The Gyromantic Informicon

Chris Dodd admits to bribery?

2012-01-24T13:05:00.000-08:00

Allow me to stipulate that at one time I thought Chris Dodd was a pretty good senator, and might even make an acceptable presidential candidate (a sort of an unglamorous compromise figure, but anyway)...

Now, however, I think he's a totally unprincipled lobbyist who should be run outta town on a rail, figuratively speaking.

Still, the online petition to the White House calling for an investigation into Dodd for, in effect admitting to bribery, has me scratching my head a little. Investigating? A former senator? For Bribery? Might as well investigate all of 'em, because as near as I can figure out, this is just S.O.P. in D.C.

Newt the faux populist

2012-01-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

I think it's a little premature to conclude that Newton Gingrich is going to be the Rightican nomminy, but it's still worth noting that he's obviously adopting an anti-elite, pseudopopulist framing, in contrast to Romney's more reassuring, professional manager-is-what-we-need message. (Which is rich, considering he's an ultimate insider, who has lived in Washington since 1978). If Pres. Obama ends up running against Gingrich, he had better work up his pro-99% real populist creds and have them in line and ready to go for the general election.

Wheelerdealer Romney losing to hypocrite Newt!?

2012-01-20T10:16:00.000-08:00

I am more than a little skeptical about reports that Gingrich is "surging" and Romney is "collapsing" in polls. But if it does turn out to be true, it will be hard to escape the (admittedly anecdotal because based on one example) conclusion: voters, at least Rightist voters, care less about sexual peccadilloes and personal character than they do about the perception that someone is a Wall Streeter. It seems in the wake of the financial collapse, no one (other than themselves) likes Godon Gekko type Wall Street wheelerdealers (and for good reason).

Press Senators and Congress to OPPOSE SOPA & PIPA now

2012-01-17T15:17:00.001-08:00

Please see this (Electronic Frontier Foundation) in opposition to SOPA/PIPA (the alternative pending House and Senate Internet bills that have been vigorously denounced by Internet content providers as destructive of Internet independence and freedom of information).

Unfortunately, both of California's senators, and my Congressman, Howard Berman, have come out for these dreadful bills. We who care about freedom of internet information need to pressure them to change their stance immediately. (See ProPublica here to find out how your representatives stand).

Here's an idea on capital gains

2012-01-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

There was a time in this country, not so terribly long ago, when so-called capital gains were taxed the same as other income. The world didn't implode. In fact, it was a time of great prosperity, at least some of the time. (And when it wasn't it certainly didn't have anything to do with capital gains taxes).

The rationale for a low rate on capital gains has always struck me is phony and hypocritical. Low taxes on the income (primarily) of the very rich (obviously) mainly benefits the very rich, who don't need any benefits.

But for those who are swayed by the usual Rightist argument that little old ladies who live on investment income would be harmed, here's my retort (both):

A cap. Capital gains can be taxed at 15% up to a maximum of (say) $60,000 income; subject to...
An aged/disabled qualifier.To qualify for a reduced capital gains rate, (capped or otherwise), you'd have to prove, in the same manner as you have to prove to be eligible for SSI, either age (over 65) or disability (inability to work full time for medical reasons).

I can't think of a sensible rejoinder. These work together: i.e., you don't get capital gains reduction unless aged or disabled, and even if you do qualify, it's limited to $60,000 income (subject to adjustment for COLA or some other formula).

The argument that without capital gains taxed at low rates investors wouldn't "invest in America" is, I believe, provably ridiculous and false; it is merely a propaganda point for advocates of low taxes on the rich.

Romney 15% tax rate a political issue?

2012-01-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

TPM today is talking about how Romney is admitting that, as a 1%er whose income is almost all capital gains, he pays an effective tax rate lower than most middle class people, on his millions and millions in annual income. I'd say this was a great issue for Democrats, but, unfortunately, unless framed very carefully and well, it probably won't be, because the level of sophistication acceptable in messaging directed to the electorate at large seems to have to be at about third grade level to have any effect, and things like "effective tax rates" are just too complicated. Sad, really.

Not a diet, a (permanent) change of diet

2012-01-16T07:51:00.000-08:00

Almost 8 months ago now, after reading Gary Taubes's quite detailed explanation of how so-called metabolic syndrome-X and the overconsumption of easily digestible carbohydrates (and especially sugar and refined flours) are the cause of most obesity and overweight, I decided I'd try to change my diet in accordance with the facts he outlined. (The book is Good Calories, Bad Calories, or there's an "airliner" version called Why We Get Fat and What to do about it).

I had put on a good deal of extra weight by that time, and it had been a factor in a back injury I'd suffered picking up a laundry basket, that caused me to be in physical therapy for six weeks and even to have to walk with a cane for a short time.

What I (and my partner, for the same reasons) did was to change our diet (permanently), not go on a diet. It's simple, although it takes some determination, and you have to be willing to go against some conventional wisdom, that Taubes convinced me was just not true. I won't go into all that; if you're interested, read his book.

For me, the proof is that I've lost more than 45 pounds and it seems to be staying off; I feel better and get around more easily; I have been able to (or had to) cut my blood pressure medication more than in half, including eliminating one of the drugs entirely, and, although there are a few foods I somewhat miss eating, I do not have to starve myself and eat as much as I want every day. Just not of certain foods.

The Good

On a sensible low-carb regime, you can eat bacon, nuts, meat, eggs, cheese (which I'm averse to, but no matter), dairy, butter, cream, (even ice cream if you go to the trouble to make it yourself and use low-glycemic natural sugar alcohols and sweet short fibers to sweeten it rather than sugar). Leafy and fibrous vegetables (but not starchy ones). Much as you want. No restriction. Your body regulates fat quite well as long as there isn't an insulin spike from sugar and starch every time you eat anything. Two important facts, contrary to most actually scientifically unwarranted belief, even in the medical community: dietary cholesterol does not correlate particularly with serum cholesterol, and it has no particular affect on incidence of heart disease and stroke. The research to prove that it does has been, at best, completely inconclusive. My personal story: I eat bacon all the time, and my blood serum cholesterol is unchanged. A little high, but not high enough to prescribe medication. The same as before I made these changes. The cause of most cholesterol "issues" is mostly genetic.

The Acceptable

You have to cut out sugar. This even means restricting sweet fruits, like bananas (I avoid them) and mangoes (ditto), although most berries, grapefruit, tart apples, an occasional orange, are fine. You have to cut out starchy foods. Potatoes (french fries are my greatest regret), pasta, rice, couscous, bread, cookies, crackers, etc. Really eliminate them from your diet (there are some pretty low carb sprouted grain breads and inulin-blocked pasta products which you can use occasionally and in small quantities, if you need to. You can have an occasional tortilla chip or something, but literally, just a couple. There are tortillas made that are mostly dietary fiber that you can use to make "wraps" to substitute for sandwiches. (This is my usual lunch). You have to look at labels and avoid salad dressings that are loaded with High Fructose Corn syrup. You have to avoid sweet beverages, including fruit juices. You can't eat cake, pastry, muffins, biscuits, waffles, pancakes, or anything that's mostly flour (although there are carb-blocked substitutes, if you must; but it's actually easier to just find other things to eat). Even tofu and other soy products are suspect. Obviously, this is not a regime suitable for vegetarians; although many people find that if they stick to whole grains and higher protein foods, they're fine. Some South Beachers avoid even pulses (legumes), but I eat them freely and continuously lost weight for months, having now more or less stabilized at what I consider an acceptable weight. A lot of people use a lot of artificial sweeteners to accomplish the starch and sugar elimination, but I have experimented with the aforementioned natural substitutes, and, mainly, you just learn to avoid starch and sweet foods. You really do get used to it.

The Bad

You have to explain to well intentioned people that no, you won't try their cookies. Cookies are poison. But most people don't insist.

I am a believer, because this has worked for me, and I'm almost never hungry and have no desire to return to eating starch or sugar.

Counterintuitive development on Iran?

2012-01-16T07:24:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of weeks Ian Masters interviewed several Iran hands about the apparently increased tensions between the US and Iran, in the wake of the draconian financial sanctions enacted in December and a number of other factors. Some of them, like Robert Baer, were quite alarmist in their assessment of how precarious the situation was, as in, an inadvertent or deliberately falsified (by either side) misunderstanding in the Gulf could lead to a Tonkin Gulf like casus belli. He stressed how out of touch with reality the hardline regime in Tehran is, and how unworkable the sanctions regime is, etc.

But then he interviewed Gary Sick, whom I believe to be one of the most informed people around on the subject. (His blog here). Sick noted that SOS Clinton had strongly condemned the clandestine assassination last week of a nuclear scientist in Tehran (almost certainly committed by Israeli agents), and that her condemnation was obviously directed, with notable anger, mostly at Israel, not Iran. There had actually been some signals that the Iranians want to seek to get some kind of negotiation framework going, and talks were actually set up in Turkey before this happened. Clinton was clearly trying to signal the Iranians that the Israelis were acting rogue, and that the US really does want to find a way out of this crisis short of military engagement, as, apparently, the Iranians do as well.

Sick also mentioned that the sanctions, which were part of the already notorious (for other reasons too) Defense Authorization Act signed by Obama in late December, may be having an unintended consequence. That is, by creating a totally untenable situation for all concerned, they have destabilized a status quo that everyone was pretty much just living with for some time, and now, something's gotta give. And what's given, perhaps surprisingly, is that the Iranians want to talk. Let's just hope the saner minds in the Obama administration are able to quell whatever neocon thinking may still reside in the halls of power here, and restrain the nuts in the Netanyahu government, long and well enough to actually change the situation and get us on the road to a negotiated resolution of the whole Iranian nuclear question.

Two NYT columns on the same subject: one right on, the other, as usual, off base

2012-01-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

Two columns in NYT today on the same subject:
Krugman. Brooks.
I suppose needless to say, in my view Krugman has it right. I think Brooks is, as usual for him, way off base in his dismissal of the callousness of Leveraged-Buyout capitalists,* and Romney in particular, and just how wrong for America right now someone like that actually is.
---
* I refuse to use the euphemism private equity, which was merely invented to deceive gullible people into thinking that quasi-criminal predation, which does no one but the raiders themselves any good, is benign.

On the other hand, recovery may already be underway?

2012-01-09T11:29:00.001-08:00

If my post (below) about the danger of an Iran war was too depressing, there's always this, a prediction that economic recovery may already be underway. Maybe if we can somehow avoid a war, we'll actually have a good year economically, which can only be good for defeating the Rightists at the polls.

Disconnect in the Media: ignoring the danger of war with Iran

2012-01-09T11:28:00.001-08:00

Listening to Vali Nasr and Robert Baer being interviewed by Ian Masters on Background Briefing, (kpfk.org; ianmasters.com), I was struck by a major disconnect in the public discourse in this country. These guys are experts on Iran by any lights and they're saying the "pressure regime" of the Obama White House has failed, that the paranoid regime in Iran is on a hair trigger, and that inadvertent war is actually likely. Which would be terrible news for Obama's re-election, and could spin entirely out of control very quickly. Yet the news media, even the progressive blogosphere and the likes of Current and MSNBC (for the most part) are acting like the clown shows in Iowa and New Hampshire (and beyond) are the only things that matter.

NYT news analysis says chance of economic uptick in 12 appears better

2012-01-06T11:14:00.001-08:00

Here.

The WTC

2012-01-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

I recall reading that Pau Casals, although a cellist, would start each day by playing one of the Inventions or Preludes and Fugues of the Well Tempered Clavier. It's also a standard anecdote of music history (probably derived from the notoriously unreliable Carl Czerny) that Beethoven "cut his teeth" as a child by playing the "ne plus ultra of our art..." meaning, the same Well Tempered Clavier, although that story seems unlikely because the first publication them didn't occur until 1803, when Beethoven was in his 30s, and the likelihood that he had a manuscript copy seems a bit remote.

Anyway, I am not naturally gifted musically, at least not particularly so. I love music, and Bach in particular, and have over the years slogged away at playing his keyboard music to the point that I can manage... just... to negotiate some of the 48 preludes and fugues of the WTC. And I have to say that even that, pale reflection of the creativity that went into them in the first place or even the pleasure that must come from real mastery of them, is a privilege that I cherish.

Why I am supporting President Obama's re-election

2012-01-02T09:18:00.001-08:00

I think it no exaggeration to argue that this comingpresidential election may be one of, if not the most important of my lifetime.My main reason for this belief is the Supreme Court. It is hardly an originalidea — that, from a Progressive point of view (the actual issues-determinedview of the majority of Americans), the danger of a Supreme Court irreversiblydominated by an un-American Rightist philosophy is the greatest threat to theAmerican Republic of our lifetime. Yet it is quite clearly true. Our presentcourt has four justices, the Gang of Four, whose identities are known to everythinking American, who do not believe in the essential constitutionalprinciples of our country, and who fail completely to respect principles oflaw, instead deciding critical issues on the basis of right-wing ideologyalone. If you doubt this, please peruse the so-called reasoning of the Citizens United case (I have done so).It’s unmistakable.

From this corporate personhood, plutocracy is good, money isspeech judicial fiat, to the potential for grave damage on civil liberties (suchas the recent defense authorization bill that purports to effectivelyeviscerate the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments), to reproductive rights, tothe right to be free from religion and to choose your own partners with equaltreatment under law, to the right to fair elections… the list is long andfrightening. If a Romney or other Rightist becomes president, the court willalmost certainly be cemented inRightist ideology for a long time to come.

I have been quite critical of President Obama on a number ofissues of importance to me, as I have discussed on this blog at length. I regardObama as no better than a corporatist-Centrist Democrat, whose policyintentions are well aligned with the moneyed interests that really run thiscountry. But Democrats are differentfrom Republicans. They at least believe in checks and balances, and in a systemthat is not entirely given over toexclusive interests of the rich and powerful. President Obama is no Progressive,but on a whole host of issues, his policy intent is clearly superior to that ofany conceivable Republican opponent.

