sense, or literally, which makes absolutely none. If you're of the latter persuasion, which didn't approach universality for many centuries into the Christian Era, (if it ever really did) the flimsiness of your construction is likely to make you touchy and humorless if not aggressively pugnacious. Imagine the fundamentalist's reaction to a poster showing A young Joseph in bed with a frustrated looking Mary and titled "Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow."



The Church that put up the billboard in Aukland, New Zealand simply wished to point out the absurd conceit of swallowing this literal fundamentalist interpretation. Archdeacon Glynn Cardy of The St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church said he wanted to inspire people to talk about the Christmas story: to challenge a fundamentalist interpretation that's obviously pasted together from pieces torn from other religions, rather than swallowing the cocktail.

"What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?"

Predictably, it wasn't well received by those who demand that everyone else swallow the same mind numbing potion and within hours an irate man was trying to paint over the image. Local Catholic spokesmen were up in arms and a "conservative" group called Family First was calling the whole thing irresponsible. It's nice to know that "conservatives" despise religious freedom in New Zealand as much as they do here. I mean it's one thing to be able to speak out against secular authority, but suggesting that God's own sacred chicken doesn't make half breed, wholly God children with young girls who somehow remain virginal throughout multiple pregnancies and births! What fools these mortals be!

If only I could claim such protection against people who disagree with me.

GIVE ME A HEAD OF ICE HAIR!

I am working on a slightly more serious post but my mother, who is visiting for the holidays, came in from a morning walk all excited about a discovery in the new dirt on the sides of my driveway and I just had to share.


We recently had work done to widen and regravel our driveway. If you live in the South, the bright red clay soil will come as no surprise to you. If you don't live here, then what we call dirt you would probably identify as pottery clay. Seriously, they make bricks out of this stuff.


Anyway, we have not planted anything on the banks yet since it has quickly turned unseasonably cold. Last night is got down into the 20s and the result is the pictures you see here. I apologize for the poor quality since this is a cheap camera but I had to snap pix in a hurry since the ice is quickly melting now that the sun is out.

It is spread out over the whole area and consists of long strands bunched together. The strangest thing is they seem to have grown up out of the soil, pushing the dirt up so that it rests on the tips of the ice hair. Don't know what causes this and I'm sure one of you more scientific types will be able to explain this phenomenon, but until then - I will think of it as a marvelous gift from nature.

Happy holidays!

First, thanks to (O)ct(o)pus for inviting me to participate at The Swash Zone.

It's barely a week to Christmas, and the holiday spirit is upon us. I haven't heard of any Wal-Mart tramplings yet, but I have heard of two separate incidents of police being called to deal with customers fighting over robot hamsters. I had no idea that there is even such a thing as robot hamsters. What on Earth do people use them for? (Actually, considering those rumors about Richard Gere and the gerbil, I'm not sure I want to know.)

This is also the time for a certain type of Christian to whine endlessly about the secularization of Christmas, usually by complaining that they can't say "merry Christmas" any more because somebody might object to it. Now, curiously enough, I've never heard anyone actually object to this. I've never objected to it myself. What I have heard, pretty much every Christmas, is Christians objecting to people saying "happy holidays" -- including, a few years ago, a woman I know to be quite religious yelling very rudely at a younger woman who had uttered the offending words to a decidedly mixed group of people.

The legitimacy of Christian possessiveness about the holiday is in any case tenuous. Christmas is an adaptation of Saturnalia, the pagan Roman festival of gift-giving and revelry celebrated in late December, which early Christian leaders co-opted to make Christianity more palatable to the pagans by merely changing the pretext for their most popular holiday rather than abolishing it. Other associated customs such as the Christmas tree originate from other pagan traditions. No element of modern Christmas -- not even the claimed association of December 25 with the birth of Jesus -- has any basis in the New Testament. I rather doubt there's a Biblical passage in which Jesus instructs his followers to get snotty with people who say something as innocuous as "happy holidays", either.

