Cogitamus

The earth will endure ... and ignorance will never cease either

OK, I'll do the honours this time and post the obvious. Since it's gotten just short of 44,000 views on YouTube, there must be plenty of you who still haven't seen this video - though a Google Blogs search suggests some 80 blogs or so have already written about Rep. John Shimkus these past couple of days.

Shimkus spoke at a hearing of the US House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment on climate change, and this is what came out (h/t The Plank):

A scary kind of funny, a funny kind of scary, you tell me.

Arguing for the latter is a detail that some of the more alert commenters noted. It is rather odd, isn't it, to hear Shimkus repeatedly intone how he considers the scripture he quoted "the infallible word of God" -- and then, in the very sentence after declaring God's word "infallible, unchanging, perfect", raise the issue that ... hey, in any case, back "in the age of the dinosaurs" there were more carbon parts in the atmosphere than there are now. So njema problema, right?

That, of course, is right when he mentions that "there is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet." I'm sure the men of faith on the panel were sorry that Shimkus never did get the chance to "get into the theological discourse" about the scriptures he quoted.

A blogger called Dale Oregon has a point to make too. Shimkus reassures us that the end of the world will only come when God wills it, and man will not be able to bring it about. But is anyone claiming that CO2-driven climate change threatens to bring about "the earth's end," Oregon asks? Or even just to destroy "all living creatures", to go with Shimkus's choice of scripture? Let's take the man's word for it here, and assume that "summer and winter, day and night will never cease". What's the corollary here?

[It] brings to mind the excluded middle fallacy nested in the middle of Rep. Shimkus's impressively dense catalog of fallacies: is there, perhaps, something short of The World's Complete Ending that's worth worrying about? Anything?

The above video is not all. For more Shimkus weirdness from the panel, do check out Matthew Yglesias's post from Saturday. If stupid has a face and a voice, then it looks and sounds something quite like John Shimkus.

(In case you were wondering, the posh English guy on the panel in the video Yglesias posted, who at least has mastered the art of seeming authoritative, is Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, as commenter #38 helpfully points out. The Viscount is "a British politician and business consultant, policy advisor, writer, and inventor" who back in the day was one of Margaret Thatcher's policy advisors - and who made waves shortly afterward when he suggested quarantaining all AIDS carriers for life. Classy.)

Shimkus is no newbie in the House, by the way. He represents the voters of Illinois's 19th district, a sprawling rural and suburban district in the south of the state, and was first elected in 1997. He received 64% of the vote last year, but then this is a district that went to Bush in 2004 by 61% to 39%.

Scotland's contribution to the fight against fascism

I didn't know about this:

In proportion to its size, Scotland provided more soldiers to fight against Franco's pro-fascist forces than any other country. Of the 2100 who volunteered from the UK, 549 came from Scotland.

Sixtyfive Glaswegians alone were killed in the Spanish civil war. That factoid is from this article about an 82-year old who became "the man of the house" as a 12-year old boy in 1938, when his father died on the Aragon front. How quickly time passes! The last surviving Scottish member of the International Brigades died last year ...

The rapid pace at which the last survivors of the civil war are passing away now poses an acute challenge in Spain as well, where the state is belatedly tackling the war's lasting legacy. I wrote about that on my old blog at some length a few months ago, got good comments too.

Because Ezra Klein takes weekends off

I'm so very pleased for the American medical profession, that the death of a celebrity actress is so useful for them in their battle against a rational medical insurance system:

"Canadacare may have killed Natasha," screamed a headline in the New York Post. "Was Canada's healthcare the problem?" asked another in the Chicago Tribune.

The implication "is totally unjustified," said Paul Saba, an emergency room doctor at Lachine Hospital and co-president of the Coalition of Physicians for Social Justice....

Richardson, 45, wasn't wearing a ski helmet when she fell, but was walking and talking afterward. She also refused an ambulance that came for her about 45 minutes later.

