The NRA is a Terrorist Organization

The National Rifle Association is a terrorist organization.  It is complicit in the murder and maiming of thousands of Americans every year.  The Association, despite its overwhelming political agenda, calls itself a charity and has 501(c)3 status.  Unbelievable.  The NRA, its leadership, and, yes, its members must face the reality of their murderous legacy.

The Emperor's New Clothes

The biggest problem with living the big lie is that just one lone defector can crash the whole enterprise.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie demolished years of Republican party propaganda in just three days.  The man who was keynote speaker at this year's Republican National Convention praised his party's biggest worstest scariest awfullest demon multiple times and received warm praise from the President in return.  The two walked together through some of the worst damaged parts of New Jersey.  Romney must be on the floor in one of his mansions kicking his feet and chewing the antique, hand-knotted Persian carpet.  Fox and Friends needed a complete hard reboot following their morning video interview with Christie and Heckuvajob Brownie, in trying to find some reason for bashing Obama, instead showed himself to be too stupid to know how stupid he is.  The Republicans are so nusto crazy extreme these days, that just one man doing his job honestly and honorably appears, in contrast, like Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. 

Rocky III

We are all toddlers informed only by single syllable words and unable to do simple arithmetic.  That is the most important conclusion I drew from Monday night's debate.

Mitt Romney tells us that all nations exist only to serve American purpose.  We are not allowed to understand our enemies or imagine objectives that may not be Americentric.  Good guys and bad guys.  White hats and black.  Life is so simple.  Be tough, send messages, and continue to inflate a military that has, after 11 years in Afghanistan and 9 in Iraq, fought to poorly defined stalemates.  Do you remember those bumper stickers that said, "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam"?  Mitt doesn't.  I do.

The world's greatest businessman and financial wizard has a plan to simultaneously (1) balance the US budget, (2) cut taxes by 20%, and (3) increase military spending.  Half of America is believes him.  Then, again, half of all Americans are below average intelligence.  I don't know the size of the correlation, but I would be willing to bet -- $10,000 anyone? -- that it is large.

Liar's Logic

Romney has discovered a corollary to Goebbels' Law.  The Nazi propaganda minister said tell one big lie and then repeat it again and again and again. Mitt prefers breadth to depth.  Romney's tells a million lies.  Each Romney lie can be refuted, but there just isn't enough time to knock them down. One big lie can be answered.  A million lies are like a denial of service internet attack.  The system crashes from overload. 

There is an old joke about Lyndon Johnson that applies well to Mittens.  Johnson lied often, so people became adept at reading his body language.  If LBJ tugged at his ear, you knew he was telling the truth.  If he leaned back in his chair and put his feet up, he was telling the truth.  If he interlaced his fingers, he was telling the truth.  And, if he opened his mouth, he was lying. 
 

The Basics

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  So many words; so few ideas.  I wish that President Obama was tougher and sharper on Wednesday night.  Sure.  And I wish that Mitt Romney had been battered with sweet science precision; a bleeding cut above one eye, a good bruise on one cheek.  Enough damage to guarantee a unanimous decision, but not enough to draw pity.  Didn't happen.  Too bad.

But, the real disappointment was the distance both candidates stayed from the fundamental principles that should define these United States:

1. Health care is a right, not a privilege.  
2. No one in America should go hungry.  
3. Everyone in the country has the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and eat uncontaminated food.  
4. All children have the right to high quality education including university education.
5. The laws of this country including the tax code must guarantee items 1 through 4.  

 Keep your eyes on the prize.

How Obama Should Answer Romney's Secret Speech

Charlie Pierce, as always, got it right in creating the speech that Romney should give in response to the secret tape.

 There is a corresponding speech that Obama should make -- though he won't -- to the same audience:

Listen up and shut up.  I'm all you got.  You want to keep tying yourself to that dying elephant?  Go ahead.  That party is going down.  Nothing coming but years and years of failed national elections.  Sure, they'll still win big for school boards and dog catchers.  But, that's not what you care about.  Is it?  So, here's the deal: I'm all you got.  Capiche?  I mean, where else are you going to go?  Put your money in euros or sterling or yen or renminbi?  Swiss francs?  Don't make me laugh.  Yessirree.  Uncle Sam is the only game left and, right now, I'm the croupier.  Got it?

I'm going to let you keep most of your money.  From now on, though, you only get to haul it in with dumpsters instead of 18-wheelers.  Quelle fucking dommage.  Glass-Steagall is coming back.   Yeah.  There's gonna be boring, nine-to-five bankers and there's gonna be high flying investment aces; but you can't be both.  You guys get to figure out who is who.  Draw straws.  Russian roulette.  I don't give a fuck.  Just make it happen or you get cuffed and perp-walked from Wall Street down to Battery Park where I will personally toss you the fuck into the fucking river. 

