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Monday
Feb272012
The Commentariat -- February 28, 2012
My column in the New York Times eXaminer is titled "Flaming Faucets! Fracking Joe Is Back!" Thsi one really irritated me. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here. Okay, I'm vain:
... Also, do read Joan Walsh's post on the New York Times' repetition, without context, of Rick Santorum's fact-free claims about President Kennedy's position on separation of church & state.
News to Make Your Head Explode. Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times: "Last week, the American International Group reported a whopping $19.8 billion profit for its fourth quarter. It was quite a feat for a company that was on its death bed just a little over three years ago, so sick that it needed a huge taxpayer bailout. But ... $17.7 billion of that profit was pure fantasy — a tax benefit, er, gift, from the United States government. The company made only $1.6 billion during the quarter from actual operations. Yet A.I.G. not only received a tax benefit, it is unlikely to pay a cent of taxes this year, nor by some estimates, for at least a decade. The tax benefit ... is the result of a rule that the Treasury unilaterally bent for A.I.G. and several other hobbled companies in 2008 that has largely been overlooked." GM, Citigroup, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac got the same deal. CW: it is unclear to me if the AIG deal is wholly the work of Henry Paulson or if Tim Geithner keeps renewing a tax break that's coming out of your pocket. Geithner obviously is the guy who wrote the GM deal.
This New York Times piece by Michael Powell is billed as news, as far as I can tell, but it doesn't speak well of the New York Police Department's monitoring of Arab Americans from New Jersey to beyond the city limits on Long Island. The 9/11 attack, Powell writes, "may not confer immunity against tough questions, not the least of which is what sort of 'leads' justify monitoring hundreds of thousands of people."
President Obama spoke to the nation's governors yesterday morning:
... Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: "President Obama did not mention Rick Santorum by name Monday morning, but it was pretty clear whom he had in mind. Three days after Mr. Santorum ... accused Mr. Obama of being a 'snob' and of trying to 'indoctrinate' young people by encouraging them to go to college, Mr. Obama responded. 'I have to make a point here,' Mr. Obama said during remarks to the nation’s governors at the White House. 'When I speak about higher education, we are not just talking about a four-year degree.'”
CW: I missed this news last week but it bears mention. Chris Geidner of Poliglot: "Today, [Judge Jeffrey White of] the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued its order finding that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act -- the federal definition of marriage -- is unconstitutional in Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management, Karen Golinski's challenge to the denial of her request for equal health insurance benefits for her wife." ...
... "Blatantly Unconstitutional Law Ruled Unconstitutional." Andy Rosenthal of the New York Times: "When the Republican candidates stop blathering about contraceptives, I’m sure they’ll brush off Judge White as an 'activist' who 'rules from the bench.' Before doing so they should consider that 1) George W. Bush appointed Judge White and 2) In his ruling, Judge White invoked the right-wing sacred cow, state rights. He chided that the law represents 'a stark departure from tradition and a blatant disregard of the well-accepted concept of federalism in the area of domestic relations.'"
Arun Gupta in Salon on how the Occupy movement is struggling with self-governance. "In a leaderless movement, who – if anyone – gets to call the shots, initiate actions, represent the group, and perhaps most important, hold people accountable by enforcing authority, order and discipline? Exactly how democratic must a people’s movement be? ... Democracy is not 'everyone does what everyone wants to....'”
Cecelia Kang of the Washington Post: "From videos watched on YouTube to the terms typed in a Google search, tracking [user] behaviors will enable [Google] to sell ads better suited to its customers’ tastes." CW: Great! They'll probably be trying to sell me golf shirts with little pictures of David Brooks embroidered on the pockets.
... Bad News. Michael Shear of the New York Times: David Boren, a former Democratic senator and governor & is now president of the University of Oklahoma, is supporting the third-party effort of Americans Elect. Boren backed Barack Obama in 2008. Boren says he won't necessarily support the eventual Americans Elect ticket, CW: Americans Elect is hedge-fund-funded & a fave of Tom Friedman. For unfathomable reasons, Boren thinks a third party would improve the two-party system. ...
... Better News. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "Bob Kerrey, who just weeks ago insisted he would maintain his life in New York City rather than run for his old Senate seat from Nebraska, has done an about-face. Mr. Kerrey has told several Senate Democrats that he’s in the race, a senior Democratic official said on Monday." CW: as Kerrey's flip-flop suggests, he's not that great a decider. I think of him as "Last Minute Bob." But his last-minute decisions are often good ones.
Right Wing World
News Flash! Daniel Strauss of The Hill: Saint Rick regrets his emesistic reaction to John F. Kennedy's pledge to respect the First Amendment.
