Month: March 2015

Now, it may prove to be the case that you can use a medieval recipe of “a bit of garlic, some onion or leek, copper, wine and oxgall” to kill methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). And it may be true that “in 200 years, people will judge us” negatively for our ridiculous and barbaric medical practices. The lesson here, however, isn’t that we should get rid of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and begin consulting 10th Century “Leechbooks.” The lesson is that human beings do a remarkable job of figuring out solutions to problems with whatever tools are available to them. Every generation has its MacGyvers.

Hugh Capet, Eric the Red, and Basil II had to worry about getting infections, just like we do today. And if they had some “doctor” give them cow’s bile to drink and it saved their lives, that was all that mattered. Yet, we’d sensibly run in the other direction if that same “doctor” tried to treat us for strep throat or tonsillitis.

In 200 years, we’re going to be judged harshly, but there will be things we figured out that are still useful in a pinch. Most of those things will have been figured out using the Scientific Method, but some of them may have been figured out by cranks using the old brute-force trial and error methods of the Dark Ages.

What I don’t think is that there will be anything worth anything that was created or discovered by the Conservative Movement.

But I could be wrong. Maybe sometime in 2215, a team of medical researchers will find an important cure in one of our own Leechbooks.

and the regressive becomes set in concrete.

Power and money is what gives rise to progressive actions by “the people” and power and money is what destroys the progressive intent and flips it..

A California example – the direct democracy initiative process:  A hundred and ten years ago in California:

The entire state government had for decades been under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Bribery was the accepted method of doing business in the state capitol.

That was the degree of power that inspires today’s version of oligarchs.

Realizing the hopelessness of dealing with the current officeholders, Haynes and other reformers began a campaign to get rid of them and remake state government from top to bottom. In May of 1907, they founded the Lincoln-Roosevelt League of Republican Clubs, and elected several of their candidates to the state legislature.

That was Step One.  Elect a few “better officeholders.”  (Generally about the limits of liberal/ progressive thoughts and actions for the past thirty or so years.)

Step Two.  Need more “better officeholders.”

Once elected, these legislators worked for a bill to require the nomination of party candidates through primary election rather than the backroom deals of state party conventions.

That was in 1910.  When US Senators were still selected in “backroom deals.”  More than half a century before Presidential nominees stopped being selected in smoke-filled backrooms.

Step Three:  Taking back the legislature

The bill passed, and the League’s 1910 gubernatorial candidate, Hiram Johnson, ran in the state’s first primary election. Johnson won the primary and the general election and swept dozens of other reformers into the legislature on his political coattails.

Step Four:  Doing what they were elected to do  (Or what’s the point in getting power if not to use it?)

Johnson and the new Progressive majority in the legislature made the most sweeping governmental changes ever seen in the history of California. Among these were the introduction of initiative, referendum, and recall at both the state and local levels. Voters ratified these amendments in a special election on October 10, 1911.

In 1912, there were five titled initiatives and four qualified for the ballot.  The one that failed to qualify was to abolish the death penalty.

In 1914, there were 21 titled initiatives and 12 qualified for the ballot.  One of the qualifiers was Proposition 44: Minimum wage (page 29) –

Authorizes the legislature to provide for establishment of  a minimum wage for woman and minors, and for comfort, health, safety, and general welfare of any and all employees;  …

In the argument for passage, it was noted that wages for girls and women at that time were better in California than in older industrial states and that 60% earned $9/week or more.  The funding and support for and against would be familiar to us today even if the arguments on both sides were slightly different.  For example, the advocates cited an expected wave of new cheap labor to flood the state when the Panama Canal opened and therefore, existing CA workers needed wage protections.

It failed.  And the beat goes on.

Forty years on and the forces for ill didn’t quite have their act together:

One of the highest stakes initiative campaigns in terms of campaign spending was in 1956, over a struggle over changes in the state regulation and taxation of oil and gas production. Proposition 4 that year was sponsored by a group of oil companies that sought to make their business more profitable, and opposed by another group of oil firms that preferred the existing system. Campaign funds spent by both sides totaled over $5 million. Proposition 4 lost: California voters, inundated with conflicting claims about a complex measure, took the cautious route and voted “no.”

