Sorry

Some things, it turns out, take longer than others.

We're back from the trip but something that developed in the course of it has kept me away from the keyboard. But here I am again, like the proverbial bad penny.

Anyway, so how'd "the most important election EVAH since the last one until the next one" work out for you?

Oh, and did you hear about Keith Olbermann? Like, wow, dude!

So, having mentioned them, I suppose I'm obligated to offer a paragraph or two on each. Election here, KO later.

Yes, this was called - more than once - "the most important election of your lifetime." However, the same was said about every goddam presidential election since at least 1980 and a good number of off-year ones, too. In other words, it's just more election year crap. I just can't get behind the notion that this is either the beginning of ultimate evil or the end of all things good and true. Yes, it will make our work a little harder, but our work - as opposed to the efforts of those who thought and think that the answer is ever to "elect more and better Democrats" - was always hard. And get some perspective: We have been here and worse before, up to and including the murder of dissenters to the cheering of crowds. Even with John Boner (that's not a typo) as Speaker of the House, I really really doubt we're going to see a lot of book burning. (Well, not a whole lot more, anyway.)

On the other hand, one thing the election did prove to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear - in other words, not Democrats - is that chasing the GOPpers to the right is a terrible electoral strategy: Yes, some notable liberals (defined as people actually worthy of the term) lost, particularly Russ Feingold and Alan Grayson (the latter of who we should have been surprised was elected in the first place). But so did Blue Dogs: Half of the Blue Dog caucus in the House lost their seats. So did so-called "New Democrats." Their caucus in the new Congress will be a third less as a result of the election. On the other hand, if I have the numbers correct and I believe I do, of the 78 members of the House Progressive Caucus, 75 retained their seats, a retention rate of 96%.

Such comparisons are always somewhat misleading, since outcomes depend on the local electorate. The House, remember, is not one big election but 435 smaller elections. But the figures do point up the bogus nature of the claim that victory is simply and always a matter of becoming just a little more of a rightist. They also means that potentially - and I emphasize the word potentially - the Dims could be more liberal in opposition than they were in the majority, since the Progressive Caucus now makes up a larger portion of the whole.

I say "potentially" because there are two big objections to that prospect. One is that it depends on the Dimcrats ability to, in what I think were Michael Moore's words, get a soul and grow a spine, either of which would be a dramatic change from recent behavior.

The second, bigger, objection is that it assumes the Ds as a party want to be more liberal, that their reluctance to stake out and clearly argue for positions to the left of Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson is neither a reflection of actual conviction nor an act of financial (as opposed to political) cowardice, a fear of straying too far from the desires of their corporate paymasters, by which I mean their source of campaign financing.

Either way, the odds on the Dums obtaining either soul or spine are low indeed, considering that already Barack "I did it your way" Obama has once again caved even before entering the arena, this time on tax cuts for the rich, and party so-called "centrists" are arguing the Dims must tack to the middle - the "middle" being defined as midway between the Dims and the GOPpers, which means that if you do "tack to the middle," that is, to the right, the "middle" will still be defined as midway between you and them, meaning you "must" go even further to the right to get to the "middle," and so on.

But none of that matters. It's all irrelevant because we know what the real problem is, the real reason the Dims got creamed. It's all the fault of the left, as self-described "socialist" Lawrence O'Donnell (He has got to be kidding!) insisted election evening. In fact, it's so much all the left's fault that according to O'Donnell, Blanche Lincoln lost because she was primaried by someone somewhat to her left, Bill Halter, which left her "wounded." This even though Lincoln was always behind eventual winner John Boozman in the polls even before the primary and Halter polled better against Boozman than Lincoln did. No matter. It was the left's fault.

Something for which I will credit O'Donnell is his declaration that he refuses to surrender the term "liberal." Good. Because I'm damn tired of hearing yet another wishy-washy "Love me, I'm a liberal" scared of their own shadow call themselves "progressives," thus sullying the time-honored and honorable appellation for those who are to the left of liberals, who do the spadework to clear the ground onto which liberals might later gingerly step. (I've long thought of myself as standing at about the point on the US political spectrum where "progressive" and "radical" meet; my moral and ethical convictions run to the radical but my stylistic approach tends to be somewhat more moderate.)

The point of that diversion is that when those of us who actually are progressives try to advance our policies and politics by arguing for or supporting (or, worst of all, being) third party candidates, we get denounced for it. As I wrote the day before the election,

[t]he root argument ... invariably, is that "independents are just spoilers who only hurt the candidate closer to them and so help the one further from them." Put another way, "they only damage their own cause." Put a third way, those who support such candidates are "pissing away their votes."

So what alternative is there? What are we encouraged to do? Why, work within the party! Run in primaries! That's the ticket!

Um, except now, according to O'Donnell (and not only him), even that is bad as it "wounds" the establishment candidate so when they lose - even if they were expected to all along - it's our fault and we again just "helped the worse candidate."

So now what's the alternative? How are actual progressives supposed to work within the electoral system? Let's see: We're not supposed to go third party. We're not supposed to primary incumbents. If it's an open seat, surely we have to present a "united front," not that of a "divided party," so challenging the establishment candidate in that case is out, too. And certainly we can't not vote! The very idea! So what can we do? What is it that we are instructed to do, expected to do, by the "realists," the "pragmatists," the ones who "understand these things?"

Simple: We are to sit quietly and vote obediently while regarding The Daily Show and Countdown as marking the outer limits of acceptable commentary.

In other words, we are to STFU.

Same as it ever was.

It is the opinion of the Court, Part Three

Things do not look so good for Arizona's bigoted "Your papers, please" law.

During an hourlong hearing [on Monday], the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals examined four provisions of the Arizona law that a federal judge in Phoenix blocked as unconstitutional. The three-judge appeals panel appeared largely inclined to agree with the lower court's July ruling, which said the law usurped the federal government's sole authority to regulate immigration.

There was some skepticism about blocking the state from from requiring police to investigate the immigration status of someone stopped on suspicion of a crime, largely because federal law permits police to inquire about a person's immigration status. Since this was taken from an article in the LA Times and not a law journal, I'm unclear on what if any difference there is between "investigating" a person's immigration status as opposed to "inquiring" about it or if there ultimately will be a meaningful difference between "allowing" an "inquiry" and "requiring" an "investigation."

The thing is, even if that provision of the law stands intact, it may not mean much. UC Hastings Law Professor David Levine said it "may end up being toothless" because the enforment of immigration law would still be up to the feds.

Meanwhile, other provisions of this hateful and hating law, including requiring all immigrants to have proof of legal residence with them at all times and barring illegal immigrants from accepting paid work, are likely headed for the dumpster.

Unsurprisingly, John Bouma, representing Arizona in the case, spun the usual horror stories about the border being "the finish line" for illegal immigrants, who are swarming over the border to commit horrendous crimes without ever being expelled. Happily, it seems the members of the panel were not overly impressed.

It is the opinion of the Court, Part Two

Surprisingly, not all the news coming out of the Supreme Court is bad. The justices have

left in place a lower court's decision requiring groups to register as political action committees even if they spend money in federal elections independent of the candidates or political parties.

It was the second time since the court's controversial 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the justices have passed on a challenge that would again bring the issue of campaign finance to the court.

Earlier, it refused to hear a GOPper challenge to the so-called "soft money" restrictions on contributions to political parties contained in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, a challenge that had failed in lower courts. This time, it declined to consider a challenge from a cash-über-alles outfit called SpeechNow.org over an adverse decision of the DC Court of Appeals.

That court found the group could, in accordance with Citizens United, accept unlimited donations to fund its ad campaigns. However, the court also said that the group

must comply with the disclosure requirements that come with being registered as a PAC.

SecretCashNow.org didn't like that, of course, and so it appealed. And got nowhere, so it still has at least those restrictions on it.

Actually, in one sense it might have been better if the appeal had been accepted, because even in Citizens United, eight of the nine members of the Court supported the idea of disclosure requirements, so some sort requirements along those lines might have been set down rather than still being open to challenge in other districts. Still, I'll take what I can get, especially since

[m]ore than 50 similar groups [to FatCatsFunnelingBucksNow.org] are now operating as a result of decisions by the courts and the FEC, and outside organizations are spending an unprecedented amount of money in the midterm elections.