Thanks for being so nice & fixing us a fancy dinner, Mr. President. P.S. You're an incompetent, liberal extremist. -- Republican Governors
Willard, We Hardly Knew Ya. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed finds something quite good to say about Mitt Romney. You should read it.
M. J. Lee of Politico: "Mitt Romney blasted Rick Santorum’s campaign Tuesday for robocalls encouraging Democrats in Michigan to vote in the Republican primary, blasting the tactic as outrageous and disgusting. 'It’s a dirty trick. It’s outrageous to see Rick Santorum team up with the Obama people and go out after the union labor in Detroit to try to get them to vote against me,' Romney said on 'Fox & Friends' on the day of the Michigan and Arizona primaries. 'Look, we don’t want Democrats deciding who our nominee’s going to be, we want Republicans deciding who our nominees are going to be.'”
Sandhya Somashekhar & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "Rick Santorum calls it snobbery to suggest that students ought to go to college. On Monday, several of his fellow Republicans — and President Obama — begged to differ. Some GOP governors in Washington for the National Governors Association took issue with Santorum’s remark, which he made Saturday as he mounted a last-minute sprint for votes before Tuesday’s primary in Michigan."
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "Santorum clearly mischaracterized Obama’s comments on college, which actually mirror Santorum’s own views. Obama did not say he wanted 'everybody in America to go to college.' Santorum also completely misstated the results of research on the impact of college attendance on religious behavior. The relevant studies suggest that going to college actually increases religious attendance (albeit with perhaps a bit more skeptical mind)."
The Fatwa Candidate. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post: "Santorum’s views on the place of religion and his quaint ideas about education are ... anachronistic." But they resonate "with Republican primary voters. On the other hand, when Rick Perry said it was fine to help the children of undocumented aliens go to college, he got pilloried for it. When Gingrich balked at deporting literally millions of people, he was excoriated. Every time some Republican says something sensible, the roof falls in on him.... For nutty ideas, Santorum is a one-man band."
** Kollege Makes Konservatives Dummer. Chris Mooney in AlterNet: "... , better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren.... For Democrats and Independents, the opposite was the case. More education correlated with being more accepting of climate science — among Democrats, dramatically so.... Tea Party members appear to be the worst of all.... But it’s not just global warming where the 'smart idiot' effect occurs. It also emerges on nonscientific but factually contested issues, like the claim that President Obama is a Muslim.... The same effect has also been captured in relation to the myth that the healthcare reform bill empowered government 'death panels.'" ...
... Paul Krugman: "Highly educated political conservatives — and this includes conservative economists — are going to be less persuadable by empirical evidence than the man or woman in the street. The more holes you poke in doctrines like expansionary austerity or supply-side economics, the more committed they will get to those doctrines." ...
... We need to look at the situation of gas prices today. We went into a recession in 2008 because of gasoline prices. The bubble burst in housing because people couldn't pay their mortgages because we're looking at $4 a gallon gasoline. And look at what happened, economic decline. -- Economist Rick Santorum, yesterday, proving once again to be a case study for nearly everything that's wrong with the right
Why Right Wing World R Us. Robert Reich: "In parliamentary systems of government, small groups representing loony fringes can be absorbed relatively harmlessly into adult governing coalitions. But here, as we’re seeing, a loony fringe can take over an entire party — and that party will inevitably take over some part of our federal, state, and local governments.As such, the loony right is a clear and present danger."
Local News
** Mark LaMet of ABC 15, Phoenix, Arizona: "Arizona Senator Ron Gould, a Republican, is calling for his opponent, Sheriff Paul Babeu to resign as Sheriff and drop out of the race for Congress after an ABC15 Investigation uncovered allegations of physical and sexual abuse at a boarding school where Babeu was once Headmaster and Executive Director. While Babeu was in charge, the Office of Child Care Services in Massachusetts found the DeSisto School was unlicensed. The state’s investigation also reveals students 'strip searched' each other and 'routinely took group showers ... leading to sexual abuse'":
Abby Goodnough of the New York Times: in "New Hampshire..., lawmakers may soon vote to repeal the state’s two-year-old law allowing gay couples to wed. A repeal bill appears to have a good chance of passing in the State House and Senate, which are both controlled by Republicans. The bigger question is whether they can muster enough votes to overcome a promised veto from Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat."
News Ledes
At 9:00 pm ET: Romney wins Arizona. Michigan way too close to call. The Washington Post coverage is more timely than the New York Times', which is here. ...
... Update: NBC News predicts Romney wins Michigan @ 10:15 pm ET.
** Maine's Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe will not seek re-election according to the Maine Press Herald. ...
... New York Times Update: "Citing excessive partisanship and a dispiriting political environment, Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a three-term Republican from Maine, said Tuesday that she would not run for re-election in November. Her surprise decision delivered a potential blow to Republicans who need just a handful of seats to regain control of the Senate; Ms. Snowe was considered one of their safer incumbents." Washington Post story here.
