Do you see what I see?

It seems to me that often enough to deserve mention I see something or react to something in a news item that others don't see (or at least don't comment on) or to which they don't react. So out of curiosity, think about your response to this brief story, quoted in full, before you go on to my reaction, just to see if my take really is off the beaten path.

New statistics show that New York Police Department officers made 601,055 street stops of potential suspects last year.

It was the first time the total topped 600,000. The NYPD reports the figures on so-called stop and frisks to the City Council, and the 2010 numbers were made public Tuesday.

Civil rights advocates claim the practice unfairly targets blacks and other minorities, and that many stops are made without proper cause.

Police officials counter that it's essential crime-fighting tool. About 10 percent of the stops result in arrests.

In 2009, 575,304 stops were recorded.

To repeat, that's the whole article. Now, one obvious thing is that it doesn't address the issues of any potential racial disparity in the stops or lack of cause even though those were cited as objections to the practice. But here's what got me about it:

Consider first that it says that 10% of stops resulted in arrests but it doesn't say what for. The whole idea of "stop and frisk" was to search for illegal hidden weapons. Were the arrests for that? Or were they for, I dunno, drug possession (which shouldn't have been found in a frisk and could indicate an illegal search)? Outstanding warrants? Were they some bogus "contempt of cop" arrests because someone made a fuss about being stopped? What?

Consider second that it mentions only arrests but not disposition. Were the charges dismissed or pursued? If they were pursued, did they result in convictions? We have no idea.

Okay. With that in mind, here's the thing that really got me, the thing I noticed: Even if we were to assume that every one of those arrests was for a legitimate hidden weapons charge and that every such arrest resulted in a conviction, we are still left with the undeniable but unaddressed fact that the cops were wrong 90% of the time! At least!

At least nine out of every ten such stops, nine out of every ten uses of this "essential crime-fighting tool" were unnecessary, unproductive, intrusive, wasteful displays of official arrogance and power that served only to humiliate and express dominance over the victims. Nine out of every ten. At least.

I've had a number of posts that addressed issues of privacy*; in several of them (this one, for example) I expressed my concern that one real and quite possibly intended effect of practices such as this "stop and frisk" business is getting us used to being watched, checked, stopped, examined, and searched by "authority," to make passive acceptance of arbitrary authority a normal part of our lives.

How far has this penetrated our culture? How about that commercial for I think it's National Car Rental with the guy at the airport of who it's said "you can spot an amateur a mile away while you go shoeless and metal-free in seconds?" This "business pro" is being praised for how quickly and efficiently he can submit - and I've yet to come across anyone (other than my wife) who thinks that's strange! That surely is one measure.

Another measure is that at least nine out of every ten of the NYPD's increasingly-frequent uses of its "essential crime-fighting tool" of "stop and frisk" fought no crime, uncovered no wrongdoing, caught no miscreant - but that fact appears to have produced no discernible outrage. One sad but true thing about a slippery slope is that the further down you go, the more slippery it becomes.

*Just FYI: Several of the posts at that link don't deal with privacy as a topic but do use the word somewhere in the post. I know of no way to separate the two so if some of them leave you going "Why is this here?" that's why.

Um, you forgot one

I decided to consider Libya separately because there is a somewhat different dynamic here with somewhat different concerns about the outcome.

Libya has been the scene of the most violent examples of repression of the protests sweeping the region, with

[e]stimates of the total number of fatalities over six days of unprecedented unrest rang[ing] from 173 to 285. Some opposition sources gave figures as high as 500.

But it has also been the place where the protests themselves have been most violent, particularly in Benghazi in the eastern part of the country. There, Al-Jazeera reports, protesters against the 41-year long regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi have seized army vehicles and weapons and even some of the troops sent to quash the protest switched sides. In fact, the protesters have essentially taken control of the city with pro-government forces reduced to harassing sniper fire.

There were also reports of protesters heading to Gaddafi's compound in the city of Al-Zawia near Tripoli, with the intention of burning the building down.

Protests have also reportedly broken out in other cities, including Bayda, Derna, Tobruk and Misrata - and anti-Gaddafi graffiti adorns the walls of several cities.

A vital point about Libya is that tribal ties are still very important. Which gives extra emphasis to the statement of the head of the Al-Zuwayya tribe in eastern Libya, who has threatened to cut off oil exports from the region to the West unless there is an end to the "oppression of protesters." Meanwhile, the Warfala tribe, which lives south of Tripoli and is one of the nation's largest, has reportedly joined the anti-Qaddafi protests. A leader of the Warfala tribe said Qaddafi is "no longer a brother" and should "leave the country."

All this together - nationwide protests, what amounts to insurrection in Benghazi, rejection by one of Libya's largest tribes - without doubt creates the biggest threat to Qaddafi's rule ever, which is likely why the response has been so ugly. That repression hasn't stopped the protests, however; in fact they have spread. And that is often the turning point, when repression produces more protest rather than less.

In a predictable step, in a nationally-televised speech on Sunday night, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, Col. Qaddafi's son, offered the carrot to the military's stick, completing the triangle of threats, promises, and pleas that have been the pattern of governments unable to understand or deal with protest that doesn't melt away at the first baton. Mixed in with defiant declarations about fighting to "the last man,"

[t]he younger Gadhafi offered to put forward reforms within days that he described as a "historic national initiative" and said the regime was willing to remove some restrictions and begin discussions for a constitution. He offered to change a number of laws, including those covering the media and the penal code.

He also appealed for an end to the protests, saying that if they continued, it could lead to civil war that could send the country's oil wells up in flames and he admitted to "mistakes" in responding to protests.

The thing I found interesting about the speech, something that indicates, as similar things have in other cases, that the regime is on flimsier footing than could have been imagined just a couple of months ago was that he found it necessary both to say that the army still backed his father and to deny rumors that he had fled to Venezuela. What's more, the BBC noted, without actually saying it he

appears to be conceding that the country has already broken into two parts, with the east out of control.

That makes what's happening in Libya qualitatively different from what's happening elsewhere in the region in this wave of protest. If the Beeb's interpretation is correct, so was Seif Qaddafi's: This is becoming a civil war. Which also means that something other than a change in the form of central government may be coming; this may not be a not-at-all simple but still relatively straightforward change from a repressive government to a more open one but an outcome considerably more complex.

Qaddafi ingratiated himself with a West addicted to oil when he withdrew his support for various revolutionary (or "terrorist") groups around the world and shut down his nascent nuclear weapons program. But those same Western nations turned a blind eye to his continued violent repression of any opposition. And here, once again, our preference for stability over justice, for convenience over conscience, may well come around to bite us on the ass.

It appears to me now that there is much more of a threat than elsewhere of Libya descending into the sort of violent chaos that was feared for - but did not occur in - both Tunisia and Egypt. With the reality that the people of Libya have been given over these recent years more than enough reason to see Western nations as enablers of Qaddafi's reign, what emerges from that potential chaos and whether or not it is burningly hostile to Western people - and note the careful and conscious distinction: not Western interests, Western people - can be a matter of genuine concern.

We - by which I mean those of us who make up the actual Left in this country - are assuredly on the side of the people of Libya over their oppressors. (If you're not, you're not part of the Left.) Here as is so often true, the best course, even the politically wise course, is the just one - which means our leaders should be and their side, too. And it would be helpful if they said so.

What's goin' down

This is going to be a rather long post but as it's broken into various bits, I hope it's not overlong. As I've said any number of times, this is not a site people do (or should) look to for breaking news. Still, the events of the past week in North Africa and the Middle East can't be ignored just because I can't do minute-by-minute - hell, day-by-day - updates.

But I decided I wanted to try to give an overview of where things stand in various places in the region as of this writing, which is late on Sunday night, despite knowing it may be outdated by the time anyone reads it. Or I finish it, for that matter.

Anyway, here it is, news I found from various sources, presented alphabetically by country as if you couldn't tell, with some commentary here and there. Perhaps it will be of use to some folks.

