Month: April 2010

I just listened to the Diane Rehm show. The subject was the financial reform bill. The AEI expert kept repeating the same talking point over and over — the bill is bad because the Democrats want to set up a $50 billion dollar fund paid for by the big financial institutions. This is bad because it will enshrine “Too Big to Fail” in the law and in the minds of those who deal with those banks.

Thus the Republicans are opposed to financial reform on principle alone: they want to prevent the evil Democrats from ever bailing out Big Banks again. It’s the GOP that stands on the side of the little guy, see? They don’t oppose reform because they are in the pocket of financial industry lobbyists! Heaven forbid! They are the principled ones here. It’s the Dems who want to screw the country and the little guy by helping the Big Bad Banks.

How soon these Republicans and their conservative disinformation machine want you to forget The Resolution Trust Company created up by Bush Sr. in 1989 to resolve the S & L crisis.

More recently, how quickly they want you to forget Hank Paulson and George Bush and the complete lack of oversight over TARP program that those GOP stalwarts created to bail out the banks that were “too big to fail.”

How quickly they want you to forget Paulson’s behind closed doors threats to Congress that if they didn’t pass the TARP legislation in precisely the manner the Bush administration demanded “that within 24 hours, the entire political structure of the United States would collapse.”

As readers know, several Congressional members have alluded to a private meeting with Paulson and Bernanke in which vague economic Armageddon was threatened if Congress did not immediately hand Hank $700 billion, with no oversight. As the political debate raged over the next 15 days, several members expressed a sense of shock over the severity of the secret warnings, while refusing to divulge the details to a concerned public. Representative Sherman of California later accidentally revealed that members were warned that Martial Law would follow if the $700 bailout plan were not approved quickly. Days later it was confirmed that the warning was delivered by Treasury Secretary Paulson.

Now these same Republican obstructionists of financial reform want to claim that the bailouts were all the fault of the Democrats, and that its the Democrats who want to bail out the big banks rather than help all the average Americans and small businesses. They want you to believe that their opposition to financial reform is to protect the public, rather than serve the needs of the financial industry who desperately wants to avoid a return to the laws and regulations governing the behavior of large financial institutions that resemble in any fashion the ones FDR and the New Deal put in place after the Great Depression.

Hypocrisy has a new acronym: G-O-P*

* That’s a lie. It’s an old acronym for hypocrisy, actually.

Was Rick Santorum right?

A convicted cocaine smuggler has been arrested for running what authorities say appears to be a bestiality farm in Washington state in which visitors could engage in all sorts of twisted sex acts with animals.

Douglas Spink was arrested at his ramshackle, heavily wooded compound near the Canadian border along with a 51-year-old tourist from Great Britain who is accused of having sex with three dogs.

Apparently not, since this is still against the law.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Wildlife conservation and sustainable farming practices are becoming increasing prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa (see Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods, Helping Conserve Wildlife-and Agriculture-in Mozambique, and In Botswana, Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Conservation). Yet efforts to preserve elephants, rhinos, and other wildlife are difficult in countries plagued by political unrest and conflict.

In Zimbabwe, for example, “it’s pretty hard to get anything done,” says Raol du Toit, Director of the Rhino Conservation Trust. Although a new president, Morgan Tsvangirai, was elected in 2008, Zimbabwe’s 86-year-old dictator Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country for more than 30 years, refused to cede power. A “power-sharing agreement” between the two leaders allows the country to function, but just barely. Unemployment rates are over 90 percent, and people who voice public opposition to Mugabe are often jailed and even tortured.

Despite these obstacles, du Toit is helping farming communities benefit economically from efforts to save dwindling populations of rhinos and other wildlife. While many conservation groups seek to protect wildlife from farmers, the Rhino Conservation Trust has a very different approach. Rather than telling farmers not to farm in areas where wildlife are present, they help communities realize that protecting wildlife can be in their own best interest.