And for those reasons, I intend to support his re-election,both financially and with time and energy. Our political system is deeplydysfunctional, and one of its dysfunctions is its bipolarity; but this issimply a fact of life. We should work, long term, to change that, but we must also make the right choices for the future now, in the short term. We must, as thinking people, act in ways that wesincerely believe will result in the best outcome for the future. For me, thechoice is clear, that we have to put our support on the side closer to ourworld view, while continuing to put what pressure we can on those whom wesupport to change their views toconform more closely to ours, while constructing in our advocacy the means to a better system, and working for that for the longer term.

But the most salient pointin this short-term calculus, for me, is the danger of generation-long domination of theSupreme Court by truly dangerous Rightist ideologues. We’re almost therealready; if we don’t reverse the trend, our country will be benighted byRightist jurisprudence for so long that real social progress will be hobbled no matter what changes in the Zeitgeist may bring in terms ofelectoral politics in the coming years. And this, alone, for me, is sufficient reason to eschew any thought ofProgressive Third Party candidates, or of high-mindedly foregoing votingaltogether (which I’ve seen advocated), and getting serious about making surethat the most Progressive Democrats we can find run to defeat Republicans, thatDemocrats in general are elected and re-elected to the House and Senate, and, above all,that President Obama is re-elected this year.

Where I part company with the Consequentialist•Atheists

2011-12-28T15:57:00.001-08:00

WhereI part company with people like Peter Atkins, Richard Dawkins, the lateChristopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris is not so much with regard to theiranalysis of the logical fallacies of religious faith. I agree with them aboutthat. They are right to cite Bertrand Russell’s famous reference to an orbitingteapot, and his having noted that even agnosticismwith respect to the reality of an eternally orbiting China teapot is notreally rational. And that the same applies to belief in the God of Abraham, theinfallibility of the Bible or (closer to home for me) the miraculous powers ofthe Buddhas and the reality of rebirth and karma which somehow persists fromlifetime to lifetime. These things are notrational, and belief in them cannot be sustained by rational argument norproven empirically by scientific investigation.

And I amskeptical, myself, about almost all religious dogma, including that from thereligion with which I have the most experience, which is the Middle WayConsequence School of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (Madhyamika Prasangika). Where Buddhism teaches the methods of training the mind towardsconcentration, towards moral discipline, towards awareness, towards generation of love for all living beings-- I believe it isuseful and good, in the sense that ithelps to decrease the suffering of living beings and to increase their overallwell being. But when it comes to whether one or another particular traditionalstory, or ritual practice, is in some literal sense true,or efficacious-- well, apart from theplacebo effect of almost any kind of ritual practice, I’m not so sure.

But whereI really part company with these modern day Consequentialist•Atheists, if I may call them that, borrowing the term from Harris (the terms used nottogether, but separately), is with regard to their assumptions about what isconsciousness. Consciousness could bea sort of meta-state that arises from the computational functions of biologicalcomputers (brains), or of the entire organism. If so, in principle, if, asthese thinkers do, you assume that there is nothing about living organisms,other than their origin through natural selection, that makes them differentfrom artificial systems, it should be possible to model these functions and tocreate artificial consciousness, or even artificial systems which will serve ashosts for transferred biological consciousness (Presto! Immortality!)

But, andhere, I cannot cite empirical evidence, but only intuitive belief, or, if you prefer, faith, I just do not believe this. I do not accept the idea thatthe inner experience of mind ismerely the sum-over effect of computation of a biological computer. I cannotprove my thesis, but nonetheless believe it, probably as firmly as mostChristians believe in God, or the resurrection: there is somethingnon-mechanical, non-physical, even, about innerexperience, about mind, thatcannot be replicated. Whether it in some way, as Buddhists believe, is acontinuum, that has always existed and can be neither created nor destroyed, Idon’t know, but that it is not merely computation, I believe. No computer, nomatter how well it may outwardly simulate the behavior of a mind, is a mind, or ever will be. No one’sconscious mind will ever be downloaded into a computer. No ArtificialIntelligence will ever have the inner experience that even a cat or a baby has.Again, I can’t prove this, but I believe it. So, in this sense, I am not fullyan atheist, and not fully a scientific rationalist.

So far, Ihave seen nothing to convince me otherwise, although I will admit that in thisparticular attitude I am not fully consistent, and am not strictly applyingOccam’s Razor, because I suppose it could be argued that the hypothesis thatmind is nothing more than a sort of sum-over of the electrochemical functionsof brain and organism is simpler thanmy theory that it is… well, I don’t know. But I hold it nonetheless, and Ibelieve that from it comes a whole host of consequences, some of which actuallyreinforce the Moral Landscape view ofpeople like Sam Harris.

That thisidea of inner experience is somehow connectedwith the fact that from apparent nothing, something, i.e., this universe andlikely an infinity of others, arises, I also hold to be true, although, again,I cannot prove this or describe a rational argument for why it must be so.

Eventually, everyone chooses what their world view will be. There are philosophical choices made in every system of thought, including scientific rationalism. For the most part, I share the worldview of the Atheists. I find the idea of a God who ransomed the supposed inherited sin of his creatures by torturing his only begotten son to death not only preposterous but offensive. I recognize the hideous harm that is committed in the name of belief in various religious doctrines. I am unclear that, in toto, religion creates more moral behavior, and less suffering, than would occur in its absence. Maybe it does, but there are a lot of counterexamples. But, irrespective or a sort of reckoning of whether holding certain irrational, or rather, not rationally justifiable, beliefs, is or is not beneficial, we all hold certain beliefs, and most of us believe at least some things that cannot be fully justified by rational philosophy or scientific outlook. And this view, that the inner experience of consciousness is in some way a product of the essential nature of reality itself, and cannot be replicated, created artificially, or even fully understood or described, is mine.

Buddhism has a doctrine of emptiness, which is explicitly held to be beyond the ability of a rational mind to comprehend. The describable part of it seems almost ridiculous, and yet is literally true, from a physical point of view: the way that things appear to exist is not the way that they exist. No thing has fixed existence, inherent, or self-contained. The apparent existence of matter and energy is illusory. I am no doubt influenced by this concept, or phenomenon-system. Perhaps it's like Gödel's proof that no arithmetic system can be fully self-descriptive. Outside of rationality there is... something. And, to me, that something is the ground of existence, which is somehow implicit in, inextricable from, and intrinsic to, the inner experience of mind.

Yet from rationality, I believe, can be derived a comprehensive, practical universal morality. And where religion fails to do this, fully, it is worse than useless. Religion, and even mysticism, the atheists argue, is unnecessary for morality, and in this they are right, I believe. But morality is absolutely necessary for the integrity of human experience, and for the full flowering of itself: we cannot be a truly moral race, until we recognize that it is irrational, and unacceptable, to cause suffering avoidably; to hold as ours what is needed for others to have well being; to take needlessly what others need. Of course, it isn't realistic for us to expect to fulfill these standards perfectly, but if we do not accept them, and strive for them; if we rationalize systematically ignoring them, we forego our claim to morality, regardless of any affiliation we may have for any religion or philosophy.

Sam Harris on Youtube: Who Says Science has Nothing to Say About Morality?

2011-12-28T13:17:00.001-08:00

This video by Atheist ethicist Sam Harris Who Says Science has Nothing to Say about Morality? is 1 h 17 min. long but well worth a view. You don't have to be an atheist to appreciate some of his points.

Morality and Science, some musings

2011-12-28T12:46:00.001-08:00

After reading Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality, I ordered another book on cosmology by a guy who turns out to be a militant (but not nasty) atheist, name of Lawrence Krauss (physicist at ASU in Tempe). Haven't received it yet, it's forthcoming next month; title is A Universe from Nothing). Krauss rejects string theory, but not necessarily the multiverse; he also embraces the idea that from nothing can come nonzero canceling opposites, which are something (think of, for example, the net electric charge of the universe, which is zero; but there isn't no charge, there's just net zero charge).

Anyway, one thing leading to another, and via Youtube, I watched some Atheist discussions and what not and stumbled upon a book by Sam Harris, who wrote Letter to a Christian Nation, called The Moral Landscape. This is about the idea that human suffering can actually be measured through the miracles or modern neuroscience, and that, at least to a "Better than Nothing" approximation, it might be possible to scientifically evaluate morality, if you define what is moral as that which tends to minimize suffering (plural, not just in any one person; you could even include para-human intelligences such as chimps and dolphins, or even all sentient beings, at least in principle).

Perhaps a bit of a stretch, but it is an answer to those who would claim that science is morally neutral: actually, it isn't. It is irrational to cause harm to the Earth, or to others, without some counterbalancing benefit, and if you accept the idea of society as having any value, as opposed to pure narcissism, the only rational goal is the old saw, the greatest good for the greatest number. That is a quantity, at least in principle, which can be determined, and used a measure of morality. Therefore, although the results scientific investigation can be used by immoral persons, their conduct is irrational, and not supported by scientific conclusions. In just the same way that mental techniques discovered by spiritual practitioners can be used by misguided persons to cause harm, but that does not mean that the spiritual practice is morally neutral, or worse, evil, just that it is capable of being subverted. The same for scientific knowledge and technique: if applied consistently, it is moral, but if subverted, it can be used by irrational persons to do harm.

After I get the book (ordered it used) and read it, I'll let you know what I think about all that.

It occurs to me that there may be value in this, irrespective of whether one chooses the reductionist viewpoint that is atheism.* A person can choose to hold beliefs, and still embrace the idea that science is not, or need not be, morally neutral, and that its methodologies can aid in determination of moral courses of action.

...
* I think this can be summed up thus: The evidence so far claimed for anything supernatural is unverifiable. The rational course in face of unverifiable evidence is to reject premises based on any assumption of the existence of the claimed phenomena (Occam's Razor). Therefore, the rational mind rejects the supernatural, which includes the existence of God, gods, fairies, ghosts, etc.
Whether this is too narrow a viewpoint, or there is a flaw in the logic, I leave for your own particular preferred interpretation. I think it's best not to argue religion with people, because religion and the questions it addresses are inherently emotional.

Obviously, there are some subtleties here. Why would one, for example, more or less categorically reject fairies and ghosts, but have a predisposition to accept extraterrestrial intelligence? I can think of several reasons, but I just throw that out there, except to say, the first category is not only unverifiable, but there is no reasonable chain of assumptions that lead to the conclusion that there is a plausible theoretical basis for the existence of these things, whereas, one actually would have to do a bit of special pleading to conclude that other intelligent beings do not exist somewhere other than Earth, notwithstanding the current state of evidence (i.e., none).

Britain effectively pulled out of E.U.?

2011-12-09T15:23:00.001-08:00

I claim no expertise in the intricacies of Euro politics, but it would seem from the refusal of Britain to join the rest of the E.U. in a treaty to impose uniform fiscal standards, that Britain has effectively removed itself from the E.U. for most practical purposes. Britain's justification, from what I understand, is essentially to preserve plutocracy: i.e., protect its banks and financial sector, the control of which is precisely why the treaty is needed in the first place, so, although not a member of the "Eurozone" anyway, it would appear that Britain has basically taken its toys and gone home.

I guess the question is whether or how long the E.U. as a Great Idea can survive without Britain as a real member.

Brian Beutler: Dems gambling on being able to raise taxes on rich in Payroll Tax gambit

2011-12-08T06:27:00.001-08:00

This piece is interesting. It seems to me that the Democrats are finally standing up for the Middle Class, and that if they do an even halfway decent job of framing and presenting their message, this will pay off and break the stranglehold of right wing economic doctrine on Congress after 2012... at long last. Let's hope and pray.

Obama Speech: Cautiously Optimistic

2011-12-06T12:38:00.001-08:00

Having now had a chance to read Obama's entire speech, I was impressed that he seems to be saying really a lot of the right things. This president has suffered from a lack of passion and energy, especially during the past two years, and I have been very critical of his having been too-ready and too-willing to cut deals with the Rightists, even before pushing hard for his own positions. But if this speech is an indicator of how he intends to campaign in 2012, I am, as Aung San Suu Kyi recently put it, "cautiously optimistic" about democracy in Burma..er, I mean, in America.

Obama's speech today: some right notes

2011-12-06T11:27:00.001-08:00

I haven't had a chance to read or see the entire speech the president gave in Kansas today, but in referring to "make or break time for the middle class," noting that the gross inequality of income in America "distorts our democracy," and acknowledging that radical free market thinking just isn't going to work to bring broad prosperity back to our country, the president seems to be hitting the right notes.

Obama DOJ, Supreme Court likely to shoot down 1st Amendment Rights yet again

2011-12-05T13:11:00.001-08:00

The failure of the Obama Justice Department to stand up for the 1st Amendment in the Cheney Arrest Case (see this) is, unfortunately, all too typical of this Administration's terrible record on defending Constitutional rights and principles. I find this particularly disgraceful, in light of Obama's repeated promises to defend and protect the Constitution (as of course is one of his primary responsibilities as president). Of course, the reliable 5-4 majority for Rightist Authoritarian ideology over legal principle on the Court can pretty well be counted on to shoot down the exercise of free speech rights yet again.

It should be emblazoned on the front of the Justice Department, a new motto:

Where there is doubt, where the call may be close, we must err on the side of defending the rights of the people to redress grievances.

The policy of the government, for a long time before this president, but unfortunately very much including this presidency, has been just the opposite.

Occupy Electoral Politics: A historic opportunity (about to be missed?)

2011-12-05T11:52:00.001-08:00

Having previously commented (here) on Republican hypocrisy in refusing to acknowledge that either allowing the payroll tax cut to lapse and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire are both tax increases, or neither is; you can't make any legitimate distinction, I wanted to comment on the wisdom of the payroll tax cut as a centerpiece of Democratic policy right now, and then comment much more broadly on the opportunity Democrats have to reshape the 2012 election.