And, the SEC?  It's coming back for real.  No more old-fashioned fat wheezing cop on the beat willing to look the other way for a few bucks.  Uh-uh.  Real.  I may even put Elliot Spitzer in charge.  Ha ha ha.  

I know what you're thinking.  I know you're wondering what you are going get from this deal.  The answer is a stable, predictable, reliable economy.  No more insane booms and busts.  No more masters of the universe bullshit.  You get to make money.  You get to keep a lot of it. What's not to like?

 In return, you have to grow the fuck up and pay taxes.  This country of ours -- emphasis ours -- needs good schools, firefighters, cops, roads, hospitals, and parks.  You are gonna help pay.  No different than what your parents and grandparents did.  And, you're gonna like it.  In fact, you're gonna love it.  Because, I'm all you got.  You didn't mind when the Republican party was overloaded with crackpot religious fanatics who cared only about abortion and evolution.  It didn't matter, did it?  You got your tax cuts; the loons got the shaft.  Your streets were paved with gold.  Now, though, the inmates are in charge of the GOP.  They are ready to screw you by losing big time.   Let me repeat, "I'm all you got."

The decision is all yours. And, I'm a generous guy.   No hard feelings.  You and the missus will still get invited to the White House next term.  You're still big cheeses.  Still on the A-list.  But, if you are not with me now, if you don't show your love for me with your wallets, then you will get the tables in the back next to the kitchen where you will sit with crazy Ron Paul and his Kim-Jong-Il-style Senator son, and they will tag-team lecture you on the benefits of the gold standard and their commitment to freezing the debt ceiling.  In other words, I'm all you got.

 

The CEO President

Romney is really in trouble. Congressman, Senate candidate, and religiomisogynist Todd Aiken is still in the Senate race despite Mitt's call for him to step aside. Mittens looks weak and foolish.  Talk about the emperor not having any clothes.  Romney has no goddamn clout within his own goddamn party. If this were 2000 or 2004, you could bet that a Karl-Rove-led death squad would have eradicated Aiken by now. No congressman can ever be allowed to defy the party's presidential nominee. No fucking way. The bastard's body would have been drawn and quartered and his head mounted on a pike set atop the St. Louis arch and left to rot until after election day.

Once again, Romney's supposed strength -- his CEO expertise -- has been undermined.  Back during the good old days at Bain, if the manager of a midwest satellite office embarrassed the hell out of the company, Romney would have issued a pink slip and some fixer from the home office would have flown out to take temporary control until the mess was cleaned up.  Two security guards, neither smaller than a beer truck, would make sure that Aiken cleaned out his desk and left quickly.  Aiken's photo and license plate numbers would be posted in the guard shack at the company entrance along with instruction to never ever let him back in.  More importantly, for Romney, it would have been 15 minutes and done.  A couple of phone calls.  If Aiken's transgressions went beyond embarrassing to criminal, then Mittens might have needed to issue a public statement and the 15 minutes could have stretched to half an hour.  But, that's all.  Romney's involvement, from start to finish, would have been finished and forgotten before lunch. 

The real Todd Aiken is not following the business model.  This is down and dirty politics, and Romney doesn't know what to do.  The upper class twit who expects to become the most powerful human being on the planet, can't even get rid of a dimwitted knuckle-dragging member of his own party. 

Chris Hedges is a Dolt

One week ago, Chris Hedges' Truthdig post began with,

On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death.

 As a scientist, I have gone through a range of emotions and responses to this condemnation. But, the most appropriate is Carol Kane's line from Annie Hall, “I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.”

Battling stereotypes often comes down to accountancy.  I could counter Hedges' block condemnation of scientists by enumerating science's triumphs starting with victories against communicable disease. Smallpox is estimated to have killed at least 300 million people in the 20^th century. Overall fatality rates were 1-in-3, and as high as 80% for children. Now the disease is gone. Polio, measles, and pertussis were also heading to near extinction, until anti-science, anti-vaxers kicked public health to the curb and watched children die. Who, in these examples, are the moral idiots?

Assaying science's benefits misses the point, though. Instead, Hedges' essay is really the mystery of the dog that barked in the night. He condemns scientists, technicians, communists, and fascists by name, and rapacious capitalists indirectly. Who else is left? World War I, he tells us, negated three hundred years of Enlightenment. He brings in Freud to describe the dark side of human nature and lists writers, artists, and musicians who explored that darkness. (Why did sourpuss include Henri Matisse? Where is the gloom in fauvism or his large canvases or the vast colored-paper collages that characterized Matisse's final work? And, how could anyone be gloomy who created a household that included both wife and mistress?) But, Hedges omits the guides who can bring us to the light. We get plenty of villains; where are the moral geniuses?