Algeria: For the second week in a row, thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators gathered in the capital city of Algiers on Sunday. And for the second week in a row the mass rally was disrupted by riot police brandishing clubs who forced their way through the crowd, breaking it into small groups that security forces could prevent from marching.

Even so, the government moved to placate the protesters, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promising to lift the state of emergency, which has been in place for about 19 years, while warning that the ban on protests in Algiers would remain.

It's doubtful that would satisfy the great number of the protesters in light of the government's notorious corruption and an estimated 42% unemployment rate among young people. They have indicated an intent to march every Saturday until the main demand - an end to Bouteflika's government - is met.

Bahrain: Six days of protests were capped on Friday by three massive funeral rallies in the capital of Manama for those killed in earlier demonstrations. According to the Guardian (UK), the turnout was above 50,000 – at least 5% of the entire population of the country and over one-third that of the city.

"We don't care if they kill 5,000 of us," a protester screamed inside the forecourt of the Salmaniya hospital, which has become a staging point for Bahrain's raging youth. "The regime must fall and we will make sure it does." ...

"Down with the king, down with the Khalifas," they cried, referring to the kingdom's ruling family. Anger among the overwhelmingly Shia Muslim demonstrators towards the Sunni dynasty that has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years is now virulent.

Even so,

"No to Sunni; no to Shia," they cried at one point. "We are all Bahraini."

Towards evening, soldiers fired on one march, wounding at least 50 and prompting Crown Prince Salman, deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces, to order the army off the streets. He also promised what one source called "a new dawn of free expression."

Meanwhile,

[v]arious sources reported that seven opposition groups demanding political reform in the country have agreed to meet to formulate a response to the government's call

for political dialogue. The opposition decided that pulling back the army and allowing protesters to re-occupy Pearl Square, the focus of previous protests from which they'd been violently driven on Thursday, was enough of a concession to engage in talks.

Iran: Supporters of the Green Movement gathered in Tehran for the second time within a week on Sunday to protest the killing of two protesters killed by police in the demonstrations on Tuesday. Thousands took part on Sunday but it was in a number of smaller groups which were met with riot police and plainclothed basiji militia who used tear gas and clubs to attack the protesters. An opposition website said that one person had been killed by police and dozens were arrested.

It was unclear how many people joined the demonstrations in Tehran on Sunday. Witnesses estimated that more than 30,000 people protested on Feb. 14, and some opposition Web sites suggested there were close to one million people. Whatever the precise turnout, these were the largest opposition protests since the disputed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

Reports from opposition sources say protests occurred a number of other places besides Tehran, including Shiraz, Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashhad, Sanandaj, Rasht, and in Marewan Province in the Kurdistan region.

In a laughably transparent ploy, on Saturday the government had warned people to stay away from the demonstrations because, it claimed, members of a banned opposition group planned to shoot at demonstrators in order to incite the police to do the same. There is of course no way to know how big an effect that sort of blatant threat had on the turnout, but it obviously failed to prevent the protests.

It seems to me that the movement's slogan might be "Green is Forever." The opposition in Iran has been aggressively dispersed and officially denounced - but, "God Bless the Grass," it never seems to die off completely.

Iraq: Protests of sizes ranging from dozens to thousands have broken out in numerous places in Iraq over the past week. Karbala, Nassiriya, Wasit Province, Kut, Sulaimaniya, Thi-Qar Province, Ramadi, Falluja, and of course Baghdad have seen protests.

Unlike their regional counterparts, Iraqi protesters generally have not been calling for the removal of their elected government, installed just two months ago after months of tense negotiations between political factions.

Which is true - but they are calling for jobs, better pay, and improvement in public services such as electric power and water, and in several cases have demanded the resignation of local officials, who they say are often indifferent and corrupt.

Some of the protests have been the targets of official violence, with security forces shooting demonstrators. According to the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, police killed three and wounded sixty while suppressing the demonstrations in Wasit Province. Meanwhile, several dozen have been injured in a series of clashes in Sulaimaniya in the Kurdish area and a gang of about 30 armed men broke into a local TV station that had been covering those protests, wounded a guard, and burned the equipment. The same day, fires were set at three offices of Goran, a Kurdish opposition group.

The government is clearly worried: The cabinet has announced it is taking steps toward "improv[ing] the food ration card system and ... reforming the social benefits system" as well as "launching job opportunities" and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has made moves intended to reduce the level of anger, including

cutting his pay, reducing electricity bills, buying more sugar for the national food ration programme and diverting money from fighter jets to food.

It remains to be seen if, lacking a wholesale sacking of corrupt local officials, it will be enough.

Jordan: On each of the past several Fridays there have been anti-government protest in Amman with turnouts ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. The protesters have been calling for an end to corruption, the creation of a constitutional monarchy, and the lowering of prices. The numbers are not massive but that they are happening at all is very unusual. The actions had been peaceful until this past Friday, when pro-government thugs attacked the demonstrators with clubs and metal pipes, injuring several.

Back on February 1, apparently aware of the potential for a threat to his position after what was then four weeks of demonstrations, King Abdullah II took steps intended to head off more protest. He had sacked his cabinet including the prime minister, replacing him with Marouf al-Bakhit, who is widely viewed as free of the taint of corruption. The government said Bakhit was charged with "taking practical, swift and tangible steps to launch a real political reform process." That appears to have satisfied some protesters - the rallies have been smaller of late - but clearly not all and the government may be feeling the pressure of the constant irritation of the weekly protests. This Friday may be revealing one way or the other.

Morocco: Ignoring a whisper campaign seeking to undermine their protest,

[t]housands staged rallies in Moroccan cities on Sunday demanding political reform and limits on the powers of King Mohammed VI, the latest protests demanding change that have rocked the region.

There were 4,000 people demonstrating in the capital Rabat and 4,000 more in Casablanca. Other cities including Marrakesh and Tangier also saw rallies. The calls were for political change, an end to corruption, and a democratic constitution.

Taken together, what was called an unprecedented show of political unity and strength turned out tens of thousands of protesters from various political strains despite calls from some established Islamic and socialist political parties for their members to stay home.

"We no longer want to be subjects," said Abdelilah Benabdeslam, a leader of the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights. "We want to be citizens."

Morocco is a hereditary monarchy and the king wields most official political power. Protesters want a new constitution and seemed to be calling for a constitutional monarchy - not to get rid of the king, but to limit his power. The idea of getting rid of the monarchy altogether is a social taboo in Morocco, so much so that it was the subject of that whisper campaign, which tried to portray the rallies as anti-monarchy.

The main rally in Rabat drew a massive tide of protesters that flooded the main streets and wound up before the parliament building. Unlike in Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, official permission was granted for the rally. No riot police were present, and the few uniformed security forces hung back, directed traffic or chatted amicably with demonstrators.

There were a few small scuffles reported in Rabat and elsewhere, but nothing serious. Then again, there often isn't at first. We'll see what happens if it develops that the protesters aren't just blowing off steam but persist in their efforts.

Tunisia: Protests at what can be considered the epicenter of the changes in the region are continuing. Protesters are calling for further changes in the interim government, in effect standing guard against the possibility of the revolution being coopted by the old guard. Meanwhile, that interim government wants Saudi Arabia to extradite ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to face charges on "severe crimes."

Yemen: Yemen has seen nine straight days of unrest calling for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, with thousands participating in sit-ins in the cities of Ibb and Taiz and shots being fired at a demonstration in the capital Sana'a. At least 76 people, including seven soldiers, have been wounded in clashes and at least one protester has been killed.

Saleh, in power for 32 years, has called for opposition parties to continue pursuing a dialogue with his government, even as that opposition said it would join the protests, which so far have been driven largely by students at Sana'a University.

A commentator with the Inter Press news service suggested that protests in Yemen may have a problem catching fire the way they have elsewhere in the region because of "a complex context here [which] demands a different kind of political dialogue with power." The problem, simply put, is that the students don't trust either Saleh's ruling General People's Congress (GPC) or the opposition coalition known as the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP). They regard them both as corrupt and are of the mind that the JMP is getting involved to advance its own political interests, not that of the protesters. They want the protests to remain a "march of the people without leaders and middle-persons from the ruling and opposition groups."