AP (via NYT): "Twenty-five suspected members of the loose-knit hacker movement have been arrested in a sweep across Europe and South America, Interpol, the global police agency, said on Tuesday."
Michigan and Arizona Republicans vote in their presidential primaries today. Here's the New York Times story.
AP: "The Dow closed above 13,000 for the first time since May 19, 2008, almost four months before the fall of the Lehman Brothers investment bank triggered the worst of the financial crisis. It just cleared the mark — 13,005.12, up 23.61 points for the day."
New York Times: "Federal health officials on Tuesday added new safety alerts to statins, cholesterol-reducing medications that are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, citing the rare risks of memory loss, increased blood sugar levels and muscle pain. It is the first time that the Food and Drug Administration has officially linked statin use with cognitive problems like forgetfulness and confusion, although some patients have reported such problems for years. Among the drugs affected are such huge sellers as Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor and Vytorin."
New York Times: "The mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware disposed of some body parts of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by burning them and dumping the ashes in a landfill, an independent panel said in a report released on Tuesday."
Guardian: "Paul Conroy, the British Sunday Times photographer who was wounded in the besieged city of Homs, has been smuggled out of Syria to Lebanon in a dramatic rescue. According to those familiar with his escape a number of Syrian opposition activists died during the rescue effort after they came under artillery fire while leaving the city."
Guardian: "St Paul's Cathedral [in the City of London] has been accused of 'betraying' Occupy London activists after giving the City of London police permission to remove protesters from its steps and end the four-and-a-half month camp. The cathedral's decision, coupled with a previous high court decision obtained by the City of London, meant police successfully removed the entire Occupy London Stock Exchange camp from the square outside St Paul's. Police said 20 people had been arrested by 4.30am in the 'largely peaceful' operation."
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Reader Comments (13)
Re: Kollege Makes Konservatives Dummer
I guess I foolishly feel compelled to explain once again why this highly educated political conservative is skeptical about some aspects of “anthropogenic global warming,” or AGW.
First let me say that I have no doubt that AGW is occurring. More CO2 in the atmosphere means global warming, all other things being equal. Since the Industrial Revolution humankind has indeed been pouring more and more CO2 into the atmosphere. Hence, all other things being equal, AGW is occurring.
What I disagree with is the incredible faith that climate scientists, the scientific community, and the lay public have placed in highly complex computer models, the dire predictions of which are essentially untestable on useful time scales.
No, I am not a climate scientist. But I am a scientist, and one who is very familiar with the enormous difficulties associated with attempting to use computer models to simulate the outcomes of even tightly constrained laboratory experiments on “simple” physical systems. And this in “real time,” where the “physics” are nominally “well understood.”
You'd be quite surprised what we can't even simulate and predict, even in the laboratory.
Thus, I am highly skeptical of the catastrophic climate predictions that emerge from highly complex global climate models, where the variables and their interactions are—I believe—much less well understood than in a laboratory experiment.
Moreover, these predictions are not testable in any convincing way. They can only be tested against past data, which were the very data used to develop the models. Hardly an “independent” evaluation.
So I'm not prepared to move into a yurt and read by candlelight for the rest of my life in order to to save the planet, based on untestable predictions. If that leaves me in the minority of scientists today, well, so be it. I feel perfectly comfortable to be in the company of the likes of Freeman Dyson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=all
Moreover, the patent hysteria of the great proponents of catastrophic AGW makes me doubtful of their very competence. When, for example, James Hansen can say with a straight face that the construction of the Keystone Pipeline is “game over for the planet,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline
and both otherwise-competent scientists and the general public swallow it hook, line and sinker, well, I weep for humanity's lost ability to think rationally any more.
And no, this \\\"smart idiot\\\" does not believe that Obama is a Muslim, either.
Marie and everyone,
Here are instructions for deleting your google web history before the March 1st policy change:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320137
I was pleasantly surprised that web history was never enabled in my account. Also I recently discovered that Firefox has a do not track option. Tools/options/privacy: check the box at the top that says \"tell websites I do not want to be tracked\".
Zee, as a scientist I agree with your assessment of the limitation of computer modeling. The only problem I have with your view is that just because the modeling might be wrong does not mean that it is not right. And if it is right, then if we do nothing to prevent a catastrophe then we will have a catastrophe. Since we are dealing with a subject for which there is no testing paradigm we have two choices, either take the the most serious view very seriously or risk the end of the human race as we know it. I personally don't want to take the chance that the computer got it wrong.
@Dave S. I'm aware of that "do not track" feature. I think even I/E, which I seldom -- but occasionally -- use, has it. But if I invoke it, won't I have to sign in every time to every Web site? Have you -- or anybody -- tried it? Do you have to sign in to read, say, a Washington Post article?