Footnote: If you want my view on what's wrong with Citizens United and why I'm not surprised by the burgeoning of money in politics, you might look back on my critique of Glenn Greenwald's defense of the decision.

It is the opinion of the Court, Part One

To what I expect was no one's surprise,

[a] federal appeals court will allow the military to continue enforcing the law restricting the service of openly gay men and women in the military while a lower court decision that struck the law down as unconstitutional is being appealed.

The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier granted a temporary stay, which it has now broadened. One judge dissented, saying he would have preferred to bar the military from dismissing members of the military under DADT during the appeal. The majority, however, using the typical excuse of "deferring" to the judgment of Congress and the military, saw nothing wrong with continuing to wreck people's chosen career through a policy they themselves admitted, albeit indirectly, subsequently could be found unconstitutional.

In Monday’s decision, the judges said the government had “persuasively” argued that Judge Phillips’s injunction “does not permit sufficient time for such appropriate training to occur, especially for commanders and servicemen serving in active combat.”

I'm sorry, but what kind of crap is that? This entire issue has been kicking around for years: Remember that when DADT was instituted at the end of 1993, it was the compromise, the "middle ground" between the military's witch hunts for The Gays on the one hand and gays and lesbians being able to openly serve on the other. That was seventeen years ago, folks. This is not a new deal.

Now, we've got various suits on the matter, we've got a House of Representatives that voted to kill the policy last May, we've got a president who swears he intends - not wants, intends - to end it, and we've got a Pentagon supposedly studying how - not if, but how - to do that. But we're supposed to act like this is some big shock and oh my, we need time, please give us time to adjust because, like, we never saw this coming and stuff? Please. All this talk about "training" is just an excuse for foot-dragging.

Frankly, it should be easy to reform the policy: Instead of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," it's "Don't Ask, Don't Care." When a law is passed to newly allow or ban some practice, we don't get "training" in how to obey the law, we don't get an "adjustment period" to get used to the idea. (Delays in implementation are almost invariably due to allowing time to set up new administrative procedures, which simply does not apply here.)

When bigots were told by the Civil Rights Act that they could no longer discriminate against blacks in areas like public accommodations, the start of that law was not put off until we could provide them "appropriate training." They were just told, we are all told in the face of new laws, that as of such and such a day, this is the law. Period. There is no reason why members of the military should be babied in a way no one else is.

Everybody's doing it

It seems everyone is doing it. So, while waiting for election results which I won't check for another hour or so, I figured I'd take a moment to offer my opinion on the Stewart/Colbert rally over the weekend.

That opinion is that it could be as well-attended as it was precisely because it was completely non-threatening, completely harmless, a homily-ridden exercise in self-congratulation about a self-proclaimed "reasonableness," a notion based entirely on a wholly bogus claim of a moral equivalence between right and left of a sort that would equate al-Qaeda's attack on 9/11 with Jesus throwing the money-changers out of the temple on the grounds that both involved destruction of property.

The quote that adorns the top of my blog is taken from Glenn Greenwald and says something totally alien to the mindset of the John Stewarts and Stephen Colberts of the world but remains true nonetheless: Passion and substance are not mutually exclusive. And frankly, despite their implicit claims to greater insight, it is those who think the proper answer to the bullies, bigots, and blowhards is to without exception rely on accommodation and polite conversation who do not understand the political and social world around them.

That does not mean, by the way, that I will stop watching either Stewart or Colbert (although in fact for various reasons I've been watching very little of them of late). They are funny and once in a while even informative. However, they are singularly lousy guides for political action and their rally proved it.

FYI

A bit of advance notice: I'll be away on a kinda-sorta business trip from tomorrow (Wednesday) morning until late Sunday night and I expect I won't have internet access in that time. So after tonight (and I may post more tonight) don't expect anything until very late Sunday or on Monday.

Everything you need to know, Headline Div.

Foreclosure activity up across most US metro areas
     - AP, October 27

Wall Street Pay to Hit Record High This Year
     - DailyFinance.com, October 12

Are you happy now?

Oh dear, another someone with another re-hash of the by-now routine "lefties are humorless sourpusses" meme. Writing at AOL, Paul Kix, a senior editor of Boston magazine, says that

[a] recent study says that Republicans are happier than Democrats and -- and! -- have more friends.

The study, published in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, is the work of Jacob Vigil, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico. He gathered 701 undergrads at a university in Florida in the months before the 2008 election and had them fill out a survey. The survey touched on, among other things, the students' pasts, their political affiliations, the number of friends they have, and how much they trusted them and, by extension, the rest of society.

Vigil then had the participants look at photos of strangers' faces, whose expressions ranged from joy to sadness, fear to surprise, disgust to anger. Vigil asked the participants to interpret, among other things, how threatened they felt by the faces. He then took that data, and that which came from the completed surveys, and reached his conclusions about who's happy and why.

Now, far be it from me - and I mean this sincerely - to denigrate socio-psychological research. But while I have a real interest in psychology (I once considered pursuing a career as a clinical psychologist), my science background is more in the so-called "hard" sciences (physics, to be exact) and as a result I often find the results of such research to be frustratingly imprecise and the conclusions drawn to be based on unspoken (and often enough unexamined) presumptions.

It's worse in this case because the full text of the study is behind a pay firewall. So I'm not sure how much of the characterizations is Vigil's and how much is Kix's. Either way, something jumped out at me immediately: "how much they trusted [their friends] and, by extension, the rest of society." By extension? There is a straight-line relationship between how much you trust your friends and how much you trust society as a whole? Really? Based on what? That strikes me as a glaring, untested assumption before the data is even gathered.

What's more important to the issue here, however, is that based on the abstract of the study, Kix more than once either misstates or misunderstands the study in order to push his own preferences. For one thing, he says Vigil "reached his conclusions about who's happy and why." The study was not about "who's happy and why," it was about how people examined faces to look for cues indicating either competency, found to be favored by the right, and trustworthiness, favored by the left.

But getting to the "friends" part, something good the study did, something often ignored in such studies and assuredly and much to my irritation was ignored in the lede of Kix's article, was to consider what people mean by the term "friend."

Vigil found that Republicans have a looser definition of friendship, one that doesn't rely as much on the sort of intimacy that Democrats favor.

More specifically, rightists define "friends" as those who can help them socially or professionally while lefties define "friends" as people with who they have some degree of emotional intimacy and can trust. Somehow, to Kix this means that rightists are "happier" with their friends "because these friends can help them" while lefties are "miserly" and have fewer friends because they are "victims" who don't trust other people. Again, Kix has misrepresented the study: Besides the pejorative language, saying the study concluded that lefties are "are wary of trusting" people is simply false: It concluded, rather, that they value "trustworthiness" over "competency" in seeking new social connections.

But put bluntly, what all this really means is that rightists define "friend" as someone they can exploit for their own benefit while lefties define "friend" as someone they care about on a direct personal level. Besides finding one of those superior on a moral level - and yes, you know which one - I also have to note that it makes Kix's initial claim that rightists "have more friends" utterly meaningless, a classic apples and oranges, because rightists and lefties don't mean the same thing by the term "friend." In fact, according to the abstract, the study doesn't even say "friends," it says "social networks," which is not the same as "friends" unless you equate "friends" and "acquaintances." Kix's description of the study and its conclusions is simply inaccurate, even misleading. But it does fit the meme.

(Parenthetically, Kix wrote that "Republicans, the study says, feel more threatened by the people they don't know." How in Kix's mind it could be true both that lefties have fewer friends because they don't trust other people and rightists have more friends in spite of being more threatened by strangers still has me scratching my head. The only way out is to adopt the rightists definition of "friend." Which tells us more about the meme - and perhaps Kix, who has apparently embraced that definition - than it does about either lefties or rightists.)

The same issue of definitions arises in discussing "happiness." Usually, and in this particular case, it is just self-defined; surveys ask people some variation of "How happy are you?" No attempt at all is made to determine how the person defines the term or how understandings might vary. Admittedly, there is some reason for that: How do you put a value to an internal emotional state, how do you quantify such an inherently unquantifiable notion as how "happy" you are? If I say I'm "fairly happy," am I feeling the same degree of happiness as someone else who says the same? How would anyone know?

