Don't forget

The total number of blogs committed to the March 19 blogswarm on Iraq is up to 190.

With the claims about the success of the escalation - excuse me, "surge" - proving to be the myths we have suspected all along, an escalation that after the "drawdown" will leave 8,000 more US troops in Iraq than there were a year and a-half earlier, an escalation undertaken to secure a city, Baghdad, which just saw its deadliest attack in nine months, it continues to become clearer by the day:

Five years is five years too many.

As always, this is not to be instead of anything else you do that day, but in addition to it.

Footnote: I will also include with each reminder links to my posts on the first, the second, and the fourth anniversary of the invasion in case you want to check them out. Lotus was on hiatus for all of 2006 and I was blogging very infrequently at another site during that time, so there is no third anniversary post.

Comment comment

I heard from one of my regular readers that he tried to post a comment only to get a message "Banned by siteowner. Your comment will not be added."

I can only wonder how many other people have gotten the same message and left in a huff or were left hurt and wondering what they had done. But in all the time I've been doing this, I have actually banned precisely one person.

The problem arises because of the way Haloscan manages bans. A while back, there was someone trying to harass me by posting a series of comments consisting of attempts at vile (but ultimately sophomoric) personal attacks with some "I know who you are!" hints sprinkled through. Not surprisingly, this person lacked the guts to use their real IP address. It was always a phony address or it came through an anonymizer.

He hasn't been around for a while; it might be because in his last comment he slipped up and revealed a little too much (which is I say he: I have a pretty damn good idea who it was) or, more likely, he just got bored because I simply deleted every comment immediately upon seeing it without offering a reply and banned the IP address from which it appeared to come.

That's where the problem arises. Haloscan gives you the option of banning a range of addresses. For example, several of the comments came from a domain in the Netherlands whose IP addresses begin with 195. So to save time and effort, or so I thought, I banned the whole range 195.*.*.* - only to discover later that doing it that way resulted in anyone whose IP address had 195 anywhere in it was also banned. It also meant that those using dynamic IP addresses, such as AOL subscribers, might be able to post a comment one day only to find they were supposedly "banned" the next time they signed on - and perhaps "unbanned" the time after that.

I have deleted almost all the bans. Hopefully, people will not have a problem commenting here. If you do, please let me know ASAP.

FISA Week

There's been a lot of confusing news and rumors surrounds the, um, "modification" of FISA known as the Defective America Act, otherwise known as PAA or "Pah!." There have been some twists and turns of late but with, I believe, a common thread, so let me run down that was the week that was for FISA.

Last week, in what I suspect was a trial balloon, the story started circulating that the House Democratic misleadership was looking for a way out, a way to give the White House what it wanted while giving liberal members a way to say they fought against immunity down the line. The idea was simple: Take up the Senate bull (that's not a typo - well, actually it was but it seemed so appropriate I decided to leave it) but break it into two parts: one on wiretapping powers, the other on immunity. If both parts passed, they would be recombined into a single bill.

The sad part is that immunity likely would pass - but doing it this way would give Dims more interested in political posturing than personal privacy some CYA material by being able to vote against the immunity provision while allowing the whole bill to pass. Writing at CBSNews.com, Kevin Drum called the proposed process "finally decid[ing] to do the obvious" before saying the "whole thing" was a "charade from the beginning" and adding that

[t]his is nothing for us anti-immunity folks to be happy about, but the votes are what they are. If there's a majority in favor of immunity, then they should call the roll and let 'em vote.

So hey, just like on Iraq, it's the "we don't have the votes" whine, in this case the votes to prevent corporations from being handed Get Out of Jail Free cards and the White House from being able to conceal, perhaps forever, its own criminality. The Dums spent years in the minority blubbering "We can't do anything, we don't have the votes." Now they're the majority and, if you didn't actually do a head count, you'd swear they are still the minority because they keep singing the same song. Well, Dims, perhaps on this those among you who actually care about things like Constitutional rights and civil liberties are the minority. But what you have now that you didn't before are the levers of power in Congress - and you refuse to use them.

(You'll notice, by the by, that Drum doesn't seem too upset by the prospect of immunity. That's perhaps to be expected, as he was the one who said last month that he was opposed to immunity but wasn't "hellbent" on it because he really didn't care if the preznit broke the law so long as it was "an emergency" and he didn't do it for "too long." This is what passes for "realism" among "liberal" circles these days.)

This rumor was followed shortly by House Intelligence Committee chair Silvestre Reyes saying on Sunday that he expected there would soon be a compromise bill. He didn't say the "compromise" would include immunity provisions but said he was

open to that possibility after receiving documents from the Bush administration and speaking to the companies about the industry's role in the government spy program.

"We are talking to the representatives from the communications companies because if we're going to give them blanket immunity, we want to know and we want to understand what it is that we're giving immunity for," he said. "I have an open mind about that."

Reyes, let's remember, was the one who just three weeks ago wrote what I called a "blistering" letter to Bush in which he declared that "I, for one, do not intend to back down - not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear." But that was then.

The reaction to these feelers among immunity opponents - who just might possibly actually think immunity is of more than symbolic importance, more than a matter of what might be in campaign commercials - was, it appears, not favorable and the predicted compromise didn't appear immediately. So on Wednesday Politico said Congress

remains deadlocked on the issue, with a divided Democratic caucus scrambling to find a solution and Republicans once again boycotting talks

on developing "compromise" legislation to determine just how much more power is to be given to the WHS* beyond that already conceded in the past. Just how pathetic the Dims are can be seen in the response to the GOPpers refusing to even talk about the bill. Instead of blasting them as narrow-minded obstructionists who regard Bush quite literally as a king and who are disgracefully eager to run away from their responsibilities as legislators, we get this mewling whine:

“It is very sad, because the Republicans and the White House are refusing to participate,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). “We need to know what they think.”

You already know what they think, fool. They say flat out that there is "no give" in their position; poster girl for dumb blondes Dana "Cuban missile crisis? Was that the Bay of Pigs thing?" Perino even said she didn't see the point of such a meeting. That is, they think "You know you're going to wimp out eventually, sucker, so why not just shut up and do it now and stop wasting our time?" And too many Dems seemed determined to find a way to do that so long as they didn't actually have to admit it's what they were doing.

But not all of them, which may have been a good part of the reason for Wednesday's statement by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer that

the House will not take up an electronic surveillance measure this week, further delaying any decisions on the controversial measure.

Hoyer said in his weekly press conference that he hoped to wrap up work on an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; “towards the end of this week or the beginning of next week.” ...

Although Democratic leaders insist they are working feverishly to iron out their differences, one House member - speaking on the condition of anonymity - suggested it could be a long time, if ever, before the bill was brought for a vote.

“A lot of people think the politics of doing nothing on this issue are very good for both sides of the political spectrum,” they said.

Which brings us to Thursday's interesting developments.

For one thing, Arstechnica.com reported that a computer security analyst named Babak Pasdar had gone public with whistleblower accusations that

a major mobile telecommunications carrier has a built-in backdoor that provides an undisclosed third-party with unfettered access to its internal technical infrastructure, including the ability to eavesdrop on all calls through its network. In an affidavit that describes the circumstances and basis for the allegations, Pasdar provides evidence which could indicate that the FBI is on the other side of the secret line, engaging in warrantless surveillance of mobile communications.