Look, I get it that there's very little that can be passed in this Congress, and that extending this reduction in regressive taxes, while making up the revenue with a tiny increase in taxes on the very richest is at least something, I find it meager and grotesquely inadequate that the best we are able to do as a society in the way of stimulating our moribund economy is a tax cut. Tax cuts are very weak stimulus, at best. As policy, this is pathetic.

George Lakoff has recently said that what the Democratic party needs to do is reach out to the Occupy Movement, not to co-opt it, but to (in essence) offer it the opportunity to shape and re-form the party in its image. I agree with this. The only way to counter the power of money in politics is to directly provide in kind what money buys: which is, in large measure, people, organization, and direct action. The "Tea Party" and its Fundamentalist Christianist allies managed to virtually take over the Republican party. Now it's time for "Occupy" to occupy electoral politics. If the Democratic party, led by the president, were to put forward a plan to actually put into effect the program of the occupiers: a financial transaction tax, prosecution of Wall Street criminals, strong re-regulation of the financial industry, reformation of trade policy to restore the production economy of America, major investment in infrastructure and renewable energy development, reform political rules including public financing of elections, end gerrymandering, investment in public works jobs to get us through the financial downturn years still ahead, etc. etc. .... AND were to reach out to the very people who've been occupying the streets and say, we want to get the things done that you have been asking for, so join us, give us not your money but your bodies, your energy, your direct action.... We could a) take the special interest corruption and double dealing out of the Democratic party; and b) sweep to victory on a tide of enthusiasm and commitment not seen since the 1960s.

Polyanna? I say no. It just takes a bit of epic leadership, of which, unfortunately, I see no sign. But no one can convince me that what I just outlined above isn't perfectly possible, even this late in the game. I fear there's little chance it will happen, but the Democratic leaders, and President Obama in particular, will have no one but themselves to blame if next year goes badly for Democrats, because the opportunity for truly historic change is there.

If it's a tax hike here, it's a tax hike there

2011-12-05T11:30:00.001-08:00

It goes without saying that Republicans and their Ministry of Truth aka Fox News care nothing about intellectual integrity or consistency, but you gotta call 'em on this: they're now claiming that allowing the payroll tax cut to lapse "isn't a tax increase" but allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is. Even the spineless Congressional Democrats and the president have gotta have enough gumption to say, Look, you just can't have it both ways.

Norm Coleman, insidious evildoer

2011-11-30T09:57:00.001-08:00

"Moderate" Democrats (by today's standards) often cite Norm Coleman as one of the "reasonable" Republicans. Take a look at this, if you are one of these "moderates." What this guy is essentially saying is that he's just fine with unlimited power of money taking over politics, and the interests and will of the people be damned. I have a terse descriptor for that view: insidious evil.

Cain Out, Gingrich benefits?

2011-11-29T10:50:00.001-08:00

Roiling around the probably well-founded speculation that Herman Cain is finally about to throw in the towel, and the presumption that the most likely beneficiary of that event will be the Newster, my comment is this:

Despite the fact that Romney is obviously a totally hypocritical wealth extraction/concentration specialist (i.e., oligarchic fatcat 1%-er), whose interests are antithetical to those of nearly everyone in America, I am more concerned about his candidacy that that of Newt Gingrich, who I truly believe has zero chance of being elected president.

Updated: FTL, Causation, and Travel to Remote Timespace Locales

2011-11-28T14:21:00.001-08:00

Updated post

FTL, Causation, and Travel to Remote Timespace Locales

Original Post Jan. 2009

I've been kicking around a sort of sci-fi idea. Conventional scientific thought has it that travel faster than light (FTL) is inherently impossible because it violates causation. (If you don't know why, you can read about it any number of places). Also because the energy necessary for any mass to travel at the speed of light is infinite, and asymptotically approaches infinity as you get closer and closer to that velocity. Nature abhors infinities, just as it abhors vacuum.

However, since the universe (as opposed to the observable universe) is, while not infinite, very very large, it stands to reason that there are many, many worlds, some perhaps a lot like Earth, all over the place, that are outside the time horizon of our current location in space and time. In other words, they are not and can never be causally connected to anything happening here.

If this isn't clear, think about this. The universe is no more than 13-14 billion years old, but there are regions of space much further than 13 billion light years distant, due to the expansion of space. A star in such regions isn't even theoretically visible from here, and it never will be. In fact, no form of communication whatsoever with such regions, which are by far most of the universe, will ever be possible. Unless...

If space is, as some believe, all twisted and interconnected with trapdoors and wormholes, maybe there are ways to connect more or less instantly, say across some kind of 'gateway', with places (timespace locations) which are vastly far away from here; so vastly that they cannot see us and we cannot see them, effectively, ever, in normal space and time.

Might it be at least conceivable that there could be a permanent or at least stable connection between two locales, vastly separated in normal spacetime but immediately proximate in twisty spacetime, so that you could routinely travel between them with no concern for violating either the energy considerations of FTL travel or the problems of timetravel paradoxes which normally arise when FTL is being considered? Travel of signals between such places in normal spacetime is impossible, so there's no way either could causally effect the other in normal spacetime. So the issue of timetravel paradoxes which would otherwise arise from any travel from one such location to another will never arise.

Anyway, an odd consequence of this is that it might be possible to immediately, or at least relatively quickly, travel to extremely remote locations in the universe, while it remains effectively impossible to travel quickly to even the very nearest stars, or anywhere in our own Galaxy, for example.

UPDATE (Nov. 2011):
Here is a more recent exposition of this same speculation. One problem that came to my attention after this, is created by relativity, whereby simultaneity is effectively nonexistent. The spacetime angle created by even small relative motion between very widely separated points in "normal space" might make synchronous travel through such points of contact effectively impossible even if they did exist. But it remains an intriguing idea, at least to me:

This is my idea, and it's how I think it's just possible that the universe actually is.

Accept, if you will, the following premise (I can explain why this is almost certainly so, if you like, but for now please just take it as a premise):

Faster than light travel by massive particles (and anything made out of them, including us and our spaceships, now and in the future, as well as those of any other creatures and their spaceships, now, and in the past and the future)....is impossible. For reasons of General Relativity, and because FTL is actually the mathematical equivalent of backwards time travel, which creates the possibility of violation of causality. For FTL to be possible, the many-worlds hypothesis of Quantum reality is necessarily true, and branching would have to occur both forwards and backwards; once you travel faster than light, you effectively break the connection with the universe you came from and you can never get back to it, although you could seemingly return to a world that resembled the one you left. Anyway, for purposes of my idea, please assume that this is not the case, that FTL is not now and never will be possible.

Now, accept, if you will, just as a thought experiment, the following:

The universe is so structured that places that are too far apart to be causally connected to each other (because light could never reach from one point to the other in the entire history since the Big Bang; rest assured that almost all locales in the universe are separated from almost all other locales in the universe in just this way)... nevertheless can be immediately adjacent to each other in the additional dimensions through which the normal space we live in is curved and re-curved. Picture three dimensional space projected like a map onto twisted spaghetti: locations distant along the threads might touch each other from one thread to another, or even one thread to another part of the same thread.

Then accept the following additional thought experiments:

There are points of contact, where it is possible to cross over from one part of space to another. The distance from A to B through this transit contact point is negligible, even though the distance between the same two points in normal space would typically be tens of billions of light years.

Such points of contact are relatively common (say, several, but not a huge number, accessible from any given place), and are possible, albeit technologically difficult, to detect.

Such points of contact are gravitationally associated with largish masses, like stars, but are typically found well outside the main mass of star systems, where planets and such are found, so that travel to them from such planetary systems is feasible, but not trivially easy. This makes them stable over time, and associated for long periods of time with particular stars and their planets.

A technological civilization arising anywhere in the universe could use these points of trans-spatial contact to create a whole network of accessible worlds, which were located some few tens to hundreds of billions of kilometers through normal space and a limited number of "link jumps" through the extra dimensions, without ever traveling faster than light and without violating causality. None of these linked worlds would be even theoretically visible from any of the others, and would be located literally all over the universe in "real space." (Yes, incidentally, the universe really is plenty large enough for this to be actually possible). Thus, a Trans-Galactic "Empire," even while travel to even the nearest stars remains effectively impracticable.

Bruce Fein, anti-NeoCon conservative

2011-11-28T12:34:00.001-08:00

Bruce Fein, the conservative but anti-NeoCon constitutional lawyer and Ron Paul adviser, was interviewed last Wednesday on Ian Masters's Background Briefing. (Ianmasters.com).

I obviously totally disagree with Fein and Paul on domestic policy issues, but Fein in particular makes a dead-on and totally rational argument against the perpetuation of the Military/Congressional/National Security/Industrial Complex and any continued funding of the American Imperial Enterprise. Fein is entirely consistent, but I believe foreign policy and whether domestic public investment and tax increases are necessary or not are completely separate issues, and it's possible, as I do, to completely disagree with these Conservative Libertarians on those issues, while completely agreeing with them (as I do) on foreign policy, and the necessity of dismantling the American Empire, in particular.

I also completely agree with Fein's views on the terrible danger to our republic posed by the National Security state and the erosion of constitutional guarantees under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Sachs: Fairness and the Occupy Movement

2011-11-28T12:32:00.001-08:00

Jeffrey Sachs, author of The Price of Civilization, is a visionary who deserves to be listened to. See his Fairness and the Occupy Movement (update) from today's Huffington Post

My bright idea: micro-commerce on the internet

2011-11-23T13:19:00.001-08:00

I am surprised someone hasn't invented (or implemented) a micro-commerce system for the internet, whereby a publication, for example, could sell a one-time view-only, no-download access to a backlist article or story for 5 cts. or something like that. You'd enroll an account, or put money in one, and by entering a password or PIN (or setting up your computer as 1-click, a la Amazon), you'd authorize the micro-charge. Surely this technology exists. Downloadable could cost more, say 50 cts. Free internet is wonderful, but small-cost access to the vast world of privately held backlogged information would be preferable to what we often have nowadays, which is no access. I suspect the reason something like this doesn't already exist is greed: people want to make unreasonable amounts of money from transactions. If the actual cost per transaction is, say 0.02 cts. (which I think is probably about what it would be), the commerce service provider could take a cut of 2 cts. out of 5 cts., giving the backlogged info owner 3 cts., and everybody gets something, at a low, sustainable cost to the consumer. Since this would be commerce that, for economic reasons, currently does not exist, it would be positive for everyone. I just have to believe that with 50 million+ transactions a day (not hard to imagine), there wouldn't be enough money in such a system to make it commercially viable. Something like this could conceivably save newspapers, too... you'd have to pay just a few cents to read an article, but you could set up your computer so that incurring the tiny charges involved would be relatively seamless and take only a fraction of a second.

Peaceful Civil Disobedience does not justify Police Assault

2011-11-22T08:53:00.001-08:00

Monumental fatuous idiots Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly discussing on Fox Propaganda Channel the police assault on immobile protesters at UC Davis agreed that it was "no big deal," and that pepper spray is a "food product". (This).

I have really had it with these Rightists who tout America and the Constitution when they neither know anything about it nor believe in its principles.

Earth to Kelly: police may, according to long standing interpretations of the First Amendment, enforce certain time and place restrictions on the exercise of assembly rights, with good cause and due notice. That could mean, for example, that protesters engaging in "Sit-Down" demonstrations (a form of nonviolent Civil Disobedience), could be arrested and physically removed, under certain circumstances. But if they are immobile, the only acceptable use of force is... "with reasonable care" bodily removal and arrest. The use of clubs, sound cannons, or assault chemicals such as tear gas and pepper spray, on people who are merely refusing to move, is assault and police riot, and should be prosecuted as such. Anyone watching the campus cop spraying massive amounts of pepper spray on completely immobile protesters as if they were weeds who wasn't revolted by that illegal use of police weaponry, has no grasp of what it really means to be an American. If our society blithely tolerates such conduct, we are a long, long way down the road to a republic lost.

Sachs: The SuperCommittee's Big Lie

2011-11-21T13:12:00.001-08:00

Jeffrey Sachs's piece in the Huffington Post today is an absolute dead-bang must-read.

Yes, it's the economy, stupid, but Michael Moran's missing the bigger picture

2011-11-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

From the headline, this piece in Salon, It's the Politics, Stupid, sounds like it's got it right, by presenting the thesis that the real cause of America's now much talked about decline is political, more than it is economic.

But when you get into the author's specific analysis, I find it much wanting. Yes, he's right that our political system is gravely dysfunctional, and is making it virtually impossible to do what's necessary to fix our economy. But the solution is not technocracy, or more unconstitutional government by commissions and czars. It's the restoration of democracy.

I've talked about this ad nauseam, but it's worth laying out the fundamental progressive position, in a few sentences, one more time:

Michael Moran is right that America's most serious problems are political, not economic. But the solutions have more to do with restoration of the American republican form of government to its intended functions than with specific technocratic policies.

We need to amend the Constitution, as now, in the wake of Citizens United v. FEC, appears to be necessary, to take the power of money out of politics, by making it impossible for special interests to buy and sell elections. We need to alter course and enshrine as a principle that Corporations are not people with constitutional rights, but public trusts; and that money is not speech. The unlimited use of money to corrupt politics should be a crime, and certainly is not a right.

We need to restore fairness in taxation, so that the rich pay more, and we need to regulate and control the unwarranted power of financial speculators in our political system.

We need to ensure that our representatives are citizens, not professional oligarchs beholden to the elite that sustains them, and that they are elected to represent the interests of the people, their legitimate constituency, not corporate and financial oligarchic elites. Limiting private political contributions, ending corporate contributions, restricting consecutive terms, and ending gerrymandering might be four of the things that would move us well along in this direction.