I infer from Chrs Hedges other writing that religion is the missing piece. Unfettered science dooms us all; only religion can save us. We must not drink freely from the fountain of knowledge because it is polluted with powerful poisons and tainted with hubris and deification delusions. Holy men must carefully separate and distill, then only they will fill our cups with the good and hide the bad. This approach may not eliminate “ancient lusts for war, violence and death,” but, thank god, those passions will remain unamplified. Eliminating atomic weapons and missiles and aircraft, transforms mass murder into hard slow work. Death tolls will be minimized by inefficiency.  We must look elsewhere for "the most potent agents of death."  Rwanda in 1994 is a key example. (Okay, so I'm heading back to using numbers.)  Limited to knives, machetes, and hand-held weapons, the killing rate averaged only 5000-to-10,000 people per day from early April through mid-July.

Just a small part of America's nuclear arsenal could kill two million people in a few seconds. In contrast, Pol Pot needed three long years to murder an equal number of Cambodians. His Khmer Rouge accomplices had to use starvation and executions with outdated guns. They sought an agrarian society free from intellectualism. Wearing eyeglasses was a sign of book learning, and grounds for execution. No totems to science there.

I lived in Los Alamos, NM, from 1980 to 1982. The town had 27 churches and 3 bars. Really.  At first, I just assumed that the scientists and engineers needed absolution from their weapons work.  There must have been, I thought, so much guilt and moral uncertainty that the town needed 27 churches to counsel all the worried souls.  Three bars also made sense.  Excessive drinking had to be done quietly in private because alcoholics or binge drinkers might lose their security clearances.  

After a few months, I realized my naivete and ignorance.  Piety and weapons work were comfortable partners in a long-term relationship.  God and country.  America's enemy was also, conveniently, religion's foe.  The message to Los Alamites from the pulpits was simple and clear:  you are doing righteous, good work.  Sure, a few outsiders showed up with protest placards every August 6th and 9th; but the local churches had no part in those barely noticed demonstrations. 

When I questioned one of the stalwarts about the need for a nuclear stockpile that could kill everyone on earth several times over, he pointed out that Mutually Assured Destruction had worked.  Thirty-five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no country had again used a nuclear weapon against another country.  He and his colleagues believed they were protecting their families and country.  They were not amoral cogs in the vast military machinery.  They really believed their work to be good.  And, their churches -- all twenty-seven -- concurred.

Yes, the Los Alamos scientists and engineers were irrational in their weighing of benefits and risks.  They ignored the environmental destruction that the nuclear arms industry created at home, and downplayed the financial waste.  Those are human traits that we all share.  And, so, back to Chris Hedges, I wonder if he can identify a golden age when rational thought dominated science and technology, and when art, music, and literature were always uplifting. The scenario actually sounds horrible to me. Something like a Twilight Zone re-creation of Lake Wobegon. Hedges' doesn't identify a refuge – either historic or hypothetical – from his stereotype-filled dystopia.

Society's best hope is more knowledge, not less. Some of it can even protect us from self-delusion.  

Drop Back Another Quarter Century

Similarities between the Great and Lesser Depressions are obvious: banking collapse, liquidity traps, and upper class twits moving confidently in the wrong direction.  But, the intransigence of the Very Serious People (as Paul Krugman calls the always wrong and never in doubt crowd) also echoes World War I.  Austerians have transformed economics into a trench warfare.  Middle-class and poor people are being ground to paste.  Their savings have been eradicated.  Their once most valuable assets are as worthless as Confederate bonds.  Higher education, long identified as the ticket for upward mobility, is a dead-end section of trench bottomed with quicksand.  

Comfortable generals in grand far away places exhort the hoi polloi to climb up and out of the trenches.  Stop being so damn lazy.  Be entrepreneurs.  Take risks.  Be like us!   You, too, can become self-made, rags-to-riches, Horatio Algers.  You only need the will and gumption to run successfully across mine fields, under concertina wire, and through machine gun fire.  Anyone can do it!  But, hush, the generals  keep secrets.  They know that only a few people will make it rich.  Most will end up exhausted and broken; either caught in the trenches or eviscerated in no mans' land.  The generals know because they planted the mines, unrolled the concertina wire, and hired the mercenaries manning the 100-shot-a-minute guns.

When Will it All End?