Two years later:

Almost as expensive was the gargantuan 1958 labor-capital conflict over a “Right to Work” (open shop) initiative sponsored by employers. This battle ended in a double defeat for employers: not only did voters decisively reject the initiative, but the opposition campaign mobilized Democrats and union members to vote in droves, resulting in the election of Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., the first Democrat to occupy that office in 16 years.

Imagine that.  California voters way back in 1958 were smarter and savvier than Wisconsin voters in 2014.  Maybe folks in Wisconsin are wearing too much cheese on their heads.

Alas, those smarts didn’t last.  Along came Proposition 14 (1964):

Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses.

(Sound familiar?  Proposition 8 (2010) and IN RFRA (2015)?  Fortunately, the CA Supreme Court and SCOTUS ruled Prop 14 (1964) as unconstitutional.  But why do we have to spend so much time on this shit again and again?)

Corporations and the big money folks finally got their act together with Proposition 13 (1978.  Democrats/liberals/progressives then wandered in the wilderness for the better part of the next thirty years.  And so far don’t seem to get that thing about taking full advantage of power when you get it.  If nothing else, that’s one lesson that Republicans fully absorbed a hundred years ago.

The CA initiative process, as it currently exists, (authorized killing of gays makes the IN RFRA look like weak tea) and Proposition 13 (1978) must die.  Right along with Charlie’s Pierce’s observation that The Iowa Caucus Must Die.  (more on that in II)

Charles Pierce reads David Brooks so you and I don’t have to.

Okay, I read David Brooks so you don’t have to, too.

But, not today. Today, Charles gave me a respite.

Which brings us to David Brooks, who would like all those hysterical gay people to start using their inside voices and to understand that their desire for equal protection under the law would be better served if they understood the feelings of the people who think they are sodomite insects who are all going to hell. No link because fk him, that’s why.

Having not read the piece, I can still safely assume that this is a full and accurate summary.

How bad is Ocean Warming caused by anthropogenic climate change?

To answer my question, the effects of the current rise in temperatures of our oceans is worse than you or I could have imagined. It’s so bad that it may take thousands of years for ocean life to recover. That’s a recovery time measured in millennia, for those who prefer polysyllabic Latinate words:

A study has found that it might take thousands of years for the ocean to recover from climate change. Researchers studied more than 5,400 fossils from a 30-foot-long core sample taken from the Pacific Ocean floor near Santa Barbara, California, and found that it can take millennia for ocean ecosystems to recover after periods of deoxygenation and warming waters. […] “In this study, we used the past to forecast the future,” Peter Roopnarine, curator of invertebrate zoology and geology at the California Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “We don’t want to hear that ecosystems need thousands of years to recover from disruption, but it’s critical that we understand the global need to combat modern climate impacts.”

Here is what the article posted at Science News regarding this research study has to say about its importance to our understanding of the impacts of global warming on Ocean ecosystems and biodiversity:

A 30-foot-long core sample of Pacific Ocean seafloor is changing what we know about ocean resiliency in the face of rapidly changing climate. A new study reports that marine ecosystems can take thousands, rather than hundreds, of years to recover from climate-related upheavals. The study’s authors–including Peter Roopnarine, PhD, of the California Academy of Sciences–analyzed thousands of invertebrate fossils to show that ecosystem recovery from climate change and seawater deoxygenation might take place on a millennial scale. The revolutionary study is the first of its kind, and is published today in the Early Edition of the journal PNAS.

The published study which looked at the fossil record from roughly 16,000 years ago until 3,400 years ago, a period that includes a significant period of time during the current interglacial period (the Holocene) can be found here: Response of seafloor ecosystems to abrupt global climate change. From the Abstract:

Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to decrease oceanic oxygen (O2) concentrations, with potentially significant effects on marine ecosystems. Geologically recent episodes of abrupt climatic warming provide opportunities to assess the effects of changing oxygenation on marine communities. […] This [fossil] record … demonstrates that seafloor invertebrate communities are subject to major turnover in response to relatively minor inferred changes in oxygenation (>1.5 to <0.5 mL⋅L−1 [O2]) associated with abrupt (<100 y) warming of the eastern Pacific.