If we could accomplish this transformation, I am enough of a believer in the power of democracy with a small-d to believe that the actual technocratic solutions will take care of themselves. There are plenty of good ideas out there for how to invest public resources to create jobs and ensure America's future in energy, industry, and sustainable development. There are plenty of ways to ensure that the common good is the goal of government. Most importantly, there is plenty of wealth in this economy to ensure decent economic development and a social safety net that would be the envy of most of the world, and on a par with the best that privileged highly developed nations like Germany, Sweden, and Japan have to offer their citizens. But until we the people, either through the Occupy Movement, or through a succession of public demands, demand control of our government back from the oligarchy that now owns it lock, stock and barrel, our republic will remain dysfunctional, and its economic decline, including gross income disparity and increasing poverty, will be merely a symptom of that disease.

Report of Crimes Connected to Occupy L.A. part of a coordinated effort to discredit Occupy Movement

2011-11-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

See this from the L.A. Times. I would stake a tidy sum that this is a media plant by governmental forces trying to justify an illegal crackdown, which is rumored among Occupy L.A. protesters to be set for this coming Tuesday.

What is REALLY disturbing, if true, is the indication from Oakland Mayor Quan, who let slip that mayors around the country, with coordination by and with the Obama Justice Department, are coordinating tactics to fight against this populist uprising.

WE ARE THE 99%.

Prop 8 proponents should have standing to argue, Cal. Supreme says

2011-11-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

The L.A. Times reports on the Cal. Supreme Court decision today, advising the 9th Circuit that the proponents of California's odious Prop. 8 gay marriage ban should have standing to appeal the District Court decision finding the measure unconstitutional.

I do not regard this as a major setback, although of course the case would have crumbled (as would Prop. 8) had the decision gone the other way. In fact, Rightists generally have argued the other way on these standing issues, and the Cal. Supreme Court, if anything, is reinforcing a precedent that citizens (such as groups like the ACLU) can act to either defend or challenge laws even when there is no specific, already manifest plaintiff damages to found the case upon. This decision is a bit arcane for the average citizen to follow, but overall I don't see it as a reason to be concerned. Where the Prop. 8 decision may face a genuine struggle is if, or when, it goes before the U. S. Supreme Court, with its unprincipled gang of 4... sometimes 5... who vote Rightist ideology over legal principle every time.

No on bad Supercommittee Deal • No on SOPA

2011-11-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

I sent 2 messages to my Congressman today. The first was simple: No on the blatant attempt to undermine net neutrality and address a problem (piracy) that requires a pocket screwdriver with a Howitzer. I refer to "SOPA," the so-called "Stop Online Piracy Act." VOTE NO.

The other one was as follows:

Virtually any deal that may come out of compromise with the Rightist members of the (unconstitutional) "SuperCommittee" is guaranteed to be BAD for the majority of Americans.

No deal that doesn't increase taxes on the very Rich.
No deal that makes cuts to Social Security, MediCal or Medicare.
No extension of the Bush Tax Cuts.
No deal that doesn't cut military spending substantially.

Since there will be no such deal, VOTE NO. The automatic cuts, which can be modified or repealed later, are far preferable.

WE ARE THE 99% and WE ARE ASKING YOU TO SUPPORT US.

Thank you.

Herman Cain: pathetic monomaniac

2011-11-17T08:45:00.001-08:00

OK, it's official. (See this.) There can be no further doubt that Herman Cain is a monomaniac, and that the subject of his monomania is his own tremendously, and pathetically, bloated self-image. The fact that this figure remains, despite all, a darling of a certain segment of the right-wing fringe that controls the Republican Party, says a great deal about them.

Some proposed reforms to take money and its influence out of politics

2011-11-15T15:45:00.000-08:00

After the shocking revelation on CBS' 60 Minutes that members of Congress are exempt from insider trading laws, and that some of the worst scoundrels in that body are in fact guilty of wretched behavior that would otherwise land them in jail for a long time, I have a few simple proposals:

1. All members of Congress and Senators must put their assets into blind trust upon assuming office; for those in need of it, the Congressional administrative offices will provide that service.

2. (While we're at it); House and Senate members may serve only one term, then must stand down; with a maximum of 2 terms in the Senate or 4 in the House in a lifetime. (Eliminates entrenched incumbency bias).

3. After the dreadful holdings of Citizens United v. FEC are nullified, Congress persons will be prohibited from raising private money, or taking any form of private remuneration for any purpose while in office, and shall have only public campaign funds to spend on elections; the same for their challengers.

Might well add a fourth: Congressional representatives and Senators, upon leaving office, shall be prohibited from all lobbying activity permanently or from taking any form of remuneration or compensation for any actions taken while in office. This would be tricky to enforce, but the standard should be there. As it should be for all Congressional and Executive branch staffers and for retired military personnel.

Also, Congressional pensions should be prorated; there is no reason someone who serves a few years should receive a glorious income for life.

Penn State Scandal

2011-11-15T12:51:00.001-08:00

I am not a prude, and I sometimes wonder if our over-sexualized culture doesn't make too big a deal about sex in general, and sex involving teenagers in particular. Having said that, this interview reveals that this Jerry Sandusky guy is a World Class Creep and very likely a sexual predator who does indeed belong behind bars for life; and people who knew what he was up to and did nothing to protect the victims, who apparently were mostly pre-teen, deserve what they've got coming to them.

Hell No -- We Won't Go‼

2011-11-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

The Occupy Movement needs to be recognized as a fundamental exercise of peaceable assembly rights, with some degree of peaceable civil disobedience admixed.

Thus, while the polities may have an arguable right to maintain restrictions against, for example, camping and tents, and those who want to defy these restrictions will have to accept that they do so at risk of arrest, it can also be said that in recognition of the importance of the right to petition for the redress of grievances, city governments should be as flexible as possible.

But having said that, when it comes to people refusing to leave, the police clearly have no right to mace and molest peaceable protesters, or, indeed, to forcibly remove them. The 1st Amendment is quite clear about an unqualified right of assembly and petition of grievance.

Congress shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

The word is abridging, not prohibiting. Macing people who refuse to break up an assembly is abridging. It is the mayor and the police who are violating the law of the land here, not the OSW protesters.

(I trust I need not belabor the post Civil War constitutional changes that apply the First Amendment's strictures to all levels of government).

Herman Cain

2011-11-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

There is a great deal of ruckus today about one of Herman Cain's accusers coming forward, etc. etc., blah blah. Don't get me wrong, I am not minimizing the importance of sexual harassment or even implicitly condoning what was in all likelihood at minimum (unsurprisingly) boorish behavior on the part of this profoundly stupid man. But what strikes me is that it's this scandal which is likely to unhinge his candidacy, when there are at least two other reasons it should have already spun entirely apart:

1. The man is an idiot. His comments about "Ubekka bekka stan stan" make George W. Bush look like the statesman of the century. Examples of the man's profound incapacity to hold national office abound.

2. As documented by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Alternet.org (Adele Stan), Cain was undoubtedly a knowing recipient of campaign material assistance illegally funneled from a 501(c)(3) organization (charity; the same category as a church) created and managed by his campaign manager, Block (aka Cigarette-Smoking-Man).

It would seem to me blatantly obvious lack of qualification and strong evidence of conspiracy to commit tax evasion would trump some fifteen year old civil matter involving unproven, however plausible, allegations of personal misconduct.

Government by SuperCommittee ... NG

2011-11-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

Two very quick points.
1. I deplore, detest, despise, and believe unconstitutional un-elected "supercommittees" and other such undemocratic means of avoiding the job of doing the people's business as the Constitution intended.
2. I actually hope the so-called SuperCommittee deadlocks and fails to reach any kind of "deal." "Deals" with the Rightist party have been disastrous for our country. Forced cuts, while stupid and counterproductive, would at least fall on the military budget to some extent. (Better to just repeal the stupid deal after we take back the House and make gains in the Senate, which if the idiot Democrats and the president could get their act together and get BEHIND the We are the 99% movement, they could easily do).

UPDATE (11/7):
I see where Chuck Schumer is predicting "supercommittee failure." Good. I hope he's right.

Greedy and UnAmerican

2011-10-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

There's an internet circulator going around that's supposed to be a letter from constituent of former Sen. Alan Simpson (of Catfood Commission fame), lambasting him for calling ordinary people greedy and referring to Social Security as a "cow with 310 million teats."

I find it just unbelievable hypocrisy that these people call ordinary folks, who just tried to do what they were supposed to do, working hard all their lives, who have the entirely reasonable expectation that they'd have some kind of secure retirement and medical security in their old age, greedy.

What about the corporate oligarchs who induced through political influence changes in accounting and financial rules that allowed them to loot pensions and other benefits and create rigged "retirement plans" that create huge fees for the financial sector and no real financial security, for those employees who even get them? And who increased the ratio of CEO pay to ordinary worker pay from 15 to 1 to 400 to 1 in a generation, so that the income of the top one percent tripled while the income of ordinary people remained flat? And who saw to it that the rights of collective bargaining were weakened to the point that corporations can ignore worker rights with impunity and have little fear of workers organizing unions? And who saw to it that trade agreements that favor only the oligarchic class made it possible to eviscerate the collective power and wealth of American manufacturing and labor? And who saw to it that casino capitalism was legalized and the tax code was heisted so they could make billions and billions while producing absolutely nothing of any concrete use to the people of our country?

You just gotta ask... who is greedy, and who is unAmerican, here?

FDR's Economic Bill of Rights

2011-10-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

It's amazing to think that 65 years ago this was political currency:

“The Economic Bill of Rights”

Excerpt from President Roosevelt's January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union:

“

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure. This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.
For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

○○

From the 1944 State of the Union Address.

FLAT TAX = SUPER RICH TAX CUT AT YOUR EXPENSE

2011-10-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

Is it actually possible that the majority of voters don't get it that Republican "flat tax plans" and Cain's "Plan 999 from Outer Space" are huge wealth transfers to the already super-rich at THEIR expense? Really? You gotta be kidding me.

America the (most) Unequal -- What Occupy Wall Street is Really All About

2011-10-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Winters, in his new book Oligarchy, notes that in terms of concentration of wealth in the top 500 or so households as compared to the average of the bottom 90% of society, the United States today is the most unequal society in the history of this planet. In comparison, ancient Rome had a ratio of about 10,000 to 1. Ours is 20,000 to 1. And the state now exists primarily to protect the wealth of the wealthy, whereas at many times in the past they had to take care of that themselves (through direct military power).

Here is my theme for a movement to change the hideously disproportionate political power of the uber-rich in America today:

Government by Entrenched Monied Interests
for the Super-Rich and Big Corporations
IS UNAMERICAN.
It's time to restore Government by the People and for the People to our nation.

Gadafi Murdered

2011-10-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Although it is obvious to anyone that Muammar Gadafi was a tyrant and a criminal, I for one do not celebrate his murder by mob today. It is a good thing, of course, that the conflict in Libya is now over (or, "for now"), but it is never justified to simply murder someone who has been taken captive, which appears to be what occurred here, based on video images released by Arabic language television and available on the Huffington Post.

Krugman essential reading

2011-10-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

Krugman in the Times is essential reading today. Here.

I believe if the Democrats, and particularly the White House, were to realize, and soon, that they must offer the frustrated majority a sharp choice between reform and a major Paradigm Shift along the lines of The Way Forward (here), which I mentioned earlier in one of my posts, on the one hand, and more of the same on the other, the floodgates of support, including small and medium dollar financial support, would open. Folks like me, who are reluctant to contribute to the DNC or the House and Senate official committees, or to the Obama campaign, because we don't support more of the same, will step up once a definitive break, and a bold leadership plan, is made manifest. I hope the White House is realistically assessing what the Occupy Movement really means, because the future of our country is in the balance.

You have just GOT to be kidding me !!

2011-10-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

Report: Cain proposes 20 foot electric fence to electrocute illegal migrants.

Events of the last couple of years make me think Mencken's famous phrase needs to be updated to No one ever went broke underestimating the lunacy of the American people, but this is just unbelievable, coming from the supposed frontrunner of one of the two major political parties' nomination race.

If the Off the Cliff Republicans actually nominated this nut, I just have to believe enough of the public would come to its senses that his defeat would be of historic proportions. I just have to.

E-mail to White House: Support NAF "the Way Forward"

2011-10-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

I strongly urge the White House to seriously investigate the profoundly well thought out New America Foundation paper "The Way Forward" here.

The president should convene his advisors and demand of them that they say what, exactly, they have to offer in the way of a program that is in any way better than this program.

Then, he should make the essence of this plan the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. Run against the Do-Nothing Obstructionist GOP and PROMISE that if the people will re-elect him, AND elect a majority of Democrats in both houses, he will see to it that the obstructionist rules in the Senate are changed, and this plan is enacted into law, to protect and restore the Middle Class, as well as protecting the essential social system of this country, all for the 99%, not the 1%.

This is truly popular... people are realizing, finally, that short term debt service will only make things worse, that our nation is in deep trouble, and only TRULY BOLD action will work to get us back on track.

The president must be much more vocal in support of Government of by and for the people, getting money out of politics, and investing in the future.

In doing this, making clear that he STANDS WITH, not against, the OWS demonstrators, will help to make clear that he gets it, and that things will be different if the people will support a bold new agenda.

Bloviating Eric Cantor fearmongers #OWS

2011-10-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

The always reliable bloviator Eric Cantor fearmongers Occupy Wall Street, as might be expected. (See this). The only problem is that there's no truth to it whatsoever. The #OWS demonstrators are adamantly committed to Sharpian nonviolent strategy and tactics, so when Cantor refers to "some" "condoning pitting Americans against Americans," he's, well, full of it as usual.

Repubs "steamed" over Reid "nuclear option."

2011-10-07T10:46:00.001-07:00

Here is an explanation of Harry Reid's procedural power play with regard to the Jobs Bill the other night.

Reports are that the Repubs, and McConnell in particular, are "steamed." I say, wonderful. These despicable people should be kept on low boil indefinitely.