It's always about the money.  Every time and every place.  America's gunnuttery will stop when business balks at the costs.  Aurora's mass murder differs from the Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Gabby Gifford prequels because James Holmes picked a private business filled with paying customers.  Movie theaters across the country will now pay more for security and liability insurance.  I don't know who will cover medical expenses for Friday's injured victims; but, I'm certain that theaters will be held responsible following any copycat attacks.

The gun lobby is successful because they have all the money.  Gun manufacturers, right-wing millionaires, and paranoid anti-government nutters have created a powerful lobbying organization.  No one else comes close.  Moral arguments and public health advocates are overwhelmed.  Michael Moore won a small concession from K-Mart by generating bad publicity for the company.  K-Mart made a business decision  -- the chain stopped selling hand-gun ammunition -- that was motivated entirely by their bottom line.  Morality was not part of the calculation.  


But, now, maybe the slaughter in Colorado will have a positive, lasting consequence.  Gun violence may cost big business some real money.  And, suddenly, supporting the gun nuts might become too damned expensive.  

It's all about the money

Libor, schmibor.  I expect money guys to cheat.  Why not?  When your world is all about money, when your career is defined entirely by the amount of money you make, and when your social status is based on how much money you have, then people will cheat.  The small scale stuff is easy to rationalize.  What's the big deal about diddling Libor by a basis point or two?  Do a favor for a friend who will make money today.  He owes you one.  Right?  Hey, it's easy money.  No one's going to notice.  


Now, move from the global casino of world finance into a real casino.  You're going to be watched very carefully.  Sit down to play blackjack, and you are on TV.  You better keep your cards on the table top.  Move them to your lap, and somebody is going to remind you about the rules.  If you transgress a second time, you will be told to cash in your chips and leave.  Don't come back. 
  
Some guy starts getting lucky at poker.  Expect him and the dealer to get plenty of attention from house security.  In a real casino, winning too often, beating the odds, isn't a sign of vast intellect and financial prowess; it's a red flag.  Bernie Madoff could never have made a nickel on a casino floor.  He knew it, too.  Cheating at cards is for chumps.  Real money comes when no one can watch too carefully or when the watchers sell their silence.  


So, all I ask is that the Wall Street honchos holding my retirement funds and mortgage and bank account get the same attention given to the poor bastards in one of the casinos up the road.  

Sixty-Eight Years After D-Day

Yesterday was the 68th anniversary of D-Day. I wonder how many men who survived those beaches on that day remain alive. A 20-year-old soldier would now be 88. Must be some left.

My father often described waking at dawn on D-Day to see the sky black with airplanes from horizon to horizon. All were flying south towards the English Channel and France. Dad was stationed at a small airfield in Kingston Bagpuize in England near Abingdon and Oxford. Everyone – soldiers and civilians – knew the invasion was imminent, but few knew the timetable or the weather-related delays. Information was particularly scarce at Kingston Bagpuize; the airmen and planes were not part of the early morning action. Instead, they waited for news and sat with mixed feelings created by their safety in the docile English countryside 150 miles from the war's great battle.

I grew up knowing the end of the story. The United States prevailed against Germany in World War II just as we had beaten them before. I never imagined that people of my parents' generation had contemplated defeat or that the invasion might have been a history-making disaster. My father and I saw “The Longest Day” soon after it came out. I was eight. The movie fit a child's automatic patriotism; good guys prevail over bad guys.

As an adult, learning to cope with big uncertainties, I finally understood at least part of my father's fears on that day. Just before noon a pilot friend of his pointed to a small plane parked near the main runway, “I'm authorized to fly it. Why don't we head over the channel and see what's happening?”  Information. Are we winning or losing? What's really happening? Dad, though, had great instincts for understanding fear and confusion. Neither he nor his friend knew the passwords and codes required to enter the airspace. Soldiers in battle would shoot at anything. The small plane would likely be brought down by friendly fire. They just had to wait.

It was early evening when my father realized that all was well. The airmen at Kingston Bagpuize finally got their D-Day orders. Marc watched enlisted men loading crates of Coca-Cola into the big planes that took off and flew south. Not ammunition or medical supplies or soldiers suited up for battle. Coca-Cola. The Army could give priority to air lifting a small luxury to the battle area. Only one explanation fit. 

Game Over for the Climate

Read James Hansen's op-ed piece in yesterday's NY Times.  If you are a parent or a grandparent, an aunt or an uncle, you have a duty to act.  Passivity is not an option.  E-mail your Senators and member of Congress.  It doesn't take much effort.  Contact information for your Senators is available here.  You can find your Congressman or Congresswoman here.  Just tell them to read Hansen's article and to act.  Now.  