Frankly, that seems rather naive to me. Even if their judgment about the JMP is correct and relations with them must be approached with caution so protests don't just turn into JMP campaign rallies, seeking to deal them out entirely is unwise and makes the students easy to isolate. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when you're risking at least your future and potentially your life, turning away potential (even if temporary) allies cannot be a good idea.

"Be afraid" is always Option One

There is, of course, legitimate concern about how the revolution in Egypt will ultimately play out. While there is still good reason to think the the military will be true to its word about returning to civilian government (because, as I've argued previously, there really is no gain to the military to stay in power), there is also cause for concern, such the the military's declared intention to put and end to the strikes that arose as part of the protests.

However, our media can always find another reason to tremble. Friday's New York Times had an article that opened this way:

Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential Sunni cleric who is banned from the United States and Britain for supporting violence against Israel and American forces in Iraq, delivered his first public sermon here in 50 years on Friday, emerging as a powerful voice in the struggle to shape what kind of Egyptian state emerges from the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

So the very first thing it was felt necessary to say was "Ooh! Scary Muslim radical" and the second thing was "Ooh - Scary Muslim radical is a 'powerful voice' in shaping Egypt's future." Be afraid - be very afraid.

Then, after saying the scary Muslim radical addressed "a rapt audience of more than a million" (Ooh! Scary!), calling Qaradawi "an intellectual inspiration to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood" (Ooh! Scary!) and repeating the "supports violence" bit (Ooh! Still scary!), only then, in the seventh graph, does the article say this:

On Friday, he struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching. He began his sermon by saying that he was discarding the customary opening “Oh Muslims,” in favor of “Oh Muslims and Copts”....

He urged the military officers governing Egypt to deliver on their promises of turning over power to “a civil government” founded on principles of pluralism, democracy and freedom. [Emphasis added.]

So the scary Muslim radical with the "powerful voice" and the "rapt audience" actually believes, according to scholars who have studied his work, that

Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy.

But the NY Times couldn't lead with that, could it? After all, that would not have been scary.

I had to share this

I came across this when I got distracted by a link while looking for something else and found it so deliciously revealing of corporate-think that I just had to share it. Consider it another entry in the "Everything you need to know" series.

It comes from a Reuters article on the corporate outlook on the economy for the next months. In considering inflation, it notes that

[i]t is no secret that commodity-sensitive companies are feeling the pinch from rising costs and are keen to share some of the burden with shoppers.

Among those intending to raise prices is Campbell's Soup. But oh wait, no no no, they are not going to raise prices. Perish the thought. Rather, the company

expected "better pricing" in the second half of the year.

The price isn't higher, it's better. It's the New! Improved! price.

That is just hilarious. Just how stupid do they think we are? (Don't answer that.)

Speaking of Avedon Carol, Three

And one more thing I came across via The Sideshow over the past couple of days.

This could - emphasize could - be really significant. Writing at Firedoglake, Cindy Kouril, a former Special Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, says that

[i]n a tour de force of dicta, a Long Island bankruptcy judge telegraphed the intention to rule against MERS in a whole bunch of pending motions.

MERS stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that runs an electronic registry which in theory tracks servicing rights and ownership of mortgage loans in the US. The whole idea of the system is, not surprisingly, to save the banking and real estate industries money (and so increase profits).

To understand how - and I admit that I'm not 100% sure I've got a real grip on this but I do think I've got a basic one so I'm giving a very basic explanation - you need to realize that there are two main documents involved in taking out a loan to buy a house. One is the promissory note; that is the one that lays out the terms of the loan, how much it is, how it's supposed to be repaid, and all the rest of that. The other is the mortgage, which assigns a security interest in your home to the lender - that is, it puts the house up as collateral for the loan.

The idea behind MERS is that it will be the owner (or the owner's nominee) of the security interest indicated by the mortgage - that is, it will hold the mortgage - while the various banks, investors, and loan servicers busily bundle, re-bundle, sell, swap, trade, and otherwise move the promissory notes around to their short-term advantage. The argument is thus that because while all that is going on the security interests in the properties involved are not transferred (because MERS holds them), there is no need to file any assignments with any county land record offices. Because there were, supposedly, no such assignments, get it? So there are also no associated fees to be paid. Presto! Lower costs yielding higher profits. It's an end run around the law that John Yoo could admire.

And at least this one court is not willing to put up with it, finding that

MERS and its partners made the decision to create and operate under a business model that was designed in large part to avoid the requirements of the traditional mortgage recording process. This Court does not accept the argument that because MERS may be involved with 50% of all residential mortgages in the country, that is reason enough for this Court to turn a blind eye to the fact that this process does not comply with the law.

That is, "too big to fail" doesn't cut the mustard in this court. But I suspect that what really has the bankers and their allies worried is the issue of "fractionalization," defined by Kouril as "the process of separating ownership of the Promissory Note from ownership of the Mortgage Deed." The court said:

In simple terms the Movant relies on the argument that a note and mortgage are inseparable. ... While it is generally true that a mortgage travels a parallel path with its corresponding debt obligation, the parties in this case have adopted a process which by its very terms alters this practice where mortgages are held by MERS as “mortgagee of record.” By MERS’s own account, the Note in this case was transferred among its members, while the Mortgage remained in MERS’s name. MERS admits that the very foundation of its business model as described herein requires that the Note and Mortgage travel on divergent paths. Because the Note and Mortgage did not travel together, Movant must prove not only that it is acting on behalf of a valid assignee of the Note, but also that it is acting on behalf of the valid assignee of the Mortgage.

If that's not clear, this is what Kouril says it means and herein is the potential importance of what the court said: The court found that by the very arrangement MERS establishes, the connection between the note and the mortgage is broken and that such fractionalization ends the security interest. Yes, the debt still exists, but the house is no longer collateral for the debt. Put another way, you owe party A money, but they have no present legal claim on your house. Party B has a security interest in your house, but you don't owe them any money! So to proceed with a foreclosure, the foreclosing institution would have to show it holds both the note and the mortgage, which in many MERS-related cases is simply not true or even possible.

I should emphasize that this won't stop foreclosures, especially not in places like Florida with its imfamous "rocket docket." And just because a lender can't foreclose because it has lost - actually, has given away - its security interest in the house, doesn't mean it can't look to other legal means to seize the property to pay the debt. But at least it might - might - provide some daylight between the homes of so many of us struggling day to day to keep going and the grasping hands of Wall Street.

Footnote A: This is not the first court to question MERS' position. In August 2009, for example, in Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, the Kansas Supreme Court found that MERS was a "straw man" that served to cloud the issue of who actually owned either the promissory note or title to the property. What's more, it found that

MERS is not an economic ‘beneficiary’ under the Deed of Trust. It is owed and will collect no money from Debtors under the Note, nor will it realize the value of the Property through foreclosure of the Deed of Trust in the event the Note is not paid.

The decision only applies to Kansas, but perhaps it will guide more courts in the future.

Footnote B: Every time I see the term MERS, I can't help but think of "merser," which is the usual pronunciation of MRSA, which stands for Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a so-called "super bug" that is resistant to a wide variety of antibiotics. (I don't usually rely on Wikipedia for medical information, but I compared this with the Mayo Clinic site and the info seemed solid and more conveniently organized.)

Footnote C: If there is someone out there who has a good grip on all this and sees errors in my understanding, please do comment and/or email. I would simply ask that you recall the old admonition that "it's better to instruct than denounce." One last note, though: If all you want to do is tell me I've omitted all the glorious consumer benefits of MERS, don't bother.

Speaking of Avedon Carol, Two

The second of three things I picked up on via The Sideshow.