Zucotti Park OCCUPY WALL STREET Statement

2011-10-06T15:56:00.001-07:00

Partial Transcript of Keith Olbermann's Countdown from yesterday:

In our third story, it is not a catch phrase, but it is a declaration of what they want. That the document — which I will read in full in a moment — is not a list of laws to be repealed nor politicians to be elected, may only confuse the precocious ninth graders now passing for TV anchors and news men these days, but the absence of the kind of painted footsteps with which they used to mark the floors of dance-instruction studios is — in a way — breathtaking.

The two by four that Errol Louis described — it implies that there is so much to change, that such a tipping point has been reached, that some easy to apply band-aids just are not going to be enough — and it implies that the commentators, and politicians, and moneyed interests that do not come to understand the scope of what must change will be without influence, and without power before they realize that the change has happened.

So with that as preamble, here is formerly and finally, what Occupy Wall Street says and wants. It is, in essence, their special comment:

“As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members. That our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors. That a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people, and the Earth, and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

We come to you at a time when corporations — which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality — run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here as is our right to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in workplaces based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is, itself, a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut worker’s health care and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams, but look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products, endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives, or provide relief in order to protect investments that have

already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully kept people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners, even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City general assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard.”

The statement issued from Zuccotti Park by the general assembly at Occupy Wall Street. We will continue, and we’ll continue to update you on the events and the violence that ensued this evening.

Bittman Wrong on Food Tax

2011-10-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

Two stipulations, if you please. First, I am no libertarian. Second, I generally find Mark Bittman's columns in the New York Times both simpatico and interesting.

I think he's dead wrong today, however, to praise the Danes' tax on saturated fat in foods. For two reasons.

1. First, and foremost, is that this is the Nanny State gone wild. I favor regulation on toxins in food and drugs, environmental hazards, etc. I am not advocating Ron Paulism, and far from it. But saturated fat is not poison, and if people choose to eat it, that's their business. It's not like second hand smoke. It doesn't hurt other people. And the concept that it increases medical costs (if true, see below)... well, so do a lot of other things. I draw the line short of here: the government has no business using taxes to disincentivize these choices.

2. Now, if that didn't convince you, how about this? The scientific justification for this kind of tax is specious. There is, in fact, absolutely no evidence, despite many attempts to prove otherwise, that saturated fat in the diet causes heart disease, obesity, cancer, or any other health conditions. Don't believe it? Refer to Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, with its extensive footnotes and bibliography. It's the truth.

Harry Shearer features Yves Smith again

2011-10-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

Harry Shearer's terrific weekly radio show Le Show (KCRW.com or iTunes for podcast--free) featured the excellent financial commentary of Yves Smith (pseud.; she's a high level former financial analyst). See her excellent blog: Naked Capitalism.

Crazy Harridan Ann Coulter and Irony So Thick You Can Cut it with a Knife

2011-10-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

Fox news' far right (of course) host introduces Ann Coulter, about to compare Occupy Wall Street protesters to Nazis (again, of course), by saying "Hundreds of lefty Wall Street protesters were rounded up and arrested...." Nutcase Annie came on to say that this (the protests) was how totalitarianism always starts out.

Now, Ann, let me set you straight: rounding up and arresting protesters is what the beginning of totalitarianism looks like. Get a clue. People protesting non-violently in the streets is what DEMOCRACY looks like.

Kudos to Kamala Harris for nixing foreclosure deal

2011-10-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

I agree with Calif. Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris's decision not to cooperate in the Feds' deal with the big banks to plough through their criminal conduct in regards to foreclosures and improper property documentation in connection the speculative housing bubble. I see that as just another example of the Obama administration putting its political financial interests (in obtaining a billion dollars to finance re-election from Wall Street contributors) over economic justice.

October 2011: Get Money Out of Politics and Reform Corporatism and Wall Street

2011-09-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

Both of these websites are well worth perusing:

october2011.org
occupytogether.org

There has been a little coverage of the Wall Street demonstrations, mainly due to police brutality, which is treated as news. It's interesting, though, that more people have been arrested in the last week on Wall Street than typically show up at even a well-publicized Tea Party Rally. Liberal media bias?? You gotta be kidding me.

Basically, I completely agree with these folks. I will vote for Barack Obama in 2012, because I am a pragmatist, but I deplore his corporation and Wall Street friendly policies, and truly believe he either deliberately evaded or squandered the best opportunity to make serious reforms in the interests of economic justice we've had in a long time, or probably will have anytime soon. And for that, while I will support him, I intend to offer my financial support only to progressive organizations.

Krugman: We should be investing like it was WWII

2011-09-28T11:28:00.001-07:00

Huffington Post reports on Paul Krugman's speech in which he advocates government investment in the face of the current crisis as if it were the "equivalent of World War II."

This is pretty much what I've been saying for the past three years, so it's somewhat reassuring that a Nobel Prize winning economist is saying the same thing.

Revisiting the Fermi Paradox in light of the experiments (apparently) showing Faster than Light particles

2011-09-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

I thought of an analogy. Life on earth exists everywhere it can exist, precisely because translation, i.e., moving from one place to the next, reproduction, (both of those in the context of duration in time), and typical lifetime of organisms, all match up nicely. Bacterialike organisms evolving one time on a planet like Earth will fill its entire surface (at least the parts compatible with life) in a comparatively short time, probably only a few thousand years. I am convinced that if certain facts are true, the same thing would be true of the presence of intelligent life, or at least evidence of its past presence, essentially everywhere if it were possible to travel at speeds faster than light.

To demonstrate my logic, please posit the following:

1. Intelligent beings roughly comparable to humans, and capable of discovering and implementing any technologies possible under the laws of physics given sufficient time, do exist, in some reasonable numbers and frequency in the universe. (This derives from several other assumptions about the origin and prevalence of life, etc.; when I refer to 'reasonable numbers' I think 1 or 2 contemporaneously existing technological civilizations in any given large spiral galaxy in any given time would be more than sufficient).
2. Travel faster than light turns out to be possible (now given some intriguing potential for being true: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/23/physicists-speed-light-violated).
3. Civilizations can and do exist for extended periods of time, tend to expand outward from their place of origin at least for a time, are at least sometimes sufficiently interested and curious to want to explore and even colonize other locations in space, and can and would if it were possible transfer their technological knowledge to other intelligent beings from time to time.
4. The universe, in terms of the emergence of planetary life, and the times for the evolution of life, has been much as it is today for at least several billion years, so that planets somewhat like Earth,, i.e. cradles of life, which had already had plenty of time to evolve advanced living things, already existed billions of years ago, and therefore so did civilizations capable of advanced technology, at least in some numbers.

If all of these things are true, then the Galaxy would resemble the Star Trek universe, at least in the sense that every world in orbit around every single one of its 3 or 4 hundred billion stars would have been visited and catalogued by somebody, at some time in the last few billion years. At minimum. The same would be true for all similarly endowed galaxies (ignoring the fact that some galaxies, due to exigencies of nucleosynthesis and star formation, are relatively devoid of the kinds of stars and planets likely to evolve life; there are plenty, as in hundreds and hundreds of billions, of galaxies even in the observable part of the universe that qualify as roughly comparable to our Galaxy. Also assumes, as most cosmologists do, that the laws of physics are everywhere and during the entire time in question pretty much if not perfectly the same).

Since to all reasonable inference from evidence this ubiquity of technological presence is not the case, one has to doubt the experimental result, or doubt at least one of the posited truths above. It's inescapable, as far as I can see. Occam's razor seems to dictate that the most likely "false" postulate is No. 2, and FTL is, in fact, not possible.

A sad day for America

2011-09-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

The state murder last night in Georgia, after an agonizing final review, of a man who in all likelihood was innocent, is a truly terrible stain on the judicial system of our nation. As an American, it fills me with shame.

I can only pray that this act of violence, so clearly wrong, will function as a seed of regret and determination in the conscience of the nation, which will eventually result in ending the cold-blooded killing of citizens by the state euphemistically referred to as capital punishment, once and for all.

Whether you, as I do, believe that killing in the absence of threat is barbaric and never justified, or not, the undeniable fact is that it is irrevocable, and is sometimes, and unavoidably, carried out despite the innocence of the one convicted. This should be reason enough to end this horrible, horrible practice forever.

Scrooge and Modern Day Republicans: a close analogy

2011-09-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

Here's from A Christmas Carol:

``At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,'' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, ``it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.''
``Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.
``Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
``And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. ``Are they still in operation?''
``They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `` I wish I could say they were not.''
``The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.
``Both very busy, sir.''
``Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. ``I'm very glad to hear it.''
``Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,'' returned the gentleman, ``a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?''
``Nothing!'' Scrooge replied.
``You wish to be anonymous?''
``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''
``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''
``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

This reminds me of former Congressman Grayson's show n' tell in Congress back in '09, when he held up cards explaining the Republicans' Health Care Plan:

"1. Don't Get Sick
2. And if you do get sick....
3. Die quickly."

Grayson got a lot of criticism for this, but he would not back down, for the simple reason that what he was saying was the plain truth of the matter. And I don't see where anything has changed one bit since then, or all that much since Dickens's time, for that matter, when it comes to the mean spirit of the Right Wing.

I cite the absurdity of Ron Paul's idiotic response to the question in a recent debate about uninsured Americans, and the recent even more preposterous and mean spirited claim of his that his own staffer who died with $400,000 in outstanding medical bills "didn't need government support."

AARP to flood Supercommittee with Constitutent E-mails: Don't Cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid

2011-09-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

AARP is sending around an e-mail to create constituent e-mails to the Supercommittee. Below is what I sent... much of it is their canned text, but then I added my perhaps obviously more militant comments at the end.

The cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits currently being considered by the supercommittee would have a devastating impact on seniors across the country. I just heard the story of one senior that I wanted to share with you, to help you understand why it's so important that you stand up against unfair benefit cuts.

"I have been working since I was 16 years old, and I'm still working now at age 67. I have no hope of being able to retire while I'm healthy enough to enjoy my non-working years. My husband is 10 years older, and has worked his whole life until he developed multiple health problems that require numerous maintenance drugs. Even with Medicare part D coverage his medications average $400 per month. My job not only provides a salary, but also group health insurance, for myself, that is much less than Medicare + a supplement policy + Medicare part D. We will have a very hard time to make ends meet at the current level of SSI and Medicare Benefits when I am no longer able to work. If there are changes to these plans that reduce benefits I don't know what we will do. We have worked hard our whole lives,have always paid all of our bills on time, and done our best to be good citizens. I implore all of our elected officials to consider the impact that changes to these programs would have on the Seniors in our Country. Please do the right thing by us."

-Elsie N., California

Please remember this story as you make decisions about the future of Social Security and Medicare in the weeks to come. Like Elsie, I am counting on you to protect the benefits I've earned from unfair cuts.

Americans are fed up and angry that, after the financial debacle was caused by profligate casino capitalism, the taxpayers were expected to pony up and bail out the banks and speculators, but when it comes to preserving the key social programs that have ensured a decent standard of living. and a THRIVING CONSUMER ECONOMY, in this country for 70 years, the powerful elites want to cut deficits on the backs of working people, the middle class, and seniors. Understand this, members of the Supercommittee: WE WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS. If there are to be budget adjustments to cut long term debt, they must come PRIMARILY from increasing taxes on those who have been getting an easy ride, and NOT AT ALL from cuts to Social Security; and the only acceptable changes to Medicare and Medicaid are cost controls, NOT BENEFIT CUTS.

We will remember, and vote out of office, anyone who doesn't represent the will of the vast majority of Americans on these issues.

Progressives will Rally

2011-09-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

I agree with Bill Keller's piece "Fill in the Blanks" in the NYT (here) entirely. I am a critic of President Obama. But I believe in a great deal of what he's trying to do, and I intend to do what I can to make sure he's re-elected; because, as Jonathan Alter said in a different context, the alternatives are dire for America.

Huffpo Report: Warren surges against Brown

2011-09-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

It is too early to predict 2012 outcomes, of course, but I think the fact that Elizabeth Warren is already showing a slight lead over incumbent Sen. Scott Brown in Mass. is encouraging and indicative. See this. Considering that he is considered personable and photogenic, while she is seen as wonkish, and has minimal name recognition among the general public, even in Mass., this is actually quite remarkable in such a short period of time.

What it indicates, and will indicate more definitively if she develops a strong and persisting lead, as I believe she will, is that Democrats who clearly state Core Democratic Principles will do well, and, in fact outperform those who are too ready to compromise those principles for some imagined (although in the end mostly non-performing) political expediency. Polling in Wisconsin and Ohio, where significant battles over public employee collective bargaining have garnered too little attention from national Democratic figures, have also shown this trend: those who strongly support traditional Democratic issues like protecting Social Security and Medicare, increasing taxes on the very rich, and protecting collective bargaining, outpoll "New Democrat" types by as much as 10%.

I see some signs that in recent weeks President Obama is starting to take this lesson to heart; I certainly hope and pray that this is the case. Because I am completely convinced that this is the road to victory, not only for the President, but for Democrats challenging Republicans for House and Senate seats, as well as Democrats defending House and Senate seats.

DADT gone day

2011-09-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

Took an unconscionable 18 years for something that should never have been enacted, but the ultimate repeal of DADT is something to celebrate, that's for sure. And Obama has to get credit for this.

Obama gets some moxie

2011-09-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

I met with a financial adviser yesterday, not an unreasonable guy in most respects, but in the course of our conversation he accused Pres. Obama of being "misleading" about taxes because he didn't mention that most people paying under $50,000 pay lower tax rates than the rich, due to deductions. Not only is this pretty much just a rightist talking point, it's not even true in a technical sense.

But the main point is the bigger picture, as I tried to explain. We've had 35 years of accelerating wealth transfer from working and middle class people to the very rich, and the tax code is a major factor (although, as Dean Baker points out, not the largest factor) in that. That is a fact.

