Rogue numbers

Would it really surprise anyone these days to see Fox News using stock footage from the Oklahoma land rush to show how many people "spontaneously" show up at a Fox planned and organized rally? It certainly doesn't surprise me when they fail to check out stories that appear on web sites or refuse to apologize when caught inventing stories like some city in Michigan "banning" Christmas. They know we're gullible and they know that if feels good to believe, it will be believed.

Still I'm ever amazed at their confidence in our gullibility and unquestioning belief. How many Fox friends looked at this and bothered to do the arithmetic? How many just saw it and thought " hey, that Sarah's gonna be our next President!"

Amazing.

PARTITIONING THE INTERNET: WHERE PARTISANS AND MONOPOLISTS COLLUDE

Just when you thought hyper partisanship couldn’t get any worse, when the country wasn’t bitterly polarized enough, now we learn that there are forces in motion that threaten to divide the Internet. An unholy alliance between a monopolist and a news conglomerate wants to change Cyberspace.

In case you haven’t tracked this story, Rupert Murdoch wants to block Google’s search engine and prevent it from accessing all content from News Corporation. This means no more online access … at least through Google … to Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Times of London, or other company-owned content. Yes, you guessed it: Murdoch is exploring online payment models to boost revenues and will grant exclusive access to Microsoft’s search engine … in exchange for payment. And Microsoft does not mind hurting Google’s margins.

Of course, the Internet search engine market is not the only place where Google and Microsoft compete head to head. Recently, Google announced a new operating system, Chrome OS, that will compete against Windows in the web-enabled laptop market.

Implications? There is no telling where this all is going and how it will affect the future of the Internet. Does this mean an end to the Information Super Highway as monopolists carve it up to profit themselves? I have my suspicions. What are yours?

Fox in the hen house

What the hell Barack Obama was thinking when he appointed Dana Perino to anything at all, I don't know. Raw Story says, with a bit of mockery, that she's staying true to her convictions but although that sort of thing is so often described as virtue, I have to remember that never changing one's mind and never changing the subject is the mark of the fanatic -- to put it politely. What was he thinking when he appointed a hostile and professional anti-regulatory, anti-government propagandist to the Broadcasting Board of Governors? She may cackle like a biddy, but she's a Fox in the hen house for sure.

I haven't heard the hortatory "there's a war on" trope for a while now, but here she is again on Fox News trying to use it to generate that same community spirit we had 65 years ago when there really was a war on that had something to do with national security and not another illegitimate, unnecessary and degenerating quagmire having little to do with anything but the ego of a president who never won anything fairly in his life. I have to wonder if the obscenely perky Ms. Perino actually knows enough about WW II to make a valid comparison.

You'll remember of course that last year as white house deputy press secretary, it came out that she'd never heard of the Cuban missile crisis, but with the arrogance only someone with the strength of conviction of the ignorant can have, she's chastising her boss by saying he shouldn't play golf "when there's a war on." and when unemployment is up - like it was under St. Reagan the infallible. He shouldn't keep the generals waiting she says, not remembering that if Kennedy hadn't keep his generals waiting, Florida might still be radioactive.

Funny stuff anyway, coming from a mouth that used so recently to tell us not to criticize the president when there's a war on. Disgusting stuff when that particular president set and still holds the US record for number of vacation days taken, morning runs, weeks accumulating into months of brush cutting and evenings passing out on the couch -- war or no war. Was Obama hoping to plant an ally of some sort in the Fox den? Sorry, you can feed it like a dog, but a Fox is a Fox.

"In fact, I think President Obama has already played golf more than President Bush did in eight years. I don't begrudge him for playing golf but you have to understand when you have the B roll of the video that shows the president playing golf while there is a 10.2% unemployment rate, while his senators are basically having to twist arms in order to get this party line vote, while KSM is headed to New York City for trials, while we have the Gitmo detainees possibly coming to Illinois — they have to understand that people could look at that and say, 'Oh, and by the way General McChrystal has been waiting 86 days for a decision about Afghanistan."

She twittered to Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends infamy. This, from someone who told us that global warming would be good because fewer people would get colds and who doesn't remember how unemployment went from just over 6% to as high as it is now under St. Reagan the faultless.