Let's take the crackpot Republican support for the Keystone XL pipeline, and turn it into a devastating election-year opportunity.  The message writes itself:  supporting the pipeline is an attack on our children and grandchildren.  Nothing is more cruel or more shameful.  

If you need extra ammunition, read Charles Pierce's "Accidental Activist" piece.  Here's my favorite part:

[Randy Thompson]'s laughed at the preposterous promises of an economic boom; at one point, TransCanada promised that the pipeline would provide 100,000 new jobs. It later was revealed that these jobs included employment in the "entertainment" industry that would spring up along the pipeline's route. "Strippers," Randy says. "They're talking about strippers. And temporary strippers at that."

Good News Squared

Good news is so scarce these days that I can't get over having two cheering items on two successive days.  First,the Brits came right out and reported:

We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company. 

OK, so it is a dog-bites-man story, but welcome and a long time coming nevertheless.

The second item requires a back story.  On April 11th, a barefoot, nightshirt-clad man shot at close range an unoccupied, specially-equipped SUV that the Santa Fe police department uses to catch speeders.  The vehicle was parked unoccupied at the roadside.  On-board radar triggers cameras that photograph the license plates of passing speeding cars.  Citations are issued electronically.  Here's the video from the SUV camera:


Two weeks later, responding to an anonymous tip, the police interviewed Scott Powell who lives close to the site of the shooting.  Powell owned a grey 2011 Audi that looks like the shooter's car.  The next day, Powell traded in that car for a new, blue Audi.  When the police returned to Powell's house to arrest him, Powell led the cops on a car chase through Santa Fe before being apprehended near a doctor's office.

Powell is 63.  He has no previous problems with the law.  He is well educated, lives in an affluent part of the city, and is a book dealer specializing in first editions and Irish literature.  He also has a permit to carry concealed weapons.  Yes, New Mexico is one of those states.  Gun nuts say we are all safer because good gentlemen like Scott Powell can walk our streets and drive our roads carrying hidden weaponry.  Until last week, the gunnies must have loved him.  What a poster boy!  No priors.  Financially stable.  He sells rare books; you can't find a better way to imply calm, gentle, and trustworthy.  Scott Powell is no George Zimmerman.

Scott Powell also seems to have gone bonkers.  No one wants him on their team anymore.  Police searched his house after the arrest and seized a .45 caliber automatic pistol. a .357 revolver, a Beretta handgun, a Sig Sauer handgun, an unidentified handgun wrapped in plastic, three Beretta shotguns, and a bag of "miscellaneous ammunition."  Powell's lawyer explained to the press that Powell has serious health problems including cancer, depression and attention deficit disorder.  The state of New Mexico found him fit to carry concealed handguns.  A crazy, depressed man with ADD and whole bunch of weapons.

Oh, yeah.  Stalwart, gun-totin', citizen Powell fired five shots at a parked car from 10 feet.  Two of those bullets missed completely.  From three paces away.

Feeling safe yet?

Double-plus Ungood

I'm numb.  I watched part of Leslie Stahl's interview with the CIA's former torturer-in-chief, Jose Rodriguez.  I had to turn it off after 5 minutes.  It's like hitting your thumb with a hammer.  There's a moment when you know it's going to hurt like hell, but the pain has not yet started, and you wait in trepidation.  In my case, over 12 hours have passed and I am still waiting for the outrage to overwhelm my consciousness.  Instead, I am in shock.  My eyes won't focus.  My ears buzz.  The man who led America's team of torture and cruelty is fucking loony.  Is everyone in Langley this absurd, or was the GWOT a special modern cadre of "the best and the brightest?"


I couldn't count the real news stories that spewed from Rodriguez's mouth like shit from a goose.  Leslie Stahl let them lie to rot on the studio floor.  Ten years after 9/11, the CIA and FBI continue to fight each other.  What?  Hold on.  Really?  Isn't that important?  The segment continued without pause.  During the brief part of the interview that I watched, Mr. CIA talked about interrogating Abu Zubaydah who was badly wounded when captured in Pakistan.  Zubaydah was cooperative while recuperating from his injuries.  Then, he went quiet, and the CIA turned to torture.  Except, maybe he didn't go quiet.  The FBI says otherwise.  Huh?  Wait a minute?  But, Lesley Stahl allowed her self-serving guest to move on and explain that Zubayah became a tough character who had to be broken by waterboarding.  Except, Rodriguez added astonishing contradiction; Zubayah best responded to "insult slaps."  WTF?  The prisoner is indifferent to simulated drowning, but sings like a canary after a slap across the face?  No.  That's completely crazy.  