Anyway, I just want to go on record as saying, like Michael Moore on Rachel Maddow's show last nigh that the president's speech yesterday, was one of the most encouraging in a long time. He seems to finally have decided to have some fight and defiance in his rhetoric. I loved the way he made clear that budget cuts without revenue fairness will get a veto.

Michelle Bachmann is dumber than Bush

2011-09-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've said before, and this article proves it: Michelle Bachmann, irrespective of her batpoop crazy ideology, is just too stupid to hold national office, even in 21st Century America, and that's saying a lot. (It also proves just how crazy she really is).

Improved Low-Carb Ice cream recipe (Chocolate)

2011-09-18T16:34:00.001-07:00

Low Carb Ice Cream / Chocolate • requires ice cream machine (I use Cuisinart), and specialty natural sweeteners erythritol and oligofructose (aka fructo-oligosaccharide) • these can be purchased from www.netrition.com or other specialty food online retailers

7/8 cup whole milk

6 oz. baking chocolate ...chill in freezer in advance ... broken into small pieces

5/8 cup erythritol granules

5/8 cup oligofructose powder or granules (“Sweet Perfection” or other brand)

2 cups heavy cream, very cold

1 tbs. vanilla extract

Heat whole milk until just bubbling at edges in double boiler

Meanwhile, break up chocolate into small pieces and put in blender with about 1/3 cup of the erythritol: pulse at highest speed, loosening any compacted material, until finely ground and uniform. Add to hot milk, and the remaining erythritol and the oligofructose and blend with hand blender until smooth. Transfer to a chilled 1½ quart+ pourable large measuring cup and let cool to room temperature. Add heavy cream and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Chill well in refrigerator.

Add to prepared ice cream machine, and run according to manufacturer's directions, although it will take somewhat longer... perhaps 40 min.

The oligofructose helps make the erythritol less prone to recrystallize.

Variation: add pecan pieces or frozen berries right before end, to taste

○○○

This ice cream is obviously not low-fat or low calorie, but erythritol has almost no effective carbohydrate, and oligofructose is a dietary fiber, with low glycemic index and few calories, although it is moderately sweet. Thus, this ice cream has a very low glycemic index and should be genuinely low-carb. The amount of erythritol and oligofructose is more than the amount of sugar that would be used in a normal recipe, but, if anything, this ice cream is slightly less sweet than it would be if made with sugar normally. (Equivalent amount of sugar is about ¾ cup; many similar normal ice cream recipes call for more like 1 cup). These products are expensive, but if you want good tasting low-carb ice cream, there really isn't any other alternative that I've come across. Erythritol is the lowest calorie and lowest glycemic index of the sugar alcohols. Isomalto-oligosaccharride might work as a substitute for oligofructose, but I have no experience with it and haven't located a small-bulk quantity source for it as of yet.

The erythritol has a slightly “cool” sweetness, but this is offset by the oligofructose to some extent. There is no stevia-like or artificial sweetener aftertaste, however.

Time for some party discipline

2011-09-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

It seems to me this is Primer Politics:

While I'm not a fan of the President's Jobs Bill (because it isn't enough), it seems to me Democrats have no excuse at all for not supporting it and trying hard to convince their constituents to support it... as a first step.

Party discipline is one of the things that has made the Minority Rightist party so powerful. It's time for some on our side. Reid and Pelosi (and Obama) should contact these Blue Dogs, personally... hell, call 'em into the White House... and tell them bluntly: you get on board and say nothing critical about this bill or you are no longer a Democrat as far as we're concerned, and we will stand someone to challenge you and end your career in politics.

Sometimes you gotta wield the big stick, something none of the Democratic leaders are particularly accomplished at.

Gary Taubes

2011-09-14T08:47:00.000-07:00

Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat, and What to Do About It, has started a very interesting series on his blog (link) about the status of the whole paradigm shift underway in the science of adiposity, so to speak.

Taubes is unabashedly partisan for the insulin/metabolism theory of overweight/obesity, but his point is mainly that unsubstantiated opinions on scientific questions don't matter and research is indicative of a different paradigm from conventional wisdom; the only reasonable thing to do is to conduct further controlled studies to resolve the issue once and for all. Kind of hard to argue with that. He's even putting his money where his mouth is, trying to raise funds to conduct definitive research.

Since at least a quarter of Americans are significantly overweight, this really does matter not only to people in their personal lives but to our entire society.

urk! Republican wins Weiner's seat

2011-09-13T21:58:00.001-07:00

Jeepers. This is not good. We just have to do better than this.

As expected, Cantor pretty much tells Prez to jump in a lake

2011-09-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

So already Eric Cantor has pretty much told the President to jump in a lake with his jobs bill, or most of it anyway. (The good parts, mainly). (No surprise here).

I'm not a fan of the Jobs Bill, as I've said; it's not big enough and not properly weighted to emphasize direct job creation, which is what we need right now.

But in any case it seems to me that these foolish Republicans have just handed Obama a terrific campaign issue. Let's just hope his vaunted (and frequently missing in action) political savvy is sufficient to seize the advantage; because he should be able to beat them handily by pointing out that they're 1) against rebuilding America; 2) against putting people back to work; 3) against investing in America's future; 4) opposed to support for Education (just for starters). I really think the Democrats should just let it all hang out and start a WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE AMERICA? campaign that lasts right through next years' election. Which, if they really did this and did it right, would be a sweeping Democratic victory both on the Presidential side and the Congressional side.

After the speech

2011-09-09T05:34:00.000-07:00

The speech was good, and more than good. That's one thing you have to hand to this President. But some elements of the plan fall way short (just nowhere near big enough, too much tax cutting, that doesn't really work; too much reliance on unspecified deficit cutting (from what? when?), when what we should do, like a business that has to grow capital now, is borrow like there's no tomorrow, especially at these low interest rates). But if this was a start, not all he's got, maybe things will start to move in the right direction.

Perry camp won't rule out ending Social Security entirely

2011-09-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

TPM: Rick Perry Campaign Refuses To Rule Out Ending Social Security ...
OK, tell me again how it is even conceivable that this jerk could be nominated by a major party, still less elected President of the United States? Sometimes I hardly recognize the America we're living in.

What Progressives would like to see in Jobs Speech

2011-09-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to go into great detail here, and I'm sure I'll miss some key points, but here's what I and a whole lot of President Obama's base who think along the same lines as me, would like to see in tonight's speech:

Legislation to create a National Infrastructure and Development Bank, and direct the Federal Reserve to post "created money" to it, and not to Wall Street Banks (this is trillions, based on past experience, and would go to Main St. not Wall St.)
Foreclosure Reform, in which all banks must participate as a cost of participation in FDIC and to be chartered as banks at all
A new WPA
A new CCC
At least $1 trillion allocated for direct job creation over 2 years
Comprehensive Alternative Energy, Transportation, and other Development plans to be rolled out to rebuild America and move her into the 21st Century economy as a leader
Force Commodity Futures Exchg. Commsn. to enforce Dodd Frank, and beef up laws to prevent and punish casino capitalism in all its forms
Extend unemployment benefits indefinitely
Protect Social Security and Medicare benefits, guaranteed, to keep seniors out of poverty
Protect medicaid, and roll out early implementation and improvement to HCR, to prevent health care related bankruptcies (among other reasons)
Promise a complete revamp of trade agreements, towards balance to protect American workers
Reform of Tax Codes to eliminate tax breaks for offshoring jobs
Lift cap on income subject to Payroll Tax
Remove Bush era tax cuts on everyone earning over $150,000
Remove "hedge fund manager" tax breaks on investor class
Eliminate most agricultural and all energy and food industry subsidies
Tax breaks for new hires (temporary)
Tax breaks for renewable energy development
Salary subsidy for six months for hiring long term unemployed
Regulations to require across the board reductions rather than layoffs (similar to Germany's regulations)
Regulations to require employee representation in business governance (similar to Germany's regulations)

Of course we'll not see all or even many of these things, but I sure hope this president, for once, follows the advice of his base, and "goes long, goes big, and goes global," in E. J. Dionne's formulation. The president needs to sharply pivot away from the Republicans' meme of debt crisis, and to recognizing that the long term debt problems can be addressed after we get ourselves out of this huge hole we're in, and what we need to do now is get Americans working again, and ensure that the causes of the Great Republican Caused Financial Meltdown are fixed. We also need to roll out reforms along the lines Dean Baker talks about in his free e-book The End of Loser Liberalism, to start the process of reversing the historic trend towards economy-crippling concentration of wealth in the hands of the richest and big corporations. If this president does not soon start acting like a real Democrat, he will ultimately be abandoned by those who are convinced that the old "New Democrat" ways just won't work anymore.

Some of these things may, at first glance, look like they don't have anything to do with jobs. But they're related to the things that are crippling our economy, and everything's connected to everything else... get the economy out of its deep freeze and they'll be more jobs. More jobs means more taxes, means deficit problem largely solved. Q.E.D. But you have to start in the right places. Doing what the Republicans want to do, cut social programs and cut spending, is a guarantee for DEPRESSION with a capital-D.

For example, the failure to rein in speculation in commodities (actually mandated, albeit weakly, by Dodd Frank), is the main reason oil prices and food prices are artificially high (80% of futures market is speculation; Depression era regulations that were scrapped kept it to less than <20%; economists say excessive commodity speculation destroys supply and demand in essential commodities).

What Obama really needs to do is lay down the gauntlet right now and start running against the Republicans. He needs to lambaste the "do nothing 112th Congress," and needs to lay out a detailed, genuinely progressive plan for his second term of how to restore jobs and get the Country back on track. He needs to do both, actually: lay out immediate goals and ask people to demand that their Republican Congressmen and Senators support them, but also a big, comprehensive plan for the future, that will be the basis of his re-election campaign, which must focus on getting a Democratic House and Senate elected along with him with a pledge to get the big plan passed. Then he needs to abandon the Mr. Conciliator approach and get tough, get mad, and start asking the people directly to support him.

Look, folks, it's the only way. Otherwise the Right Wing Takeover of American politics will succeed, and when their wrongheaded and unrealistic policies crash our entire economy and destroy our social system that took a century to create, we'll really be in the soup.

Barack Obama's epic failure

2011-09-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Matt Stoller in Salon makes the case that 1) Obama has ruined the Democratic Party, and 2) Democrats should seriously consider dumping him before it's too late. What Democrats Can Do About Obama, Here.

I have to agree with many of the points he makes, except that I'm pretty well convinced it's already too late, and that we are already reduced to hoping and praying the Republicans screw up so bad that he is re-elected. We're only left with the hope that somehow we can maintain enough control in the Congress to limp through the next however long before we can organize a real Progressive movement, gain control of our own party, and elect someone who will actually fight to enact that agenda.

I keep trying to find something to be optimistic about, and keep putting my energy and money into trying to make sure Progressive Democrats are elected. But this President seems determined, time and again, to undermine those efforts; to cave in to preposterous Republican demands before there's even a fight; and to adopt Right-Center positions at odds with what he said he would do when he was a candidate, even when there appears to be no political impetus that should cause him to move in that direction. Examples of all of these are now too many to discuss. They're occurring on a daily basis. It's gotten so bad that it's actually hard to find anyone who expects any actual results from the President's jobs speech; and few of us Progressives can honestly say we expect him to even say what the vast majority of Progressive Intellectuals would agree is needed in terms of policy.

Right at the moment I am reminded of a saying that's common in Science Fiction circles: Sometimes optimism is just another word for wishful thinking.

Speechless

2011-09-03T08:50:00.001-07:00

I am just speechless at Obama's abandonment of environmental protection. It is that stark. Where is the Democrat we elected in 2008? I cannot recognize him in this president.

Krugman eviscerates the odious Eric Cantor

2011-09-02T11:12:00.001-07:00

Here, and I can honestly say I don't believe there is even a gram of exaggeration here.

Imagining Space

2011-09-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

I have been a reader of science fiction, on and off, most of my life, although in recent years; well, decades, I have mostly found the field pretty devoid of anything much worth reading. Anyway, there's always been a subgenre, dominated by writers who took some care with astronomical detail and tried to make their space fiction plausible, at least within some conventions, such as "hyperdrive," to get around the fact that stars in the Galaxy are so far apart that travel to them even at relativistic speeds is effectively impracticable (that is even assuming that relativistic speeds were technologically feasible, not only in terms of energetics, but in terms of survivability... anything moving at that speed is essentially hard radiation). Probably the first classic example of this kind of so-called "hard" science fiction is Mission of Gravity (1953) by Hal Clement; a much praised but not too often actually read book.

It's a spectrum, really. Writers like Poul Anderson and Larry Niven, or even C. J. Cherryh and Ursula LeGuin, attend to detail: they set their stories in the real Galaxy, and mention real stars, and talk about such things as the stars' spectral classes and the orbital peculiarities of planets (such as tidal lock, i.e. the same face always to the star (not a convenient or possibly even survivable condition, but probably pretty common; think of the moon); or seasons caused by orbital eccentricity rather than axial tilt; that sort of thing). People who love to imagine what other stars and their worlds might actually be like loved this sort of thing, although eventually it pales; the contrivedness of it all becomes too glaring. Some writers, like Jack Vance and Iain Banks, set their stories in space, posit magical technology allowing space travel to be a lot like maritime or air travel on Earth, and get on with their (very different) baroque story telling. Frank Herbert imagined a vast span of time and space, including mention of some real stars, but his imagination went more towards imagining strange evolution of man and how history would be affected by it: Dune is incomparable, but most people would agree that after that, the whole thing just kind of gets out of hand.

More recent writers sometimes pay a lot of attention to scientific plausibility (Stephen Baxter comes to mind), but for my money, few "space fiction" writers still active can tell a story that holds my interest. Iain Banks is one.

Still, even today, almost all of this space fiction is based on a mindset that thinks "stars like the sun" are going to be more or less just like the sun. There will be watery worlds more or less like the Earth. The pattern of the Solar System: rocky inner worlds, gas giant outer worlds, stable, long lived star, which has somehow maintained a stable set of conditions on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, long enough for us to evolve, etc., all will be the rule. This kind of begs the issue, what is the actual truth, as now understood? It used to be that not much was actually known, or at least widely published, to indicate otherwise: one yellow dwarf star was assumed to be much like another.