“Wildlife is like a herd of cattle,” says du Toit, and farmers “will get benefits” if they manage and conserve local wildlife species. This “horns and thorns” approach gives farmers an opportunity to be paid for the ecosystem services they provide through more sustainable farming practices–including protecting wildlife, conserving water, preventing deforestation, and sequestering carbon in the soil. The solution is to help farmers practice agriculture “in appropriate areas, using appropriate practices.”

What’s needed, according to du Toit, is more “landscape-level planning” that takes into account the needs of wildlife, the environment, and farming communities. Rather than relying on development agencies and governments to decide where cattle fences should go or where farmers should plant their crops, local communities and stakeholders need to be part of the process. Development aid, says du Toit, should follow what local stakeholders need and perceive, not the other way around. “We need to trust people on the ground, rather than just planning for them.”

More locally based partnership arrangements, such as the Laikipia Wildlife Forum developed in Kenya, can help both farmers and wildlife survive. The Forum has united the community, from smallholder farmers to tourism ventures, in the fight to preserve wildlife and manage natural resources, helping to improve local livelihoods.

Educating children early about the benefits of wildlife is also important. The Rhino Conservation Trust has developed a school materials project that teaches children the importance of conserving rhinos.

And despite the political turmoil in Zimbabwe, the country still has wildlife resources that other countries don’t have, giving it the opportunity to both protect these assets and profit from their conservation.

For more about rhino conservation in Zimbabwe, see Raol du Toit’s presentation at the AHEAD workshop last year.

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U.S. troops pulled out of Kunar province last week, abdicating control of the Taliban supply route from Pakistan through the Koralgan Valley of Death. The Obama administration must have stopped the search for Osama Bin Laden, holed up in this extended mountainous region on the AfPak border.

Below the fold, latest video of Taliban control in valley »

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

It’s hard to know what to make of the SEIU-backed effort to create a third-party in North Carolina. I certainly understand Tarheel progressives’ frustration with the three congressmen who voted against health care reform. But I think these activists may be getting played.

Chuck Stone, a longtime SEANC leader who is chairman of North Carolina First, asked: “Does it really matter if you put a Democratic label or a Republican label on them when they go up there and support big companies and big insurance?”

SEANC and its parent group, the Service Employees International Union, possibly the nation’s most politically powerful labor union, are funding the effort, which was announced April 8. In the days since, they have hired more than 100 canvassers who are rounding up the signatures needed to qualify as a third party on the general election ballot.

This is a top priority for outgoing SEIU President Andy Stern, who considers it a way to hold Democratic lawmakers accountable for their health-care votes. “It’s not a fly-by-night kind of thing,” said SEIU spokeswoman Lori Lodes. “We’re making a very strong commitment to doing this. There is significant money behind it . . . There’s not a ceiling to what we’re willing to do.”

They need to get the signatures of 85,000 registered voters by June 1st, and then they must nominate candidates before July, even though they have not yet identified any candidates.

Now, the SEIU is also involved in primaries, notably, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s challenge to Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. And that route makes a lot more sense. After all, the optimal outcome is not to bleed enough votes off from the left to elect a Republican, but to actually win the primary and field a candidate you can be proud to support. But the effort to create a new party called North Carolina First is all about achieving accountability through the former approach.

Now, the excuse is that it doesn’t really matter “if you put a Democratic label or a Republican label on them when they go up there and support big companies and big insurance.” That’s basically true. But it matters a lot whether all the committee chairman are Democrats (mostly progressive Democrats) or they are conservative Republicans who want to repeal health care by defunding it. It matters whether we have a Speaker Pelosi or a speaker Boehner. So, why doesn’t the SEIU fund primary challengers? Because, it appears, they know they can’t field a credible threat in any of these three districts (Reps. Kissell, McIntyre, and Shuler).

But, you know what? I don’t think they can do much damage (this year, at least) in the general election either. Here is what I suspect. I suspect that they will either fail to get the signatures or they will fail to field candidates. What they’re doing is trying to put some pressure on these Democrats to give us some progressive votes. And I don’t think that is worth all the effort and resources that Andy Stern decided to put into this effort before he announced his retirement.