Nevertheless, I am more than willing to concede that Christmas today, regardless of its history, should indeed be regarded as a Christian holiday. After all, considering what it has become -- all the crass consumerism, mob scenes, greed, squabbling, stress, and those godawful "carols"* -- who would want it back from them? They broke it, they own it.

I just wish they'd refrain from taking out their understandable frustration with all those shopping-mall lines on people who use greetings they disapprove of.

Afterword: If you want to express "Christmas spirit" in a positive sense, please see (O)ct(o)pus's posting just below this one.

*The only Christmas music I like is "Winter Wonderland", which someone once told me isn't even a "carol", and the Mannheim Steamroller version of "Good King Wenceslas", which I'm sure would never be played in any church. The versions of carols played over store Muzak systems every December ought to be used instead on the captured terrorists in Guantanamo to extract information -- I'm sure they'd be more effective than waterboarding.

AN APPEAL FOR HELP

Our good friend and colleague, Matt Osborne, has just posted this appeal:

Some of you already know that my girlfriend's mother was in a very bad wreck at the end of November. She's still recovering at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, a two-hour drive from where we live. We're all counting out blessings that she's alive, despite severe injuries. She won't be home until the week of Christmas.

It would be bad enough that the holiday is upon us, but Ramona was also supposed to start a new job the day after the accident. She had spent months looking for this position while unemployed and has very little savings left -- the accident literally could not have happened at a worse time. Now, she's discussing long-term disability, which means at the age of 55 she could be at the end of her working years.

Her family is scrambling to pay the bills. Everyone is paying for gas to drive back and forth and help her with physical therapy and rehabilitation (which helps explain the sudden irregular frequency of posts), while unopened and unpaid bills are beginning to stack up. Anything you can give, even a few dollars, is a huge help to her and us ...

If you are in a position to help, there is a PayPal button after Matt’s post.

(O)CT(O)PUS Caught on Video

Yes, our own dear eight-legged denizen of the Swash Zone was recently caught on camera by Australian scientists using a human-discarded pair of coconut half-shells as temporary shelter. This is the first recorded use of tools by an invertebrate species (our companion's able keyboard-handling skills notwithstanding).

Watch:


Click here to learn more.

Let only one flower bloom

According to the Foxspeak dictionary, a school of thought is defined as a scheme, usually by Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch that they wish to attribute to a broad segment of the public. People say, or Some people are saying are alternate disguises for propaganda. If there really is a school of thought that believes cutting the minimum wage will be good for workers, I would like to see its accreditation and I suspect it's a school where employers such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart are heavily represented.

"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs,"

pronounced anchortwit Juliet Huddy from the Fox News Podium in an attempt to give credit to the idea if not to the school of one promoting it.

As Raw Story describes in detail, Fox reduces the entire concept of a minimum wage to "social justice" which sounds sufficiently close to Socialism that they deemed it unnecessary to point out any contrary ideas, no matter how credible. Blind slogans and doctrines being so much easier to sell than truth in all its complexity -- or justice for that matter.

At one point I was foolish enough to think that the failure of doctrine driven economic, social and military policies would be an embarrassment to Fox and its friends, but it seems now that with America down and out, the opportunity to kick us while we're down is irresistible. It seems that their dream of building a new, invincible corporate oligarchy from the ruins of our country, is the only school of thought that isn't a strategic fraud.

(O)CT(O)PUS IN THE NEWS

This video of an octopus commandeering a coconut appeared tonight on all major news networks, including ABC, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and WTFNN. What's the big deal? Shall I consider this an affront? An insult to my intelligence? Have you never seen an octopus commandeer a coconut before?

How ridiculous! But not as ridiculous as this:

Q: Why did the octopus cross the road?

A: To enslave humanity and save it from itself!