Writing at The Lipstick Chronicles, novelist Sarah Strohmeyer tells of her friend Melissa who died unexpectedly because the chest and back pain she was suffering was not, contrary to what she thought, a pulled muscle. It was a failing heart. "Melissa died," she wrote, "because she couldn't afford to see a doctor."

So instead of having the EKGs and blood work and other tests that might have saved her had they been done in response to her symptoms, Melissa was found in her house, dead, alone except for her beloved pet dog Daisy.

Melissa worked hard. She owned a home. She paid her taxes (late, but paid). She was trying to live a dream - the American Dream - that supposedly we as citizens are promised - the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. For her, that couldn't be achieved in a traditional job that came with the perks of health care.

But does that mean she had to die? ...

[At a time when so many have so much they simply waste it,] is it fair that Melissa Hall should lie suffering and in pain in the home she was afraid of losing by risking a trip to the emergency room?

Should fear, financial fear, ever be a deterrent to health care? Strohmeyer referred to health insurance for the self-employed Melissa as "a luxury she simply couldn't afford." In comments, Ramona wrote:

Here's the definition of luxury from the American Heritage Dictionary:

1. Something inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort.
2. Something expensive or hard to obtain.

Neither of those should apply to seeing a doctor.

Damn straight. And note well and note clearly: The sort of health insurance reform we saw last year will not stop the creation of more Melissas because even when fully in force assuming it gets that far, there will still be those without insurance and still be those - indeed likely more of them than now - who have insurance but with deductibles so high that it will be of little use and the fear, the hindering financial fear, will still remain. Because - and I will keep saying this as long as I have breath (or a keyboard), the issue is not access to health insurance. It is access to health care.

And as long as there are still Melissas we have failed.

Footnote: Also in comments, Nancy Martin links to an article in The New Yorker which describes programs in places including Camden and Atlantic City, NJ, and Boston which are succeeding at reducing health care costs by preventive care focusing on the most vulnerable (and most expensive) patients.

Footnote Again: My wife nearly died from a heart attack. She, too, ignored her chest pain, chalking it up to stress and concealing it from her doctor and from me (we were dating, but not yet a committed couple, at the time). She now gives talks on women and heart disease, encouraging them to not ignore their symptoms and to be aware that the symptoms of heart disease in women can vary, sometimes significantly, from those for men. She recommends the book Women Are Not Small Men.

Speaking of Avedon Carol, One

The first of three more things I picked up via The Sideshow.

In December 2008, a young environmental activist named Tim DeChristopher, a student at the University of Utah, took part in a public auction for federal land. He placed the winning bid of $1.7 million for 14 of the 77 parcels up for sale, totaling 22,000 acres. His intent was to protect that land from oil and gas drilling and to protest national energy policy.

"I was concerned about the state of the environment and how little people were doing," he said in an interview. "I was building up the commitment to do something to try to resist the climate crisis. I felt that writing letters and riding my bike was not enough."

So when the opportunity to take part in the bidding arose, he took it.

One problem: He couldn't pay for his bid. It was, in fact, an act of nonviolent civil disobedience or more exactly disruption, peacefully throwing a virtual monkey wrench into the works.

Despite the fact that over the past three years there have been 25 other people who made winning bids in similar autions without being able to pay for them, only one person is being prosecuted for it: Tim DeChristopher. He has been hit with two felony charges and faces 10 years in prison and a $75,000 fine. The charges, apparently, were filed at the behest of the Bureau of Land Management and quite possibly with the collusion of the fossil fuel industry: DeChristopher's lawyer first learned of what the charges would be from an AP reporter, who learned it from an oil industry lobbyist.

His trial starts on February 28 in Salt Lake City. A website to support him has been set up under the name Bidder70; the site covers more than just his legal case and is worth a visit on general principles. There is to be a rally in SLC on the day the trial opens and there is a legal defense fund; info on both is at the site.

Certainly 10 years in prison is such an absurdly outsized punishment for the crime of causing some nuisance to those eager to serve the desires of the oil and gas industry (and to that industry itself) that it becomes clear that the filing of these charges - especially when no one else has been charged due to an inability to make good on their bid - marks them as intimidation done less to punish DeChristopher than to deter anyone else who might consider some similar action. Which of course is clearly and unjustly contrary to "let the punishment fit the crime" but hey, when you're writing the rules you can make them say whatever you want. And there are profits at stake, after all.

Everything you need to know in one sentence again

This time about the media.

Fair warning: It's not actually a quote, it's a paraphrase. It comes from The Bobblespeak Translations - What They're Really Saying When They're Saying What They're Saying. The target in this case was yesterday's This Week with Christiane Amanpour:

Amanpour: whoa ‘people power’ overthrew a 30-year dictator in Egypt so of course we will talk to Newt Gingrich

Again, not a direct quote but couldn't be more spot on.

Thanks go to Avedon at The Sideshow for the tip.

Everything you need to know in one sentence

From Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times for this past Friday:

The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid.

I was going to say more but yeah, that sums it up.

Egypt on my mind

This is not going to be some in-depth analysis. Rather, it is just some general observations. I'm not entirely happy with the clarity or insight of what follows, some of which may prove in a rather short time to be jaw-droppingly naive, but it's what I have now.

The first thing is to point out, as others have, that what happened in Egypt was essentially and almost completely a nonviolent revolution. It was a revolution driven by emotion and passion, by courage and commitment, and not by guns or murder or bombings; indeed, its nonviolence stood firm even in the face of the murderous violence of the state and even on that one day and night of stones and Molotov cocktails being tossed back and forth it did not allow itself to lose so much control as to enable the state to justify the imposition of the most massive official repression. It was a demonstration of precisely what is so often denied: the power of the people, the power of unarmed determination, the power yes of nonviolence. Watching this unfold has been, well, frankly exhilarating.

At the same time I have to say that I am thoroughly sickened by hearing praise for the nonviolence of the demonstrators come out of the mouths of those who have been the architects of so much violence, the authors of so much blood, violence against the people of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of Pakistan; of hearing that praise come from those who preferred "stability" above freedom until it was politically inconvenient, who have coddled and condoned dictators (who were, we were told, not even really dictators), who have endorsed and financed the oppressors and the occupiers.

But enough of that for now. The important question, the one that actually matters, is what now? What happens in Egypt, what happens to the hopes and ideas and ideals of the protestors?

There is still a huge "if" hanging over the whole situation. The army, which took power when Mubarak was forced out by the protests, has in the wake of his downfall repeatedly done things or made statements that can be seen as encouraging or ominous depending on how you want to interpret them, and so far there simply is not enough experience of this new situation to favor one such view over the other.

For example, the army ruling council has promised elections within six months - which is actually a fairly short time line given that it requires a new, even if interim, constitution and more importantly, if the elections really are going to be free and fair, political parties and groupings that have been repressed for so long will need some time to get organized and establish a presence in order to effectively campaign.

On the other hand, six months is more than enough time for the military to establish a direct and firm grip on the country if it is of a mind to, something Robert Fisk fears is already happening. Additionally, it is easy to read a sinister meaning into the army's statement that

it intends to retain power for six months or longer while elections are scheduled and will rule by decree,

the phrase "or longer" being a loophole more than big enough to drive a military dictatorship through, especially one that has spent those months ruling by decree.

Combine that with the calls for "stability" and a declared intention to crack down on those the army accuses of creating "chaos and disorder" ("Plus ça change?" Fisk asks.) while effectively banning strikes and you have more than enough reason for concern.

Yet it must be said that the people of Egypt largely trust and respect the military and welcomed many of the moves, such as suspending the constitution and dissolving Mubarak's rubber-stamp parliament. I think it can be reasonably said that when the military declares that it fully intends to hand over control to a civilian government, most Egyptians honestly believe it. And, being as fair as I can, it should be noted that during the protests the military on the whole - not completely, surely, as there were several reports of the military arresting and even torturing protestors and turning them over to the police, but the qualified "on the whole" - tried to avoid taking sides. Which tells us little about longer-term intentions, but does at least suggest that the army is not particularly interested in being responsible for running the country, preferring its politically (and for officers, personally) comfortable role of "respected defender of the nation" to a "new boss, just like the old boss" status. It suggests, putting it another way, that the army is prepared to back up the state, but is not so much interested in formally being the state.