There is a notion - tenable, though hardly conclusively demonstrated in non-laboratory environments - that over a large enough group, those variations tend to even out and so for a general statement about a group as a whole, such surveys can be an accurate measure. Granting that at least for the moment, there is still the problem of interpretation, even of meaning. That is, what does it mean to say "conservatives are happier than liberals?" (Or the reverse, for that matter.) What defines "happiness?" We've already been told that right and left don't define "friend" they same way, why should we think they agree on "happy?"

Kix links to a post by Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute (red flags flying everywhere) which, if you follow it through the rest of Brooks' series, reveals that to the degree the data can be trusted there is something that makes for an intersection of "happiness" with political belief. That intersection, it develops, is not a matter or left or right, it's a matter of left and right - or, more specifically, hard left and hard right. According to the results that Brooks cites, those toward the "fringes" tend to be, or at least say they are, happier.

What unites those more-extreme beliefs in a way that differentiates them from their more centrist brethren? One clear way is what could easily be called "certainty." Those at the outer edges of the political spectrum tend to be clearer and firmer in their beliefs; they tend to have either worked through or successfully repressed questions and conflicts. And, apparently, having strong convictions contributes to self-described happiness.

(Which, considering the number of times I've been called "stubborn," "pig-headed," and "arrogant," should mean I should be ecstatic. But never mind.)

That connects to a broader context. Greater security in various ways, be those physical, emotional, or psychological, appears to be connected to self-described happiness. For example, wealthy people tend to rank themselves higher on a happiness scale than poor people do. Married people - or people in a committed relationship - tend to regard themselves as happier than single people do. And people who are more secure in, more convinced of the rightness of, their political convictions tend to express a greater degree of happiness than people who are less devoted to a particular set of principles.

But that raises the central question: Why do these and other studies say that "Republicans" (that is, rightists) are "happier" than "Democrats" (that is, lefties)? Yes, rightists tend overall to be wealthier than lefties, but even after controlling for that and other factors such as age, marital status, and even church attendance, a difference remains. So why? It can't be the fact of being a Republican: Unlike, say, getting wealthier or entering a committed relationship, the act of changing party registration is not itself going to make you happier. It's got to be something about what produces a Republican. What could that be?

I think I know and it draws on a couple of related points.

One is that Kix describes the results of Vigil's survey as showing that lefties "sympathize with people more" than rightist do, which is pretty much a psychological truism: Such sympathizing, such even more to the point identification, is a factor strongly connected with being on the political left. As Eugene V. Debs famously said when being sentenced to 10 years in prison for his opposition to World War I,

years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Lefties are more sensitive to, more emotionally aware of, the injustices in the world, more emotionally connected to the suffering of innocents, than are rightists - and that leads them to connect their own welfare, their own security, their own, yes, happiness, with the welfare and security of others. As I expressed that in a letter to a friend some time ago:

The fact is, it’s the right that says “I,” the left that says “we.” It’s the right that says “gimme,” the left that says “we’ll give.” It’s the right that says “compete,” the left that says “cooperate.”

Lefties can't really be happy when those around them are not.

Another point is that has been shown often enough to be another psychological truism that the one psychological thread that unites people who call themselves “conservative,” reaching across lines of class, age, race, and gender, is fear of change. Conservatives want things to stay the way they are - or, more often, to be "the way they used to be" (even though they often weren't). You want an example? Just think of the TPers with their cries that they are going to "take the country back," a "back" that applies chronologically, and thus socially, as well as politically.

I’ve for a long time argued that the great emotional attraction of conservatism in all its forms is its certainty: You don’t have to decide if something is fair or unfair, right or wrong, good or bad. You just have to know what someone else told you. It’s already been decided. The doubt, the fear, the questions, the responsibility are all gone.

(An even longer time, now: I wrote that just under 17 years ago.)

That is, rightists as a group are more likely than lefties as a group to be convinced they have The Truth and such a state increases self-described "happiness." They know what's true, what's false, what's right, what's wrong, and they know because they were told what's true and false and right and wrong and they don't have to think about it, they just have to believe what they were told. It's an easy, a psychologically safe, way to live and to be, one that does not require you to think though matters and experience all the doubt and conflict involved in finding your own way to your own convictions.

So why are rightists supposedly "happier" than leftists? Two reasons: One, lefties think in broader terms. Like rightists, they want to be secure. Unlike rightists, it matters to them, affects their own sense of security and thus "happiness," if other people are also secure. It's "I" versus "we" and the burdens on "I" are much smaller.

And two, unlike rightists, lefties are not spared what I once called "the frightening prospect of having to re-think yourself, possibly from scratch." Lefties do not inhabit a world - a happy security blanket world - of predetermined answers drawn from handed-down, unexamined, principles. Even those on the "fringe," the ones usually most secure in their beliefs, have almost always gotten there by going through a period when all their beliefs, everything they'd held true before, seemed to be up for grabs. Rightists are "happier" than lefties as an overall group because as an overall group they are more secure in their beliefs because they've never bothered to subject them to any critical examination.

There's one other important thing here, one which goes back to the earlier question of if we should think lefties and rightists think about "happiness" the same way. It's quite possible they don't.

In a review of one of Arthur Brooks' books at Amazon.com, a man named Richard Bennett makes a very valuable point (I have corrected some typos and cleaned up the formatting some):

On page 4 Brooks distinguishes between three distinct forms of happiness. They can be summed up as "fleeting feelings of happiness", "happiness on balance" and "moral quality of life".

The first is similar to joy or euphoria, [the] second is like an emotional balance sheet we keep that allows us to tell honestly whether we are living, all things considered, a happy life. This is the level most often studied by social scientists and it is the level measured in the survey data used in this book.

The third form is of happiness measurement is eudaimonia, a "moral quality of life (that) has little to do with a sense of happiness - it is the well-lived life, in which a person realizes his or her true potential...Aristotle termed (it) eudaimonia...an activity of the soul expressing virtue."

Brooks is not interested in this form of happiness! But for liberals it is possibly the most important sense of what is meant by "happiness". What is the import of someones self reported state of happiness when no account is taken of of his aims?

"The well-lived life." A life with meaning, with importance, a life that matters to others - that is the sort of life that lefties crave, that is the sort of life that will make them happy. Is also a life not easy to achieve because even if others think we have lived such a life, we may well not think so, having desired even more from ourselves. It is also a life to which few rightists will aspire because it requires that identification with others for purposes beyond one's own self-advancement at which they fall short compared to lefties. Which means no, what constitutes "happiness" to lefties and rightists is not, in the final analysis, the same thing, because something of genuine importance to lefties is also something in which rightists have little interest.

So do rightists "have more friends" than lefties? Are they "happier" than lefties? Sure - so long as you define the terms in ways that will get you that answer. And that's how you advance the meme.

Footnote: Kix really just can't help himself, he has to keep pushing the meme. He quotes a study by the Pew Research Center as saying, in Kix's words,

regardless of who holds political power, people who have more money, and worship a god regularly, "tend to be happier."

However, the very link he cites says that "the factor that makes the most difference in predicting happiness is ... being in good health."

But that doesn't push the meme, does it?

In which I take a moment out to pat myself on the back...

...for my prognosticatory acumen.

Speaking of elections, running up to one populated by more than the usual number of freakoids, nutzos, and dingbats, I recall that the day after the 2008 election, even before the smiles had faded from the faces of the faithful, I said

the wackos and nutballs populating the right edge of our political discourse are not going to go away. I do not even expect a moderation in their rhetoric; in fact I expect it to escalate.

And yet now we're supposed to be even more convinced that our best hope, indeed our only hope, is to stick even more firmly with those who think that half-measures go too far and that making nice with the bullies and bozos will get them any further toward the quarter-measures they favor next year than it has to date.

We are so screwed.

Show who's placed to win

The LA Times had an article a couple of days ago on the potential for some "third-party candidacies" to "shake up" several races. It reminded me of the always-vociferous, sometimes-nasty exchanges I've had about the role of third parties and the reasons to support (or refuse to support) them. The root argument against them, invariably, is that "independents are just spoilers who only hurt the candidate closer to them and so help the one further from them." Put another way, "they only damage their own cause." Put a third way, those who support such candidates are "pissing away their votes."