Considering the Source

As you may have noticed, I'm ambivalent about global warming and reluctant to argue for or against it. Whether or not it's an ongoing process subject to random variations lasting a decade or a century or many, many centuries; whether burning fossil fuels and deforestation are a major factor in any trend or whether or not much can be done about it are moot questions once one realizes that the human race won't do any more about its behavior and its environment than yeast fermenting in a vat will do to prevent the alcohol it excretes from poisoning it. We won't do a damned thing until we have massive famine and drought and huge uncontrollable migrations and bloody wars to stop it. Even then we will not spend any money on change because there will be " a war on" and we won't allow ourselves to afford it.

If, in 200 years, we're all baking and the tundra is a rain forest and Kansas covered with sand dunes, the "conservatives" will find or invent some scapegoat, invoke some hoax or alternative explanation. On the other hand, if things haven't changed much, change, like Armageddon will still be a dire threat, just around the corner, lurking in new technology and demanding that we go back to riding horses, living in the dark and taking cold showers once a week.

Face it, not only are we thoroughly irrational, self centered and dishonest apes who love our opinions above all else; not only are we not very smart, but we simply can't deal with the immensity of time and the transience of our species. We've all got to go sometime and we all will -- and if you're one of those people who likes to talk about our planet as a living entity that needs to be saved, perhaps the sooner, the better.

I have too much respect for science to indulge in the certainties and partisan bravado both sides have barricaded themselves behind. Nobody is completely right and all projections become blurry as they are extrapolated or trimmed to fit the opinion and it's all very obvious that the certainties seem to swarm most heavily around those with no background whatever in atmospheric or Earth sciences. Why this should be such a political dispute, I do not know. I remember well the Geological dispute between Static isostasy and plate tectonics but I doubt it ever came up on the Senate floor or that Joe the anything had any awareness much less a militantly expressed opinion -- even though it was heavily disputed and careers began and ended over it. It was settled, in the end, by irrefutable data, not by politics or by gyrating TV pundits bellowing like blue-assed baboons about conspiracies.

My inner suspicion is that the apparent lack of facts, the apparent contradictions and the apparent conspiracies appear sharpest through the glass called "I don't want it to be true" but I know full well that cataclysmic predictions have had a very, very poor record of accuracy.

While other popular disputes can be better understood by looking at the demographics; the viral etiology of AIDS, for instance. The origin of species through natural selection, the great age of the Earth: these things after all are threatening to some religious certainties. Climate change may be more independent and may even fit into apocalyptic molds. I'd venture to speculate however, that those who become most irate at the suggestion that the post industrial revolution climate has been altered by that human factor are those who fear government itself -- and that those who feel an imminent threat and want something done right now are those whose fear of industry and the political power of industry feeds an opposite attraction to government action.

None of us can really handle the truth, nor do we want to. What we do instead is to vilify, to deny, to attack. Is Christopher Monckton, one of the loudest UK naysayers indulging in neurotic denialism or are his opinions driven by rigorous scientific investigation? Does the fact that he also thinks we should round up all HIV positive people and imprison them for life argue for his intellligence? Does his comparison of those who find evidence of man-made climate change to Nazis really inspire confidence in his objectivity? Then again do the kids carrying signs and painting themselves green really have any background making their opinions worth listening to -- or do they just believe what is fun to believe, what people of their social class believe and is useful for picking up girls of like opinions?

One thing that I'm pretty certain of and the evidence supports, is that environmental change drives biological evolution. It also drives cultural evolution and technological evolution. If anything now alive has massive potential for opportunism, for adaptability, for evolution, it's us -- some of us.

The climate is going to change over time -- a very big change. Something will fall on us from space, vulcanism will come and go, the Earth's magnetic field absolutely will fail and then slowly reverse with potentially dire but unknown consequences, a gamma ray pulse may blow away the ionosphere, the continental ice sheets will eat up most of North America and Europe once again. None of these things depend on our politics and prejudices or prayers. Our adaptability and survival however does depend on abandoning the ape-like tribalism, the ape-like confidence in things we have no business being confident in and the ape-like resort to chest thumping, shit flinging and hooting that are more likely to accompany the end of the world than any whimper.