Rodriguez responded to Stahl's question about stress positions by showing that prisoners were forced to hold their arms straight up overhead.  Not such a big deal, he explained.  Just like exercising at the gym.  Only different.  


I turned off the television.  

The Best and The Worst

Early in my first year of college, the chemistry faculty described their research in a series of short talks to the potential chem majors. I best remember Prof. JS. He fit the stereotype: dumpy, balding, thick glasses, and a short sleeve white polyester shirt half in and half out of his trousers. JS talked about his work on alveolar surfactants; the proteins that coat the tiny air sacs in our lungs and reduce the effort required to draw each breath. All of us, in 1971, remembered well Patrick Bouvier Kennedy's short life. He was born premature in the summer of 1963 to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The baby lived only three days. Preemies are born before those air sac proteins develop. The babies struggle for each breath. In 1963, many, including Patrick Kennedy, died. And, there was JS, rumpled and completely uncool, telling us about his work to save those babies. The professor was a hero. Of all the descriptors, it was the most appropriate adjective. The one to endure.

I thought again of that day in 1971 when reading the latest New Yorker. An article by Jerome Groopman  covers oncology researchers who are trying with some success to drive cancer into remission by activating our human immune systems. A few pages further back Jill Lepore reports on America's gun fetishism. The two articles contrast the best and worst of humanity.

The cancer researchers are now making progress with methods once abandoned as ineffective. Cancer grows and spreads because mutant cells are too much like their healthy progenitors to trigger immune response. The new therapies super-charge patients' T-cells to induce that extra bit of activity that allows the T-cells to target cancer cells. The approach is not perfect. Supercharged T-cells, like more conventional chemotherapy, may also destroy healthy tissue. But, the research as explained seems like true progress. And the researchers? We don't get much insight about their psyches other than overriding perseverance. These men and women work hard. Are they motivated by ego? Probably. Do they view their research as a competition with other scientists? Certainly. Does it matter? No. Successful research will save many lives. It is hard, slow, grinding, frustrating work toward a heroic cause. The best side of humanity

Jill Lepore's gunnies, in constrast, are immature, diminished people. Their stories are all about emotional (and intellectual) defects without redemption. Gun fetishists use the 2^nd amendment as post-hoc justification for preset conclusion. The Bill of Rights is a cloth remnant. One-half of one tenth was carefully cut out and sewn by the NRA into a drum major's tunic. The rest was tossed on the ground; ignored, forgotten, unseen. Think of mafiosi pleading the 5^th, then cheering themselves as constitutional stalwarts and noble souls motivated exclusively by their love of the Bill of Rights and the Nation.  

Lepore interviews David Keene, the NRA's new president, whose son is doing time for shooting at a driver during a road rage incident. 

He was sentenced to ten years in prison for “using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.” I asked Keene if this private tragedy had left him uncertain about what the N.R.A. had wrought. He said no: “You break the law, you pay the price.” 

I asked Keene if any public atrocity had given him pause. He explained that it is the N.R.A.’s policy never to comment on a shooting. 

I asked him how he would answer critics who charge that no single organization has done more to weaken Americans’ faith in government, or in one another, than the N.R.A. 

“We live in a society now that’s Balkanized,” Keene said. “But that has nothing to do with guns.”

Gunnies exist in tiny rooms without mirrors or doors.  No chance for self-reflection or path forward.  They are the unwanted opposites of Groopman's scientists.

Blowback

Mitt Romney will likely be the Republican party's 2012 presidential nominee.  He is wealthy, dull, hypocritical, inconsistent, pandering, and mendacious.  Guess which adjective matters most.  Yeah.  It's the money.  And, now it's time to welcome the far right to the Citizens United blowback.  I hope they're happy.

Despite all talk about the GOP being dominated by ultra-conservative crazies, the Republicans have ended up with the guy without true right wing bona fides.  Romney's record in Massachusetts, his religion, his flip-flopping, and his demeanor all alienate the base.  How did that happen?  Guess what?  It was easy.  One not-Romney after another came charging out of the trenches, sprinted across no-man's land, and got blasted by a Gatling gun spew of money, and more money, and endless money.  The ammunition belts were fed some by Romney himself, but most were handled by masked men under super-PAC banners.  Once again, the biggest losers are all the dim rubes and nuts for Jesus whose votes gave America the five-ninths of a Supreme Court that tips the scales of justice using piles of cash.  The same tapioca brains cheering Citizens United because all they could feel was the tingle-up-the-spine joy from the SCOTUS-endorsed attack on Hillary Clinton, now are the victims.  Their hopes, their voices have been buried by millions and millions and millions of dollars.