Pasdar discovered the backdoor when he was brought in to help with a large-scale network security hardware migration. He was told to not touch a so-nicknamed "Quantico Circuit" which had no firewalls and no access controls - a degree of freedom even the internal offices and systems of the carrier don't have. When he pressed the matter, he was threatened with loss of his contract if he didn't just shut up about it.

Pasdar won't name the company, but the article adds that Wired magazine notes that one telcom lawsuit charges that Verizon

has engaged and maintained and still does maintain a high speed data transmission line from its wireless call center to a remote location in Quantico, Virginia, the site of a U.S. government intelligence and military base

as well as being the home of the FBI Academy.

In response, three powerful members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee - John Dingell, chair; Ed Markey, who chairs its Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet; and Bart Stupak, who heads the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations - sent a "Dear Colleague" letter noting Pasdar's revelations and how they "echo" the charges by former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who earlier described a "secret room" in an AT&T facility. The three wrote that members of the House must not "vote in the dark" on immunity. They also said, interestingly, that

Mr. Pasdar's allegations are not new to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, but our attempts to verify and investigate them further have been blocked at every turn by this Admnistration.

Surprise, surprise. It does indicate, though, that Pasdar has been vetted by Committee staff and is a reliable source, not just some conspiracy-loving flake. By the way, Dingell, Markey, and Stupak are the same three who sent another "Dear Colleague" letter opposing immunity a month ago.

Also on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi threw another little twist into the saga. Paul Kiel, writing at TPMMuckraker, said that in a conference call with bloggers on that day, Pelosi insisted that "exclusivity is the issue," that is, any final bill must contain a provision that FISA is the "exclusive means" by which the government spies on electronic communications. That is, doing it any other way would be illegal.

Pelosi says that she "absolutely" opposes retroactive immunity for the telecoms, but that she "didn't want the fight to be so focused there that we neglect exclusivity."

(Sidebar: She also said that the House leadership was "at the mercy of the 17 or 18 Democrats in the Senate who are voting with the Republicans on this." Another chorus of the "We don't have the votes" song.)

Kiel wonders if the GOPpers would support a bill with exclusivity and if Shrub would sign it. But considering that the Bush gang has already at the very, very least evaded if not outright ignored FISA in order to conduct illegal surveillance and since it's easy to see Bush just issuing one of his infamous "this law doesn't apply to me" signing statements, the better question is - here's that common thread coming up again - if this is just a different way for the Dems to back down while trying to claim it's actually a victory.

Glenn Greenwald certainly thinks so. He wrote on Friday that

[a]s has been expected for a week now, the House Democratic leadership has prepared and is now currently circulating (while trying very hard to keep it confidential) their so-called "compromise" FISA bill. Their soon-to-be-unveiled bill, unsurprisingly, is designed to give the White House exactly what it has demanded, with only the smallest and most inconsequential changes

such as a somewhat shorter sunset time; an audit by the DOJ Inspector General; the inclusion of Pelosi's "exclusivity," about which Greenwald has the same thought as I do; some sort of 2009 review; and a few definition changes.

Greenwald, who based his description on Congressional sources, notes that the proposal does not include immunity, but suspects the idea is that when the bill goes back to the Senate, immunity will be added back in, after which the bill goes back to the House for an up-or-down vote - after which the everything-Bush-wanted bill goes to our only president for his signature.

That was hinted at Thursday night, when, according to Politico, Pelosi

signaled ... that she is ready to fall back on the strategy of “ping-ponging” alternatives back and forth between the two chambers. This risks more stalemate but also could provide a path for a final resolution of the issue before lawmakers go home for their spring recess next Friday.

The first title of the modified bill is expected to reflect proposed compromises already reached with Senate negotiators regarding the surveillance program. But the second seems sure to reflect continued differences over liability for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the surveillance program the president approved in the wake of 9/11. ...

However, with the immunity issue still unresolved, no one expects the House proposal to be the final word. One possibility is that the Senate could give its blessing to the first title and then insist on concessions in the second. That could set up a situation making it easier for the House to claim a partial victory and allow final passage.

In other words, a variation on the original rumor, a way - again - for the Dums to lose while claiming they won. I admit the process outlined raises a number of questions for me, among which is the obvious one of why, apparently, the Senate gets to make amendments to the bill but the House doesn't. I'm sure I'd be told that was part of the deal. (I'd then like to ask why the House leadership would agree to such a dumb deal that makes them a subservient body to the Senate and also why the House never said to Bush and his Senate ass-lickers - with Jay Rockefeller among those with his tongue furthest out - "What do you mean, we have to take up the Senate bill? We passed a bill months ago. You take up our bill." But those clearly would brand me unserious in the extreme so I won't dare ask.)

Back at TPMMuckraker, Paul Kiel, relying on his own sources, says the provisions of the still-secret draft are somewhat better than what Greenwald describes: an even shorter sunset timetable, a ban on "reverse targeting" (where it's claimed the foreign side of the conversation is the target of surveillance but the American side really is), and limitations on "blanket warrants" (where an entire group or internet domain is subject to surveillance rather than a particular individual or email address) - that in addition to the DOJ audit and "exclusivity" provisions Greenwald mentions.

The [senior House] aide [who was Kiel's source] also stressed that the bill "is in the exact same ballpark" in terms of civil liberties protections as the RESTORE Act, the bill which the House passed last year

and which is far better than the Senate bill. Whether Greenwald's or Kiel's version is right - assuming either is, since much of this appears to be going on behind very tightly closed doors and Jay "May I have another, Sir?" Rockefeller is saying he could not support a bill such as Kiel describes - will be seen early next week.

Greenwald argues that the best-case scenario is that

the House will end up marginally improving some of the surveillance provisions in the Senate bill, but still give telecom amnesty and needlessly gut many of the key protections of FISA.

I'm not as pessimistic as that; although I don't see any of the improvements on Pah! contained in the still grossly inadequate bill the House passed in November to survive the combination of gutlessness on one side and petulance on the other (the "sides" not demarcated by party) I do still hold out hope for the scenario suggested by that anonymous Representative on Wednesday:

[I]t could be a long time, if ever, before the bill was brought for a vote [because]

“A lot of people think the politics of doing nothing on this issue are very good for both sides of the political spectrum.”

The GOPpers get to screech about national security, the Dims get to pretend to have backbones, the spooks continue with the tools they already had before last August, which they admit to being adequate, and everybody winks and smiles. The charges drone on, but people are less and less moved by them and each side uses the lack of action to appeal to their base. In short, I think the best-case scenario, and one there actually is a chance of coming about, is stalemate. That would effectively, once existing warrants issued under Pah! expire, leave us with the old FISA law. That law had a lot of shortcomings and the FISA Court is little more than a joke but it's still better than anything before us now.

But as the saying goes, hope for the best but plan for the worst. Call your Congress critters. And Pelosi. And Reyes. If you're feeling bold, call Jay Rockefeller and tell him to stop being an ass and support the House bill. This should be a deal-breaker. I have told my Rep and I will tell him again: Fail on this and I will not support you, I will not contribute to you, I will not work for you, and I will not vote for you. Ever. Period.

Yes, I think it's that important. For privacy, for unfettered speech, for upholding of the rule of law, for upholding of the Constitution, of Constitutional processes and freedoms, yes. It is that important.