How the researchers characterize their study’s significance:

We demonstrate here that ocean sediments harbor metazoan fossil material that can be used to reconstruct the response of seafloor biodiversity to global-scale climate events. We show that the last deglaciation, the most recent episode of climate warming, was accompanied by abrupt reorganizations of continental margin seafloor ecosystems through expansions and contractions of the subsurface low-oxygen zones. This archive reveals that global climate change disturbs seafloor ecosystems on continental margins and commits them to millennia of ecological recovery.

The basic cause of the loss of biodiversity in the oceans is that warming oceans lose oxygen, which results in a die-off of invertebrate life, the foundation on which our complex ocean ecosystems are based. Once you wipe out entire species of invertebrates it can take a very long time for a complex system such as the Earth’s oceans to recover. These impacts stretch far beyond our short time-scale concerns regarding the effects of climate change on human civilization in this century.

Again from the Science News article:

This week’s study explores multicellular life–in the form of invertebrates–in pursuit of a more complete picture of ocean ecosystem resilience during past periods of climate change.

“The complexity and diversity of a community depends on how much energy is available,” says [study co-author Peter] Roopnarine. “To truly understand the health of an ecosystem and the food webs within, we have to look at the simple and small as well as the complex. In this case, marine invertebrates give us a better understanding of the health of ecosystems as a whole.”

The study’s all-important sediment core revealed an ancient history of abundant, diverse, and well-oxygenated seafloor ecosystems, followed by a period of oxygen loss and warming that seems to have triggered a rapid loss of biodiversity. The study reports that invertebrate fossils are nearly non-existent during times of lower-than-average oxygen levels.

News like this should be cause for all of us to be running around screaming with our heads on fire. It should be front page banner headline news on every media outlet, online, print or televised. Instead, it will likely be ignored or marginalized by major media outlets. And that will be not only an immensely stupid reaction, but a tragic one as well.

In the past, when Senator Rand Paul has been asked about enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or other civil rights bills, he’s fallen back on the idea that you can better assure, for example, desegregated lunch counters by denying that particular Woolworth’s your business than by enacting federal legislation. When it came to housing, he said this, “Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate.”

Using this rough logic, if you can call it that, people who seek to order lunch or buy a home are behaving a certain way. And people who deny patrons a meal or won’t sell them a house are also behaving a certain way. And people should be free to behave pretty much however they want. In a free society, some people will exhibit racist behaviors: “some associations will discriminate.” Other people will try to do certain things and find that they can’t accomplish them because of their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. But no one told them that they couldn’t try.

For Rand Paul, the best way to change someone’s behaviors is to behave some way yourself. Like Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who said he wouldn’t continue to eat at a restaurant that turned away gay couples, Rand Paul thinks that businesses can best be persuaded to serve all people by the threat of lost business from customers whose patronage they actually want.

So, pretty much across the board, Senator Rand Paul thinks about civil rights as a matter of how people behave rather than a matter well-suited for legal solutions or protections.

But, then, look at this:

“I don’t think I’ve ever used the word gay rights, because I don’t really believe in rights based on your behavior.” –Senator Rand Paul

The logic of that statement appears straightforward. Being black or a woman, how old you are, are not things you can change through behavioral modifications, but who you are physically attracted to is purely a matter of choice. Someone can deny you a sandwich or a wedding cake based on their perception of your sexual orientation because the presumption is that you behave a certain way, not that you are a certain way.

So, suddenly, the gay couple seeking dinner is distinct from the black gentleman seeking lunch, even though their behaviors are nearly identical.

If you’re seeking some consistency here, it’s not that hard to find. Rand Paul, in all circumstances, defends the right to discriminate and opposes the government’s right to protect people from discrimination.

He’ll shift around how he justifies these positions, but the positions remain the same.