As someone who regularly (but, I will note, not exclusively) votes for third parties and more than once has run for office on a third party ticket, I obviously disagree. A while back, after one nasty exchange, I set out my own ideas on the importance and value of third parties, available for those who are interested at these four links.

But leave that aside to get back to the LA Times article. One of the "third party candidacies" mentioned was that of Kendrick Meek, mired in third place in the Senate race in Florida. Another was Scott McAdams, who, despite some improvement in his poll numbers, is still considered a long shot at best to win the Alaska Senate race.

The thing is, as I'm sure you know, Meek and McAdams are the Democratic party nominees for those seats - while the leaders in those races are in each case a conservative GOPper (Charlie Christ and Lisa Murkowski, respectively) and a certifiable nutzoid (Marco Rubio and Joe Miller). In neither case is either leader desirable, but in both cases one is arguably worse, especially as measured by a yardstick of a size normally wielded in rejecting third-party candidates.

So here's the question: Have you heard anyone, anywhere, any time, has anyone among the blogging Obamabots and their fellow-travelers - people always ready to gasp in horror at the notion of someone voting for (or, worse yet, running as) a Green or a democratic socialist or some other version of lefty because "You're only helping the Republicans! Is that what you want?" - have any of them even once called for Meek or McAdams to drop out because they're just "spoilers" who are helping the "worse" candidate?

As the saying goes, "Some questions need only be asked." Of course no one is saying that. Of course no one expects them to drop out. Why? Because they're Democrats! Because being part of the in-group, being in the major parties, playing the game according to the rules set down by that in-group composed of the major parties, exempts you from the requirements and expectations placed on those who want to change the rules and generate that "wider range of choices" so many claim - apparently falsely - to want.

Just how much are we as a political culture locked into that game, just how mentally trapped are we by those rules? Here's an example: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has done an ad buy in Alaska. Not to attack Miller. To attack Murkowski and to do it in terms echoing the right-wing mantra:

It characterizes her[, the Wall Street Journal says,] as having “gone Washington” by voting for big budgets and a Wall Street bailout.

I say with a very great deal of confidence that if all else had been the same - including the poll numbers, political records, and political and social convictions of all three - except that Murkowski was the Democrat and McAdams was the write-in candidate, we would hear peals of outrage in significant portions of the "progressive" blogosphere at how he was "attacking the Democrat" and "only helping the Republican." Instead, it's crickets - which says a lot about how much that concern about "third party spoilers" is truly about "not helping the worse candidate win" and how much is about just telling the left to STFU.

So there I was...

...all ready to post some stuff, just finishing up the writing, when my wife starts complaining that she's been booted from AOL. Which prompts me to realize that my internet connection is down as well. So AOL is off the hook this time - particularly when we realize that our phone isn't working, either.

So there's been a bit of a delay. But here I am again, he said to a thunderous round of silence. A couple of the things I had are now too dated to post, but there are others coming right up after these important messages.

Time for some good news

Polio. The word can still send a chill of fear through people above a certain age. A crippling, uncurable disease that can leave its victims paralyzed - or dead. As recently as 1952, in the US alone there were 60,000 cases of polio and 3000 deaths.

I had an uncle who was stricken with polio as a child. He lived, but as a bed-ridden invalid unable to walk or even feed himself for the rest of his life. It is something we grew up with; we all knew what an iron lung is. My brother, not three years older than me, was a "polio pioneer," one of the 1.8 million children who participated in the first full field trial of the Salk vaccine, the first polio vaccine.

As a result of the Salk and later Sabin vaccines, polio has all but disappeared from the US; there has not been a naturally-occurring case since 1979. The disease is so rare here that in dealing with the teenagers I meet in my work, I often encounter ones who had never heard of it.

With aggressive immunization programs, that success has spread acoss most of the world. As recently as 1988, the number of countries where polio is endemic stood at 125. By 2005, the figure was four. The number of cases dropped from 350,000 to just 1600 in 2009.

Still, the disease continues to appear in outbreaks in various areas - but those outbreaks can be contained with immunization programs. The real problem area has been central Africa, most recently in Angola, where a 2007 outbreak has spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo because, the World Health Organization says, too few children were vaccinated in previous campaigns to eradicate the disease. Now, the intent in Angola is to vaccinate every child under five.

So where's the good news? It comes in two parts. First part is that Oliver Rosenbauer of the WHO's Global Polio Eradication Initiative, said that

"[W]e know this outbreak [in Angola] could be stopped very rapidly.

"If these upcoming immunisation campaigns are effectively implemented, this outbreak can be stopped in its tracks even by the end of the year.

"Africa is on the verge of being polio-free...."

I added the emphasis and I think it is well deserved.

The other part is that according to research published in the medical journal The Lancet, a new polio vaccine already in use in Afghanistan, India, and Nigeria

is about 30% more effective in protecting against polio than the most commonly used vaccine to date. ...

In India the number of cases this time last year was 464. Over the same period this year there have only been only 39 cases.

Nigeria has seen an even greater difference, with cases falling by 95%. ...

Dr Roland Sutter, from the WHO and the lead author of the study, told BBC News: "This (new) vaccine could get us over the top and get us to the finish line for eradication."

I don't want to get over-excited: We have been here before. The WHO once predicted that polio could be eradicated by the end of 2004. And there have been both disappointments when immunization campaigns didn't reach as many children as was intended and setbacks as outbreaks spread to countries that had been polio-free. But with the new emphasis on inoculating every child under five, not just those "at risk," and with a new, even-more effective treatment, maybe, just maybe, this time it can be done and polio can join smallpox in the trashbin of history.

And wouldn't that be sweet.

Unintentional humor, European Div.

The BBC reports that the Italian government of flakoid Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently granted extra powers to mayors, supposedly to fight crime and "anti-social behavior." But as is typical in the case of small minds given extra power, it hasn't gone quite according to plan. Among the activities banned in some places have been

sandcastles, kissing in cars, feeding stray cats, wooden clogs and the use of lawn mowers at weekends.

Now, the seaside city of Castellammare di Stabia wants to enforce a dress code

which would effectively outlaw everything from miniskirts to low-cut jeans....

There will also be a ban on sunbathing, playing football in public places, and blasphemy, if the proposals are approved at a council meeting on Monday.

And who is behind this inane concoction of restrictions drawn from 1950s fantasies? Mayor Luigi Bobbio - of the People of Freedom party.

Unintentional humor, Middle East Div.

In a communique at the end of a two-week meeting, Middle East bishops gathered at the Vatican

demanded that Israel accept U.N. resolutions calling for an end to its occupation of Arab lands, and told Israel it shouldn't use the Bible to justify "injustices" against the Palestinians. ...

The Mideast meeting at the Vatican involved about 185 participants, including nine patriarchs of the Mideast's ancient Christian churches and representatives from 13 other Christian communities. A rabbi and two Muslim clerics were invited to the meeting as well.

In response to the statement, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said "[t]he synod was hijacked by an anti-Israel majority."

Uh - what? "Hijacked by the majority?" Um, I think you're a little confused about this "democracy" thing that Israel supposedly has nailed down.

Footnote: Ayalon also called the statement "in the best history of Arab propaganda," which does prompt a "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8:3-9) thought, but surely it would be odd to address a New Testament reference to an Israeli official.

Except it wouldn't, it seems: Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor made exactly that reference in grousing about the bishops' assertion that Israel shouldn't use Biblical arguments to justify injustices.

"This has never been a policy of any government in Israel, so this position sounds particularly hollow," he said. "Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone."

Maybe he wanted to use the New Testament since the Old Testament describes justice as "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." (Exodus 21:23-25) Be that as it may, I hate to break it to friend Palmor, but every time your government uses the terms "Judea and Samaria," every time it refers to Jerusalem as the "undivided and eternal capital of Israel," using the Bible to justify oppressing Palestinians is precisely what you are doing.

I'll believe it when I see it

This should be good news: At the end of a three-day visit to Sudan during which he met with senior officials, Sen. John Kerry said that those officials

assured him that they are committed to holding a referendum on southern independence on time. ...

[Kerry] says Sudan's leaders "are absolutely committed" to making the Jan. 9 referendum take place as planned.