Footnote: Just in case you need to be reminded who we are ultimately dealing with.

President Bush said Monday that telecommunications companies should be thanked, not sued, for helping the government conduct warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks. ...

"Should those who stepped forward to say we're going to help defend America have to go to the courthouse to defend themselves, or should the Congress and the president say thank you for doing your patriotic duty? I believe we ought to say thank you," he said.

Yes, thank you. Thank you for breaking the law. Thank you for helping with illegal spying. Thank you for helping to undermine the Constitution. Thank you for helping along the creation of a police state.

Oh, and one other thing: Thank you for cutting the spooks off when they didn't pay their bill, clearly demonstrating the relative importance you place on upholding the law and the Constitution as compared to your bank accounts.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths

Well said

August J. Pollak of Some Guy With a Website apparently had the same sort of reaction I've had to certain pieces of news recently, but he had a sharp way of making the point:

Rated to a monthly average, the following countries have a Gross Domestic Product of less than $55 million:

Liberia, Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, Comoros, Vanuatu, Samoa, East Timor, Gambia, The Solomon Islands, Guinea, Kiribati, and Tonga.

The amounts of money raised every month, month after month, for political campaigns is just obscene. And the only news coverage is about who raised how much more than who and is that more or less than last month and all rest of this variation of the horserace crap and not one of them seems to ever say "S/he raised $50 million in one month? Holy fucking crap, this system is just bananas."

It can't be all bad news

Via Daisy's Dead Air comes a little bit of good news for the practice of simple, quiet dissent.

Back in August, a man named Jonas Phillips held a sign reading “Impeach Bush/Cheney” on an overpass on an Interstate highway in Asheville, North Carolina. He was arrested, charged with obstructing the sidewalk and endangering traffic. On Thursday, the Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC) brought the news that he was acquitted by the judge in the case.

District Court Judge James Calvin Hill said that the prosecution had insufficient evidence to prove its case, as none of the arresting officers had observed any pedestrians being blocked by Phillips’ actions, and that he did not believe reactions from motorists who honked their horns was enough to prove his sign a dangerous distraction.

“I’ve been listening to both sides for clear signs that his actions were causing a significant problem for pedestrians and motorists,” Hill said. “Based on what I’ve heard, I can’t find that they did.”

The prosecution insisted that he was not targeted for the content of Phillips' message "but his method of delivering it." I find that quite unconvincing, since, as immediately occurred to me and defense counsel argued, lots of other things - such as billboards - are at least as distracting. (Yes, I know there are no billboards on Interstates; that doesn't take away from the argument that Phillips' sign was no more distracting, no more of a danger to auto traffic, than many other things that might be encountered while driving.)

[Phillips] said he intends to resume highway blogging in the future.

You go, guy.

Footnote: Just as a reminder, this kind of harassment did not being with the Bush administration. I recall from Vietnam days friends being arrested for "harassing" pedestrians "by attempting to give them leaflets they did not want," on a charge of "blocking traffic" on the grounds that passing cars slowed down to read the signs at a demonstration, and for - this is my all-time favorite and it is an exact quote from the arrest report - "doing certain things on Capitol grounds."

Again: And, of course, a reminder about the best-known freeway blogger of them all: The Freeway Blogger, who according to his own count has put up 4,000 signs against the Iraq war and in favor of impeachment on freeways in the western US. I don't know if he has updated the site recently, but his blog is current, as is his MySpace site.

Speaking of blogswarms

Updated Updated again Lots of other folks have chimed and still are chiming in on this, so I guess I can, too, even at this bloggy-world late date. On Sunday, the Washington Post gave a right-wing flake named Charlotte Allen a prominent space to assert that women are, in general and in a word, dumb, with "brains permanently occluded by random emotions [and] psychosomatic flailings" and who "always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental." The column apparently was prompted by some hyperventilating reports of women having "screamed" and even fainted during rallies for Barack Obama - something about which I hadn't heard before but apparently is big news at the predictable places like World Net Daily and the Wall Street Journal Online. And now the Washington Post.

Not surprisingly, it generated a good deal of response, a lot of it negative. (When I said lots of other folks, I meant it: The Post claims there have been over 1,000 comments and 10,000 related blog posts.) So much so that Post management had to issue a statement defending the decision to publish this piece of crap and the author had to take part in an online Q&A about it, published today (which I suppose gives me a hook to say I'm not so late after all), during which she tried to pass it off as just good-natured fun - and utterly failed.

Failed because first off, it wasn't the least bit funny. That she hoped to be seen as a wit is clear; that she made it half-way is equally clear. So sorry, no sale on the "I'm so clever" front. And no sale on the line proffered by some of her defenders, typified by one who called it an expression of "frustration" about how women are "feed[ing] negative ideas about themselves."

Bull. This was neither a lighthearted romp across the social landscape nor a frustrated call to stop feeding stereotypes. It was a complaint from an elitist right winger about why "other members of our sex besides us" - that is, the silly women lacking her and her friends' superior insight - "don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess," and doggone it, just be good wives and mothers and "not mind the fact that way down deep, we are ... kind of dim" in a way that insures that the "number of women in [male-dominated] fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason." That "reason," apparently, being that women's pre-frontal cortex is like "Cream of Wheat." (Ellipsis as per the original.)

Her argument is transparently vapid, but it might have had some facade of force if her own failings of the sorts she ascribes to other women weren't so profound. For example, whatever she may think about those "other" women, her own grip on facts is weak. For example:

No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin).

Morgellons is very controversial but it is simply untrue that "many if not all doctors" deny its existence. In fact, in January the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the launch of a study of this "unexplained skin condition." Moreover, I can find no indication either among believers or skeptics that it is a complaint solely or even largely of women.

Another example:

[F]emale fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons. ... I predict that over the long run ... the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men.

I didn't find comparisons for the particular occupations she cited, but I do know of figures for another area where women were expected to "always lag behind" men, indeed for which not that long ago they were supposedly unfit: medicine. As recently as 1970, fewer than 8% of US physicians were women. By 2006, nearly 30% were. And that portion is sure to increase: In 2006, 42% of interns and roughly half of med students were women.

She also dipped into the realm of artificially-created, politically-useful fantasy:

[Hillary Clinton] has wept on the campaign trail, even though everyone knows that tears are the last refuge of losers.

Far be it from me to defend Hillary Clinton but this is bullshit. She has never "wept" on the campaign trail. The truth of the matter is that the day before the New Hampshire primary, which she was predicted to lose with the accompanying devastating impact on her hopes to be president, she was asked at a rally something like how she carried on. The mythologized "weeping" was a brief emotional catch in her voice which you could easily overlook in the video if you didn't know it was there. As for loser, she of course won in New Hampshire; some have even claimed her brief show of emotion was among the reasons why. Apparently not "everyone" thinks that such expressions are for "losers."

Then there are Allen's logical skills, which could also use some of "the special mentoring and role-modeling the 21st century can provide." She says in reference to men not getting conditions like Morgellons,

[a]t least no man I know.

Now there's the way to really nail the logic of the argument. Not to be topped by:

[Clinton's debate performance] consisted largely of complaining that she had to answer questions first and putting the audience to sleep with minutiae about her health-coverage mandate.

So this dumb, complaining woman whose campaign has displayed "every stereotypical flaw" did poorly at a debate because she was too smart? What? But wait, Allen's not finished.