Mixed Nuts

I just sent this letter to my local fish wrapper. I've included a link at the end to my most recent Huffington Post essay:

I just read the AP story about Conservapedia.com, the Bible rewriting project proposing to erase the effects of "liberal academics" who have "watered down" Jesus by studying the ancient languages of the Bible. The linguists, one supposes, are all secret Satanists and cannot be trusted.

The group's founder, Andy Schlafly, is the son of Phyllis Schlafly. The apple has not fallen far from the tree; these are the same John Birchers and reactionary right-wingers of yore. Conservapedia is just a new offshoot of that poisonous tree, and Schlafly is the fruit of fringe insanity. The poor kid was raised to believe this gorp.

Over the decades, a nebulous root-system of direct-mail lists fed the paranoia of the stupid and "informed" the world of AM talk radio. Toxic to democracy, this monster has flourished in the age of the internet and media consolidation. Its tentacles pull the mixing-board levers of Fox News Channel, where Glenn Beck spews that same pollution into the mainstream of public opinion.

Birthers, death panels, black helicopters, lizard people, secret UN armies in Nebraska...where do you think these idiots come from? A majority of Republicans today actually believes the president was born in Kenya. How do you think that happened?

Now they want to turn the Bible itself into a weapon of culture war. This was exactly what Jesus meant when he said there would be many who cry "Lord, Lord!" that are too wicked for him to recognize.

But what I want to know is: given their long record of tinfoil-hat bizzarro fearmongering, how do these wackaloons and hoopleheads still merit the fair-handed attention of "liberal" media?

I would like to see journalists call them by their proper names: shills, hacks, and mixed nuts.

AND THE WINNING BID IS…ITALY?

There is a small article in today’s local paper that will probably go largely unnoticed but not by the forty families who will suffer because of it.

Seems that a North Carolina company may have been outbid by an Italian company to supply the granite benches, fountains and flooring for the 9/11 memorial in New York.

Aside from the fact that an Italian company being able to outbid an American company is kind of suspicious to begin with given the Port Authority’s track record for corruption, could not a small portion of that stimulus money be put to good use in helping to keep these jobs intact?

Granted, this particular event hits close to home for me so perhaps I’m more upset by it than others. But it makes me wonder how many other companies might be losing bids like these that perhaps could be subsidized by stimulus money in order to keep Americans at work.

So, what say you?

I Hate Xmas

Christmas is fine. Xmas, however, is a blight. The season of Xmas brings an overabundance of crass commercialism and traffic. It removes my classic rock station and replaces it with jingle goddamn bells. Of late, the Xmas season has gotten worse; a yearly drumbeat of cultural warfare has gotten louder, and the Christmas season more politicized.

But this year has brought me a gift in the low ticket sales enjoyed by Glenn Beck. In case you haven't heard, his Christmas-sweater show has bombed. I celebrated tonight by attending an underground punk show at the Black Owl.


Have I mentioned that the musical culture of Muscle Shoals, Alabama is incredibly diverse?

WAR AND PEACE

President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace prize yesterday even as he prepares to deploy/redeploy 30,000 troops into Afghanistan.

We, as a nation, have asked much of our service men and women – perhaps too much as the continued lag between new recruits and the number of military personnel required on multiple fronts continues to drain and strain all arms of the military complex.

There is overwhelming evidence, coming from multiple sources, including the usually tightlipped, conservative military hierarchy as reported in Stars & Stripes, that there has been a huge spike of PTSD cases since the war in Iraq began. These wars not only take a toll physically and mentally on our soldiers but also on their families and friends.