The vote will decide whether the south will split from the north and become an independent state.

Kerry told reporters Sunday the U.S. is committed to playing a "positive role" in ensuring a peaceful outcome to the vote.

Yes, that should be good news, as it is part of implementing a peace pact putting an end to a civil war that lasted over 20 years and saw 2 million dead and 4 million driven from their homes. But the truth is, I can't be too enthusiastic just yet.

I had a few posts on the progress of the peace talks that eventually lead to this point. There was the early optimism in December 2003 that a deal was possible. Then there was an actual outline of a deal in May 2004, the heart of which was that the south, which is largely Christian and animist, would be autonomous for six years, including with its own monetary system, with a vote on independence to come at the end of that time. That is the vote now scheduled for January. Meanwhile, the largely Muslim north would continue to be ruled under Sharia law.

It took more than six months to turn that outline into a preliminary accord, but it was done and in January 2005 the deal was signed.

Then came the crashing of hopes that June when the leading figure among the southern rebels, who under the pact had become vice-president, was killed in a helicopter crash. Things have been on a knife edge since with the risk of incidents leading to renewed civil war ever present. Oddly but still understandably, a clash in May 2008 in an important oil-rich area coveted so much by both sides that under the preliminary accord it is guarded by joint patrols, was seen as something of a blessing in disguise - because it did not lead to more general fighting. People, it seemed, really were tired of war.

So here we sit, months away from a referendum that could well lead to a final resolution. There are still issues outstanding, including the status of that oil-rich region straddling the northern and southern regions, but there always are in such cases until the very end. So why am I not as enthusiastic as might be expected?

One big reason is that quite bluntly I do not trust Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. In Darfur, he proved himself a master at

the compromise-and-stall game: Hold out until the pressure is too much, then "compromise" to take the heat off - and promptly forget about it once people look the other way.

In fact, a couple of years ago I noted seven times he had pulled that off over the preceding three years.

And now? This is from al-Jazeera for October 10:

Sudan's president has accused the country's southern autonomous leadership of breaching terms of a peace deal, warning that a conflict could re-erupt if the two sides did not settle disputes before a referendum on the south's secession, state media reported. ...

[Omar Hassan al-]Bashir said he was still committed to holding the vote on the south's independence, which is set to take place on January 9, but insisted both sides first had to settle differences over the position of their shared border and how to share oil, debt and Nile river water.

"He [Bashir] said a new conflict between the north and south will ensue if there was a failure to address these issues before the referendum and that such a conflict could be more dangerous than the one that took place before the peace agreement," Suna reported, referring to a speech Bashir gave on Saturday.

What's more, according to the VOA,

Mr. Bashir's foreign minister has suggested the government could reject the referendum results if it sees "interference" in the vote.

The south is strongly expected to vote for independence in the referendum. So it certainly appears that Bashir is positioning himself to be able to refuse to accept the outcome unless he gets what he wants on the outstanding issues.

Bashir doesn't have nearly as much wiggle room here as he did with Darfur, but the bottom line remains: As much as I hope this comes off the way it's supposed to, I will believe it when I see it. And not a moment before.

Go on, tell me this has nothing to do with bigotry

Come on, convince me. Tell me how we can't fuss about this, we can't denounce or even discuss it, because it will alienate those same white voters who need to be shielded from the "presumed" existence of racism. From AP:

New Hampshire's largest newspaper is defending its decision to refuse to publish marriage notices for gay couples.

New Hampshire is one of five U.S. states to have legalized gay marriage. Two men getting married in Portsmouth on Saturday wanted to publish a marriage notice in the Union Leader of Manchester but were refused.

The newspaper says it has a constitutional right to choose what to print and opposes the new law. Publisher Joe McQuaid says the paper isn't anti-gay but believes marriage is between a man and a woman.

Of course you're not anti-gay! Who could ever have even gotten the first hint of such an idea? You just think they shouldn't have the same rights and privileges as everyone else. You just think it's by definition impossible for gays to have a "real" marriage. How could anyone think that makes you anti-gay?

Democratic Senate candidate Paul Hodes called on the paper to change its policy. GOPper candidate Kelly Ayotte ran away from the issue. Which, if we're to listen to some, is what Hodes should have done.

Everything you need to know, The Ultimate Edition

Updated Okay, I've done it. I've found an example of Everything You Need to Know in a single word. A use of a word so revealing of the person that additional explication is unnecessary.

The person in question is Bob Somerby. I have lost interest in Somerby and his increasingly obvious intent to demonstrate he is a realer, truer, liberal than anyone else on the planet and that most liberals have "low IQs" - meaning they disagree with him. So I emphasize that I came across this quite by chance, following a link to a link to a link.

So what's the word, the Everything You Need to Know about Bob Somerby word? On Tuesday, in writing about "interpreting the crazy," he reasonably says that "sometimes, The Crazy is just The Crazy; it isn’t The Crazy and Racist." And then, immediately after, he says

Presumably, racism still exists in the land.

What th- Presumably?? That's as far as he can drag himself? Presumably there is still racism? How much more revealing can a single word be?

Somerby has repeatedly striven to minimize racism as a political issue and attacked "liberals" and columnists for raising it; he's so hypersensitive to it as to insist that calling conservatives racist "is the only political concept found in [liberals'] tiny small brains."

And now he can barely bring himself to admit - indirectly - that racism even exists? WTF?

I've had my problems with Somerby on various issues, but this is beyond the pale. Now, I am quite confident that Bob Somerby is not a racist. But I am equally confident that he embraces a liberal version of the GOPper's infamous Southern Strategy of "get the white vote" (he pointedly notes that "in 2008, the electorate was 74 percent white") and if that means telling minorities to fend for themselves politically while embracing the meme of whites as economically and socially victimized by "those people" - if that means deliberately turning a blind eye to the very real (not "presumed") existence of racism - well, hey, that's the way it goes.

That is reprehensible. Somerby is correct that not everything coming from the right is based on racism. Some of it is based on selfishness. Some of it is based on ignorance. And a lot of it is based on cynical exploitation of all three. But his bottom-line contention that race is essentially irrelevant and that racism (which merely "presumably" exists) must be ignored in order to pursue white voters is not only insulting to those white voters (who are, apparently, incapable of addressing the issue), it is ethically and morally contemptible.

Contrary to the "novelized tale" Bob Somerby is peddling, real progress, progress that takes root and persists, is never built on lies. And denying the importance of racism is a lie.

Updated with a Footnote: I wasn't going to address this but I changed my mind. Somerby's main argument for "sometimes, The Crazy is just The Crazy" is to point to Bill Clinton. There was craziness about him - so clearly that had nothing at all to do with race!

Is he joking? He can't be that uninformed. So has he forgotten - or does he just not care - how Toni Morrison, with tongue in cheek, called Clinton "the first black president" - and more importantly how the term was eagerly embraced by Clinton supporters?

Has he forgotten - or does he just not care - how the black community embraced Clinton, sensing his relationship with that community "was at least partly in his heart, as well as in his head?" Has he forgotten - or does he just not care - that as a result there was enough concern about the notion that as president he would be somehow "too solicitous" of minorities that the campaign found it necessary to stage the eponymous "Sister Souljah moment" because he had to prove he would "stand up to the minorities?"

Obviously, Bill Clinton isn't black. But the idea that The Crazy surrounding his presidency was wholly unrelated to the exploitation of white racial fears is itself crazy. The example of Bill Clinton does not support Somerby's thesis, it rebuts it.

RIP

A week late but I couldn't let this pass without notice.

Benoit Mandelbrot died of pancreatic cancer on October 16. He was 85.

You may never have heard of him but you may well have heard of the Mandelbrot set, an illustration/example of his great accomplishment: He basically invented the field of fractal geometry. No, he didn't originate it, but he put it on a firm foundation.

The mathematics of fractals can be extremely complex, but essentially they are about addressing "roughness" in a quantitative, rigorous, way.

For an example of what one related issue is, consider the coastline of, say, Massachusetts. How long is it? Using a kilometer-long ruler, you could draw a line wrapping around the coast and come up with a figure, a rough figure. Now do the same with a meter-long ruler and you can measure into small areas of bays and inlets where your kilometer-long ruler wouldn't fit. You'll come up with a bigger number. Do it again with an centimeter-long ruler and you'll get a bigger number still. Do it with a millimeter-long ruler - and you get the idea.