The theory that women are the dumber sex ... is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence.

Evidence which, she immediately goes on to say, shows that while men are better at spatial reasoning, men and women have essentially identical IQs because, as she says in the very next paragraph, women are better at verbal reasoning. So her conclusion follows from her data exactly how?

Now, it's true that in a neurological sense, men and women are different in terms of intelligence. For example, it’s pretty well established that men do have an edge in spatial/mathematical reasoning and women an equal edge in verbal abilities and memory. Significantly, those differences appear to persist across cultures, making a strong case for there being some biological basis for them. The case is strengthened by brain studies that show that men and women tend to process information differently - or, to be more exact, they tend to use different types of brain matter to achieve intelligence. It's a case where, if you will, separate but equal actually does mean just that.

(I should mention that while the differences appear to persist across cultures, the degree of the difference does not: To cite one instance, a 2004 study of Israeli children found that the pattern of sex differences was different for Israelis than for Americans and the differences between the sexes was smaller among children raised on kibbutzim than among those raised in cities.)

But those facts are grossly misapplied when they are used, as Allen does, to address the issue of fitness for certain occupations. There are two solid reasons for that:

First, the differences do exist but in each case the overlap far exceeds the difference, something that folks taking Allen's view never seem to remember. So the very most that could be claimed about fitness for jobs would be something like "As a very general rule, all else being equal, each sex might have a small advantage in a certain limited number of occupations that are heavily dependent on one of those skill sets as opposed to the other." In short, not much at all.

Second, all else is very rarely equal. Looking at innate differences is interesting in neuro-psychological and evolutionary terms but is not useful in sociological terms, especially in considering employment, where personality factors like drive, ambition, outside support, the baseline of having a genuine interest in the field, and more come into play; even family tradition can play a role.

Bottom line is that using innate psychological differences as a basis for predicting men will always outshine women in some lines of work, which is exactly what Allen did, simply will not wash. It is a falsehood born of either ignorance or bias or both. (I also find it worthy of note that she did not name a single occupation other than "the ability to make a house a home," i.e., be a housewife, at which by her argument women presently do, and will continue to, naturally excel over men.)

And what's more, Allen's math reasoning is no better than her logic. She says that

[w]omen really are worse drivers than men.

This is "proved" by a 10-year old study using data now 18 years old showing women having 12% more accidents per million miles driven than men. She presents her own conclusion - one not reached by the researchers, who made no judgment about "better" or "worse" drivers - as a flat fact despite her own admission that men are three times likelier to be in a fatal accident. And to show her own understanding of the figures she cites, she says the figures showing women have a higher accident rate are as they are "even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year." But since the comparison was accidents per million miles, that last part is utterly irrelevant to her argument, something of which she seems quite unaware.

(To be complete, the investigators said the difference in miles driven was relevant to the issue of fatal accidents, which had not been adjusted to a per-mile basis. They claimed that 40% of the difference in fatal accidents was due to the greater number of miles men drove. But even allowing for that, it would mean that men drivers get into fatal accidents at a rate 1.8 times that of women per unit of miles driven. So women get into 112% as many accidents as men but men get into 180% as many fatal accidents as women. Exactly how that proves that the members of either sex "really are worse drivers" escapes me. And the fact remains that the way she quoted the statistics shows that she doesn't understand what she quoted.)

Which leaves us with the original point about women fainting at Obama rallies, the cliché "hysterical female" image that prompted Allen's bilge and bile. Her source is "Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich." His Wikipedia entry describes him as "a self-labeled social libertarian and political conservative ... very conservative, pro-Iraq war, pro-military and anti-Democrat [sic] Party." Admittedly, Wikipedia is not the most trustworthy source on the planet when it comes to such judgments, but even if this is overstated by an order of magnitude, it still means the guy is a real right-winger and not what I would call a reliable source on anything to do with Barack Obama.

But hey, forget that; it doesn't matter except for what it reveals about Allen via her choice of sources. Grant what he says: Five women fainted at Obama rallies since September. (Apparently, the actual number is six.) So in how many rallies? involving how many scores of thousands of people? he managed to come up with five cases of a woman fainting. This is supposed to prove something - anything at all - not even about women Obama fans but women in general? Nonsense. Utter, complete nonsense. But then again, so what: The whole essay is.

In sum, after having for eight years been afflicted with an incompetent, egomaniacal, power-hungry jackass as president because enough guys thought they'd rather have a beer with him than with the other fella, as a result of which I don't think anyone is in a position to condescend to women who are excited by Obama, we are now (again) being told that it is women who are too illogical, too emotional. Charlotte Allen piled together a bunch of ignorance and illogic, glued it together with her own condescending, right-wing, elitist fantasies, and made a net of negative stereotypes to cast over the heads of ordinary women, the ordinary "emotional" and "dim" women who are not among her elevated friends.

Some have called this misogyny, some have called it hatred. I don't know that I would use those words, but the fact remains that she has taken the failings or shortcomings of some and used them to describe a group as a whole. That is a textbook definition of bigotry.

And that's what Allen's essay is: sexist bigotry.

Footnote: For anyone who doubts my description of her as a right-winger, you could google her and check some of her other writings if you're confident in the strength of your stomach - or you could take an easier, gentler course and just consider not only her choice of source about the fainting Obama fans, but some quotes from her Q&A:

- Women aren't a historically oppressed minority; they're half the population or more! What - are we women always supposed to portray ourselves as victims of patriarchy? That's absurd in 2008 when we have every conceivable opportunity.

- I said Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans because it finally opportunity [sic] to a huge number of New Orleans residents living in passive dependency on welfare to get out of New Orleans and change their lives for the better. ... New Orleans itself now has a chance to change into a more self-reliant city.

- I don't think that women are at all discouraged these days from careers in math and science

- I see the ERA as a constitutional club with which to beat down state and local laws. It has nothing to do with rights.

And finally, this lovely exchange:

Woodbridge, Va.: Congratulations on a hilarious article. Do you think the hysterical response to it provides further proof that feminists have no sense of humor?

Charlotte Allen: Is the pope German?

I'm of the mind that when someone engages in insults and put-downs and then responds to complaints by insisting your objections prove that you have no sense of humor - in other words, the only proper response was to endorse the smears by laughing along knowingly - you know pretty much everything you need to know about that person's intentions.

But just in case you're still wondering, this is, in full, what Kathryn Jean Lopez had to say at The Corner at National Review Online while linking to Allen's tripe:

Charlotte Allen eviscerates women. I love it.

So much for good-natured kidding.

Another Footnote: To be completely fair, I now have to add that not all the criticism came from the left. For example, faithfully right-wing Ed Morrissey, late of Captain's Quarters and now of Michelle "Internment camps are a great idea" Malkin's Hot Air, had this to say:

Rarely have I read a newspaper column that shocks me for its sheer breadth of nonsense, but today’s effort by Charlotte Allen in the Washington Post provides one of those I-can’t-believe-she-wrote-that moment. ...

Bobby Riggs during his intentionally provocative promotion of his tennis match with Billy Jean King couldn’t have written this with a straight face. ...

If Charlotte Allen wants to embrace her inner dimness, she is free to do so. After reading this essay, she has a lot to embrace.