No, it was OK for Bush to bicycle, jog, cut brush and pass out in front of the TV while hundreds of thousands died and millions were made homeless, It wasn't golf, that elitist game. It was OK for Ronald to sleep all afternoon when unemployment was 10.5% and there was "a war on" in Granada but Obama should not have a break, or get a break either -- because he's Obama.

For someone who clearly remembers the way the warhawks went after Dwight Eisenhower for dithering and playing golf instead of addressing the missile gap that never really was, it's amusing and infuriating at the same time, since his greatest strength, in my opinion, was his resistance to being rushed or bullied by the Generals. It's also amusing to remember that Lyndon Johnson played golf when a far bigger and deadlier war was "on" and you didn't hear much about it from the support-any war-Republicans.

All and all, she's just another yipping Fox Friend, with the annoying self confidence of those born yesterday. She belongs with Fox and along with Malkin and Coulter and giggling Glenn, not working for a government she hates.

What the hell was he thinking?

Dr. Joseph Suglia Reviews "Going Rogue"

Dr. Joseph Suglia, PhD, is the author of two critically-acclaimed literary novels: Years of Rage and Watch Out. A social-networking friend for years now, he emailed me his critique of the new Sarah Palin memoir and graciously agreed to let me post it here.

GOING ROGUE / GOING ROUGE

by Dr. Joseph Suglia

The title of Sarah Palin’s martyrology, GOING ROGUE (2009), is richly significant. “Rogue” can mean “renegade” and thus point to Palin’s illusory departure from the ever-redefinable “political” and “media elites,” as well as from the McCain camp. Reactionary politicians, these days, like to style themselves as “mavericks”—when, in fact, they represent this country’s most powerful insiders. They endorse tax cuts for the affluent; they serve the gluttonies of the wealthiest financiers, corporate executive officers, and industrialists in America.

A slight logogriphic substitution would transform “rogue” into “rouge.” The title, then, could be rendered: THE REDDENING OF SARAH PALIN. Red, obviously, is the color of the Republican Party, but it is also a highly sexual color and evokes the menses. (“Rouge,” in particular, recalls a shade of lipstick. Would “rouge” refer to the pig’s lipstick-smeared mouth?). It is, as well, the color of fury, of blood, of rapine and viciousness. It is the color of ecclesiastics, of cardinals. In the iconography of National Socialism, black swastikas were emblazoned on red backgrounds.

This is a book that is drenched in red.

There is discussion of the animals Sarah Palin enjoys slaughtering, the caribou and moose she takes pleasure in shooting, the salmon she skins and guts. A photograph of the Arctic Huntress beaming with the psychosexual thrill that comes from killing game, the bloodied corpse of a caribou under her heel. “I love meat... [I] especially love moose and caribou. I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals—right next to the mashed potatoes” [18-19]. Little commentary is required; what is said is clear. The only room for animals, even endangered animals, is inside of us. Kill animals and then internalize them, kill animals that prey upon those other animals we want to internalize: “[W]e HAD to control predators, such as wolves, that were decimating the moose and caribou herds that feed our communities” [134].

I wish someone would tell Sarah Palin that “to decimate” means “to kill every tenth being.”

Sarah Palin thinks that animals exist only in order to be devoured by human beings. That is their purpose, their end, their divinely ordained telos. Like a “red kite” [83], Sarah Palin’s mind is connected by an invisible string to the mind of God: “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” [133; in italics].

In other words,

1.) Animals can be meat—meat that is devoured by human beings.

2.) Therefore, animals exist only to be devoured by human beings.

We have here both a non sequitur and a teleological argument. It is equivalent to saying:

1.) The human genitalia may be used for rape.

2.) Therefore, the human genitalia exist only for the purpose of rape.

Red, in this context, connotes the blood of animals. It also denotes shame. One is reminded of the red face of the unnamed Alaskan politician who observes Sarah Palin with horror as she gleefully breastfeeds her daughter on a radio program: “I acted like I didn’t see the shocked look on the politician’s face as he turned red and pretended it didn’t bother him at all” [67]. A flocculent creaminess mingles with the blood that rises to the politician’s cheeks.

The color red reappears when Sarah Palin douses herself, Countess Bathory style, in the blood of political martyrdom or of “the popular political blood sport called ‘the politics of personal destruction’” [352]. Seldom has self-imposed victimhood been exploited so meretriciously as it is here. Sarah Palin bemoans the fact that she was “slapped with an ethics accusation” [355]. And yet WHICH “ethics accusation,” precisely? There are many. That she misappropriated her governorship for personal and political gain? That she used the Alaska Fund Trust to cadge gifts and benefits? She never tells us. She merely dismisses all ethical grievances as personal attacks issued by the monolithic Left: “One of the left’s favorite weapons is frivolous ethics complaints” [363].