So how long is the coastline of Massachusetts? It depends on the roughness of your measurement.

Footnote to the preceding

Earlier this month, Abdallah Abu Rahmah was sentenced to a year in prison by an Israeli military court.

You likely have never heard of him, but you should. Abu Rahmah is a Palestinian activist who had been organizing weekly nonviolent protests against Israel's so-called "separation barrier," better called the "apartheid wall," where it was to cut though the land of the farmers of the West Bank town of Bil'in. This is an area where the Israeli Supreme Court had earlier ruled that the wall must be moved - but that order was never carried out. In short, the route of the wall is illegal - but it's still being built.

Last December, Abu Rahmah was arrested. In August, he was tried on charges of "organizing illegal demonstrations," "incitement," "throwing rocks," and "possession of weapons." He was acquitted on the latter two charges; in fact, the charge of weapons possession was based on his gathering of spent IDF (Israeli Defense Force) tear gas canisters and bullet casings to prove such force had actually been used on protestors, an argument that proved too much even for the military court.

He was, however, convicted on the first two. But they are both by their nature bogus charges aimed at obtaining a conviction, not at punishing a crime. For one thing, it is surely true that under the occupation, it would be almost impossible for any Palestinian demonstration to be "legal" in the eyes of the IDF. And "incitement" is such a vague charge that saying or doing most anything that might inspire someone to do something the Israeli government (or the IDF) doesn't like - such as taking part in nonviolent demonstrations - becomes a crime.

The conviction sparked protest from a variety of sources, including Amnesty International, which "condemned" the conviction, the European Union, which described the conviction as "intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest," and Human Rights Watch, which called the trial "unfair" and accused Israeli authorities of "effectively banning peaceful expression of political speech."

Last week, his year-long sentence came down. Having been in prison since December, it would appear he would be out in a couple of months.

But maybe not.

In July, another Bil'in organizer, Adeeb Abu Rahmah, was sentenced to a year in prison for his role in the "illegal" protests. Having been in prison for a year already prior to conviction and sentencing, he should have been released immediately. Instead, upon the motion of military prosecutors unhappy with what they insisted was a too-light sentence, the judge ordered him to be held pending the prosecution's appeal of the sentence.

On Thursday, his sentence was lengthened to 18 months.

So with the prosecution in the case of Abdallah Abu Rahmah having been given a month to appeal the sentence, it may be some time yet before he is freed.

And by the time he is, the struggle may be over. The Jerusalem Post says that the wall in the vicinity of Bil'in will be completed in a few weeks, with a tall concrete wall replacing the current fence.

About 650 dunams [about 160 acres] of agricultural land will be given back to Bilin. Nonetheless, according to attorneys representing the village, roughly 1,300 dunams [about 320 acres] of private farmland will remain on the Israeli side. It was decided a concrete wall would be constructed in place of a fence, since this replacement barrier will skirt a new neighborhood in Kiryat Sefer, known as Matityahu East. If left as a simple fence, the Israeli residents might be at risk[, the Post reported].

So because the residents of a settlement that is illegal under international law "might" be at risk, Palestinians are denied access to their own land, in essence that land is stolen, in direct defiance of a Supreme Court decision.

What was that about Israel being "democratic?"

Everything you need to know, The Continuing Story

Well, I had everything you need to know in two sentences, in one sentence, and even in one phrase. I can't beat that, but this certainly makes the cut for the category. It was prompted by the first part of what follows, drawn from an article a couple of months old but which I just came across:

I can get a tax deduction for a donation to various Zionist groups seeking to help radical settler Jews establish an imperialist, peace-destroying permanent presence on the West Bank though their illegal settlements built and maintained in violation of international law - but if I donate to the legal activities of a group like Hamas or indeed if I even talk to it about how it could abandon terrorism in favor of nonviolent appeals, I can get thrown in prison for 15 years as having "supported terrorism."

Footnote: Just to add a lighter note, I'm reminded of the story Pete Seeger has told to tell about some king who, being too lazy to actually study, directed his council of wise men to reduce all the world's wisdom to a single page. When they had done that, instead of reading it he directed them to cut it to a single paragraph. Later, to a single sentence. Later still, to a single word. Omitting the fleshed-out details and going straight to the punch line, the single word was "Maybe."

Five Million Geeks to Earth

A couple of recent space-type things.

First, you may or may not recall that last year a NASA project to slam a missile into the Moon to see what it kicked up was regarded as something of a dud by media and a lot of the public when the plume it produced was not some big dramatic blast like an exploding volcano.

Well, scientists cared more about what the test revealed than what it looked like and they were excited by the fact that the results indicated that there is water on the Moon.

But wait! There's more! In fact, a whole jumpin' lot more. The latest analysis says that

[t]here's more water on the moon than on certain places on Earth.

That's the conclusion of many scientists who have spent the past year analyzing data from NASA's LCROSS spacecraft, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which was intentionally crashed into the south polar region of the moon.

LCROSS's original 2009 mission was to search for traces of water when it hit the perpetually shadowed crater called Cabeus. Not only did it find water, it found tons of it.

In fact, the estimates run as high as a billion gallons in that one crater. How much water is that? To hold it you'd need a cube over 500 feet long on each side. If you wanted to drain that cube in one day, the water would have to flow out at nearly 700,000 gallons a minute, nearly 12,000 gallons a second. In short, the evidence to date indicates that there is more than enough water on the Moon to supply a hypothetical Moon base.

Besides water, there was evidence of a variety of elements and compounds including hydrogen, carbon monoxide, sodium, silver, mercury, magnesium, ammonia, methane, calcium, and gold. Important among those is hydrogen: That hypothetical Moon base might be able to supply its own fuel. Peter Schultz, lead author of one of studies published in the journal Science, called it "a treasure trove."

However, Barack Obama is uninterested in Moon exploration. His reason is, literally and in so many words, "we've been there before." Which is rather like saying that because I've been to London I know everything I need to know and have experienced everything I need to experience about the UK - as well as suggesting that London would not be a good base from which to explore the rest of Europe. For his part, Schultz compared it to no longer going to Antarctica for research. Either way, Obama's argument is just lame and his claim that going to a near-Earth asteroid is a step toward Mars is silly.

Okay, first the closest thing to us, now the farthest from us. And the oldest, which in space is pretty much the same thing.

Hidden in a Hubble Space Telescope photo released earlier this year is a small smudge of light that European astronomers now calculate is a galaxy from 13.1 billion years ago. That's a time when the universe was very young, just shy of 600 million years old. That would make it the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far. ...

"We're looking at the universe when it was a 20th of its current age," said California Institute of Technology astronomy professor Richard Ellis, who wasn't part of the discovery team. "In human terms, we're looking at a 4-year-old boy in the life span of an adult." ...

The new galaxy doesn't have a name - just a series of letters and numbers. So [Matthew] Lehnert [of the Paris Observatory, lead author of the study published in the science journal Nature,] said he and colleagues have called it "the high red-shift blob. "Because it takes so long for the light to travel such a vast time and distance, astronomers are seeing what the galaxy looked like 13.1 billion years ago at a time when it was quite young - maybe even as young as 100 million years old - Lehnert said. It has very little of the carbon or metal that we see in more mature stars and is full of young, blue massive stars, he said.

What's most interesting to astronomers is that this finding fits with theories about when the first stars and galaxies were born. This galaxy would have formed not too soon after them.

"We're looking almost to the edge, almost within 100 million years of seeing the very first objects," Ellis said. "One hundred million years to a human seems an awful long time, but in astronomical time periods, that's nothing compared to the life of the stars."

Nothing indeed: The predicted life span of our Sun is on the order of 10 billion years. That's 100 times longer than a hundred million years. Some stars are expected to last as long as 10 trillion years. So yeah, 100 million years is not a long time for space.

Another happy moment in our nation's history

Updated Actually, probably not. But enjoy it for now.

At the top, I have to say that my only interest in Don't Ask, Don't Tell is the philosophical one of how it relates to equal rights. I have absolutely no interest in seeing more gays and lesbians in the military because I have no interest in seeing more people of any sort in the military. I do, however, have an interest in equal treatment, equal justice, equal rights. With that in mind, onward.