Probably the best thing about this is the change it represents: Can you imagine any right-winger writing something like that as little as, perhaps, 20 years ago? We can't deny the continued existence of sexism - but neither should we deny that there has been progress.

Yet another footnote: I am glad of just one thing in the article: It introduced me to Hildegard of Bingen, who does seem to have been quite a remarkable person, all the more remarkable because of the special obstacles she faced as a woman.

Updated with the comments by Kathryn Jean Lopez and Ed Morrissey.

Updated again with the info that in its own post about the column, MMFA had a good chart from the Census Bureau's 2008 Statistical Abstract of the US showing more women than men employed in several tax and business-related areas.

Don't forget

A reminder, which I intend to give weekly, to take part in the blogswarm on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. That day is Wednesday, March 19. As of today, there are 170 blogs pledged to take part.

As one likely unnecessary reminder as to why, this if from the Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) via a link from the invaluable Juan Cole:

The number of Iraqis killed in February rose by 33 per cent over January, reversing a six-month trend of reduced violence, in a setback to the US military plan to curb the bloodshed ravaging the country.

The combined figures from the interior, defence and health ministries showed that the total number of Iraqis killed in February was 721, including 636 civilians, compared with 541 dead in January.

Five years is five too many.

Again, this is not to be instead of anything else you do that day, but in addition to it.

Footnote: I will also include with each reminder links to my posts on the first, the second, and the fourth anniversary of the invasion in case you want to check them out. Lotus was on hiatus for all of 2006 and I was blogging very infrequently at another site during that time, so there is no third anniversary post.

Geekathon, part six

This one, as you'll see, has political relevance.

Don’t bother trying to persuade your boss of a new idea while he’s feeling the power of his position, new research suggests - he’s not listening.

“Powerful people have confidence in what they are thinking. Whether their thoughts are positive or negative toward an idea, that position is going to be hard to change,” said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and a psychologist at Ohio State University. ...

The research examined an issue largely ignored by social scientists, Petty said: many studies have looked at how the power of a person delivering a message affects recipients, but this one seems to be the first to assess how the listener’s power affects persuasion.

In the studies, the investigators told college students they would participate in two supposedly separate experiments.

In one, the students role-played in a game in which one acted as a boss, the other as an employee. In the second experiment, the participants viewed a fake ad for a mobile phone. Half the viewers saw ads with rather feeble arguments for buying the phone, such as its great currency converter; the other half saw ads with strong arguments, such as the quick five-minute recharging time.

When the role-playing took place before the ad, those who played boss were more likely than the “employees” to rate the phone similarly - regardless of the ad type, Petty and Briñol said. “The strength of the argument made no difference to those who played the boss. They obviously weren’t paying attention when they felt powerful,” Petty remarked. “Those who played the employee, who were made to feel powerless, paid a lot more attention to the arguments. They weren’t as confident in their own initial beliefs and weighed the arguments more carefully.”

Briñol is Pablo Briñol, lead author of the study and a social psychologist at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain.

In another part of the study, the order of the experiments was reversed; reading the phone ads came first, with the students writing down their thoughts as they did so, came first and the role-playing after. After that, they went back and rated the phones.

The role-play­ing “bosses” were now more influenced by the quality of the arguments in the ads, the researchers said, whereas the “employees” were less influenced.

“When power was experienced after the ads had been processed, it gave people confidence in their most recent thoughts, so if they read strong arguments, they rated the phones more favorably. If they read weak arguments, they were much more negative,” Petty said.

In case that's not quite clear: You see an ad and think it makes a good argument. You get a taste of power. You rate the product in the ad and in essence think (without actually thinking) "Well, if I thought the argument was strong, it must be strong!" And vice versa for a weak argument. Meanwhile, those who had been the powerless "employee" were actually less influenced by the ads because they hadn't been given that power-propelled ego boost so they had less confidence in their original judgment.

As for the political relevance, I'd say it explains a lot. Take a person with a sense of entitlement and an overblown ego and put them into a position of power and what do you get? Someone so convinced of the correctness of their own thoughts that they are incapable of accepting criticism and stubbornly resistant to alternatives and who may even be unable to remember a single mistake they've made.

Footnote: Just as a quick observation, I'm aware that criticism has been directed at studies such as this one because they frequently use college students as subjects. Are they, critics ask, really representative of an entire population? Are they really typical enough to generalize from them? I think in some cases, especially those that revolve around social attitudes, the criticism can be valid. But in a case like this, where it's thought processes rather than attitudes which are under study, I don't think it applies.

Geekathon, part five

In 2001, a fossil skull was discovered in the desert in Chad. It had a nearly complete cranium and some pieces of jawbone and teeth. Dubbed Toumai, it provoked an intense debate when its discoverers said it was a hominid - more exactly, if it was an early human. From the article:

Critics said that Toumai's cranium was too squashed to be that of a hominid - it did not have the brain capacity that gives humans primacy - and its small size indicated a creature of no more than 120 centimetres (four feet) in height, about the size of a walking chimp.

In short, they said, Toumai had no right to be baptised with French researcher Michel Brunet's hominid honorific of Sahelanthropus tchadensis - he was simply a vulgar ape.

Toumai's supporters used 3D computer reconstructions to show that the structure of the cranium had clear differences from those of gorillas and chimps and indicates that Toumai was able to walk upright on two feet, something our primate cousins cannot do with ease.

The argument just took on some added significance: The French team that found the fossil say they have determined its age to be between 6.8 and 7.2 million years old. So if it truly was an early human, the story of human evolution will have to be re-written because it will mean the split between apes and humans took place 500,000 to a million years earlier than previously believed.

If Toumai - the name means "hope of life" in the local Goran language - is accepted as a human, the implications are profound.

The fossil was found some 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) west of the Great Rift Valley. If that is still seen as humankind's ancestral home, it implies the early hominids ranged far wider from East Africa, and far earlier, than previously thought.

The discovery also implies hominids evolved quickly from apes after they split from a common primate ancestry.

Anatomically modern humans, homo sapiens, are generally believed to have appeared about 200,000 years ago.

Geekathon, part four

Archaeologists have discovered one of the oldest structures ever found in the Americas: a circular plaza 5,500 years old. It's located at the ruins of a site called Sechin Bajo, part of the Sechin Alto complex located some 366 kilometers, or 229 miles, north of Lima, Peru. The plaza is 500 years older than the ancient Peruvian citadel of Caral, previously thought to be among the oldest sites in the Western Hemisphere.

The plaza had not been discovered before because it was hidden under a later structure at the site. MSNBC has more:

"It's an impressive find, the scientific and archaeology communities are very happy," said Cesar Perez, the scientist at Peru's National Institute of Culture who supervised the project. "This could redesign the history of the country." ...

Scientists say Caral, located a few hours drive from Sechin Bajo, was one of six places in the world - along with Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India and Mesoamerica - where humans started living in cities 5,000 years ago.

Now, Sechin Bajo may have to join that list - or even head it.

Geekathon, part three

There are good days and there are bad days. WorldScience.net has some news from a bad day:

Scientists have dreamed of finding evidence for past life on Mars, where they believe there was once plenty of liquid water. But now they’re saying it might have been too salty.

“Not all water is fit to drink,” said Andrew Knoll, a Harvard University biologist who is on the science team for the NASA Mars rover Opportunity.

High concentrations of dissolved minerals as well as acids may have thwarted microbes from developing on the red planet, he added. ...