Saturday Night Song of Obsession

"Teenage Kicks" - The Undertones

From 1978, somewhere at the nexus of the Ramones and the Bay City Rollers.  I saw these Irish lads open for the Clash in 1979 --preceded by Jamaican DJ Mikey Dread and followed by Sam & Dave -- a brilliant, eclectic show.   

Sir Charles is heading off at the crack of dawn to the Caribbean for nine days.  I feel slightly guilty, yet somehow I'll manage to get over it.

Shopping the Middle Ages for Bras and Panties

Consider this Reason Number 3,999,999,999 that Deborah is grateful for the moderately-modern mindset of the society in which we live here in the West. Not that I'd be embarrassed to buy undies from a guy, mind you--I'd probably enjoy watching him squirm at whatever extremely naughty jokes I'd made a point of telling him--but I would feel an ongoing need to loudly protest the fact that our Saudi sisters not only are prohibited from driving a car, but can't even turn to a lady bra-fitter to help them when they're seeking comfort and support for The Girls, because their law apparently says only men can be lady bra-fitters. Or store clerks or car-drivers. Or something.

Oh dear. I am imagining a loudly-protesting Me, standing in a lingerie store in Saudi Arabia, assuredly not wearing the forty yards of black wool draping they like to throw all over our Evil Temptress Female bodies, and if it's hot outside (!), probably sporting bare legs, bare arms, and at least one wayward bra strap.

Wait! Wait! I want my lawyer! I want my gift-with-purchase teddy bear! I promise not to name it Mohammed!

More than the sum of her parts

I should have known better, but I was expecting Will Saletan to actually address his critics in his article about "why [he] write[s] about 'lady parts'." Instead, it was a lovely lecture about how when pro-choice advocates are worrying about women's autonomy, they really need to be worrying about fetal life, which they never bother to think about.

And I write about the value of unborn life because that's the problem my fellow pro-choicers don't like to talk about. I want to challenge you. Keeping the government out of these sticky moral questions doesn't make them go away. It just puts the burden on you to face them responsibly.

I'd like to challenge Saletan to responsibly face the value of women's work and autonomy when it comes to child-bearing. That's the 190-pound pregnant lady in the room that Saletan is ignoring. Way to completely avoid the criticisms about being unable to see the women for the fetuses, Saletan. I thought the image used to illustrate the article was especially telling - a faceless woman with her hand on her belly, which is the only bit Saletan seems to think is relevant. When he discussed the case of surrogate mothers being stiffed for their pay, he says

It's a familiar tale of vanishing funds and defaulted obligations. But this time, the potential loss is bigger than property. It's pregnancy.

Yes, it's pregnancy, not property (i.e. the physical property being carried around and nurtured by the surrogate). Pregnancy is the work that's being paid for in surrogacy. Surrogate mothers are compensated for their time, physical sacrifice, and labor - not the baby. The starting materials for the baby were provided to the surrogate to begin with, so along with the physical resources she contributes toward growing the embryo into a whole baby, the product is the growing and not the baby. If compensation dries up, it's logical that the product would as well. There are endless perfect metaphors for the situation, but when a metaphor is absolutely perfect, it's incredibly boring, so I'll spare you illustrative repetition of the point I'm making.

The parents whose genetic material was used to create the embryo have entered into a contract with the surrogate, but the embryo/fetus itself is not party to the agreement. After the fetus reaches viability, the state has a compelling and enforceable interest in the surrogate's continued support of the fetus. This is in addition to the state's interest in upholding the surrogate's right to compensation for her work. Also, it would be pretty strange - and vanishingly rare - for a surrogate to quit 8 months in.

This is where Saletan's argument comes within view of relevance - yes, the fetus itself does have value as a proto-human being, but at a stage significantly before viability, the surrogate's right not to be pulled into indentured servitude outweighs the fetus' right to development and physical support.

Beyond the blastocyst stage, I definitely think that the product of conception is a special thing deserving of a significant measure of its own consideration (and so do the stiffed surrogates, who have all elected to continue the pregnancies). Saletan is doing precisely what he's accusing abortion-rights advocates of doing - ignoring the conflict between a woman's right to choose what to do with her body and the value of fetal life.