Historians will not argue this point.  Instead, it will be the English majors writing their senior-year projects who will debate Tragedy or Comedy?

A Message to Job Creators

Hey, All You Job Creators,

If you were really doing your job which is to create jobs for the rest of the country, our unemployment rate would be a lot lower.  So, here is my modest proposal.  The nation will give you people three months to bring the unemployment rate down to 5%.  You do it by creating lots of jobs.  Lots of jobs.  After all, that's what you say you do.  That's what justifies your low tax rates.  If you pull that off, Congress and the President make the Bush tax cuts permanent.  If not, it's Eisenhower time, with a 70% top rate for all types of income.

Seems reasonable to me.  A carrot and a stick, and a great opportunity for the wealthy to truly put their money where their mouths are.

Blog Against Theocracy 2012

Here is a recipe for catastrophe: Base your society on myth and superstition, and then claim those ideas are profound and immutable.  Nothing good can come from it.

Take, as one example, the "Personhood" idea.  I like the example because there is an easily-followed path from religion to politics to law to lunacy.  In other words, the consequences of theocracy.  "Personhood" grants to fertilized human ova all of the legal status of living people.  The failed amendment to the Mississippi state constitution gives a definition, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof."  My emphasis.  

 Religious zealotry crashes into physiologic reality.  Fertilization usually takes place in the fallopian tubes.  At least 50% of fertilized human eggs fail to implant in the uterus.  Those eggs have, typically, divided seven or eight times to form a hollow ball of about 150 cells called a blastocyst that is between 0.1 and 0.2 mm in diameter.  That is really tiny.  One hundred blastocysts can fit on the head of a pin.  All of the loser  blastocysts -- the ones that don't implant -- become part of the woman's menstrual flow.

The outflowing blastocysts are stillborn babies in a Personhood theocracy.  Deaths must be recorded, micro-corpses buried or cremated, and death certificates issued.  It gets ickier.  Lots ickier.  Every tampon and sanitary napkin used by every fertile, sexually active woman will need to be examined for dead blastocysts.  After all, you can't allow women to toss dead bodies into the trash. 

In math or science, we call it Reductio ad absurdum.  An idea is disproven by showing its consequences to be absurd.  I've not yet talked with a Personhooder about the absurd consequences of fertilized-eggs-are-people.  All I know is that the realities of human physiology have not yet deterred the zealots.  And, remember, the Personhood idea is just one sample of crazy intended by American theocrats.  

Global Warming. Part 1

Global warming is real.  It is caused by people and the consequences are likely to be devastating.

This is the first of several posts I will be writing about the basic science of global warming.  I hope to give readers useful tools for debating the deniers.  When your crotchety old uncle starts badmouthing Al Gore, you will be able to respond with scientific fact.  If someone next to you on an airplane sneers that winter storms are the death knell of climate change, you will be able to describe the basic science and some useful history.

The posts will answer three starting point questions.

1. What do we mean by the temperature of the Earth?  
2. What determines that temperature?  
3.  And, finally, why does adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increase the Earth's temperature?  

Answering these questions requires explaining some physics plus a little bit of chemistry.  The science can be presented clearly without using much math.  I've discovered that blogging is a great environment for discussing science.  The give and take will allow me add wonkish detail when requested or to expand explanations to make them more suitable for non-scientists.

This series of posts is motivated by a recent conversation with an environmental activist.  I wanted to know how he stayed optimistic against so much anti-science and anti-environmental propaganda.  How does someone working on a shoestring budget compete sanely with the moneyed forces of darkness?  I just loved his answer. Only history can identify truly significant events, he explained.  We will not know which book or film or speech or song or street protest will be a turning point until after -- sometimes long after -- the event.  Rosa Parks was not the first person to defy segregation laws; but, when she sat down the whole world stood up.  The Vietnam war included many, well-documented brutal events, but Ernest Faas' photo of a street execution of a Vietcong prisoner and Nick Ut's picture of a naked, burned Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack are forever linked to that war.  I doubt if Rachel Carson predicted the impact of "Silent Spring."  Nor did Harriett Beecher Stowe anticipate the response to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."  I could continue with a long list of examples.

So, my environmental activist friend advised me to just write.  Get my message out and encourage everyone else to do the same.  I probably won't find the right words to change history.  Very few people do.  But, nothing is gained by fretting while hoping to hit the longest home run ever.