On the other other hand, some of the protestors are not satisfied, angry over the retention of Mubarak's cabinet and upset at the lack - at least so far - of civilian participation in the transition planning. Some of the organizers are trying to set up a civilian council to deal with the military and establish civilian control of the changeover. In the meanwhile, some protestors - I have seen numbers ranging from "hundreds" to "a few thousand" - have sworn to remain in Tahrir Square and continue to protest until there is civilian rule. Military attempts to push them out caused some scuffling but the BBC said this afternoon that "the situation on the square has become a good-natured standoff." Which again can be seen as either damning (the army tried to push them out) or encouraging (it's reluctant to push really hard).

(A related point here which I don't think I've seen mentioned elsewhere - although I'm sure it has been - is drawn from something I wrote in a post about Egypt sometime last century, i.e., about two weeks ago: Middle-ranking officers appeared to sympathize with the protestors while soldiers on the ground freely mingled unarmed among the crowds in the square. Does the upper echelon of the military really have complete confidence that if it did order a mass crackdown that it would not face some form of rebellion from within its own ranks?)

At this point, while I'm not as sure as I was about declaring that Mubarak was on the way out, I have a fair degree of confidence that the military will be true to its word and that a civilian government will emerge. Besides wanting to cling to a Pollyanna moment - I have few enough of them - the baseline reason is that the military has no reason to fear any threat to its position or its members (particularly, as always, high-ranking officers) from a civilian government. It has not been connected in the public mind with the repression and cruelties of the past decades and there is no reason to expect any investigations or prosecutions. So I don't see where the military would see any gain, any advantage, in retaining direct power with all the hassles of dealing with an energized citizenry and the undermining of public respect and confidence that would entail.

I think another week or two will tell the story. Does the military forcibly clear Tahrir Square? Does it aggressively break strikes? Or do the "good-natured standoffs" continue? Perhaps most significantly in the short-term, there have been calls for protests on Friday to continue to press for a rapid move to civilian government and to complain about the retention of Mubarak's cabinet. If those protests look like they are going to be large, what does the military do? Does it try to repress them? Disrupt them? Or not? If that civilian council comes together, does the army talk to it? Or not?

The move for change in Egypt has scored a major, potentially an historic, victory for sheer people power. But the cause is not complete and the song has not reached its coda. Perhaps the best source of hope is that I am quite sure that the people of Egypt know that.

Everything you need to know in one headline

You might also consider this a Footnote to the preceding.

RealtyTrac, which tracks mortgage default and foreclosure data, reported recently that

foreclosure activity jumped in 149 of the country's 206 largest metropolitan areas last year.

It said the foreclosure crisis is getting worse and has entered a new phase:

"We've actually had a sea change in what's causing foreclosures, from the overheated home prices and bad loans to a second wave of foreclosures actually caused by unemployment and economic displacement," says Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac.

Meanwhile, the percentage of mortgagees who are underwater, that is, who owe more on their mortgage than the property is worth, rose from 23.2% in the third quarter of 2010 to 27% at the end of the year, largely due to the continuing crash in house prices, which is largely driven in turn by the continuing bad economy.

So how does the Wall Street Journal approach that? With an article headlined

Home Affordability Returns to Pre-Bubble Levels

Because, y'see, housing prices have dropped so much that the ratio of median home prices to annual household incomes in something over half of the markets followed by Moody's Analytics is now below what it was in 2003.

Woo-hoo! Let the good times roll!

Really - they're not

If you are still prone to wondering about who is on what side, consider that besides expanding the "national security" prerogatives of the Executive branch, cutting aid to the poor, "containing" Social Security benefits, and never never raising taxes on the rich, there is something else on which the wackos and the White House agree: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

should be left to die and that their support for the housing market should wither away. ...

Federally backed Fannie and Freddie buy mortgage loans and guarantee them against default. This government guarantee has lent certainty and stability to the housing market, keeping funding available and interest rates low, at a time of severe stress. Fannie and Freddie, combined with the Federal Housing Administration, which supports low down-payment loans, have been behind more than 90 percent of new home loans in recent years.

In other words, they have expanded the possibility of home ownership to moderate- and lower-income people who never could have afforded a house otherwise and helped to secure the housing market against collapse until the greed of the bankers was too much to bear so when the giant investment houses went down, the undertow took Fannie and Freddie with them. The wingnuts have always hated them precisely because of the leverage they gave to ordinary workers and other members of the non-elite, so when the opportunity to (falsely) blame them for supposedly causing the 2008 financial meltdown arose (it would be more accurate to call them victims or at worst accessories after the fact), the wackos of course took it. What PHC's reason for agreeing to kill the firms off is less clear.

Oh, wait, maybe it's not:

"I think it's absolutely the case that the U.S. government provided too much support for housing, too strong incentives for investment in housing," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said Friday during a speech at the Brookings Institution.

So to correct that egregious interference in The Free Market (pbui),

[t]he Obama administration wants to raise fees for borrowers and require larger down payments for home loans as part of a long-term effort to restructure the nation's housing market. ...

[T]he administration said it intends to wind down the federal mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and curtail the Federal Housing Administration to help reduce the government's outsized role in mortgage funding.

Significantly, as it did it admitted that the plan

could boost mortgage rates and make it harder for home buyers to secure the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, a mainstay of American home buying for decades.

So, in sum, the plan is for higher fees, bigger down payments, higher interest rates, and fewer fixed-rate mortgages. All to correct the supposed mistake of having helped ordinary schmucks like us buy a house by, it certainly appears, making it harder for us to get one.

This despite the fact that people who have the biggest mortgages, those in excess of $1 million, are far more likely to be delinquent than those with smaller loans (1 in 7 versus 1 in 12) and a 2008 study by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation found that

[m]ortgage defaults stem from loan products not income level....

Delinquency and foreclosure rates for subprime borrowers were comparable across all income levels, according to Michael Rubinger, LISC president/CEO.

Even Timmy G. says that part of the problem was that

the government "allowed a huge amount of basic mortgage business to shift where there was no regulation or oversight"

and even the Wall Street Journal, for pity's sake, referred to "lax lending and speculation" as inflating the housing bubble and unless you know a bunch of blue-collar or middle- and lower-income families who are housing speculators, that wouldn't seem to be directed at us.

Doesn't matter. The problem in their minds is still that all those déclassé people were helped to buy houses, when they should be grateful for the opportunity to pay someone else for the privilege of living where they do, as

[t]he report emphasized the importance of rental housing for low and moderate-income communities.

Now let me be clear: I have nothing against rental housing. I have rented and I have owned and while overall I prefer owning, the place my wife and I lived before here, a place we had hoped to live in for a long time, was a rented apartment. Rather, it's that I agree with

John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, [who] said his group supports the effort to expand affordable rental housing, but he feared the plan's effect on working-class home buyers who couldn't afford the higher upfront costs.

And what enrages me is the attitude, the attitude that, despite the facts of the matter, the facts that indict Wall Street avarice, corporate corruption, and financial speculation as the drivers of the burst bubble, the attitude that the real problem with the housing market is that too many non-wealthy people were able to be in it. The self-blinding hubris is breathtaking.

Fortunately, there is some pushback coming from "some influential interest groups." (Are the banks ever called an "interest group?")

They include small banks, real estate agents and consumer groups, who all say that Fannie and Freddie, or something similar, are crucial for sustaining the struggling housing market. ...

Some business groups, such as small banks and credit unions, are worried that the demise of Fannie and Freddie would allow large financial firms to dominate the mortgage market,

an even bigger concern than you may realize, considering that according to a study by researchers at Ohio State University which was released last month,

[e]ven the riskiest borrowers tend to have an easier time dealing with their home loan obligations if they got their mortgage from smaller local banks.... If two homeowners with similar credit ratings get a loan for the same amount and at the same interest rate, the one that went to their local bank will default far less often.