Me, I think the woman's rights win. Saletan won't take a position on which is more valuable, and tries to deflect by insisting that killing a fetus is always a bad thing in itself that a woman deserves the right to do - but only if she feels guilty about it. If unwanted pregnancies germinated in random incubators, my sense is that it would be preferrable to support them instead of denying them a chance to get to personhood. I don't think guilt or shame mitigate anything (though Saletan is clearly hoping for a deterrent effect), so on balance, I'd rather a woman who has an abortion be happy that she'd done it. I like people in general, and am happy to welcome any newcomers to the ranks of humanity.

For further reading, Amanda Marcotte at Pandagan has much more patience with this guy than I do, and bothers to hassle him about his disingenuousness.

I don't know how much I've added to her work, but I was annoyed enough at Saletan's evasiveness that I had to express myself.

Watch the assumptions

Kevin Drum writes that banks shouldn't get too small, else they'd be... too small:

So just what would the limit be on bank size? $500 billion in assets? $200 billion? Can a country the size of the United States even have nationwide banks with limits like that?

Why presume that America needs national banks? I'm not trying to be glib here, but seriously -- assuming that they're able to lend and borrow across state borders, why presume that America must have national-scale institutions at all? It's a way of framing a question so as to exclude an answer, and I don't see why we should bias policy in favour of a particular scale. Or, if we ought to be biasing policy, there are strong, positive reasons to bias it in favour of smaller institutions where corruption, if not less frequent, would have less severe secondary effects.

And today's musical contribution comes from the planet of WTF.

Umm, no, I don't know either. But it's pretty bad ass.

So there's communist worker chicks toiling under the hammer and sickle, zombie Stalins, Gorbachev with the body of Jean-Claude Van Damme (but recognizable by the trademark port-wine stain on his head), Micha killing off the zombie Stalins, and the worker chicks gaining the kind of freedom that allows you to perform oral sex on bread.

Or something.

The song is by АНЖ (ANJ), described as "Gogol Bordello meets Megadeth", and the vid is part of the surely underappreciated computer game Stalin Vs. Martians ("The Unknown Pages of the Second World War"), the existence of which was passed on by the fine folks at Eternal Remont. (The trailer, in case you're curious, features an animated Stalin dancing to Snap!'s Rhythm is a Dancer.)

If you're wondering what the hell the lyrics are, the video's creator, Tom Stern, presented his handywork nine months ago at Vimeo and he posted the lyrics in comment #90 (near the bottom of the first page). But mostly I posted this because what this blog really needed was a post that could be given the keywords video, music, games, history, heavy metal, zombies, stalin, gorbachev, martians, communism and WW2.

Tell Bill O'Reilly to back off and stop harassing women - send his advertisers a message

If you're an American liberal who follows the blogs, you'll probably have heard about how Think Progress's Amanda Terkel was stalked and harassed by one of Bill O'Reilly's message boys. Steve Benen linked to the video of Terkel appearing on Olbermann's Countdown, which is well worth a watch. Olbermann is still a douchebag, even if he's a douchebag who's right, and doesn't actually do a very good job in summarising clearly what happened, but Terkel's is a star turn. I hope we'll see much more of her.

Meanwhile, however, there's something you can do. I don't think they'll listen to a furriner like me, but all you Americans do respond to Think Progress's appeal to tell O'Reilly's advertisers that you're not pleased about their sponsorship of harassment. They've got a list of advertisers and a sample email to send them all.

Ironically, the spokesman of one of the advertisers in question (AT&T) has now complained to Think Progress about the flood of emails, calling it ... harassment. Some people have no sense of self-awareness, I guess.

This Is Why I'm An Atheist

Gingi Edmonds, writing about the recent plane crash in Montana:

Some of you may have seen the major news story of the private plane that crashed into a Montana cemetery, killing 7 children and 7 adults.

But what the news sources fail to mention is that the Catholic Holy Cross Cemetery owned by Resurrection Cemetery Association in Butte - contains a memorial for local residents to pray the rosary, at the 'Tomb of the Unborn'.  This memorial, located a short distance west of the church, was erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.