As you surely know, back on September 9, US District Judge Virginia Phillips found DADT to be unconstitutional. On October 12, she issued an injunction barring the military from enforcing the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces. The Obama administration reacted by requesting that she stay her injunction pending appeal.

You know all that. This is the new part:

A federal judge said Monday she is learning toward denying a government request to delay her order halting the military from enforcing its ban on openly gay troops. ...

"My tentative ruling is to deny the application for a stay," Phillips said at the start of the hearing.

Phillips said the government has not proven that her order would harm troops or in any way impede efforts to implement new regulations for the military to deal with openly gay service members.

Phillips also called the government's request for a stay "untimely" because the DOJ had over a month to file briefs relative to a possible injunction before she issued it.

The government threw the "Don't you know we're at war?" argument at her, claiming that the "abrupt change" would damage troop morale. Phillips, happily (and reasonably) was having none of it. Nor was she impressed with the "It's so complicated, we don't have enough time" sniffling. Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay rights, said Phillips "seems to have lost her patience with the government's position" and expects she will not grant the stay.

One thing unspoken but which might figure in her thinking is that if she does issue the stay, the White House and the Pentagon would have reason to drag things out to force events into their own schedule, which involves changing the policy let's be polite and call it gradually. If she refuses, the question will be put to them immediately and they will have to move on the matter, promoting a more rapid resolution.

If she does refuse to stay her injunction, the DOJ will surely appeal.

Experts say [government lawyers] will likely find friendlier venues in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco and, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The farther the decision gets from the presentation of evidence in the trial court, the more likely it is that courts will assume the military must have some critically important interest at stake," said Diane Mazur, a law professor who opposes the policy.

Note the important word in there: assume. Phillips said that the government presented no evidence at trial and nothing at the hearing to show her order would cause irreparable harm to troops, military readiness, recruitment, or any of the rest of the malarky. The government is counting on higher courts to simply assume such harm based solely on the government's assertion, without the need for evidence. And they will probably get their way: Socarides said the DOJ "will probably go to the appellate court or Supreme Court and you'll see in a couple of days that this order has been stayed."

Which why I said "enjoy it for now." Be prepared to be disappointed in the short run. But the day will come. Yes, this is about the military and I do think we spend too much time getting rapturous about things military. But this is also about justice. And advancing justice is always a good thing.

Updated with a Footnote: The DOD has instructed military recruiters to accept openly gay applicants. Those recruiters are also to tell those applicants that they would be subject to dismissal from the military if DADT is upheld on appeal. Meanwhile, all discharge cases againt homosexuals have been frozen.

So much for the "it's so complicated" routine.

Another sad moment in our nation's history

A group of bigots in Tennessee has filed suit in County Court to prevent the building of a mosque in Murfreesboro.

Their complaint claims that the county failed to determine whether the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro is entitled to protection under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment which guarantees basic rights, including freedom of religion. They have also claimed that the county violated the state's Open Meetings law in the approval process.

Well, on Monday US Attorney Jerry Martin of Nashville filed a brief with the court offering legal proof that Islam is a recognized religion entitled to constitutional protection. Martin said his office was not taking sides in a "local matter" but that the office

would not sit by while mosque opponents raise questions in court about whether Islam is a recognized religion. Martin said in a statement that to suggest otherwise "is quite simply ridiculous."

Well, good on Jerry Martin.

So why is this "another sad moment?" Because he found it necessary to say it!

There are no accurate figures because the Census Bureau does not ask about people's religion, but its 2010 Statistical Abstract, citing a standard survey, says Islam is the third most followed religion among adults in the US. It is exceeded only by Christianity (which comprises 76% of the total) and Judaism. There are more adult Muslims in the US than there are adult Buddhists, Hindus, or Unitarians. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, worldwide there are over 1.5 billion Muslims, over one-fifth of the world's population.

And yet there are people going into court suggesting in their arguments that Islam is not a "real" religion, people who in pursuit of maintaining their bigotry, their ignorance, their paranoia, are insisting that Islam does not deserve the protections of the First Amendment.

That is indeed sad. It is also frightening, but today I find it just truly sad.

Deliberately missing the point

A little over a week ago in a post about the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks - or rather their absence - I referred to a new proposal from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change the law related to becoming a citizen so as to require all non-Jewish candidates for Israeli citizenship to pledge allegiance to the country specifically as a "Jewish and democratic" state.

Thousands protested the bill and Arab members of the Knesset denounced it as racist and as undermining the rights of Israel's minority Arabs.

So now Netanyahu has taken the painfully obvious step of asking that the bill be amended so that all immigrants, including Jews, would have to swear the same oath.

Yeah, well.... While that change may address some legalistic concerns it does not address the central issue: the requirement for non-Jews to swear allegiance to Israel as a specifically, officially, Jewish state, in effect declaring themselves outsiders in their own chosen home.

As I also noted at the same time last week, there is an inherent tension between being both a "Jewish" state and a "democratic" state. You cannot truly be both because the demands of the former for adherence to Biblical law and principles will inevitably come into conflict with the requirements of the latter for open debate and majority rule. The proposed change does not address that conflict and does nothing to resolve it.

In other word, it misses the real point - I believe deliberately.

Footnote: Again as noted before, this tension does not exist only in the case of Judaism. Turkey faces some of the same problems and conflicts in trying to be both Muslim and democratic. The only way to minimize that conflict is to have a nation that is so overwhelmingly of one religion (and even of one school within that religion) that the question just doesn't arise.

Even that may not be enough: Ireland is not officially a Catholic country, but it is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Despite that, it has still had real political conflicts in areas where the law has sought to follow Catholic teachings, such as marriage, divorce, birth control, and abortion.

But leave that aside because that sort of homogeneity does not exist in Israel. So unless it is prepared to forcibly expel its Arab residents and citizens (which some right wing parties do espouse) that conflict will persist.

The right wing is the same around the world

Wherever you go in the world, whatever nation you're in or culture you experience, there is a constant: The right wing of that nation, that culture, that society, is all about "Mine! Mine! And fuck you!" It's all about selfishness.

Over four months after elections, efforts to form a new government flopped again Monday in an enduring spat between Belgium's Dutch and French-speaking camps that touches on the fate of the country as a unitary state.

Since the June 13 elections, half a dozen politicians have failed to form a government that would enact more self-rule for Dutch-speaking Flanders — Belgium's economically dominant north — and Francophone Wallonia in the south.

The latest failed attempt was lead by Bart De Wever, head of the New Flemish Alliance, Belgium's largest party, which advocates an "orderly breakup" of Belgium.

Gutting Belgium was long a dream of the far right in Flanders, and in recent years the idea of a breakup has become a mainstream politics among Flanders politicians.

Among the "reforms" De Wever proposed - besides one that would limit Francophone language rights in Flanders - was that

the regional governments of Flanders and Wallonia would raise half or more of their budgets through direct taxation, a job now done by the federal government.

But why? Is this just a culture war writ large? A Netherlands-France proxy fight? For some, certainly. But the real core can be found in the fact that

Wallonia would lose up to 70 percent of its revenue if that [taxation] proposal went through, said Elio di Rupo, the head of the Francophone socialists.

That's because Flanders

has 25 percent higher per capita income than Wallonia and half of its unemployment rate.

In other words, same as it ever was: It is the richer side saying to the poorer side, "I got mine, so screw you." The difference between right and left - the difference between "me" and "we," between selfishness and sharing, between coldness and compassion, between fear and hope, the clash of yesterday versus tomorrow - is universal.

I like the side I'm on.

The Geek From The Black Lagoon

Easing back into the saddle while still trying to extend my politics-free vacation a bit longer, here are some science-related bits that caught my eye over the past couple of weeks.

1.- In 2008, some language researchers were documenting some unwritten languages spoken in the northeast corner of India, near the borders of China, Tibet, and Burma. At the time, there were 6909 documented languages. When they were done, there were 6910.

In doing their research, they discovered that a language known to its speakers as Koro, which was thought to be a dialect of a language called Aka, is actually an independent "hidden" language - one never before recognized.