“The door you walk into when you’re looking for a loan matters a lot,” said Stephanie Moulton, assistant professor at OSU’s John Glenn School of Public Affairs. “Local banks seem to offer some protection to homebuyers, particularly those with low incomes who may be seen as risky borrowers.”

Which makes PHC's* plan a double whammy: harder-to-get loans from places less willing to work with you afterwards.

Bottom line:

"The administration today has laid out a series of options that could lead to the abandonment of a nearly 70-year commitment to affordable homeownership by working American families," Barry Zigas, director of housing policy for Consumer Federation of America, said in a statement. "American consumers need policies that will foster affordable, long-term fixed rate mortgages, as well as a stable supply of capital that will be available to lenders of all sizes, including community banks and credit unions."

Which is exactly what PHC would see us denied.

Footnote: Timmy G. does not want to completely abandon a federal role in the housing market. He said that

whatever path lawmakers choose for Fannie and Freddie, there must in the future be "some capacity for the government to step in and protect the economy from the collateral damage that can come from that sort of crushing deleveraging, big withdrawal of private capital that happens in crises."

That is, whenever the banks fuck up again (and they will) we taxpayers will have to jump in again in "shared sacrifice" to save their stinking asses so they never have to suffer - Perish the thought! - from their bonehead greed fetish.

*PHC = President Hopey-Changey

They still are not on your side

So on Wednesday, Sir Boner of Orange and his crew announced a series of deep cuts of $30-something billion in current federal spending, focused almost entirely on programs related to environmental protection, public support for transportation, the arts, and aid to the poor, with zero cuts aimed at the military, the wars, or corporate subsidies.

By Thursday, they had already "accede[d] to demands from conservatives" for even deeper cuts; "conservative" being the polite term, it seems, for the right wing of the right wing, making me wonder if we now are supposed to regard Sir Boner as what, a "moderate?"

By Friday, Boner, et. al., had come up with a plan to slash $61 billion in current spending, a notable degree of responsiveness to their base.

Well, still, who expected better? But what about the "other side?" What, that is, of PHC*? What hope and change is he offering in response?

According to Jacob Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, it's "a five-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for national security." Remembering that unless inflation is zero, spending freezes equal benefit cuts, what does "a five-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for national security" mean in a practical sense? It means cuts focused almost entirely on programs related to environmental protection, public support for transportation, the arts, and aid to the poor. And not on war.

Is there an echo in here?

By the way, when is a freeze not a freeze? When it's an actual immediate cut - and PHC

is planning to request that funding for heating oil aid to the poor be cut in half in his upcoming budget proposal, according to several news reports.

The president would seek to reduce the Low Income Home Energy Heating Assistance Program from the current funding of $5.1 billion to $2.6 billion, the Associated Press said, citing a source familiar with the budget discussions.

Because as we all well know, hypothermia is character-building.

These people are not on your side.

What, you expected better? You expected more from those who respond to criticism from their left by calling them "fucking retards," dismissing them as the "professional left," and telling them, in pretty much just these words, to shut the fuck up and get with the program? Really?

Get a clue: They are not on your side.

*PHC = President Hopey-Changey

They are not on your side

As everyone knows, the renewal of some provisions of the Traitor ('scuse me, "Patriot") Act was unexpectedly defeated in the House on Tuesday. Brought to a vote under a "suspension of the rules" procedure, it required a two-thirds vote to pass - a margin it failed to reach.

Most of the media coverage - and a good deal of the online commentary - was about how "embarrassing" this was for Rep. Boner and his cronies, since it was the fact that 26 GOPpers defied the leadership and voted "nay" that brought the bill down. In a sense, I suppose that was a reasonable focus, since the vote was 277-148 for passage and when it is brought up again under normal procedures - and there is a rush on to do just that, under a rule allowing for just one hour of debate with no amendments or points of order allowed* - it should pass handily.

That outcome should be of great relief to much of elite opinion, i.e., the Serious People, such as the editorial writers at the Washington Post, who ran a panicky, trembling-lip piece on how "the clock is ticking" on the Traitor Act and how

[i]f lawmakers fail to act, they risk stripping the government of important anti-terrorism tools,

thus, we are apparently supposed to gather, leaving us all at the mercy of The terrorists! The terrorists! who hate our freedom and want to murder us in our beds. I expect the editorial was dictated; I can't help but think their hands would have been shaking too much in fear to type it in themselves.

But getting back to the overall coverage of the vote, there were a couple of points that were either wrong or omitted.

One thing that was wrong was all the talk about the vote reflecting some kind of "tea party insurgency" or "tea party defiance." But only eight of those 26 GOPpers were first-termers. Even if every one of the 5 non-voting GOPpers was a first-termer, that would still mean that 50 of the 63 new GOPper House members voted with the leadership. Not much "defiance" there.

On the other hand, something that was omitted almost entirely from the coverage that I saw was that support for renewing provisions of the Traitor Act declined rather significantly. Last year, only 10 GOPpers voted against renewal as compared to this year's 26. And that renewal got 315 votes, which is 38 more than this year. So 16 GOPpers and 22 Dims went from "yea" to "nay" since last year. Not nearly enough to make the difference for more than the immediate moment, but when support for this sort of crap drops nearly 14% in a year, well, it's at least worthy of mention.

Something else worthy of mention but got very little is that the defeat of the bill is proof again, if proof were still needed, that the areas of privacy and civil liberties are the ones where the right and the left can overlap and diverge in perhaps unexpected ways. In a lot of ways, Ron Paul may be (meaning is) suitable for popping out of a cuckoo clock - but when he says that police powers should be strictly limited to those proven actually necessary and protection of personal privacy against government intrusion is a high ideal, there are many on the left who could (and will) echo not only the sentiments, but the words.

But here's the crux of it, the vital, central point that has to be made and made clearly and to which the title of the post refers: The GOPper leadership and the White House were and are united in support of the bill. They are united in their support for continuing the expanded government powers to poke, prod, and pry into every aspect of our private lives. The are united in their devotion to the maintenance and yes expansion of executive power. In fact, the White House's only objection was that the extension was only to December of 2012 instead of 2013.

This is nothing new, of course. When these same three provisions were up for renewal in 2009, the White House was all over it, calling them "important authorities" even as they admittted that one of them hadn't ever been used, which does raise the question of just how "important" it is. No matter, we need it! Why? Well, because we have it! Which has always, always, been the cry of the national security state from the very beginning: It must have more power and it must continue to have whatever powers it already has. It's vital! Important! Necessary! It's for your own good! Power, we need to keep reminding ourselves, never concedes anything (least of all its own powers) without a fight.

And in this the Obama administration - with the full support of the Serious People - is every bit as bad as the Bush administration was, adopting its policies and embracing its positions, even going beyond them in some cases, sometimes shockingly so. On the power of the powerful, the extent of the Executive, on the ability of the government to know more about you while you know less about the government, PHC** and Shrub are two of a kind, peas in a pod, birds of a feather, soulmates, whatever cliché you care to employ.

Which is why the whole business about "sunset" provisions, about how "Oh, this is just a temporary extension, just so we can take a better look at it" is such thoroughgoing bull and has been since the Traitor Act was first passed in a panic after 9/11. At that time, we were assured that we needn't worry about the impact on civil liberties because most of the provisions - 16 of them, in fact - we going to sunset after five years.

Well, four years later, in 2005, the House voted to make 14 of those 16 permanent and the other two were extended for 10 years. The Senate made a number of changes in the Traitor Act, but most of those were undone in conference and ultimately the House version passed pretty much intact. Other provisions have gotten the same treatment: They haven't been made permanent, but "sunset" keeps getting later and later, pushed back again and again. And now some Dims in the Senate are saying they want the three provisions involved here made permanent.

All of which means that when it comes to your privacy, when it comes to your civil liberties, when it comes to insulating the individual against the power of the state, they are not on your side. Never have been. Never will be.