. .

What else is the mainstream news not telling you?  The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim's memorial, is the family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation. . .

Although Feldkamp is not an abortionist, he reaps profits of blood money from the tens of thousands of babies that are killed through abortions performed every year at the clinics he owns.  His business in the abortion industry was what enabled him to afford the private plane that was carrying his family to their week-long vacation at The Yellowstone Club, a millionaires-only ski resort. . .

The plane went down on Sunday, killing two of Feldkamp’s daughters, two sons-in-law and five grandchildren along with the pilot and four family friends.  The plane, a single-engine turboprop flown by Bud Summerfield of Highland, crashed into the Catholic cemetery and burst into flames, only 500 ft. from its landing destination.  All aboard were killed. . .

In my time working for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, I helped organize and conduct a weekly campaign where youth activists stood outside of Feldkamp's mini-mansion in Redlands holding fetal development signs and raising community awareness regarding Feldkamp's dealings in child murder for profit.  Every Thursday afternoon we called upon Bud and his wife Pam to repent, seek God's blessing and separate themselves from the practice of child killing.

We warned him, for his children's sake, to wash his hands of the innocent blood he assisted in spilling because, as Scripture warns, if "you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you". (Ezekiel 35:6)

A news source states that Bud Feldkamp visited the site of the crash with his wife and their two surviving children on Monday.  As they stood near the twisted and charred debris talking with investigators, light snow fell on the tarps that covered the remains of their children.

I don't want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual "I told you so" moment, but I think of the time spent outside of Feldkamp's - Pam Feldkamp laughing at the fetal development signs, Bud Feldkamp trying not to make eye contact as he got into his car with a small child in tow - and I think of the haunting words, "Think of your children."  I wonder if those words were haunting Feldkamp as well as he stood in the snow among the remains of loved ones, just feet from the 'Tomb of the Unborn'?

Edmonds goes on to say, "I only hope and pray that in the face of this tragedy, Feldkamp recognizes his need for repentance and reformation. "  Let me tell you something, Ms. Edmonds.  The God of the Christian Bible doesn't hear those prayers.  The Christian's Jesus doesn't know who the hell you are, because in all your sad, sorry life you've obviously never even attempted to talk to him.

Gingi Edmonds, Jill Stanek and the people at Christian Newswire are all simply worshiping and praying to their own self-righteousnes, their own sense of superiority and goodness.  Their gods stare at them out of their mirrors, and they are every bit as vindictive, hateful and bloodthirsty as they wrongly think the Christian God is.

As for the headline?  Yeah, I'm playing with semantics.  But I don't believe in their god.  I don't buy into their heresies and false teachings.  They make me sick.

A sane and insane way of reporting on Geithner's banking plan and corresponding Wall Street rally

The New Republic's blogs this week have one of each.

On the sane side, there was Jonathan Chait reminding us, on Monday, to avoid being carried away by the spin of the moment. Yes, the stock market rallied upon Geithner's announcement. Yes, that seems like a tempting opportunity to smack down those Republican critics who attack anything the Obama administration does and will use any argument (sense or nonsense) to do so. We all know some conservative crank whom we would love to tell, regardless of our own reservations about Obama, Geithner and the lot, "See! See! What do you say now, huh, what do you say now?!"

Don't, warned Chait on The Plank:

I'm not really sure what to think about the new Treasury plan. But I do know that the fact that the stock market rallied upon its announcement is not proof that it's a good plan, just as the market drop was not proof that the last iteration of the plan was bad.

After all - he quotes what he wrote when the markets sank after the announcement of the administration's first financial rescue plan - "stock prices represent the market's guess at the profitability of corporations. While that's related to the health of the overall economy, it's not the same thing, and sometimes the two diverge sharply." Obviously. Ergo:

Keep this in mind when you read passages like this, from today's New York Times coverage of the market rally:

“This is the free-money rally,” said Barry Ritholtz, chief executive of Fusion IQ, an investment and research firm. “Traders like the fact that there’s a boatload of cash headed their way.”