Opportunity spent recent months examining a bright band of rocks around the inner wall of a crater in the planet’s Terra Meridiani region. The crater turned out to lie atop an underground water table, according to scientists. Knoll said the rover - which serves as a robotic geologist - found that the water, which once covered the area, left behind evidence of its high acidity and salinity.

“This tightens the noose on the possibility of life,” considering salt is a preservative, he added. Conditions may have been more hospitable earlier, with water less briny, Knoll said. But “life at the Martian surface would have been very challenging for the last 4 billion years. The best hopes for a story of life on Mars are at environments we haven’t studied yet - older ones, subsurface ones.”

On the other hand, as I mentioned just the other day, we keep finding life in places we previously thought impossible - including a lake in California with water three times saltier than sea water but which still contains an ecosystem including microbes, plankton, and small shrimp. So it does tighten the noose, but it by no means chokes off the possibility.

And, of course, the real purpose is not to find life but to learn and discover what we can, whatever the answers to any of the questions turn out to be. It's just that finding life somewhere else would be really, really, really cool.

Footnote: Opportunity and Spirit rovers have now lasted 16 times longer than their planned mission. They began their fifth year on Mars last month.

Footnote to the footnote: The Phoenix lander is on schedule to enter Mars' atmosphere on May 25.

Geekathon, part two

It's sometimes remarked by scientists that the easy questions are the hardest. One of the very hardest is the mystery of consciousness, our awareness of ourselves. We know we exist: "I think, therefore I am." It's far more than a matter of sensory input: A bacteria can react to its environment. It's an internal, something within ourselves, something that deals in and incorporates the information provided by our senses but goes clearly beyond it.

It's so mysterious - so frustrating - that in fact some people denied it even existed. But developments in neurology and neurological imaging continue to suggest a physical basis for consciousness. For example, WorldScience.net reports that

[i]n a study billed as an exploration into the realm of “consciousness,” researchers claim to have found brain cells that become very busy only when something is consciously noticed. ...

Volunteers were shown pictures on a computer screen very briefly - for a time just at the edge of being long enough to be noticeable. The participants were asked each time whether they saw the picture or not. Sometimes the exact same visual input was noticeable on one trial and not on another, for the same person, [lead researcher Rodrigo] Quian Quiroga [of the University of Leicester, UK,] said. ...

Certain neurons, or brain cells, “responded to the conscious perception in an ‘all-or-none’ way,” Quian Quiroga said: they dramatically changed their rate of firing signals, only when pictures were recognized. These neurons were in the medial temporal lobe, a region deep inside the brain often associated with memory.

For example, in one patient, a neuron in the hippocampus - a structure also in that area - “fired very strongly to a picture of the patient’s brother when recognized and remained completely silent when it was not,” Quian Quiroga said. ...

“[A] picture flashed very briefly generated nearly the same response - if recognized - as when shown for much longer periods of time.”

In other words, it was the recognition itself, not the length of time it was recognized, that produced the reaction. This is not, of course, a measure of consciousness itself, which still defies real understanding, much less analysis, but it does show the existence of specific physical mechanisms connected to a conscious - and that's the key point here, a conscious - awareness of the world around us. For the moment, neural scientists are having to content themselves with analyzing such physical mechanisms, but there is more than enough to do even there.

The article adds that potential applications of the work, even without considering the idea of explaining consciousness, include development of “neural prosthetic” devices that could enable paralyzed patients to operate a robotic limb by thinking about what they want it to do and the treatment of epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and schizophrenia.

Geekathon, part one

Okay, I know I've said things like this before but my oh my, this really just pins my coolness meter.

The video is a loop of an electron riding a light wave. Did you get that? It's a video of a flippin' electron.

As MSNBC reported on Monday,

[p]reviously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event.

The technology involves generating extremely - and I do mean extremely - short bursts of intense laser light, pulses which are measured in attoseconds. An attosecond is 10^-18 seconds, or if you prefer, a billionth of a billionth of a second.

"[A]n attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe," said Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden. ...

The length of the film Mauritsson and his colleagues made corresponds to a single oscillation of a wave of light. The speed of the event has been slowed down for human eyes.

How cool is that?

There have been pictures of atoms for a while, although initially they were more reconstructions than actual pictures. The first directly interpretable pictures came in 1983 but they were of limited use because the maximum resolution of the electron microscope being used was 1.4 angstroms (abbreviated 1.4Å) and most atoms are pretty much the same size, ranging from one to two angstroms. It would be like trying to use a 12 inch ruler without subdivisions to accurately measure things that run from nine to 18 inches across. You could get a general picture, a pretty good sense, but no more.

To get a good measure of something, the smallest unit on your measuring instrument - in this case the maximum resolution of your microscope - has to be smaller than what is being measured. By 2004, the resolution achieved had improved to 0.6Å, good enough to observe individual atoms of silicon in a crystal.

But this is different. This is not an atom, this is an electron. The classic diameter of a hydrogen atom ("classical" meaning without considering quantum dynamics, which make such measurements kind of wibbly-wobbly) is about a million times that of a classical electron. To make a vague and not to the same scale comparison, its kind of like the difference between being able to observe the Solar System as a whole versus being able to observe Mercury.

Oh, and yes, there have been photographs of electron clouds of elements with multiple electrons as far back as 1993. But this is not an electron cloud, this is an electron. A single bleedin' electron.

Definitely cool.

Footnote: A few days earlier, Cornell University announced that

[a] new electron microscope recently installed [there] is enabling scientists for the first time to form images that uniquely identify individual atoms in a crystal and see how those atoms bond to one another. And in living color.

"The current generation of electron microscopes can be thought of as expensive black and white cameras where different atoms appear as different shades of gray," explained David Muller, Cornell associate professor of applied and engineering physics. "This microscope takes color pictures - where each colored atom represents a uniquely identified chemical species." ...

It allows scientists to peer inside a material or a device and see how it is put together at the atomic scale where quantum effects dominate and everyday intuition fails.

The more we look, the more there is to learn. Sometimes that seems like the only thing that makes life worth it.

And it's not even the Fourth of July

As I expect many of you know, CNN.com carried an article about wingnut charges and rumors that Barack Obama is "unpatriotic" based on his failure to wear a flag lapel pin and that photo of him standing with hands crossed in front of him during the playing of the national anthem. Related to that story, the site ran a disgraceful poll asking if he shows "the proper patriotism" for someone who wants to be president.

In comments at Media Matters, that brought up the whole issue of patriotism, with several people denouncing in various words the idea of lapel pins as a measure of patriotism. One troll there quoted three of the terms used, applied them to patriotism per se, and then suggested that was "the predominant feeling on the left." I decided I would answer with my own take on the overall question, which follows:

Patriotism measured in terms of wearing flag pins, having your hand over your heart during the national anthem, and the like is worthless, dangerous, and overrated, all three. It is a hollow "patriotism," a shell that prefers form to substance and too easily, as we have seen over the last several years, slides from "patriotism" into jingoism.

(And no, don't bother claiming I said wearing a flag pin, etc., is "hollow," as that would be the reverse of my argument. I in no way denied that such actions could be outward expressions of a deeper commitment; I said that a patriotism measured in those terms rather than by that deeper commitment is hollow. And it is.)