"Koro is quite distinct from the Aka language," said Gregory Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. "When we went there we were told it was a dialect of Aka, but it is a distant sister language."

Koro is an endangered language, spoken by only about 1000 people. Anderson said if they had made the trip 10 years later, they might have discovered only a handful of speakers. Linguists estimate that a language disappears about every two weeks as the last of its speakers die.

National Geographic, which supported the research as part of its Enduring Voices program, has a video about the discovery here.

2.- Around 5500 years ago, a Scandinavian Stone Age settlement, likely of the neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture, was hit with a disaster, possibly a fierce sandstorm or maybe a sudden flood that drew sand from the river. However it happened, the town was inundated and encased in a thick layer of sand.

And so it remained, undisturbed. Until now.

Archaeologists working in southern Norway dug through two meters of soil and sand, expecting to find an "ordinary" Stone Age site, one small and badly preserved. Instead, they uncovered what Håkon Glørstad, a spokesman for the dig, called "an archaeological sensation," an unspoiled dwelling site with stone structures and the most well-preserved Stone Age pottery ever found in Norway, including at least one entirely intact clay vessel.

More than 300 square meters have been excavated so far. It appears the complete settlement is much larger.

3.- The common belief among scientists is that life on Earth began forming in a “primordial soup” in the oceans. However, it develops that there is another possibility.

A study simulating chemical processes in the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, discovered that molecules known as nucleotide bases and amino acids could have formed there. They are components, respectively, of DNA and proteins: the basic building blocks of life.

Intense radiation hits the top of Titan’s thick atmosphere and can break apart normally stable molecules, members of the research group explained. They studied what happens after these molecules fall apart. The researchers beamed radiation into a chamber containing chemicals believed to replicate those in Titan’s atmosphere, nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. Formation of the life-building molecules, called complex organic compounds, followed.

In fact, the simulations generated all five of the nucleotide bases used by life on Earth, plus the two smallest amino acids. Team member Sarah Horst noted this means that to start building organic molecules, "We don’t need liquid water, we don’t need a surface."

Which means in turn that instead of starting in that "primordial soup," the building blocks of life on Earth might have arisen in a "primordial haze" high in the atmosphere. Life again proves to be more creative and more robust than we imagine.

4.- Finally, and speaking of evolution, while it wasn't their goal, a team of scientists at the University of Bristol in the UK has given what amounts to a big "Buzz off" to creationists and their "intelligent design" fellow travelers. After studying the impact of various fossil discoveries, they have concluded that despite various claims by various palaeontologists about "rewriting evolutionary history,"

most fossil discoveries don’t make a huge difference: they confirm, rather than contradict our understanding of evolutionary history.

That is especially true in the case of human evolution, where most discoveries of new fossil species simply fill in previously-known gaps in the fossil record.

Put another way, the more we learn about human evolution, the more we discover that while they may have had some of the exact details wrong, those dang evolutionists had the right idea all along.

Footnote: There are, of course, the Ig Nobels, awarded this year on September 30.

Another leftover from before the trip

In the face of those who argue that "the media controls what you think," I have always insisted that that is not true - but it is true that the media has a great deal of influence over what you think about. Case in point:

About 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from the Gulf of Mexico, Dave Edmonds is struggling to remind people about the BP oil spill.

There aren't many magazine covers with photos of oil-drenched birds now that BP has capped its massive gusher at the bottom of the sea. ...

So Edmonds, who lives on the Delaware coast, has started a nonprofit organization [called Taking Back the Gulf] to keep the disaster on people's minds with a website and social networking campaign. ...

For Gulf residents fighting for economic survival, a nation's short attention span is deeply unsettling, especially with oil still washing ashore. Yet it's unclear whether Americans are turning their attention elsewhere, or whether it's just the media that have.

Either way, people like chef Chris Sherrill feel abandoned.

"It's amazing how quickly the American public forgot that this was one of the worst manmade disasters in U.S. history," he said.

His wedding catering and event business in Gulf Shores, Alabama, is teetering because few brides are still coming to the beach for weddings.

Yeah, but be fair: What are the interests of a bunch of just ordinary people like you compared to the protection of the oil industry?

After all, the Obama crowd's own investigating panel says that the White House

blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis....

Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill's size, and President Barack Obama's senior energy adviser went on national TV and mischaracterized a government analysis by saying it showed most of the oil was "gone." The analysis actually said it could still be there. ...

The report shows "the political process was in charge and science really does not have the role that was touted," said Christopher D'Elia, dean of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

In fact, those early estimates were not only "erroneous," they were downright silly.

At first, BP claimed the well was leaking 1,000 barrels a day. By early May, the administration had revised its estimate upwards to 5,000 barrels a day, but based its assessment on the work of a single NOAA scientist using "overly casual" analysis of satellite images of oil on the surface of the ocean.

The administration clung to that estimate – which turned out to be 12 times lower than the actual spill size – despite known inaccuracies in the scientists' work, the report said.

Despite those facts - or more likely due to their cause - the O-gang

announced [this past] Tuesday that it is ending the temporary, six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling operations. The announcement means that new drilling could take place in the Gulf "very soon," said Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, though rigs will need to undergo new inspection and permitting procedures before companies can start drilling.

The moratorium was supposed to remain in place until Nov. 30....

Despite there still being questions of exactly how the disaster happened, exactly how big it is, and what the long-term impacts will be, "we are open for business," Salazar said.

Why? Well, because, we're told by Salazar and Michael Bromwich of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement,

enough work had been done in the months since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon to prevent another disaster. "The risks of deepwater drilling have been reduced sufficiently to allow deepwater drilling to resume," said Bromwich in a call with reporters.

These smiling assurances are based in part on the existence of those "new procedures" - even though the agency lacks the resources to do adequate inspections. Bromwich would only promise to "do the best we can with the resources at our disposal." In other words, to do crap.

(Interestingly enough, this announcement came the same day the European Commission announced plans for tougher controls on offshore oil and gas drilling, ones that would force national governments to abide by Commission rules and increase liability for oil companies in the event of a disaster.)

All this while the spill is actually still going on. The well may have been plugged - finally - but oil continues to wash ashore, albeit not in the amounts seen over the summer. Meanwhile, Florida State University professor Ian MacDonald and Georgia Tech scientist Joseph Montoya

said NOAA is at it again with statements saying there is no oil in ocean floor sediments. A University of Georgia science cruise, which Montoya was on, found ample evidence of oil on the Gulf floor.

So while no, it has not been the "environmental Armageddon" the direst of the predictions foresaw, it has been an environmental disaster that has yet to play out and whose worst effects will not be found in the immediate, media-drawing drama but in the slow grind of time in altered landscapes, environments, and food chains and through them human economies. It's not over - either environmentally or economically - and it won't be for some time.

Footnote: And an entirely fitting one it is. BP has announced that it

is disbanding the external safety ombudsman it set up after the fatal explosion in 2005 at its Texas City refinery, despite the growing number of concerns raised by the oil company's employees. ...

BP said that it would not extend the office's tenure beyond June next year. ...

Scott Schloegel, chief of staff for congressman Bart Stupak, who is chairman of the House subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said: "Every time there is a disaster, BP sets up a new programme and says they are going to change the culture within BP." ...

Independent of BP, the ombudsman's office is run by Stanley Sporkin, a retired federal judge, with a full-time staff of five and with a budget to hire external contractors to investigate BP's operations. ...

A BP spokesman stressed that the ombudsman's role was never meant to be permanent, adding: "It has always been our intent to internalise the employee concerns process [into the corporation's OpenTalk programme], but only at the point in time when we felt the internal processes were sufficiently robust."

In other words, BP just put up with this until they could find a way to weasel out of it with platitudes about employees "trusting" management.

According to the internal figures, the number of concerns received by the ombudsman's office increased almost fourfold between its inception and last year. Last year alone, the figure was up by two-thirds on 2008. Of the 252 known concerns received in total since 2006, 148 relate to BP's Alaska operations. These include 50 specific safety-related concerns at the North Slope operations.

Apparently, there were a lot of people who felt they couldn't trust management. With a signficant amount of employee concern being raised about another, ongoing, BP operation, one truly wonders why they should feel differently now.

"Come into my parlor," said BP to its crews.