There’s a certain appeal to the Paulista philosophy that has the potential to attract a lot of people in the younger generations, but here we see him running afoul of a core value of our youth, which is that gays should not be denied the same rights as everyone else.

It’s not just that he seems to be insisting that sexual orientation is a choice, but also that he wants to defend people’s right to behave any way they want, even in an openly discriminatory manner, unless their behavior involves sex.

This is not a winning position and it will hurt Paul badly with the very generations that might otherwise flock to his campaign.

See my earlier extended diary – Coalition of the Willing Against Iran: US Justice Dept, Ungar, UANI and Mossad .

Where is U.S. Foreign policy drafted? In think-tanks, billionaires, political friends and business alliances? WTF

• U.S. Anti-Iran Lobby Group Accused of Mossad Ties | Tikun Olam |
• Justice Dept. Moves to Shield Anti-Iran Group’s Files | Pakistan Defence |

  WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has gone to court to protect the files of an influential anti-Iran advocacy group, saying they likely contain information the government does not want disclosed.

  The highly unusual move by the Justice Department raises questions about the connections between the American government and the group, United Against Nuclear Iran, a hard-line voice seeking to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The group has a roster of prominent former government officials and a reputation for uncovering information about companies that sometimes do business with Iran, in violation of international sanctions.

  The Justice Department has temporarily blocked the group from having to reveal its donor list and other internal documents in a defamation lawsuit filed by a Greek shipping magnate the group accused of doing business with Iran. Government lawyers said they had a “good faith basis to believe that certain information” would jeopardize law enforcement investigations, reveal investigative techniques or identify confidential sources if released.

• The Restis group denies the allegations by the US anti-Iran lobbying group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), claiming that none of its ship visits to Iran violated international sanctions because they were carrying humanitarian aid as permitted by the US government.

A follow-up @Emptywheel …

Heinonen Moves Deceptive Anti-Iran Campaign from Washington Post Opinion Page to New York Times News Page

Last week, I [Emptywheel] called attention to the fact that in printing an op-ed by Olli Heinonen (co-authored by Michael Hayden and Ray Takeyh), the Washington Post failed to disclose Heinonen’s position on the advisory board of the anti-Iran group United Against Nuclear Iran. One week later, the Post still has not corrected its identification of Heinonen. Today, we see that Heinonen’s deceptive anti-Iran campaign continues, where he appears as a key expert quoted in a front page New York Times article by David Sanger and Michael Gordon. Once again, Heinonen is only identified by his previous IAEA and current Harvard roles, ignoring his more relevant current role with UANI.

…
Heinonen’s co-conspirator from the Post op-ed, Ray Takeyh, also makes an appearance in today’s Sanger and Gordon article, suggesting that their propaganda will remain as a package deal for the duration of the P5+1 negotiations.

Note also that last Monday, the defamation case by Victor Restis against UANI was thrown out by a district court after the Department of Justice successfully intervened to have the case quashed under a claim that state secrets would have been divulged. Writing in Bloomberg View, Noah Feldman mused:

“Usually when I write about a case, I begin by describing the facts. Here the facts are so secret I can barely say anything. United Against was founded in 2008 by a former CIA director and a group of retired diplomats to advocate against the nuclear Iran. Its board includes former directors of foreign intelligence services including the U.K.’s MI-6, Germany’s BND — and Israel’s Mossad.

…
What makes matters worse is the lingering possibility, indeed probability, that what the government fears is not a true threat to national security, but a severe case of embarrassment. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that United Against is a front organization for U.S. intelligence, possibly acting in conjunction with other foreign intelligence services.”

Though Feldman notes that it seems obvious there is an intelligence conduit between the CIA and/or Mossad and UANI and he even notes that disclosing this now would be awkward for the P5+1 negotiations, he should have gone further to note that this intelligence link, and the subsequent selective leaks, seem aimed to disrupt those negotiations and prevent an agreement.