You want my understanding of patriotism? Well, maybe not but here it is anyway:

In addition to embracing the comment I read some years ago that "it is natural to have an abiding affection for the land of one's birth," I say being a US patriot means being dedicated to the ideals on which the country was supposed to have been founded and which, at its best moments, it strives to uphold to as full a measure as possible: Ideals such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as the right to rebellion against oppression, as "promot[ing] the general welfare," as political freedoms, as representative government "of, by, and for the people" - the ideal of, to sum up in a single phrase, an intent to "establish justice," a justice I say must include the economic and the social as well as the political if it is to have real meaning.

(Another sidebar: Yes, I know "one of these things is not like the others" in the above list. Don't waste our time with irrelevant quibbles.)

Patriotism, that is, lies in the devotion to the ideals, not in any symbolic outward expression of it. Further, patriotism thus does not lie in support for or opposition to any particular administration or any particular policy except insofar as that support or opposition is an expression of that internal commitment to those ideals. An opponent of the Iraq war who is angered by the Executive branch's usurpation of power is much more patriotic than a war supporter who keeps referring to the president as "the commander-in-chief" as if we were all soldiers expected to obey orders rather than citizens with the obligation held by any free people to "question authority."

I do not wear a flag pin. I do not put my hand over my heart during the national anthem (which, I'll note in passing, I was taught as a child was something that some folks did but was not required). I do not sing along with the national anthem. In fact - and I know this will promote ammo for some and lead others to say I undermine my argument, but I don't care, it's the truth - I don't even stand up for the national anthem. (Not intending to give offense thereby, I usually manage to be out of the room at the time.)

But if patriotism can be understood as embracing the ideals of our nation, as striving to hold this country to the highest of those ideals instead of the lowest of its prejudices, as committing to a notion of what the US, of what we as a people, can be and have at times approached being, then I submit that I am as patriotic as they come. And I have neither patience with nor tolerance for those who would make patriotism a matter of gestures and decorations rather than conviction.

And?

So Ralph Nader has announced he's running for president again. (Big surprise: Did anyone expect him to go on Meet the Press to say he wasn't running?)

I really don't care: I've said before that for very personal reasons I won't vote for him even if he gets the Green Party nomination (which I hope will go to Cynthia McKinney). I'll vote for other Greens, but not him. In any event, I fully expect his impact on the 2008 election to be even less than he had on the 2004 election, which was none. For that reason I can predict with reasonable confidence that this will be the only post in which I will mention him as a candidate (unless it's to gripe if he gets the GP nomination).

Still, it was interesting to see the

Democrats foam at the mouth, shudder, twitch violently, and otherwise go bonkers in response

to the announcement, just like I expected they would. The usual suspects were there, including TalkingPointsMemo, where Josh Marshall called Nader "Bush's chief enabler" and comments on a snide post were filled with lots of "fuck you"s and repetitions of the long-discredited notion that George Bush is Nader's fault.

At TalkLeft, it was that "MTP had no business putting Ralph Nader on. He is not newsworthy." (Which would seem to be disproved by the number of people talking about it.) According to comments, he "needs a dunce cap." He is, we were told, "hideously selfish - morally obtuse" and "certain to help Republicans cling to power." (That last from someone obviously unaware of the realities involved.)

Of course the armies of drooling partisans at Daily Kos wasted little time in developing their own party line, dishing out the argument that Nader is Harold Stassen.

In comments at Crooks & Liars, he was an "asshat," "DESPICABLE," "delusional," a "joke" dealing in "blatant hypocrisy and lies," a "narcissistic buffoon" who has "the blood of tens of thousands on his hands."

And another mouth-breathing partisan, John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, calls him "fool" and "the herpes of presidential candidates" (which is at least original) while pulling out a quote from Mike Huckabee (who Aravosis otherwise considers a complete moron but in this case is apparently a political savant) saying that Nader takes votes from Dems so GOPpers like him.

At other sites, terms like "insect," "insane," a "crackpot" who is "trying to get Republicans elected" were frequent, along with, as always happens whenever Nader's name is mentioned in these circles, the insistence that everything bad that has happened over the last seven years, every blessed little thing right down to that annoying hangnail on your ring finger and the heartbreak of psoriasis, are Ralph Nader's fault. Nothing to do with Bush. Nothing to do with incompetent Democratic campaigns, nothing to do with the lapdog Democrats in Congress. Nothing to do with biased media. Nader's fault. All of it.

To be as fair as I can to this outpouring of paranoia, this hailstorm of hatred, there were dissenting voices, some who defended Nader against the 2000 canard and a few who dared to say something to the effect of "right on, Ralph." But they were few and far between in the chorus of condemnation, a pose maintained ever since 2000 for the specific purpose of giving the Democrats someone, anyone, to blame other than their own incompetent, invertebrate selves.

I will say I found one valid criticism of Nader, found at the C&L post linked above, where Nicole Belle asked:

Where have you been, Ralph? What have you done in the last eight years to help make third parties more viable and allow them a voice on the national stage? How is showing up more than a year into presidential politicking with just a few months left helpful to the validity of third parties?

Making independents more meaningful isn’t an eleventh hour appearance on a talking head show. It takes years of sustained effort and commitment....

I don't think the criticism is entirely justified in that Nader has not been idle the past seven years, although he has slowed down the past couple. (In fact in 2004, Democrats complained he had spent too much of the preceding four years criticizing Democrats - without, of course, mentioning that what he had been criticizing them for was not being aggressive enough in opposing the GOPpers.) Yet it remains true that Nader has not been contributing to building a party and actually seems more of the mind that an electoral opposition can be built without party-building, which strikes me as quite odd.

Finally, it is a fact that sometimes the best way a given someone can help build a movement - including a third party - is by being the figurehead, the public face that draws the attention. Any third party can use such a person. However, for the American left that person is no longer Ralph Nader.

One Footnote: One of the better responses to Nader's announcement came from Barack Obama, who

said today during a visit at the Ohio State University Medical Center that he wasn’t terribly concerned about the prospect of a Nader campaign. “I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage [points] of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference.”

It was obviously a prepared answer since he immediately followed up with the classic political move of taking shots at an opponent while praising them, but he does make the central point that I have argued all along: It is the Democrats' job to win those votes, not Nader's job to hand them over; the burden is not on Nader to be silent but on the Democrats to speak more persuasively.

Another Footnote: DKos was not the only place Nader was equated with Harold Stassen as a candidate who had become a joke, so I wanted to say a few words in Stassen's defense.

He was elected three times to be governor of Minnesota, a position he resigned in 1943 to join the Navy as an officer - an action which undercut his political base, costing him dearly later on. He was a delegate to the founding convention of the United Nations, he served in the Eisenhower administration, and was president of the University of Pennsylvania for five years. As president of the American Baptist Convention in 1963, he joined the 1963 civil rights March on Washington.

He was one of those old-fashioned liberal Republicans, a moderate when the term actually meant something. When he ran for the GOP nomination in 1964 (after not having run since 1952) it was specifically to offer resistance to the emerging Goldwater wing of the party and his later runs were an increasingly futile effort to raise the banner of that old-style moderation in the increasingly-reactionary face of the GOP.

I also have a more personal attachment: I ran for Congress three times. During my third race, a reporter referred to me as "our district's Harold Stassen," which she defined as "the guy who keeps running, he makes these great speeches, everybody nods and applauds - and then votes for somebody else."