But, it's really quite interesting. If you follow extrasolar planet research, or, for that matter, just read what's readily available from studies of stars themselves, you'll realize that these assumptions are not justified, at all. Look at this article about just one nearby "sunlike" star, 61 Virginis, in Wikipedia, to see what kind of detailed information is currently available. There are literally thousands of such articles available.

Stars vary enormously. More than half of star systems have more than one star. Often in close orbits, which probably rule out planets in orbits where water could remain liquid. Stars rich in metals (Astronomese for everything beyond Helium on the periodic table), seem to be more likely to have planets; and it's already becoming apparent that at least some dwarf stars don't have planets, although why they don't isn't really understood. It used to be thought that older stars, that formed early in the history of the universe, were always metal poor, and more recent ones were metal rich; and while this pattern may generally hold, there are exceptions. The Sun is moderately metal rich, even for its age, but some even older stars (a nearby example being 16 Cygni), are even more metal rich, so the relationship between age and metal content is not regular or simple. Planets, it's now known, do not typically form in the Solar System pattern. Gas giants are often found in inner orbits. Nor are the nearly circular orbits of the Solar System's planets typical. Many systems have apparently stable but nonetheless highly eccentric orbits. Moreover, stars, even when similar in many respects to the Sun, are all different. 18 Scorpii (along with HD 98618 and HIP 56948) are thought to be "near solar twins," but even these stars have differences that might be critical, and might cause a planetary environment in their vicinity to be unstable. Further, there is current speculation that just maybe the dimmer, cooler, orange dwarfs (late type G and early type K), which live longer than brighter stars like the Sun and may settle into stable temperature ranges for longer periods, may be more "life friendly" than stars resembling the Sun (which would be a good thing, since something like 1 in 15 stars is main sequence type G5 thru K5, while stars from say F8 through G4 (the sun is usually given as G2), may only be about 1 in 30. *

So, what? I have no answers. Science fiction has become tired; it no longer seems to explore the edge of possibility. The universe is, clearly, quite a bit more varied than we thought. Is it full of life? Other civilizations? Other worlds like our own? We still don't know, but one thing is pretty clear: not just like our own. What is out there is as varied as the variation of landscapes on Earth, and the life that may have evolved will be varied too. Somehow the innate curiosity of human beings is outer-directed: someday we will know these things, if we survive; in the meantime, we need a bit better imagination to conceive of their possibilities.

------
* By far the majority of stars are tiny red dwarfs. Stellar population is more or less in inverse proportion to mass. Red dwarfs don't produce the kind of light in abundance that's probably necessary for terrestrial type life, and they have such narrow zones where temperatures could be right, which, in turn, are so close to the stars themselves, that the planets would usually be tidally locked, one face always to the star. This causes obvious problems, greatly accentuated by the fact that almost all red dwarfs flare, i.e., are quite irregular in their output and occasionally would blast their close in planets with excessive radiation. Thus, despite being so dim that almost none of them are close enough to even be visible in the night sky, these little stars, which make up something like 85% of all stars, aren't very good candidates for having living worlds as companions.

Please Mr. President, get aggressive! Run AGAINST the Do-Nothing 112th Republican Congress!

2011-08-31T11:41:00.000-07:00

Just wrote this to www.whitehouse.gov:

For the first time in a while, I am gratified to be able to write to my President and say, "Brilliant! I love it!" Congratulations on scheduling jobs speech as a joint session and sticking it to the inconsequential fools on the Republican side by scheduling it the same night as their gabfest.

Now, take E. J. Dionne's advice and GO BIG, GO LONG, and GO GLOBAL. We need some major leadership and a big vision.

The White House should (finally) start sending bill after bill, fully written out, to the Democratic leadership to introduce and let the Republicans try to block. Then the President can run, not just for himself but on behalf of every genuinely contested Congressional and Senate Candidate, and say, "Look (unfurling a list that drops all the way to the floor)... here's OUR list of serious proposed legislation to address our nation's problems... and the Republicans have blocked almost every one. America can and will do better than this, but I need your help! I need you to vote for Democrats in Congress and the Senate to pass these proposals and move our country forward!"

This is a winning recipe, whereas hanging back and trying to pick up scraps from the obstructionists' table is a sure recipe for defeat.

The president needs to think long, towards 2013, and get REALLY AGGRESSIVE, in a complete change of approach, before it's TOO LATE.

Thank you.

To which I added:

I commended the president for scheduling a joint session of congress, and recommended that he get aggressive in sending Congress a legislative agenda, irrespective of whether the Republicans are likely to pass it.

I want to make the point that the key to the President's and other Democrats' victory in 2012 will be taking a lesson from Harry Truman in 1948: RUN AGAINST THE DO-NOTHING 112TH REPUBLICAN CONGRESS. Show a long list of bills proposed to address America's problems at EVERY speech, every campaign stop. Go out and campaign for every Democrat who has a chance to unseat a Republican. We need the majority back in the House. We need to keep the majority in the Senate, in order to start passing this agenda starting in 2013. In the meantime, an aggressive approach, that starts winning over public opinion, is MORE LIKELY to achieve short term results than trying to figure out in advance what the nasty Republicans are likely to "give us." That hasn't worked and never will.

GO BIG, GO LONG, GO GLOBAL, and FIGHT LIKE HELL! This is what your base wants and what will win both in terms of policy victories and electoral ones.

Thank you.

Perry's monstrous lies

2011-08-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

I mince not my words. If that prick Perry succeeds in his attempt to mislead the public that he would somehow save Social Security by calling it a "Ponzi Scheme" and a "monstrous lie," when in fact what he would like to do, and will do if he ever gets a chance, is to kill it... well, I fear for the future of a country that would elect someone like that, and I wonder if we shouldn't negotiate the secession of Texas after all.

E-mail to White House: SUPPORT Social Security Already!

2011-08-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

My e-mail contact to the White House Today:

The president simply must differentiate himself from the Republicans and start DEFENDING Core Democratic Values. Perry is now doubling down on his crazy "Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme" meme. The President should forget about compromising with these mean spirited Rightists, and say clearly and unequivocally that Democrats created Social Security, Social Security is in good financial shape and has never contributed one dime to the deficit, and the President WILL VETO any attempt to cut Social Security or raise the retirement age further. Period.

Then, Mr. Obama should ENDORSE Bernie Sanders's plan to ensure the solvency of Social Security indefinitely by lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes (an idea which CANDIDATE Obama endorsed).

Aggressive campaign rhetoric 101: Why do Republicans Hate America?

2011-08-29T08:46:00.001-07:00

· Republicans oppose rebuilding America

· Republicans oppose putting Americans back to work

· Republicans deny scientific truths

· Republicans oppose investment in education, the key to our future

· Republicans want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare

· Republicans favor tax giveaways for big corps and the very rich

· Republicans even want to obstruct your right to vote

WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE AMERICA?

Trumka, Sanders right on.

2011-08-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

AFL CIO leader Richard Trumka's criticisms of the president and Democrats in Congress strike me as exactly right.

I also think Bernie Sanders's proposal to ensure funding for 3/4 of a century for Social Security by lifting caps on income subject to the Payroll Tax, is an excellent plan, which all Democrats, including the President, should endorse forthwith.

Neanderthal and Denisovan Ancestors

2011-08-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

Good article in today's L. A. Times about the extinct human subspecies (Neanderthal and Denisovan) with which modern humans, after coming "out of Africa", are now believed to have interbred. Among the upshots was improved immunity. Here.

How can they SAY that??

2011-08-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

So Dingdong Rubio says Social Security "weakened America?" (Here).

What I want to know is, how is it that, with huge majorities consistently saying they support Social Security and Medicare and don't want them cut, Republicans can say stuff like this and not be hounded out of office on the first train?

Cantor's meanness manifests again

2011-08-25T11:19:00.001-07:00

Now we hear that that total creep Cantor is saying "no disaster relief without spending cuts." Is it even possible that the majority of the electorate isn't fed up to here with these mean spirited jerks by now?

Will it really be Perry? and Should we be happy about it?

2011-08-24T12:51:00.001-07:00

Is is just me, or should Democrats not be welcoming news that the Republicans seem determined, in recent polling, to dump Mitt and go with the Certifiable Nutcase and Megalomaniac, Rick Perry?

Surely, if they go off the cliff and nominate this guy, regardless of the economy, regardless of disenchantment with his style and even substance, the people will vote to re-elect the sane candidate over this unbelievable lunatic? Surely?

○○○
UPDATE:

I often cross-post to FireDogLake (http://my.firedoglake.com/oldionus). Here are a couple of the comments that were posted to the above:

Vote Socialist August 24th, 2011 at 3:13 pm «
Why would we want Osterity re-elected? I’m pulling for Mittens; by having a Republican instead of a “Democrat” in the White House, there’d be some opposition to the Austerity Agenda from the Congressional Dems, yet there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between White Romney and Black Romney. Best of both worlds.

Alternatively, there’s the theory that we want the Oristocrats to be humiliated by losing to the most extreme candidate the Rs can nominate. Make the repudiation of the Obama Adminis-Traitor-ion as complete as can be. The bonus here is that Perry/Bachmann/Herman Cain/whoever would tank the economy hard and fast, priming the country for a hard swing to the left in ’16, if not revolution before then. A more extreme idea to be sure, but an argument worth considering.

But if we’re going to elect a Romney next year, I say go for the fresh one, not the one who’s already proven to be a horrible President. No more Black Romney!

○ (Reply )vizmike August 24th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
«I’m with VoteSocialist above. I’m afraid we have to give up on the Democrats. In fact, the way they have been playing us, I would be so bold as to say our first consideration in 2012 is to UTTERLY DEFEAT Obama. We need to smash these triangulating betrayers who will clearly achieve nothing but worse going forward. We must make clear that they can not succeed electorally without moving dramatically our way. And if their failure to do so means the end of the Democratic Party, well, good riddance. I’m not happy about it, but that’s how I see our situation. ///

------------------------------

○○○ To which I can only say that the Democrats are in BIG trouble in 2012 if any significant fraction of their committed, progressive base thinks the way these folks do. I admit I "go there" sometimes, myself, out of sheer frustration with what I see as the cluelessness of Washington Democrats, ESPECIALLY the President, who seems completely oblivious to the FACT that Democrats who FIGHT BACK, and who endorse Labor Issues and Core Democratic Values, consistently do better, and in fact are far more likely to DEFEAT Republicans, when compared to Beltway Obama-style Democrats. The President and the Party leadership better wake up pretty damn soon, or 2012 is going to be a disaster.

Payroll Tax Cut? or "Go Big, Go Long, Go Global"? Both, I guess

2011-08-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

The Republicans have now coalesced around not extending the Payroll Tax "holiday" included in the budget deal last December, which is downright weird, unless you accept the fact (as I do) that they basically hate and couldn't care less about the interests of working and Middle Class people, and care only about the interests of the very rich. So a tax cut that only benefits working people? They don't like it, and won't support it. Makes perfect sense.

So now we read about a "full throated" Democratic push to extend this tax cut.

I was dubious about this idea in the first place. Tax cuts... of any kind... are weak stimulus. And I worry that this undercuts the financial strength of Social Security, which only adds fuel to the Republicans' efforts to portray the program as "in trouble" and "in need of reform." This is actually a ridiculous position on its face in light of the actual facts, which are that Social Security is solvent for decades without any changes. But reducing revenue to the Social Security Trust Fund is not the best way to ensure that Social Security remains protected going forward. Obviously.

Given polling that shows that even a significant majority of Republicans favor increasing taxes on the very richest and closing corporate loopholes (like oil, agribusiness, Pharma; tax breaks for offshoring jobs and assets, etc.), I think the Democrats should focus instead on these areas.

But hey, I get it, that the optics of Republicans fighting for what (in their own formulation, as used in the debate about extending the Bush cuts for the richest) is a tax increase, just works for Democrats.

But let's not lose sight of the fact that most people now get it that the Republicans are fighting for the rich to keep their tax breaks, a very unpopular position. Democrats, and the President, have a historic opportunity to portray the Republicans as out of touch with ordinary people, and working for the interests only of the very rich.

E. J. Dionne, writing in the Post yesterday, urged Obama to "Go Big, Go Long, and Go Global," meaning he needs to make his economic proposals into a major program to revamp the entire economy, as soon as possible. Of course the Republicans will fight tooth and nail; they will anyway. But the President needs a real program that would actually work to run on.

The unbelievable extremity of Rick Perry

2011-08-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

I find it hard to keep emotion out of politics these days. To me, the mere appearance of Rick Perry makes it glaringly obvious that he is a Grade-A asshole who cares for nothing but his own plutocratic interests. Now (here), he's made it clear he really does, with no hyperbole, endorse reversing over 100 years of progress by turning the clock back in terms of the role of the Federal government to before Teddy Roosevelt.

Somehow, as dumbed down as the electorate is, and notwithstanding Bush's Brain co-author Jim Moore's prediction that he will "waltz to the nomination," I just can't believe that the American people are going to go along with this crap.

Or, for that matter, that it will be possible for Perry or the Republican party to walk back from this kind of rhetoric in the run-up to the General Election.

White Paper on Extraterrestrial Contact

2011-08-19T11:58:00.001-07:00

Penn State & NASA have published what I guess you'd call a "White Paper" titled Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity • A Scenario Analysis.
Here. (pdf)

UPDATE (8/24):
Having now perused this paper, which I linked to out of a strong interest in the subject, I can report that it is highly conventional and not really particularly interesting (in addition to being written in the usual stiff and tedious Academese). It claims to help us "train our minds" to think about what extraterrestrial contact would actually mean, but it doesn't really add anything to the thought process that many have already accomplished in that area.