UPDATE: Richard Silverstein has posted a new article on his blog …

Continued below the fold …

Anti-Iran Media Drumbeat, Fueled by Israel, Increases as Deal Deadline Nears | Tikun Olam |

As the deadline looms for the P5+1 nations to achieve a framework for a nuclear deal with Iran, the steady drumbeat of hostile coverage directed at Iran in the media increases. Jim White at Emptywheel, in two good posts, noted a tendentious Washington Post op-ed by Ray Tayekh, Michael Hayden, and Ollie Heinonen, along with a separate piece by perennial NY Times Iran doomsayer, David Sanger.

Regarding the Post op-ed, everyone knows about Michael Hayden’s role as a holdover spook from the Bush administration, who ran both the NSA and CIA during that period. He also is a partner in the Chertoff Group, founded by Bush’s Homeland Security czar, Michael Chertoff.

Ray Tayekh, though he served in the Obama administration for a time and is Iranian-American, has chosen to throw in his lot with the Iranophobes. According to Nima Shirazi, he is a founding member of the Iran Strategy Task Force, whose avowed mission was to pressure the Obama administration to adopt a tougher approach to Iran. ISTF includes the neocon Freedom House as its co-founding sponsor, and individual members like Josh Block of The Israel Project and Rob Satloff of WINEP. Tayekh is also a member of another Iran committee founded by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), one of the leading hawkish, pro-Israel security outfits in DC.

○ Daniel Pipes: ‘Obama has quite a hostility towards Israel’ | France24 |

Why I Published US Intelligence Secrets About Israel’s Anti-Iran Campaign

In 2009, Shamai Leibowitz was working secretly for the FBI, translating wiretapped conversations among Israeli diplomats in this country. He passed some transcripts of these conversations to me, which described an Israeli diplomatic campaign in this country to create a hostile environment for relations with Iran. I published excerpts from them in my blog, Tikun Olam.

Leibowitz comes from a family of distinguished Israeli Orthodox public intellectuals.

In searching for an online community, I came across Shamai’s Pursuing Justice blog. When I read his last name, I presumed he might be related to the eminent Leibowitz family and wrote to him. He confirmed he was the grandson of Yeshaia Leibowitz, one of the most distinguished Israeli philosophers and public intellectuals. His aunt was Nechama Leibowitz, an eminent professor of Bible at Hebrew University, with whom I studied when I was a student there.

○ Shamai Leibowitz, Once Jailed Victim of Obama’s War on Whistleblowers: Snowden a ‘Man of Conscience’

I guess my first question is why Washington State’s Snohomish County Republicans asked former congressman Allen West to be the feature attraction at their annual Lincoln Day dinner. I mean, I get the whole Lincoln Day=find a black guy thing, and I know that the bench is pretty empty once you get past Clarence Thomas, but Allen West is not only insane, he’s intemperate and nasty.

Of course, West made some news by ruminating on the enthusiasm with which Seattle Seahawks fans root on their team. Why root for your local football team but not root for America (fuck yeah)?

For that matter, why root for the University of Washington’s sport teams if you’re basically more interested in perpetuating failure and dependency than success, amirite?

This is the kind of deep and delusional thinking that gets you invited to address Snohomish Republicans on Lincoln Day.

“Why is it that here in Seattle you have the loudest, I mean the loudest, fans in the National Football League?” West asked.

“You want to win, right? Why is it that you’re one of the most liberal cities in the United States? This is the juxtaposition. Why is it that you go to a game and you cheer for your own team to win, but yet you don’t cheer for your own city, you don’t cheer for your own country, to win?”

…“Why is it that you want to relegate (sic) the individuals on the football field to success, to score a touchdown, but yet you would rather have people in your city, in your state, in your country sit on the sidelines and wait for somebody to go out and score a touchdown for them?” West asked.

“How dare you scream and cheer here on a Saturday or a Sunday at the UW stadium or there in CenturyLink stadium and then when it comes to Monday through Friday, you’re not cheering? You’re seeking every single way that you don’t create victors, you’re creating victims. That’s the incredible perplexion (sic) that we see.”