One alternative explanation is that Stern thinks two or all three of these candidates are going to lose anyway, and he wants Labor to get credit for their defeat so that they can increase their leverage with other members in the next Congress. That would be a somewhat more savvy strategy than the first scenario, but I still think its advantages are dubious in an environment where even Nate Silver is predicting that control of the House of Representatives is a toss-up.

I don’t think that is the kind of environment where progressives want to play the role of spoilers. I support primary challenges, even where an insurgent upset would make an otherwise safe seat into a toss-up. But that’s the most risk I want to contemplate at the moment. Intentionally trying to throw races to Republicans to put fear into other Democrats? How’d it work for the Club for Growth? They got more party discipline at the cost of their majorities.

Pastor Agnostic’s Ten Commandments:

If it was good enough for some two part, badly translated, mostly borrowed, and politically edited fairy tale, then ten arbitrary, off the cuff rules must be good enough for the rest of us. Please feel free to take my post in vain.

These commandments should be read like speed limits. Obey them only when it pleases you, especially if your radar detector is not working. Except in school zones, where you must slow down and keep a careful eye open.

1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and others warn the countryside of the troop movements.

1949 – The aircraft carrier USS United States is laid down at Newport News Drydock and Shipbuilding. However, the giant ship is canceled 5 days later, resulting in the Revolt of the Admirals.

COINCIDENCE? I think NOT!

 “Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.”
— Rev. Jerry Falwell

“The Spirit tells me, Fidel Castro will die in the 90’s.”
—  Rev. Benny Hinn

FROM THE CHURCH OF INEFFABLE STUPIDITY:

If it was good enough for some two part, badly translated, mostly borrowed, and politically edited fairy tale, then ten arbitrary, off the cuff rules must be good enough for the rest of us. Please feel free to take my post in vain.

These commandments should be read like speed limits. Obey them only when it pleases you, especially if your radar detector is not working. Except in school zones, where you must slow down and keep a careful eye open.

1) Read, write, study, learn.

Honestly, what one thing separates us from animals? Writing, written history, and the intertubes. We can share information, knowledge, and experience today in ways never dreamed of just two decades ago. Sure, a lot of it is crap, (see, generally, Drudge, PalinPac, Whirled Nut Delay, WaPo of late, and the formerly honored Wall Street Urinal) but frankly, it pays to see what the great unwashed NeoConmen and  Tea Baggers and are brewing up now.

Learning something new is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Applying that new knowledge is close to saint-hood.

2) Practice what you preach.

The Intertubes offer most of us anonymity. I post my name in my profile, and have suffered for it. But, unless I am willing to stand up for my (ahem) beliefs, what impact can I ever expect my words to have? We must stand up against injustices. We must learn from our mistakes. We must admit our faults (but not grovel about their occurrence). And, we must act in line with what we say we promote.

If that means that we need to organize an anti-teabagger meeting, so be it. I suggest July 4th as an appropriate date. They can choose the Ides of April to protest their lower taxes. We should, and must, stand up and demand that freedom and independence have responsibilities, as well as benefits.

3) Organized religions do great harm. One must fight the worst of their impact.

So far, the courts have done pretty well. Despite 8 yrs of W, there still is a separation of state and religion. Creationism is not a science, intelligent design is neither, and religious folks who demand that we accept their ways on all issues must be acknowledged politely, then stopped in their tracks. It is not only a 4 yr old girl being reborn, confessing her worldly sins on the 700 Club, it is not only Texass Skule Bored rewriting history, nor is it only the insane claim that only christians can understand what moral behavior is.

Every single time that anyone replaces fact with faith, society takes a hit. The more that faith intrudes, the worse things get for society. Sure, there are many imponderables, many unknowns, even many known unknowns. But to regress to “faith” in response to an unknown is what religion demands of us. We must do the opposite. When there is a hard question, we should be spurred on to do more research. Until we learn a factual answer.

4) Morals, ethics, and societal responsibility must be a necessary part of your daily life.