Will the president pivot and start blaming the Rightists for the state of the economy and our nation in general?

2011-08-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have (less and less frequently since 2009) been accused by some fellow Democrats of my acquaintance of giving up on President Obama. People who think like me retort: oh, no, he's given up on us. But I do see a few signs that in small ways, at least, the White House is beginning to realize that they simply HAVE to stop coddling the Rightists, and start blaming them. Politics is not a graduate seminar. What gets said has to be blunt, pointed, and clearly aligned to a particular interest. And for the President, if he wants to be re-elected, which I assume he does, those interests had better start being the interests of Middle Class and working people. And he'd better start making clear what he wants to do, if the people will just give him the means to do it.

I think the president's greatest weaknesses are these:

1. He has no natural or learned gift for negotiation. He accommodates others' interests in advance, and just thinks "of course they'll agree, because I've already taken their interests into account!" But that's not how it works. The Rightists see this as weakness, and take advantage of it to get MORE of what they want. So far, for the Rightists, this has worked every time. (Shall I name some? How about massive tax cuts in the original stimulus, (even though real economists all agree they're less than half as effective as direct stimulus), taking single payer and then public option off the table without a fight, giving up on Employee Free Choice Act without a fight, caving on the Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich without a fight, and the long, sad, disgraceful unfolding of the Debt Hostage Crisis. Note most of these occurred when the Democrats still had a majority in both Houses).

2. Once he became president, he turned off his campaign mode. He fails to understand, or if he understands he fails to act on, the principle that public opinion can be changed by direct appeal, and that a sufficient mass of public opinion still matters in this country. What FDR did with the Fireside chats, and what JFK and Reagan were very good at, i.e., directly appealing to the people for support, this president has done sparsely, without real flare or charisma, and without much effect. He simply has to do better, and make this his main job from now until the election.

Can he turn this around? Of course he can. He's shown himself at times in the past to be a very gifted politician and capable of changing his approach. But whether he will do what needs to be done to consolidate the American people behind him for major Democratic victories in '12, or not, remains to be seen.

Michael Keegan on Rick Perry

2011-08-17T11:18:00.001-07:00

Michael Keegan, of People for the American Way, has an excellent post up summing up the revolting development that is Rick Perry. Here.

Spitzer's advice to Obama

2011-08-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

Never mind any quibbles over the fine details, Elliot Spitzer's advice to the president here (to require taxpayer subsidized banks to cut upside down mortgages and to free up money from foreign wars to create jobs)...is spot-on, and the White House should call him in right now to discuss it, then act on it as quickly as humanly possible, all the while touting that the president is doing something to help the economy, while the "DO-NOTHING 112th CONGRESS" is dithering (echoing Truman in 1948).

Repubs might nominate Perry? Ryan? Hmmm.

2011-08-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I am not entirely upset at the prospect that Perry may overwhelm the current field among the Republicans (not really convinced that's so, but anyway); or that Ryan supposedly might enter the race. I really believe both of these guys, in their very different ways, are inherently unelectable to the presidency.

It's a sad fact that Obama may only be re-electable if the Republicans nominate someone totally unacceptable to the American people, but it looks like they just might.

Resisting the Rightist Takeover

2011-08-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

My new office sign:

DEFEAT of the RIGHTIST

MINORITY TAKEOVER

of AMERICA will mean
we have to be prepared to

TAKE TO THE STREETS
in NONVIOLENT PROTEST.

Believe it.

This isn't hyperbole. These people (Ryan, Bachmann, Perry, McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, you name 'em) will stop at nothing, they care not a whit that they are in the minority on almost all major policy matters, and they have consolidated power due in part to congenital weakness in the President and the Democratic party. I'm convinced we will not be able to defeat them without our own Tahrir Square... and it will be coming.

Buffett: 'Stop coddling the Super-Rich.'

2011-08-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

I find it MOST TELLING that Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the World, said quite definitively recently that the US should raise taxes on the super-rich, and that such a move would not harm investments.

See this.

Gradually, gradually, the people are waking up to the fact that when the agenda driven Republicans make the opposite claim, they are not expressing honest opinions. They are lying.

Could living things on Earth be descended, in part, from alien life? And some inferences

2011-08-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

Could living things on Earth be descended, in part, from alien life?

I've been pondering the whole concept of panspermia and whether it is possible to conclude with reasonable certainty that all life on Earth is of a single origin.

Perhaps my kind reader will remember ~15 years ago, when scientists rather prematurely announced the discovery of Martian fossil microorganisms in a tektite from Mars. (Which led to the speculation that if life could transfer from the Martian orbit to Earth, the more likely direction 4 billion years ago was from Mars to Earth, so maybe Earth life descended from Martian life?) You'll notice, though, that there was hardly any mention of the possibility that Earth life today is a mix of life having separate planetary origins. And this is because there is a scientific paradigm, so far pretty much unshaken, that the genetic code of Earth, and some of its expressions (such as the specific forms of pigment molecules, like chlorophyll and cytochrome), are in some sense arbitrary; i.e., equally likely biochemical processes could have achieved the same or roughly equivalent functionalities, for example, using different base combinations for DNA, or even if DNA exactly in the form it is found on Earth is universally optimal, surely some of the early-evolved and nearly universal proteins found in every living cell on Earth are not; they are simply contingently evolved. In other words, they could just as well have been different—not radically different, but perceptibly different. But they're not. And the simplest, most likely explanation for everything sharing something that's just the way it is by happenstance is that they all share a common origin. All the biochemical markers, then, point to a single common ancestor.

When it was discovered some years back that what had always been referred to as bacteria were actually two entirely separately evolved lines of similar-morphology organisms, with some differences in biochemistry and genetic markers indicating extremely ancient divergence (the Archaea and the Eubacteria), there was a flurry of discussion in the pop sci rags about the possibility that one or the other of them originated elsewhere, and that we do in fact live in a multiple-origin biosphere.

But from what I understand, those who really understand the molecular chemistry involved (which of course I don't at all), quickly squelched that controversy by demonstrating to any reasonable person's satisfaction that the Archaea and the Eubacteria clearly had many contingent elements in common and were all but unquestionably the descendants of a common ancestor. All the serious discussions of the origin of life question seem to agree that all the evidence so far points to the conclusion that all terrestrial life shares a common ancestor; best guess for time frame is more than 3 but less than 4 billion years b.p. There are some outliers (only among the microbes), which are probably remote isolates of rather early populations that struck out in a different direction from most other life, but in a large set of parameters, every cell shares a significant set of common markers.

So, what does this say about panspermia, or the possibility, often touted in science fiction, that in the long history of life on Earth (at least 12 Galactic revolutions of the Sun (=~250 m.y.)), perhaps there had been visitors... whether sentient or incidental (riding on interstellar flotsam), that penetrated the biosphere of Earth.

What can a rational person actually infer about that?

It seems obvious to me, first, that it cannot be categorically ruled out. A meteorite that entered the Solar system from another star system (unlikely, but not spectacularly so), could have intersected Earth's orbit and survived reentry to crash onto the surface, somewhere in all that time. If it had spores or dormant organisms, they could have survived. This, indeed, could conceivably have been the source of the first life on Earth, although that would require a remarkable coincidence and so falls in the category of special pleading insofar as it should be thought of as a theory.

It's also possible that this could have happened and whatever was on the rock just didn't survive. That eventuality is not particularly interesting: it can't be ruled out, but has no real consequences and so leads nowhere.

It's conceivable, although less and less likely as research into the biochemistry of life gets more and more complete, that this happened, and alternate origin life is here, just not yet discovered.

And then there's the possibility that alien intelligent beings traveled here at some time in that vast expanse of time (after all, from the point of view of the likelihood of time enough for intelligent life to evolve, the universe has been more or less as it is now for much if not all of that time). Perhaps these visitors, finding a world already teeming with life, prudently decided to quarantine themselves so as not to contaminate our world. This too, is intriguing, but unprovable, at least for now, and not supported by any evidence, Nazca megaglyphs and whatnot notwithstanding. (The whole popular meme of "ancient astronauts" is a house of cards of pure silliness; if you don't agree, I'll leave it to you to investigate). Anyway, if alien visitation ever did happen, just by the laws of chance, it was probably many millions of years ago.

But what did not happen, I think can reasonably be inferred from the terrestrial biological evidence, is that alien visitors arrived here, walked around in the open air, allowed our planet to interact with the organisms of their native biosphere, and then left. If that had happened, to a pretty high probability I'm pretty sure, there would have been contamination, and some of that alien life would have likely survived here. It might have overwhelmed our biosphere, or, possibly, simply co-existed, evolving perhaps into forms that filled niches to which its particular predispositions fitted it. But there is simply no evidence of this; and from what I understand, if it had happened, there would be. We could tell if a type of fungus or a type of bacteria were descended from a different origin of life than ours.

I suppose you could say, well, maybe life here originated there, but that just takes us back to panspermia, and it seems to me that just defers the origin question anyway. Somewhere, somehow, life had to have originated, and clearly there just hasn't been enough time for life to have originated somewhere else and filled the universe, or even the Galaxy, through panspermia... unless directed by super beings with nearly divine powers... in which case, why in Their name, would they be so secretive? It just doesn't add up, in my mind.

So this brings me to several inferential conclusions:

Life on Earth originated here, and has never mixed with alien life. To a fair certainty.
Intelligent aliens have never visited Earth, or, if they have, they quarantined themselves and left no biological traces.
Since, if spacefaring intelligent civilizations were extremely common, No. 2 above would seem rather unlikely, they are, and have throughout the history of life on Earth, been rare. (This inference requires some background on the evolution of intelligence and the likelihood of space travel, etc., which I've discussed before on the Gyromantic Informicon; what I am referring to as unlikely is that if there had been a lot of visits, they wouldn't all have been successfully quarantined).

I think these are the only reasonable conclusions from the facts.

Any contrarian comments would be most welcome.

UPDATE:

In defense of my dismissal above of the idea of "ancient astronauts," I add the following:

First, although it is conceivable that alien spacecraft could actually enter the atmosphere without contaminating the Earth with alien life (had such contamination occurred, it would almost certainly have left detectable traces)... it does not appear to me to be likely that any significant intervention in human affairs could have occurred without actual contact with extraterrestrial living things. Which, I reiterate, would almost certainly have left detectable biochemical traces. As Sagan says, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, but the burden of proof is on those making the claim. I submit that since, despite substantial ongoing biochemical research for over a century, no hint of extraterrestrial biochemistry in Earth's biosphere has ever been demonstrated, it is reasonable, using Occam's Razor, to state that to a reasonable certainty there has been no mixing of extraterrestrial life with Earth life at any time.

The next point is that the first point implies, at the very least, that extraterrestrial visits to Earth, which would have at least some probability of introducing such contamination, throughout the history of life on this planet, must have been quite rare, if they occurred at all. Something which has some non-zero probability becomes a near-certainty, given enough time; and if the contamination had ever occurred, it would still be detectable, in all likelihood; there's little reason to just assume that the extraterrestrial life would have died out, every time. So there are three things: (1) a posited nonzero chance of visits, (2) a deduced nonzero chance of contamination, and (3) a deduced relatively high chance that if contamination had occurred, the extraterrestrial life would have survived in some form and would remain detectable and would have been detected by now. Even if you estimate high for (1), low for (2), and minimize (3), either by saying contamination would likely not have occurred or that it wouldn't necessarily have been detected, if you give any reasonable values to these three factors, a large number of visits necessarily implies contamination, and that just does not appear to be the case from all available evidence.

The final point is just how statistically unlikely it is that, in the vast span of Earth's history, one or more of the necessarily small number of visits (given the first two points) that may have occurred would have occurred recently. Let's stipulate that the likelihood of visitation in any given ten million year period throughout the history of life on Earth has to be treated as approximately equal, let's say x% chance in any given ten million year slot; you can say whether x is vanishingly small or substantial, it doesn't matter for this point. Now, why do I say this? Because the universe as a whole is approximately 13 billion years old, and all galaxies are roughly the same age. There was an early period, during which most stars were mostly hydrogen and helium, but the roughly "current epoch," in which stellar evolution has led to abundant metals and the possibility of planetary environments conducive to life, is at minimum several billion years in duration, so the chance of a civilization achieving technology comparable or superior to ours at any time during the history of life on Earth has to be considered to be relatively constant over time. I don't see how this can really be argued against.

The chance of visitation in 3 billion years is then 300x, which if x is high enough, could approach certainty if you assign any substantial value to x, but that chance is spread equally over the entire time. Since there is no actual evidence that this has ever happened, the chance that it likely happened anytime in human history has to be deemed to be exceedingly small. In other words, let's say there were 10 visits to Earth by aliens in 3 billion years, at random. Just statistically, the chance that even one of them occurred in the last 20,000 years is ~0.007%. Not very realistic odds.

I rest my case.

A FINAL COMMENT
16.Aug.11
• Just in case anyone has read this and wondered why anyone would care about any of this, since it's all so removed from our everyday concerns, apart from the pure intellectual curiosity of it, which I believe is essential to the survival of the human race, my answer is this: we have to conclude, as the least unlikely eventuality, that we are effectively on our own as a species. There will likely be no deus ex machina from older and wiser predecessor extraterrestrials, and, as I went into in great detail earlier on the Gyromantic, we are not at any time in the foreseeable future going to have an economically viable alternative habitat to our own Earth. So we better the hell preserve and protect her and make sure she remains habitable. That is probably the essential lesson of our time.

Drew Westen in NYT: What happened to Obama?

2011-08-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

Drew Westen's piece in the NYT is an absolute must-read. It is a chronicle of failure, of good intentions and missed opportunities. But, primarily, it is a tale of bitter tragedy, because we had a brief moment of real opportunity, but it turned out the man we elected just didn't have the ability to bend the arc of history, to use one of his favorite phrases. Now we are left to try desperately to pick up the pieces.

Some will try to defend the president and say this is too harsh a judgment, but I think not.