Marriages have broken up, children have been placed in foster care, homes have been lost and spouses have suffered emotional and physical abuse and sometimes even death. While the pros and cons of these wars are endlessly debated, the burgeoning collection of studies highlighting the devastating effects of these continued conflicts cannot be ignored or trivialized.

This excerpt is from a document prepared by a joint study done by Walter Reed researchers and those at Texas A&M:

“If the present rate of deploying U.S. forces continues
as it has since the end of the cold war, then
soldiers entering the military today will deploy an
average of 14 times by the time they serve 21 years
in the military (Castro & Adler, 1999). The projected
deployment rate stands in stark contrast to the 4
deployments reported by soldiers who entered the
service more than 20 years ago.”

The length and frequency of deployments is an issue that has been under intense scrutiny since the Vietnam War. Due to findings from that era and bolstered by more recent studies such as the one linked above, the military determined that the maximum time spent in a combat zone should not exceed 6 months which is why we have seen this time frame used since the first Gulf War. What no one anticipated was the depletion of troops that would occur over the last 20 years and the extreme difficulty replenishing those troops if we had to go to war on multiple fronts.

So, here we are in a “perfect storm” of sorts. The number of troops remains in decline while we remain obligated to manning numerous non-combat bases around the world while maintaining a combat force in Iraq and now committed to a troop surge in Afghanistan. All in the name of PEACE, of course.

The vast body of evidence points to a terrible toll that will befall many our service men and women even if they manage to make it home unscathed physically. One cannot make light of the debilitating effects that stress, not only from being in active combat but also in the cycle of seemingly endless deployments will have on a significant number of military members.

While I am not willing to second guess the president and his military advisors on the necessity of continuing one war while escalating another, I believe our government owes all our soldiers, their families, their friends and especially their children an exit strategy and a clear definition of what would be a successful conclusion. Those fighting and dying and those waiting at home deserve at least that.

A little more than a year ago we voted for change, we voted for an end to our involvement in war, we voted for increased tolerance, acceptance and cooperation.

We're still waiting...

All I want for Christmas is a silver bullet

Christmas in these new dark ages is like a full moon to werewolves and lunatics and the USA is the new Transylvania. You can almost hear them howling at night. In the dark, ruined castle of the House of Representatives, the latest time wasting assault on truth, the Constitution, freedom of religion and the Founding Fathers is H. RES. 951, a resolution drafted by 19 house Republicans stating:

Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and

Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;

(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and

(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.

The framers have been framed once again, it seems. Of course there is no prohibition against "mentioning" religion, but there sure as Madison is one against promoting one religion over another and establishing support for any belief or ceremony or symbol is as prohibited as Jefferson could make it -- the ignorant passion of the lawless Republican denialists notwithstanding.

No I'm not going into the open hostility the Constitution writers had toward organized religion and it's influence on Government, or the largely fraudulent claims that "liberals" hate Christmas and Christians and want to take away your Christmas tree. You either already know or you're one of the hairy palmed lycanthropoids, too demented to listen. For my part however, any party that harbors such Visigoths (yes they were Christian) is illegitimate to the core, an enemy of religious freedom and unworthy to participate in government on any level.

Is it humorous that the only real effort to stamp out Christmas and its various and ever changing "traditions" was by the "pilgrim fathers" we just finished pretending were the founders of American democracy. It would almost be laughable if these worms weren't eating the heart out of liberty by trying to restore exactly the sort of government we fought a revolution to rid ourselves of.

We've got 15 more days of raging Republicans who are going to make up stories about stores not having Christmas trees, towns banning lights or private business owners not having the right to call Christmas a holiday -- or private citizens not having the right to celebrate it or not celebrate it when and how they please. We have at least two more weeks of support for tyranny and attacks on our freedom of speech, press and religion. It's more than just some Scrooge, more than just some Grinch stealing everyone's good time, it's the ancient evil of religious authority stealing our birthright and for me, the holiday I used to love is hardly worth it any more.

CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS AND BOILED FROGS - UPDATED

Credit: AZRAINMAN

Whatever you call it, a silly anecdote or imperfect metaphor, the boiling frog story serves a useful purpose, and it goes like this. If you place a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out; but if you place the same frog in cold water that is heated slowly, it will not notice the gradual rise in temperature but will stay in the water until it boils to death. No frogs were harmed in the writing of this post, but the boiling frog story is a useful metaphor to describe how people refuse to recognize a threat that occurs gradually.

Climate change deniers are akin to slow boiling frogs. For most folks, the climate change crisis is vague and impalpable. You cannot see it, touch it, or watch it happen on cable news. It lacks the immediate drama of a hurricane or tsunami. Climate change may not be noticed for a decade or even within a lifetime. Yet, it exists today as a set of observations and data points that are too arcane and abstract for most people to grasp. But make no mistake: Global climate change is here … a dark cloud hanging over the lives of our grandchildren and future generations. Despite the preponderance of data, there are skeptics, doubters, and boiled frogs. A case in point (source):

Double click on image to enlarge.

When a climate scientist looks at the above graph, the most obvious feature is the red [my addition] trend line. The above graph plots rising temperatures from different data sources. The skeptical boiled frog might look at these data and say: “So what! It proves nothing.”

There are two statistical concepts to bear in mind. Some data points conform to a pattern while others seem randomly spread. When data points fall outside a trend line, we call these “outliers,” a fancy word for random distribution. The skeptical boiled frog focuses on the random jitters and ignores the trend line. “So what,” croaks the frog, “Mother Earth has mood swings.” My point: Statistical outliers turn boiled frogs into outrageous liars.

Still skeptical? Next slide (Fossil fuel combustion as a component of total greenhouse gas emissions):

Double click on image to enlarge.

What this graph shows are the various types of greenhouse emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons from various sources. Most importantly, the graph shows the source of each greenhouse gas: From forest fires, from natural decay, from agriculture, from waste, and from fossil fuel combustion. Notice the large red area dominating the bottom half of the graph. This represents carbon dioxide as a product of fossil fuel consumption. What does this mean?

It means climate change is a man-made phenomenon. People burn fossil fuels in their cars, homes, and factories. Skeptical boiled frogs have claimed that greenhouse gases come from natural sources ranging from forest fires to flatulence or from the rise and fall of some geologically unknown Dow Jones. These data tell a different story. It means that more than half of all greenhouse gases (56% of total emissions) have a human origin. Hence, the term “anthropogenic,” meaning “caused by human beings.”

One more slide for a skeptical boiled frog (Spatial distribution of greenhouse gas emissions):

Double click on image to enlarge.

This color-coded map shows the distribution of carbon dioxide around the world. Notice how concentrations of CO2 emissions correspond with areas of human population density and, most especially, with areas having the highest levels of industrial output. These data confirm the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and human activity.

Overall, the latest observations show that globally averaged levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have reached new highs in 2008: Higher than those of pre-industrial times (before 1750) by 38%, 157% and 19%, respectively. Within the past 10 years alone, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased 26.2%.

Admittedly, the boiling frog story employs a flawed metaphor. Experience has shown that most frogs are too restless to sit still long enough for any pot of water to reach the boiling point. However, the definitive experiment was performed in 1869 by the German physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, who was searching for the location of the soul and demonstrated a fundamental truth. Frogs that had their brains removed will remain in slowly heated water; whereas frogs with intact brains will promptly escape. Thus, I end my post with this observation:  Climate change deniers, unlike their intact amphibian counterparts, have neither brains nor souls.

UPDATE: Readers may also be interested in this slide show prepared by the Philosophy Department at UCSD. There is a brief history of the climate change debate starting with John Tyndall, the first to discover the greenhouse properties of CO2, and James Fleming Callendar, who argued as early as the 1930s that increases in CO2 levels would raise global temperatures. My thanks and a hat tip to Flying Junior for the link.