It is so cute how conservative christians claimed that they, and only they, could be moral and ethical. Everyone else was a sinner, and doomed to hell. Ted Haggard, Rev. Baker, Senators Vitter, Ensign, and many other family values creeps proved the opposite to be the case. Their theft of those issues caused a great deal of harm. It is time we reclaimed them from religious cretins.

Morals, Ethics, and societal responsibility are ours. Every day, in many ways, modern society expresses our current standards and beliefs about what constitutes proper behavior. Some call them laws. Legislation. Statutes. Codes. But laws alone do not constitute (and never can) the whole of what “Morals, Ethics, and social responsibility” are. Unless you are the unfortunate recipient of genes,  head injuries, or magnetic forces,  which prevent you from having an ethical internal debate, (the amazing brain) all of us have some clue of what is right and wrong. It would do all of us some good to study it even further, starting much earlier in life. Say, age 15 or so.

5) If you covet your neighbor’s spouse, be sure to pay all divorce costs.

Seriously, if you and she/he want to get it on, go for it. But be prepared to responsible for your (and his/her) actions. Despite the Papal Maltese Decree that divorce is a mortal sin (and far worse than his bishops covering up thousands of sex abuse cases around the world), life goes on. People are attracted to others. People realize they made huge mistakes in relationships. People need to act responsibly.

One very good corollary to this commandment: ALWAYS GET A PRE-NUPT! That applies to same sex marriages, too, folks. Frankly, the more you think about a permanent relationship, AHEAD OF TIME, the better your’s will be.

6) An open mind is the most cherished prize. Keep the gates to your mind well oiled.

I recently read a couple of posts this weekend, one by Black Kos, and another, by a transgendered person. It struck me that my own gateway to my brain was getting rusty. I deal with many people of color in my profession, quite often. But until I could actually stand in their shoes, how the hell could I understand the daily racism, subtle as it is, that they feel and (even worse) expect? Or as powerfully, how the hell could I ever understand the confusion, the pain, the societal abuse poured upon people who are transgendered? This weekend, I realized that I continue to be a racist, close-minded pig, on top of being a sarcastic curmudgeon. This weekend, I pledged to fix it, no matter how long it takes.

I better get a lot of WD40 for the brain.

7) Government IS by the people and for the people. Make sure it stays that way.

What a horrible time we live in. What great times these are! It is great and horrible. Somehow, that which brings us together, government, has been redefined as the enemy, something to shrink, then drown. How did we let this happen?

Well, partly it is the fault of those in government. I am not talking about the time warp that occurs within Chicago’s Central Post Office, where everything seems to move  a t   h a l f     s p e e d . . . . but rather, those who create secrets, or withhold information we citizens need in order to make decisions when we vote. NSA is a pimple that popped. Yes, having such wonderful eyes and ears all over the world is an asset we should not toss aside. Yes, having a functioning FBI is an asset. Even, to some degree, having a CIA (but without the torture squads, the Blackwater subcontracts, and the assassination squads) can be a good thing.

However, the instant that government starts keeping too many secrets, government is no longer by the people, for the people. It becomes a separate entity, intent on its own self-preservation, “knowing more than we do” and not being able to trust us to do the right thing. BULLSHIT. An informed population is a very powerful force. A misinformed population is a very dangerous group that gets angry when it realizes that it was fooled.  Take Iraq. Please. Oh, wait, we already did. Dammit.

That’s where the “Make sure it stays that way” comes into play. We cannot afford to allow government to classify everything as secret “for our own good.” I repeat, BULLSHIT. Determining what is for our own good requires our input, and therefore it requires as much information and background we can get. Secrecy is the acid which corrodes democracy.

Take Iran. Who can really believe anything the government says about that State? We’ve been lied to so often, on so many critical issues (Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, TARP, the economy), that everything the government tells us, (be it Petreaus or any other Soviet-medalled toy soldier they put on tv), that we cannot believe anything they say. Frankly, under Bush, if we took long positions on everything they told us being false, we’d all be billionaires. Much like Wall Street.

Government is good, so long as we have a voice in it. A good way to retrieve that voice is by banning lobbyists from DC, and have federal funding of congressional elections.