Don't forget!

A reminder, which I intend to give weekly, to take part in the blogswarm on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. That day is Wednesday, March 19. As of last week, there were 120 blogs pledged to take part.

On a day when between 40 and 50 people were killed and over 100 wounded in two attacks on Shia pilgrims outside Baghdad and the Turkish attack on Kurds in Iraq continued, it is easy say again: Five years is five years too many. STDD/GTHO.

Again, this is not to be instead of anything else you do that day, but in addition to it.

Footnote: I will also include with each reminder links to my posts on the first, the second, and the fourth anniversary of the invasion in case you want to check them out. Lotus was on hiatus for all of 2006 and I was blogging very infrequently at another site during that time, so there is no third anniversary post.

Lawyering up

This would actually be funny if the stakes weren't so high. The source here is Raw Story for today:

House Democratic leaders came under criticism Saturday from President Bush who said they are blocking intelligence legislation so lawyers can sue telephone companies for helping the government eavesdrop on suspected terrorists. ...

"When Congress reconvenes on Monday, members of the House have a choice to make: They can empower the trial bar, or they can empower the intelligence community," Bush said in his Saturday radio address. "They can help class-action trial lawyers sue for billions of dollars, or they can help our intelligence officials protect millions of lives." ...

"House leaders are blocking this legislation, and the reason can be summed up in three words: class-action lawsuits."

Other GOPpers have also been using the "trial lawyer" reference. With Shrub joining in, this is apparently the now-agreed-on line of attack, the newly-minted right-wing meme. Now, it's true that wanting to "kill all the lawyers" is an old sport, but this, it seems to me, is really silly. Does anyone outside of the 19% think this is going to fly as an effective argument? Does anyone really think people are going to jump up and say "Oh my GOD! Trial lawyers? I must support President Bush above all else! Congress, I am anti-lawyer, hear me roar!"

It sounds to me like some element of desperation is entering the winger thought processes (assuming that's not an oxymoron), that they are searching for something that will strike a responsive chord among Americans. The significance of that, especially in light of the silliness of the line of argument itself, is that is indicates that the old meme is no longer working like it did before. It's a clear sign that people are no longer moved by the repeated appeals to unreasoning fear like they used to be.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that those appeals no longer work, period, but I think we can say that they are losing their impact. Which leaves the GOPpers and their minions (including among Dumcrats such as Jay Rockefeller and Diane Feinstein) exactly where?

Stargeek Atlantis

From the Beeb a few days back, serious coolness.

Rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found. ...

Michael Meyer, an astronomer from the University of Arizona, said he believes Earth-like planets are probably very common around Sun-like stars.

"Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth," he said. ...

Mr Meyer's team used the US space agency's Spitzer space telescope to look at groups of stars with masses similar to the Sun. ...

Nasa's Kepler mission to search for Earth-sized and smaller planets, due to be launched next year, is expected to reveal more clues about these distant undiscovered worlds. ...

Excitement about finding other Earth-like planets is driven by the idea that some might contain life or perhaps, centuries from now, allow human colonies to be set up on them.

The key to this search, said Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University, California, was the Goldilocks zone.

This refers to an area of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its parent star so that its surface is not-too-hot or not-too-cold to support liquid water.

Astronomers have already found Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, including one planet which

probably has a substantial atmosphere and may be covered with large amounts of water ... and, most importantly, temperatures [which] are very similar to those on our world.

We have also learned that life is a lot more robust than we used to think and that the Earth's own Goldilocks Zone is much wider than we thought.

Scientists have found microbes in nuclear reactors, microbes that love acid, microbes that swim in boiling-hot water. Whole ecosystems have been discovered around deep sea vents where sunlight never reaches and the emerging vent-water is hot enough to melt lead.

As well as microbes, plankton, and small shrimp living in a lake three times saltier than sea water with a pH equal to that of household glass cleaner.

Of course, extraterrestrial microbes and shrimp are not going to be responding to hellos from SETI, but the fact is, the more we learn, the more we discover, the more likely it appears that, somewhere out there, there really are little green men. Or greys.

What you don't know won't hurt you

Or so they tell us.

On New Year's Eve, George the Shrub signed into law the Open Government Act of 2007. One of the things the bill did was create a post of FOIA ombudsman. Working out of the National Archive, this ombudsman was supposed to be an honest broker between citizens making FOIA requests and government agencies receiving them. The idea was that having such a person could both advance open government and reduce lawsuits.

Well, the ACLU reported a couple of days ago that

it was too good to be true. Tucked away in Bush's proposed new budget for 2008 - in the 1,300-page appendix - was language that stripped funding for the FOIA ombudsman role, and shoves the responsibilities off to the Justice Department. The same department, we might add, responsible for defending the government agencies when they're named in lawsuits to have FOIA requests enforced.

Give the White House cabal this much: At least they'e consistent.

More than one, three

Finally, just to show how everyone on SCOTUS can get along when corporate profit is at stake, while that decision may have been only 8-1, this one, coming to us from AP via the New York Times, was 9-0:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday invalidated parts of Maine's law barring Internet tobacco sales to minors.

In a unanimous decision, the court said Maine cannot impose a regulatory scheme on transportation companies delivering tobacco products directly to consumers. The justices said federal transportation law blocks the states from doing so.

The ruling could provide the impetus for the transportation industry to get out from under state laws regulating cigarette deliveries in the Internet age.

Various outfits have been evading state laws about tobacco sales by selling cigarettes, etc., online, shipped directly to underage buyers. Maine is one of 32 states with laws targeting such deliveries. The Maine law required delivery companies to intercept packages from unlicensed tobacco sellers and verify the age of buyers in order to keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids under 18. The industry, of course, argued the costs were just astronomical, bankrupting, ruinous, and besides, hey states, you can't touch us, nyah-nyah.

Federal law, the AP article says, bars states from "regulating prices, routes or services of shipping companies." Maine officials argued that this was regulation for public health and safety, not traditional economic regulation of the sort subject to federal preemption. The First Circuit Appeals Court rejected the argument and SCOTUS has now agreed. Writing for the Court, the supposedly liberal Stephen Breyer said that federal law "says nothing about a public health exception" - that is, states can't regulate trucking firms over public health concerns because the law did not specifically say they could. Reading that made me flash back to the 1980s and the Reagan administration saying they could legally funnel money to the contras through the Agriculture Department because Congress did not specifically mention Ag in the law banning such aid.

Getting back to the immediate case, again, there was a money quote, one that revealed the real concern:

Because of Maine's regulation, companies will have to offer tobacco delivery services "that differ significantly" from what the market might dictate, Breyer wrote. [emphasis added]

Because, of course, the Market Is God. And what's more,

[t]he ruling against Maine's law could enable the industry to argue that similar laws in other states are invalid.

Because, again, the Market Is God.

Footnote: The latter two results may be disturbing, but they should not be surprising, not even the majorities. Last June, I quoted a representative of the US Chamber of Commerce calling the Supreme Court session just concluded "our best Supreme Court term ever." In 30 business-related cases, SCOTUS had ruled against business interests just twice and 80% of the decisions were by margins of 7-2 or better. When it comes to protecting corporate America from the ravages of regulation and the awfulness of accountability, the "liberal" and "conservative" wings of the Court are as one.