Sarah Palin’s silence over her ethical misconduct is only one of the many silences that perforate GOING ROGUE. She never attempts to wash away the record of her ignorance of Africa, the Bush doctrine, or NAFTA. Certain things are so shameful that they cannot be erased with lies. Let me cite one more instance of this studied silence: As Mayor, our gentle authoress called for the banning of “objectionable” books from the Wasilla Public Library. She claims to have merely asked librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, “What’s the common policy on selecting new titles?” [77]. And yet nowhere does Sarah Palin, meek and mild, mention that she fired Mary Ellen Emmons two days after this conversation took place. So many of this book’s pages are devoted to assaulting her critics (169 out of 234, by my count), but those criticisms for which she has no rejoinder, those words and actions that are truly indefensible and cannot be mangled and distorted, are consigned to a willful silence.

Sarah Palin is a ventriloquist’s doll, a cue-card reader, a red harpy, a Venus in Carmine.

Dr. Joseph Suglia

NEW MAMMOGRAM GUIDELINES: MORE NOISE THAN SCIENCE

Last week, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued new mammogram screening guidelines that have stirred considerable controversy in political and scientific circles. If the taskforce report were credible and convincing, there would be no need to suspect a hidden motive. However, these findings are deeply flawed and highly suspect. Here is a synopsis of findings released by the taskforce:

Credit: (O)CT(O)PUS

According to the taskforce: If you screen 1,904 women in the 40 to 49 year-old age group, there is a high probability of preventing one cancer death. Similarly, to prevent one cancer death in the 50s age group, you would have to screen 1,339 women. It goes without saying that cancer risks increase with age, meaning that women in older age groups are more likely to test positive for cancer than women in younger age groups.

With simple arithmetic, you can estimate how many lives per million can be saved. For women in the 40s age group: If you screen 1,904 women to save one life, it is reasonable to assume that you can save 525 lives if a million women were screened. What does this mean when applied to the U.S. population? According to the U.S. Census Bureau (Table 1), there are 22,346,000 women in the 40s age group (14.7%). When you divide this population by 1,904, the probabilistic number of lives that can be saved is 11,736.

If you accept this assumption, then you cannot accept these findings of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which state (source):

The USPSTF recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years (...) This is a C recommendation.

The USPSTF recommends against teaching breast self-examination (BSE). This is a D recommendation.

In other words, the taskforce recommends no mammogram screenings for women in the 40s age group and no breast self-examinations for women of any age. Why? According to the study panel, the relative risks outweigh the benefits, i.e., risk factors such as false-positive test results, anxiety, and pain from increased biopsy rates resulting from over-diagnoses. Yet, there are contradictory statements within the taskforce report, such as:

Breast cancer mortality has been decreasing since 1990 by 2.3% per year overall and by 3.3% for women aged 40 to 50 years. This decrease is largely attributed to the combination of mammography screening with improved treatment.

On one hand, the study panel recommends a reduced screening regimen for women in the 40s age group yet attributes reductions in mortality to a “combination of mammography screening with improved treatment.” How contradictory!

If you think these conclusions are strange, the measurements of relative risks are even more contradictory. According to the taskforce report, the relative risks are virtually identical for both groups: 15% for the 40s age group, and 14% for the 50s group. In other words, the tradeoff is more peace of mind within the context of “ignorance is bliss.” Either the data are internally inconsistent, or the conclusions contradict the data, or Aesop wrote the final study report.

A few words about methods and statistics: It seems different branches of the federal government employ different research protocols. If this were the FDA, for instance, no report would pass muster if it did not include at least one domestic study covering these age distributions. The USPSTF report includes only one domestic study for the 40s age group, but none covering the 50s age group. Other meta-analyses are based on non-domestic data sets that are less representative of U.S. population demographics.

Furthermore, the USPSTF report applies less than rigorous statistical methods. For example, the study panel uses the term “credible interval” instead of the more conventional term “confidence interval” as a measure of statistical validity. By definition, the term “credible interval” is a subjective subset of the confidence interval … implying considerable wiggle room to employ a fudge factor when one wants to force data into a preconceived conclusion.