*Because of the way Thomas files information, that link may not be valid for long. If it doesn't work, go to the Thomas home page, look up H.R.514, select "All Congressional Actions," and look for February 9.

**PHC = President Hopey-Changey

Just in time for BAD

The three days of this weekend (i.e., Fri-Sun) are the somewhat misnamed Blogroll Amnesty Day, when small bloggers give a nod to other small bloggers that they think deserve wider notice.

To understand why I've not been promoting it, you need to know the background and my own opinion on that. BAD got started a couple of years ago when a few of the "big" bloggers decided they were going to cut their blogrolls and so chucked off a number of smaller, lesser-known blogs. They called it "blogroll amnesty" on the idea that they were not going to feel guilty about it.

There were howls of protest, primarily from those affected by the loss of links, who more or less argued that the big blogs had some kind of moral duty to provide links to smaller blogs, even as those link lists got to be hundreds of items long, which to me makes them pretty useless. I had a hard time feeling offended; my attitude was "It's his/her blog, they can do whatever they damn well please with it." I also had trouble conceiving of Skippy, one of the loudest denouncers, as having a "small" blog considering that over the course of its lifetime it has averaged nearly 1000 hits a day.

Still and be all that as it may, the idea of smaller bloggers supporting each other is a good one. I know from experience, as I know you have, that there is a lot of talent and insight out there that doesn't get due notice. (Plus, there is my contention - I am speaking here of political blogs - that a number of the big blogs are not big because they are better, indeed, often, to be blunt, they are not, but merely because they were among the first and so got established before many others appeared on the scene .)

So I do want to point up a couple of blogs I think deserve notice. They are all taken from my blog list to the right (minus the "big" or at least bigger ones), so no big surprises, but since, as it says right there, "Beyond the reciprocal links, my blog list is pretty much limited to blogs I actually do look at on at least a fairly regular basis," I can claim familiarity with each of my selections. Most people seem to be picking about five for their list, so I'll so the same.

Blckdgrd
Daisy's Dead Air
Jobsanger
Notes From Underground
The Existentialist Cowboy

Of course, now I feel like it'll seem I'm dissing the others on my link list that I didn't mention. Which I'm not, I'm just.... Oh the heck with it, I refuse to feel guilty about my choices. Amnesty!

Footnote: Damn! Forgot one I meant to include because I haven't gotten around to adding it to the sidebar.

Pruning Shears

And now for something completely different

This aging hippie is feeling much the aging part today. I learn from Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast that Jorma Kaukonen is get me my cane and shawl 70.

Yeah, I know most of you are going "Who?" He was the lead guitar for Jefferson Airplane and if you're still going "Who?" then I can tell you that you missed out.

Jorma and his friend Jack Casady, JA's bass player, returned to their roots in blues in 1969 when they started their own group (while still playing with Airplane) which they called Hot Tuna. I haven't checked to be sure, but I think I still have their eponymous first album - on vinyl, no less.

Jefferson Airplane went the way of many rock bands, shifting, breaking up, evolving (into Jefferson Starship in this case), reuniting, and finally dissolving. But Hot Tuna is still going, still playing, still touring, 40 freaking years later. This is from December:



But I have to say that when I think of Jorma Kaukonen, this is what I think of - and if you haven't heard this before, bear in mind as you listen that this is a solo.



And I have to admit, it's the result of overlearning if anything ever was, that when I hear the last notes of that, in my head I always hear the opening bass line of this:



So happy birthday, Jorma - oh, and to Paul Kantner, too, who I gather is also about to join the septuagenarians.

Another passing thought

Frank Wisner, who had served as Barack Obama's special envoy for Egypt, told reporters in Germany on Saturday that "President Mubarak remains utterly critical in the days ahead." According to Al Jazeera (see 8:07pm at this link), he said

We need to get a national consensus around the pre-conditions for the next step forward. The president must stay in office to steer those changes.

How's that? He must stay in power to "steer the changes" toward a "national consensus" on "the pre-conditions" for "the next step?" How many months, how many years, are there in a "steer changes to national consensus on pre-conditions for the next step?"

So just a thought: How many weasel words can be fit into one statement? (And I didn't even include that ridiculous modern cliché "forward.")

Passing thought

In an interview with ABC reporter Christiane Amanpour, Hosni Murbarak was quoted as saying "I am fed up. After 62 years in public service, I have had enough. I want to go" before adding that he couldn't because "If I resign today, there will be chaos."

Beyond the extraordinary self-pity there, I can't be the only one who thought "Après moi, le déluge."

The quote, attributed to both Louis XV and his paramour Madame de Pompadour, has been understood a couple of ways but it always seemed to me to say, as Mubarak clearly did, "I'm all that stands between you and chaos."

And as a passing thought on the passing thought, if Mubarak quit, what would be immediately left behind? A vice-president and a new cabinet, all of which he hand-picked. It seems he doesn't have much faith in his own people.

Everything you need to know in one sentence

Twice.

Number one comes from Fox Business.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has named Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chief Investment Officer Eileen Rominger to head its division overseeing asset managers and hedge funds.

Number two is via Raw Story.

President Barack Obama announced Monday that he plans to nominate former Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lawyer Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. as solicitor general, a position formerly held by Elena Kagan.

Verilli is not a complete waste; he's represented defendants in death penalty cases and signed an amicus curie brief that argued Jose Padilla could not be classified as an "enemy combatant." But still, isn't there somewhere other than the heart of corporate America where PHC* can find staff?

Yeah, I know.

Thanks go to Dan at Pruning Shears for both links.

*PHC = President Hopey-Changey

Egypt

Watching the live video coming out of Egypt tonight reminded me of something I was thinking of including my earlier post on events there, something I should have included but didn't: Another tactic dictators often use when faced with mass opposition is to try to provoke violence specifically in order to justify a massive, severe, violent repression of the opposition in the name of "security" or "public safety" or some similar spurious crap.

I didn't include it for a couple of reasons, one being that I thought the post was already rather long but another being that, as I said there, such large-scale repression would require the cooperation of the military, a cooperation of which it certainly appears Mubarak can have no assurance.

Perhaps that's why when Mubarak's hired thugs and police goons attacked the protestors in Tahrir Square today, they weren't trying to provoke a violent reaction, they were trying to physically drive the protestors out of the square, to achieve a sort of overt physical victory over, a clear physical defeat of, the regime's opponents. That this was a coordinated, planned, assault can't be denied: An attack that comes "without warning," including riders on camels and horses, which includes

[r]egime supporters dropp[ing] concrete blocks on the opposition protesters from the roofs and balconies of surrounding buildings

doesn't occur spontaneously. Neither does what appears to be a planned intention to attack journalists. Meanwhile,

Mustafa el-Fiqqi, a top official from the ruling National Democratic Party, told The Associated Press that businessmen connected to the ruling party were responsible for what happened

and some government workers said they were ordered by their employers to participate in pro-government protests. Even the New York Times, hardly a friend to "instability," referred to Wednesday's events as Mubarak

unleashing waves of his supporters armed with clubs, rocks, knives and firebombs in a concerted assault on thousands of anti-government protesters.

The attackers, however, ultimately got more than they bargained for and were driven back out of and away from the square even as sporadic violence, driven by anger and a desire for revenge, continued through the night.

The position of the military remains a question. Journalists and other observers on the scene appear to agree that the army is trying to keep out of events, perhaps partly for fear of being seen as partisan and partly for fear of a rebellion within its own ranks if it did try to impose "calm" by force after having made much of saying how it will not fire on protestors. But that position is a difficult one: By not intervening, the army also risks being seen as partisan. The military leadership no doubt just wants the whole thing over with and just needs lets call it a nudge in the right direction.

So this is what I think should happen right now: The US has already broken with Mubarak, a fact made plain by Obama's deliberate use of the word "now" in referring to a "transition" in Egypt. (If there was any doubt that it was deliberate, Robert Gibbs made it plain: "Not September. Now means now.")