8) Be liberal in all things, especially  to others, when dealing with respect, support, honor and how you pour scotch.

I am constantly amazed how “liberal” and “progressive” became profanities, while “conservative” became a path towards sainthood. We now know that the “liberal media bias” is utter crap. Conservatives, corporations, and advertising (for corporations) have way too much control over journalism, to the point that Glenn Beck and Bill and Rush and Sean actually become the sole source of misinformation for all too many people. If any liberal tried to be as fact and logic free as that gaggle of jerks, he/she would be laughed off the air. Rightly so.

Being liberal is a blessing, not a sin. It means respecting others, even including the right of a pompous Glenn faking tears on air. It means helping those in need. It means thinking not of what is most efficient, but what is the most effective for the greatest number of people.  (and then searching out and helping those we missed) Being liberal is what we all should strive towards in every step we take.

Especially as it relates to how you pour my single malt.

9) Every society is damned to repeat the mistakes of the past. The more you learn about history will help limit the damage of future mistakes.

Sigh. This one speaks for itself. Sadly. When you think back to the mid 1760s, to the start of the revolution, and realize just how lucky we were to have our founding fathers, well read, well traveled, well educated, and thinking well of humanity, and how they did their damnedest to avoid the mistakes of the past, you begin to realize how magical this country is. Except for that slavery bit.

Talk to an older person. Ask them about the 50s, (McCarthy), the 60s, (Viet Nam), and more. What we see is not unique, but simply predictable human reactions in this slice of time. If we can learn how they survived, and use that experience, all of us would be far better off.

10) Nationalism is nothing more than perverted bigotry. Patriotism is fine, if you are a patriot of the world. Be a patriot.

War. Riots. Death.

Nationalism manages to tickle something deep inside our brains. It stops logical thought. It replaces it with emotion and group think. Ask any survivor of Stalin’s purges, and how he was cheered as a savior. (even after millions of families were torn apart because some were accused of treason) Ask those who lived in and survived Hitler’s Germany.

Nationalism is evil. It leads to violence. At its best, it is as bad as organized religion. At its worst, it leads to world wars.

We now have global telecommunications. A global economy. A global understanding. And, we have a global need. It is time to start acting  and thinking globally. We are al patriots. It is simply that that for which we should feel patriotic is a tiny, water covered, hot iron rock, orbiting a rather boring star, stuck in an unfashionable arm of the galaxy.

It never ends:

Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower “whether we like it or not,” saying she was taken aback by his comment.
“I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower,” the former Alaska governor said. “I don’t understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful.”

What has Sarah Palin ever contributed besides pom-poms to making us a powerful nation?

I had a conversation with Nate Silver in Pittsburgh last year about Rasmussen Polling. It wasn’t an easy conversation because it took place during the Netroots Nation afterparty in a noisy bar. But I basically implored him to look into their polling practices because it seemed obvious to me that they were creating dishonest product and lots of it, and that it was skewing polling averages on issues and approval ratings that were hurting Democrats in virtually every news cycle.

Not long after our conversation, Silver did expose a Republican leaning pollster, but it turned out to be Strategic Vision instead of Rasmussen. I has happy to see the statistical master take them down, but I was frustrated that he didn’t seem able to nail Rasmussen, who I felt and still feel are far more pernicious and influential in distorting the debate in this country.

So, I am extremely happy to see Silver has started asking tough questions of Rasmussen. In essence, he can’t say for certain that Rasmussen is wrong, but he can expose their house effect. Here’s the thing to remember. In order for pollsters to have credibility and attract clients and have influence, they absolutely must do a good job of predicting the outcomes of elections. But their performance is judged by their last poll in the field. They can skew results in a Republican direction in the weeks and months before an election to help candidates look viable and raise money (and do the opposite to the Democrat) without paying any price for it. They can make the Democrats look more unpopular than they really are and make proposed legislation look like it is loathed by the public. They can do this because there is never an accountability moment on those types of questions. And that is what I firmly believe that Rasmussen is doing. It’s not a bug, but a feature of their polling that it is about 6% more favorable to Republicans than the average of the rest of the pollsters. And I expect that house effect to slowly dwindle down to almost nothing by election day because they want to be as accurate as possible in predicting who will win. After all, on election day, we have winners and losers, and we can judge the pollsters strictly by whether they made the right predictions. We can’t do that on the president’s or health care’s popularity.