Marie,
I just clicked on a WAPO and NYT article and did not have to sign in, in fact I was still auto signed in.
Here's mozilla's faq:
http://dnt.mozilla.org/
@Zee. I understand that as a scientist, you're skeptical of models. You should be. Scientists are supposed to be skeptics. Testing models is a scientific thing to do. Even peer-reviewed articles reporting on modeling can suffer from biases -- "ooh, his model works off the same assumptions my model does; it must be good"; "oh, he's highly-respected"; "her stuff is cutting edge"; "man-made effects are a given." Blah blah.
And I agree that some of the dire warnings are ridiculous hyperbole or even Chicken Little shit.
BUT. The models, for the most part, work off history, and I think even a scientist would agree that the history that mainstream scientists work off of is probably pretty accurate. So we know the globe got hotter & the CO2 levels went up at the same time we started using more fossil fuels. That in itself is not proof of a causal relationship among the three; I mean, global warming could be entirely due to too much cattle ranching, too many bean eaters (see "Blazing Saddles"), or God has a financial interest in a Vermont swimming pool company. But it ain't, as Jim Inhofe assures us, based largely on his debt to the Oklahoma oil lobby and partly on congenital fact-aversion, a hoax. At some point, you have to invoke inductive reasoning, however weak you may think it is, and say, "Well, A and B and C trended up at the same time at the relatively the same rate, so there's probably a causal relationship, and if we continue to hike A & B, we'll more than likely experience more C, too. Is that a deductive "proof"? No. But it's science-y. And it's sensible.
@DaveS. Thanks very much. I'm going for the opt-out.
@Marvin Schwalb--
I don't disagree with you at all that we need to take the current predictions seriously. Just because the models are uncertain does not mean that we should simply do nothing at all.
But given the models' uncertainties and the global economic situation, we need to be very thoughtful and analytical about the relative efficacies of mitigation versus adaptation vis-a-vis climate change, and prioritize accordingly.
One simply can't say “We will do everything that we can do, no matter how much it costs and how small or uncertain the benefit, because it's the right thing to do.”
Well, I suppose one can say it, but, in my humble opinion, it's the wrong thing to do.
@The Constant Weader--
Love the reference to Blazing Saddles and the cowboy fart-fest!
Zee, I have no problem being thoughtful and analytical. Now if we can just find one Republican politician who takes that view we could rationally move forward. I am not betting on it.
I read yesterday on Charles Pierce's blog that he's not too thrilled with Bob Kerrey's re-entry into politics, leery of Kerrey becoming a compromiser like Ron Wyden. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Return_Of_Bob_Kerrey
Thanks, Dave S, for the Firefox tip. On my mac, it wasn't under tools, but Firefox/preferences/privacy. And like Marie, I checked to see that I wouldn't have to sign in to websites. Tested it with the NYT, and saw the headline that Olympia Snowe won't seek re-election. Can't decide if this is good news or bad: does it provide a good opportunity for a Democratic win, or is she one of the last remaining moderate Republicans no longer able to fend off the wingers? I'm not too hopeful given the governor that was elected in 2010, unless the citizens are having a sense of buyers' remorse.
@Janice,
Regarding Olympia Snowe's retirement, a lot of what happens will depend upon who the Dems nominate to run for her seat. I fear the choice may be second district representative Mike Michaud, who tends to be a "Blue Dog". Although he'd probably have no trouble being elected for Olympia's seat, would he then turn around and support Republican policies?
A better choice would be first district representative Chelli Pingree who is definitely more progressive. She'd have a harder time winning over the numerous Roman Catholic (and more socially conservative) voters who live in-land in the formerly heavy manufacturing areas of the state. She lost a Senate race to Collins before.
But don't forget, Governor LePage won with just 39% of the vote in a three-way race featuring the next-in-line Democratic leader and a well-respected, but not-in-line-for-the-Dems-so-he-ran-as-an-independent businessman with progressive leanings.
Although LePage seems to be gathering some good will these days, I think he turned off all but the most hard-core Tea Party voters. If the Maine Democratic party is smart, we won't fall into the three-way race trap again when trying to win Olympia's seat.
@Janice. Thanks for the heads-up on the Charles Pierce post on Bob Kerrey. I think Pierce is right & I was wrong. However, Kerrey may be the only Democrat who can win Nelson's seat. A mixed blessing, if he wins, to be sure, but better he than some Tea Party wingnut.
@Gail Leiser. Thank you for the analysis of the Maine situation. Snowe's decision to retire does give Democrats a shot I don't think had yesterday, a shot that might mean they retain control of the Senate. I had forgot Tea Party Paul won in a 3-way race, so maybe a reasonable Democrat has a chance in the state.