According to The Globe & Mail (Canada), a range of US officials, both civilian and military, are

all giving their Egyptian counterparts the same message. The Americans are warning of consequences – believed to be cuts in the $1.3-billion in military aid that provides Egypt’s officer corps with a privileged lifestyle in a society plagued by poverty.

“Officers throughout our command ranks have spoken to their counterparts … it's safe to say, again, each and every one of those conversations starts out with a conversation about restraint and non-violence,” Mr. Gibbs said.

It's time to go that one better. It's time for PHC* to tell Bob Gates to tell Mike Mullen to get on the phone to Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Sami Hafez Enan, Mullen's Egyptian equivalent, and tell him that the US has determined that it will be impossible for stability to return to Egypt so long as the Mubarak regime is in power and that we're so very sorry but, y'know, the US simply can't provide military aid to unstable governments. Put it as diplomatically and politely as you want, as you can, but make it clear: As long as the Mubarak regime is in power - and having Mubarak graciously "retire" seven months from now in another set of rigged elections designed to put his some Gamal in his place is not getting rid of the regime - there will be no more military aid.

See how long Hosni Mubarak stays around after that.

*PHC = President Hopey-Changey

Chills me to the bone

Writing at AOLNews.com, meteorologist Paul Yeager starts a February 1 piece this way:

A massive snowstorm is slamming America's midsection - again. New York City just set a record for January snowfall. The South has experienced bitter cold, snow and ice this winter.

If the Earth is getting warmer, why's it so darn snowy and cold?

AAAAAHHHHH!

Do we still have to argue this? Do we still have to deal with this canard? Are people still spreading this "Where's your global warming now, huh?" crap?

Apparently so, he said with a deep sigh, apparently so.

So let's go through it one more time. Short-term phenomena are just that, short-term. It's impossible to attribute a single storm or even a single cold, snowy spell to anything more than normal variations in weather, just as the same is true for a single heat wave. As I have written several times before here and elsewhere, no one cold winter disproves global warming any more than one hot summer proves it. Only a trend over a period of a fair number of years (climatologists suggest 30) is revealing. Which means the snows and storms of this winter in the US in and of themselves tell us nothing one way or another about climate change. Period

To be as fair as I can to Yeager, he acknowledges that early on, writing that "short-range weather events have little to do with the climate change debate." But he sullies that central point in three ways: First by immediately preceding that statement with "opinions about climate change vary greatly," second by including the word "debate," both of which falsely imply there is a genuine scientific debate, and third by having the first "expert" quoted being Roy Spencer.

Roy Spencer, for pity sake.

Don't know who Roy Spencer is? Well, for starters he's a meteorologist (not a climatologist) who now holds the title of Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and makes much of his work with NASA.

He's also something of a fruitloop.

You can get an idea of his style at his most recent blog post, dated January 31, in which he starts out with a clichéd slam of Al Gore (Just what the hell is it with the nanny-nanny naysayers' obsession with Gore?) and ends up by counterposing "those who read all of Reverend Al’s sermons" with those "who are still capable of independent reasoning and thought."

Back in October 2009 a naysayer at MMFA held Spencer up as an authority and referred to two links at his site. I'm posting below what I wrote in response, somewhat edited for length, because I think it gives a broader sense of how Roy Spencer argues his points and what kind of "authority" he is. (The links to Spencer's posts in the following are from the original.) After saying I looked at the links and was "unimpressed," I said this:

For example, the first link says that "global warming theory starts with the assumption that the Earth naturally maintains a constant average temperature." That is a crock. I don't know of anyone who's ever said that. The average temperature of the Earth has varied by a good number of degrees over time.

What the Earth will do is seek an equilibrium, a balance, between energy in and energy out - but there are so many things that can disturb (and have disturbed) that equilibrium from the very-predictable and very-long term (such as the precession of the Earth's orbit) to the somewhat predicable (such as the radiance of the Sun) to the relatively unpredictable (such as large-scale volcanic activity) that no one would rationally claim that "the Earth naturally maintains a constant average temperature." It's a straw figure.

What global warming theory says is that an equilibrium that had persisted for several hundred years if not longer is being disturbed by human activities that have lead to the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with the result that the average temperature of the Earth is rising as the climate seeks a new equilibrium.

So right at the top he misstates what he's supposedly critiquing.

He refers several times to "forcing and feedback (loosely speaking, cause and effect)" - but that is, again, wrong. A "forcing" is something that drives climate in a certain direction. An "effect," the result of a forcing, isn't a "feedback" unless it is a new forcing. One of the big dangers of global warming is the development of positive feedback loops [where forcings produce new forcings in the same direction] such that the temperature would continue to rise even if we generated no additional greenhouse gases.

[On to] the other link you give. There, he says "The main arguments for global warming being manmade go something like this: 'What else COULD it be? After all, we know that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations are sufficient to explain recent warming, so what's the point of looking for any other cause?'" That is such a stinking pile that I'm grateful that Smell-o-Vision is still fictional. I mean, how many ways could that be wrong? For one, CO₂ is the most abundant greenhouse gas, but it's not the only one or even the most powerful one. (Methane, for example, is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO₂ is.) For another, the idea that scientists are simply dismissing out of hand any other possibility is not only ridiculous, it is a puerile slam on the entire community of atmospheric scientists.

So much for the links, what about the author himself? Dr. Roy Spencer is a leading nanny-nanny naysayer on climate change. His 2008 book Climate Confusion not only argued that human impact on the climate is so small as to be safely ignored, he claimed the very best thing we can do for the world's poor is to keep on right on doin' exactly what we're doin' now.

But he's rather more than that. For one, he's a creationist, having said in 2005 that creationism "actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution." For another, he was a "scientific advisor" to something called the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, which declared itself to be "committed to bringing a proper and balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development."

He's associated with both the Heartland Institute, a right-wing outfit promoting "free market" solutions to just about any problem you can think of, including global warming, and the George C. Marshall Institute, a right-wing think tank.

In 2004, he wrote that "either you believe that the world has been created for mankind's use, with a certain resiliency and stability, or you believe it is just a cosmic accident, fragile, and overly sensitive to our meddling" - a particularly interesting statement in light of his repeated efforts to prove the climate is "insensitive" [- that is, unlikely to be affected by human activity]. In that same article he compared toxic waste to deer droppings.

A year earlier, he and a partner had published an analysis that claimed that the troposphere, the lowest level of the atmosphere, was actually cooling, not warming. Two years later it turned out they had screwed up the calculations and the troposphere was actually warming, and warming in a way that was in large agreement with global warming computer models. Despite having to admit they were wrong, the pair said "our view hasn't changed," that is, even though they were wrong, they were still right.

Two final tidbits: One, in 2007 he asserted that "very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, 'big picture' understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming." Which is probably why the IPCC, for example, relies on the combined effort of a few thousand scientists in relevant disciplines from around the world - and why, by his own words, Spencer's lone-wolf nanny-nanny naysaying is not as impressive as some here (eagerly) find it.

And two, he also insists that despite his connections to the Heartland Institute, which has gotten a good deal of money from Exxon-Mobil, "My research has always been 100% U.S. Government-funded." Which would seem to be a poke in the eye to those who claim that researchers keep finding new support for anthropogenic global warming because "that's where the grant money is."

I'll here add one other bit: He has argued that both environmentalism and "evolutionism" - that is, acceptance of the scientific reality of evolution - are religions and that teaching evolution in schools violates the First Amendment's separation clause.

So yes, short-term weather tells us nothing about long-term climate change. But no, you do not want to go to Roy Spencer as your first source. Or second. Or fifty-third. Or - how many sources are there?

Footnote: If you want the unedited version and more of the same exchange from which the above is taken, I posted my side of it here. That longer exchange also contains the acknowledgment that when I referred to carbon dioxide as "the most abundant greenhouse gas" I should have said "the most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas," the one for which we are responsible for the increase and the one, therefore, that we can do the most about. In terms of pure abundance, water vapor far outstrips carbon dioxide.