“That’s the incredible perplexion (sic) that we see. Every single inner city where you have an NFL team people are going out and cheering for success, but when they go on Monday they’re not cheering for success.

“That’s what you should be talking about. See it comes down to this: Do we want to have a state of productivity or do we want to have a welfare state.”

The first reason this nonsense is stupid is, of course, that Seattle and Washington State are doing just fine and better than average on the employment front. But I don’t want to argue about West’s meritless speech. What I want to discuss is this:

As has been the case lately at Lincoln Day dinners, a viable prospective Republican candidate for Governor — Seattle Port Commissioner Bill Bryant — played second fiddle at Friday night’s dinner.

He did, too, in Yakima earlier this month, with radio talker David Boze the keynote speaker.

There is the problem.

That’s it.

The Republican base wants to listen to lunatics, so that’s who gets to keynote their county dinners. The Port Commissioner cools his heels while the entertainment talks.

This is the key to understanding the larger picture of what’s gone wrong with the Party of Lincoln. They’d rather celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s legacy by flying a token black guy 3,000 miles so he can insult their city and state than listen to the ideas of the person who might make a serious run at the governorship.

You know that thing at the county fair where you take a giant mallet and you strike a pad as hard as you can and it sends a ball rocketing up a metal pole to where it, hopefully, hits a bell and you win a prize? John Sununu’s Stupid mallet is so powerful that the ball not only rang the bell but it continued up into outer space and is now in orbit.

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R) said on Monday during an appearance on Fox News that President Obama is “inciting” birther conspiracy theorists by planning a trip to Kenya this summer.

“I think his trip back to Kenya is going to create a lot of chatter and commentary amongst some of the hard right, who still don’t see him as having been born in the U.S.,” Sununu said on the show “America’s Newsroom.”

“I personally think he’s just inciting some chatter on an issue that should have been a dead issue a long time ago,” he said.

Yes, it’s true: if Stupid were rocket fuel, you could use John Sununu to launch satellites.

Is it possible to be dumber than Glenn Harlan Reynolds and still have a nationally syndicated column?

It’s good to know that Carly Fiorina is 90% sure that she’ll be a Republican candidate for president and that she’s bringing her ‘A’ game with some really great ideas.

Right of the box, she recommends zero-based budgeting, which is probably an even more sub-mental idea that you imagine. It’s true that administrations submit a budget plan, but Congress controls the pursestrings and they don’t waste time reevaluating the need for every single item in the federal budget. For starters, there’s the non-discretionary budget, the size of which varies more through changes in demographics and the economy than through adjustments for inflation. In 2011, it made up 56 percent of the overall budget, and interest payments made up another approximately seven percent. In any case, when it comes to the discretionary budget, the congressional appropriations committees set the rate of increase or decrease and typically don’t simply tag it to inflation. Of course, with Sequestration, the appropriations committees lose this discretion.

Fiorina justifies the need for zero-based budgeting using a curious argument.

“Washington, D.C. has become a vast and unaccountable bureaucracy. It’s been growing for 40 years,” she opined. “We have no idea how our money is spent.”

Either this is an acknowledgment that the Reagan Revolution roughly corresponds with an era of unaccountable spending and government growth or it is a rigorous defense of New Deal fiscal discipline and streamlined bureaucratic efficiency. I think it’s actually both, although not intentionally.

Speaking of streamlined bureaucratic efficiency in the Reagan Era, Ms. Fiorina has another idea.

“We have — how many Inspector General reports do we need to read that say, you know, you can watch porn all day long and get paid exactly the same way as somebody who’s trying to do their job?”

Her solution is to introduce “pay for performance in our civil service.” That way, she can get at-work porn-watching back to a manageable level, hopefully around the rate we saw in the early Ford administration. Of course, there’s probably no way that Fiorina can fail to improve on the Reagan administration, as James Dobson, Ed Meese, and Henry Hudson watched more porn than the combined populations of the next eleven largest nations combined. Their report was more lurid than Kenneth Starr’s.

So, it’s good to know that Ms. Fiorina is proposing manageable goals. Her plans are like a Swiss watch.