In Pain

I hurt my right shoulder seven weeks ago.  Pain, as measured on the 10-point scale, started in the 7 to 8 range and has mellowed into 2's and 3's.  That's bad enough to wake me several times a night.  My medical insurance coverage is OK, though more pricey and less comprehensive than what I had a decade ago.  Out of pocket expenses are now a little over $900.  In one sense, yes, I can afford it which means that I don't have to choose between physical therapy or groceries, haven't been late on the mortgage in order to pay a doctor bill, and have kept up with utilities and health insurance.  But, pain does wonders for focusing the mind and, in my case, for examining ideas about fairness.  Here is my radical idea:  Mitt Romney should pay my medical expenses.  So should Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul; also the Koch brothers, Hunt brothers, and Baldwin brothers.   Add Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, and John Kerry.  And, my neighbors, cops on patrol, and the county firefighters.

Because, here's the deal.  Pain is awful.  Cancer and heart disease are worse.  And, we the people have a moral obligation to help each other.  Sometimes we have to grit our teeth like when a drinker needs a liver transplant or a motorcyclist riding without a helmet requires brain surgery.  We may not like their behavior, but that's just too bad.  Health care is a human right, not an entitlement.   My injured shoulder gets treated and my taxes help pay for everyone else's health care.  Anything less is grotesque cruelty.

Former Senator Rick Santorum thinks he should be President and tens of thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of Americans agree. This is Santorum at a campaign stop yesterday or the day before:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told the mother of a child with a rare genetic disorder on Tuesday that she shouldn't have a problem paying $1 million a year for drugs because Apple's iPad can cost around $900.

Speaking to more than 400 people at Woodland Park, Colorado, the former Pennsylvania senator said that demand should set prices for drugs.

"People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad," the candidate explained. "But paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it."

The mother replied that she could not afford her son's medication, Abilify, which can cost as much as $1 million a year without health insurance.

"Look, I want your son and everybody to have the opportunity to stay alive on much-needed drugs," Santorum insisted. "But the bottom line is, we have to give companies the incentive to make those drugs. And if they don't have the incentive to make those drugs, your son won't be alive and lots of other people in this country won't be alive."

"He’s alive today because drug companies provide care," the candidate continued. "And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t."

I do not know what caused Santorum's emotional disfigurement. Just get him the hell away from me and everyone else. There aren't enough therapists or enough couches in this land to repair his twisted psyche. Has Santorum or any of his cohort ever responded to a question or comment with, “Oh. Wait a moment. You've got a good point there. I may have been wrong/hasty/ill informed/misguided about that idea. I guess I just didn't think it through. Thank you.”? 

Only this one datum – a family can't afford extraordinarily expensive medication for seriously ill child – should smash forever the idea that unfettered markets solve all problems.  Anyone who can't understand that or cannot have a sophisticated discussion about expensive on-going treatments should leave politics.  They have chosen the wrong career.   

More Math

The tax returns are out.  Mitt and Ann Romney received $21,600,000 in 2010.  Received is the most neutral verb I've found for the previous sentence.  Earned has a moral sense.  Collected implies some effort.  Acquired doesn't add useful nuance.  Income is a noun.  I'll stay with received.

And received they did.  $59,000 spewed through the Romney spigot on an average day.  Every day, for a full year.  In 2010, one day of being Romney -- just one day -- brought in more money than the median US household earned in an entire year.  Or, think about the four days of Thanksgiving.  Mitt and Ann received almost a quarter of a million dollars: $237,000 from the time the turkey was slid into the oven until the last leftovers were eaten.  In just those four days, the Romney's got more money than 98% of Americans get in one year.

Ooops.  I had to put this post on hold while running an errand.  The little trip took 20 minutes and, in that time, Mitt sucked up another $820.

America has reached banana-republic-magnitude income disparity.  Our skewed distribution of wealth is the sign of a sick society.

Wrong wrong wrong, again

America and Europe are running their economies as well as Francesco Schettino steered the Costa Concordia. The financial results are and will be just as predictable.  But, Very Serious People demand even more austerity to supplement failed austerity.  Why?  Because people can believe just about anything:

Evolution is only a theory, global warming is a hoax, the Earth is 6000 years old, homeopathy works, vaccines cause autism, Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, a mythical magical invisible omnipotent all-powerful being guides holy quarterbacks to victory, women should be subservient to men, the President is a Muslim, Earth Day   celebrates Lenin's birthday, Yuri Geller, foreign aide takes a large part of the national budget, Obama is a communist, Iraq helped the 9/11 hijackers, cell phones cause brain cancer, the Laffer Curve, Sylvia Browne, Jonathan Edward, Juan de Dios, The Secret, and Jim Jones,

not matter how strong the opposing evidence.