Why are substandard study methods and statistics being used to justify new mammogram screening guidelines? Consider this comment by one of our Swash Zone writers under my last post on this subject (link):

maleeper (@11:02 AM, November 20, 2009): “Thanks for raising the issue of the USPSTF ill-advised report on breast cancer. The study was commissioned during the Bush administration, which may be why no oncologists or radio-therapists served on the study panel.

According to the American College of Radiology, the USPSTF recommendations ignored direct scientific evidence from large clinical trials and "also ignored peer reviewed journal articles that critqued studies on which their recommendations rely."

One trial that was used for the study was translated from Russian to English so that it could be used in the study, while many reputable articles were ignored.

Such selectivity in sources cited leads me to believe that the taskforce may have decided the results it wanted ahead of time, since they clearly will save money for insurance companies for a few years. The USPSTF panel then found studies to back up their assumptions, regardless of the cost of human life.

What do you get when junk science conspires with junk journalism? You get editorials like this one from the New York Times:

There is nothing wrong with a healthy public debate about mammography within the medical community and among women who must decide when and how often to get screened. It should not be injected into the partisan debate over health care reform.

Unless, of course, the findings of the taskforce are specious and suspicious.

THE LOOMING UNEMPLOYMENT BOMB

When you look at this multimedia visualization, you can see why joblessness represents an even bigger threat to economic recovery than the credit crisis that triggered this mess. Watch the black death of unemployment sweep over the country in 30 seconds or less. And notice the data feed: It does not even include the latest unemployment figures. The visualization gives you a snapshot through September 2009 when the unemployment rate reached 8.5 percent. Not shown: The current unemployment rate is 10.2 percent and still rising.

The key phrase is “double dip.” Unless the job situation improves soon, the economy may slide into a second recession … deeper and more intractable than the first.

NEW MAMMOGRAPHY GUIDELINES: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

About the new guidelines for breast cancer screening, the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology (ACR), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), among others, find the new recommendations “objectionable.”

Shawn Farley, the director of public affairs for ACR, says: :

"If the USTSF recommendations are adopted as policy — particularly if Medicare and private insurers try to use them as an excuse to cut cost — many women will die unnecessarily from breast cancer (...) The treatment costs associated with the disease may rise because cancers would be found at a more advanced stage. For those women diagnosed at a later stage, they may experience more invasive techniques to remove the cancers because the disease is more advanced."

And here is the most damnable part: Not one, I repeat, NOT ONE oncologist served on the panel that recommended those revisions. To quote the source: “Let us just hope that our mostly male legislators and insurance CEOs have women that they are very fond of, and will work to protect this group of mostly female victims.” Never count on the goodwill of sexist pigs ... especially insurance company pigs and their Congre$$ional lackeys.

This post is a work-in-progress. Please look for a more detailed analysis on Monday.

The bow that shook the world

Actually it shook very little outside the Fox's den other than the behinds of the Wingnut Obama haters when President Obama did the traditional Japanese equivalent of the European handshake with the Emperor of Japan. Inside the borrow however, it was immediately dubbed the Bow-Gate in the tired old idiom of "let's get 'em back for what they did to Nixon."

Yes, we've all seen pictures of Don Rumsfeld bowing and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and we've seen too many pictures of George Bush lovingly caressing the Saudi Royals and all but making out with Prince Bandar -- not to speak of the Andrea Merkel supergaffe. What we haven't seen, except on blogs like The Reaction, is Richard Nixon bowing to Mao Zedong as though he were the Emperor of China.

Fox Folk may have short and selective memories, but the Internet remembers. To give him due credit, Nixon's little bow opened up an era of detente, increased cooperation and a liberalization of human rights in China. The internet remembers.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

And he said unto them that stood by, Take away from him the pound, and give it unto him that hath the ten pounds.

-Luke 19:24-

Once upon a time there were people who would lend you money at high rates of interest. We called them loan sharks and we put them in jail if we could catch them. We had usury laws to protect the public from being forced into ruinous transactions. We were just inches away from Marxism.