It’s obvious that discussion of Elena Kagan’s sexuality isn’t going to go away. The right has given themselves permission to assume that Kagan is gay because Queerty reported:

The front-runners appear to be federal appellate judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland and U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the lesbian former Harvard Law dean…

…As we understand it, Kagan is out, but has not commented on her sexuality for reporters. But most notable about Kagan is not her sexuality, but her status: While all the Supreme Court’s sitting justices have been judges, Kagan has never held a bench seat.

Queerty appears to be a legitimate gay website and not some smearmongering front rag. I can’t vouch for their reportorial ethics or anything because it’s not a site I’ve ever read before. But, in any case, the righty blogosphere thinks that Queerty’s reporting is decisive and are treating it as such.

This controversy started when disgraced plagiarist Ben Domenech used his space at CBS News to openly speculate that Kagan is a lesbian. To which the White House responded forcefully:

CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: “The fact that they’ve chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010.” She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger “with a history of plagiarism” who was “applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers.”

Obviously, I have no idea what is true. The White House is on the record saying that the rumors are not true, so they would not want to try to walk that back if it turns out the rumors are true. Matt Yglesias even tweeted that he had been under the impression that Kagan was openly gay, so this is not all coming from the right.

Supreme Court nominations can be kind of cut-throat, and I wouldn’t put it past supporters of some candidates on the short-list to make trouble for Ms. Kagan because she is widely considered the frontrunner for John Paul Stevens’ seat on the court. Of course, the rumors could be true, but I would hope the White House wouldn’t call the rumors ‘lies’ if they were not. That would effectively kill her chances of being nominated, while being gay wouldn’t necessarily. William Jacobson is correct that the public would demand to know about any straight nominee’s spouse or significant other in order to vet for possible conflicts of interest, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for a nominee to attempt to stay closeted through a confirmation process for a lifetime appointment. On the other hand, a candidate cannot prove a negative. I believe, if she were nominated, that Kagan would have to confirm or deny her orientation and any lasting relationships.

Regardless of the truth, I agree with Anita Dunn that older single women are often stereotyped as lesbians and the subject of rumors. What’s weird is were entering a phase where tolerance is the expectation and defensiveness about accusations of homosexuality is seen as homophobic in itself. So, we see EqualRep.com blasting the White House for getting angry about CBS News’s lax editorial practices and demanding that they apologize for treating alleged homosexuality as a slur. I think EqualRep is being a little idealistic. We’ve made progress, but we haven’t reached the point where being gay is not a liability for a nominee to the Supreme Court. The people spreading these rumors do not wish Elena Kagan well. At a minimum, they are merely repeating something they’ve heard. But no one thinks this controversy improves her chances of serving on the Court.

As further evidence that the present right wing Likud government of Israel represents a minority of uber-nationalist and religious extremists, in a survey just conducted by the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, two-thirds of Israelis support dismantling settlements in the disputed (read “occupied”) territories as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Three fifths of Israelis support dismantling settlements in the disputed* territories…

60% of the Israeli public answered that they supported “dismantling most of the settlements in the territories as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.” This is 11 points higher than the previous survey, conducted in December 2009, and the highest result since 2005.

One-thirds of the Israeli public oppose dismantling most of the settlements, with 13 percent of that number very strongly opposed.

In sharp contrast, however, are the responses of settlers surveyed by the Truman Institute. 69% of settlers oppose dismantling West Bank settlements – and a majority believes that most of the Israeli public shares this view.

*As a footnote, the use of the term “disputed” to replace “occupied” is an old propaganda trick to obscure the legal status of the Palestinian territories, and was first suggested by the Republican pollster/Israel consultant, Frank Luntz.