Then came the deregulators who told us that it was toxic government interference and was depriving us of our "freedoms" to apply the same laws to that class of supercitizens known as corporations and so now we are free to borrow at rates Don Corleone wished he could have charged. Sure, some states jumped in and capped payday loans and the government "protected" the military from being charged more than 36%, but of course that's an outrageous assault on our "freedoms" and sure enough, the lobbyists came out of the woodwork and bought themselves a House subcommittee which went to work legitimizing loans with a 391% APR. For many in the payday loan business, that's not enough.

H.R. 1214 introduced earlier this year by Congressman Rep. Luis "dances with jackals" Gutiérrez [D-IL4] is still in committee. Yes, Luis is a Democrat, let's give credit where it's due and Luis, who rose from poor Hispanic roots in Chicago promising to help others like him is now the champion of legalized juice loans and the big banks that screw the little guy in a big way.

The congressman got into trouble last year for getting a $200,000.00 loan from a contractor for whom he had intervened with the zoning board, but I'm sure he isn't paying 391%. A competing bill from Congressman Joe Baca would prevent States from capping rates at all and would allow much larger add-on fees and charges, but the really great feature would allow you to roll over the loan indefinitely, racking up that 400% or so until you're forced to commit suicide.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us who aren't desperate enough with trying to pay medical bills and mortgages we can't afford, the Credit companies are out to protect our freedom too. Faced with having to warn us they're tightening the screws in the near future, they're tightening them now without warning. I got a letter yesterday from my friendly MasterCard folk ( I won't mention the name but it rhymes with Citibank) informing me that since I've been such a good customer for 25 years and always paid the full balance on time, they would raise my interest rates to over 20%. Well to tell the truth there was a time or two when I got the un -postmarked bill on or after the due date although the last two times they tried that I'd switched to e-bills and had documentary proof that they sent the bill too late to be paid on time. They refunded the charges which would have amounted to nearly 100%, but I never got an apology for their attempt at petty larceny and I don't expect a letter of appreciation for my part ( and yours) in bailing them out when they choked on their own greed.

Yes, I know, when the Republicans justify their crimes by insisting the Democrats aren't pure at heart either, they don't avoid the guilt, but they're not always lying.

Adoration of the McCarthy Madonna

Credit: Sylvia Karl-Marquet from the art collection of (O)CT(O)PUS

Our media is again abuzz with non-stop crapola, and this time the subject is Sarah Palin’s latest book, Going Rogue. I prefer to avoid talking about Sarah Palin as I prefer to avoid talking about pneumonic plague or Pain-in-the-Neck-Beck, Cayenne Coulter, Gumbo-Limbaugh, and other vile creatures of the reactionary fringe. These loudmouth louts deserve no clout, no stage upon which to spout their reactionary stupidity.

Yet, mainstream media, and the liberal community especially, continues to fall sucker to blather and prattle. Why do we always bestow the legitimacy of public attention upon a lunatic fringe that deserves nothing more than to be marginalized to the bottom of the Sargasso Sea?

If there is at least one interesting thread amongst the hullabaloo, it is this article by Andrew Sullivan (h/t to Michael) who rains the blame mainly on McCain:

The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain. He picked her so carelessly, and his thought process was so cynical, that he should stand in the dock of public opinion before Palin does.

Cynical, feckless, and reckless, the choice of Sarah Palin was an opportunistic move to grab dispirited Hillary voters and appeal to the radical fringe of the GOP while raising to national prominence a VP candidate who represented the very opposite of women’s aspirations.

From the beginning, the God-Fearing, Wolf-Shooting, Caribou-Barbie, Soccer Mom from Wassila was anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-healthcare reform, anti-rights, anti-science, anti-everything but not against fear mongering, pandering, and demogoguery. Sarah Palin is no more analogous to Hillary Clinton than Clarence Thomas would be considered a worthy successor to Thurgood Marshall.

How quickly we forget this website, Women Against Sarah Palin, and the tens of thousands of voices who reacted bitterly to the nomination of Sarah Palin, such as Texas Mom who said:

Thank you, Gov. Palin, for being the ideal example of how maliciousness, pettiness, manipulativeness, and viciousness can hide behind an appealing, friendly smile and look and sound a lot like people you can trust.

Yet, here we are a year later. McCain/Palin lost the election, Alaska has a new governor, but Sarah continues to hack like a bad case of chronic bronchitis. A year later, look at the Hobson’s choice that has been forced upon us: A Healthcare reform bill with a Stupak amendment … all because we forfeited control of the public debate to Sarah and her teabagging rabble. Nice going!