Look, if the plan works, then I can live with subsidizing rich folks. But the fact that the market is rallying doesn't mean it will work, it just means that the rich folks think they'll come out ahead.

Right. Now compare the ditzy-headed, excitable take on the bank plan and the accompanying Wall Street rally from Tina Brown, featured in a post by Noam Scheiber on The Stash:

Even as Obama drops to a 59 percent approval rating from 64 percent last month and is starting to give his supporters little flutters of panic, Geithner’s geekiness has started to feel reassuringly authentic. The market—that testosterone-fueled imponderable—certainly loved his bank plan, and the beleaguered Treasury secretary is now being helped by the lowered expectations built up by his botched debut. Maybe thoughtful is OK after all! Maybe being a slight, quizzical infant prodigy is actually right for now—after all, chrome-domed Hank Paulson looked like a CEO is supposed to look, but he got it all wrong! [..] When the market jumps by 500 points, Timid Timmy is suddenly Tiger Tim. [..] Geithner’s comeback vindicates the president’s patience and belief in him.

I'm lost for words, really, at the shallowness here. Talk about missing the point. Talk about demonstrating that you so lack the qualifications to analyse a policy or plan substantively, that all you have to resort to are the pop psychology of gendered prototypes and the breathless showbusiness treatment. It's all about how someone looks, sounds and feels, don't you know? Andrew Cuomo "looked great" when he went after Merrill Lynch’s John Thain! Brown feels reassured by Geithner's "authentic .. geekiness" - well, no need to worry anymore, then; obviously Tim has "vindicated" himself.

Brown, of The Diana Chronicles fame, of course gets to babble on at her website The Daily Beast. (Her Wikipedia page has a revealing quote from a senior NYT editor about her discontinued column: "She had these good ideas but she never bothered to develop them into anything more than soundbites. Her columns used to read like a list of taglines on the cover of a magazine.") Unfortunately, her type of analysis (if not her cheerleading of Geithner) seems a lot more representative of how the mainstream media approach the subject than Chait's.

When Brown marvels about "how quickly in these frantic times reputations soar and crash and are suddenly made all over," she is of course strictly talking about the panting of her colleagues in the media and punditry bubble. Even though (or perhaps because) they aren't quite as informed about each day's latest Beltway snippets, people at large are luckily not quite that fickle on a random day-to-day basis. But it is this impressionability about appearances, and this lack of curiosity or competence to actually analyse the financial policy, which helped the finance business to get away with its mismanagement and greed during the years of the bubbles in the first place.

Unsurprisingly, Brown also chimes in on the hype of the day that Obama is "strangely tone-deaf to the risk of overexposure". This is the freak show reporting stuff we know from campaign seasons (remember the flag pin issue? The bowling? Whether Obama was too professorial, too charismatic, too black or not black enough?) Back on The Plank again, Michelle Cottle efficiently smacks that meme upside the head. May Obama pay as little heed as possible to the sizable freak show corps among reporters.

Inside All of Us is a Wild Thing

Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are--aka The Tornello family's Favorite Book Ever--is coming to the Big Screen, courtesy of the wonderful Spike Jonze.

I'm thrilled to bits; after all, there are at least three copies of the book lying around my house, and I know we had all the monster puppets at one point (though Heaven help me try to find them right now). And each of us has one variation of the t-shirt or another, even Mama.

Wild Things Fever really took hold when Son One turned six, and we threw him a huge Where the Wild Things Are birthday party. On the morning of his big day, Son One walked into the back garden to find a real, full-sized and red-painted wooden sailboat that Robert and our friend Jeff built, complete with a bamboo mast and a yellow canvas sail sewed by Yours Truly. We also set up a washing-line-and-flowered-sheet tent (just like the one Max plays in) over one of the lower oak branches, and designed a cake that looked like a limb from the scary forest and covered it with plastic creepy-crawlies. I had painstakingly copied the book title's font when making the invitations. And, of course, stuffed versions of the Wild Things were stationed around the house.

Everyone had a ball and no-one was sent to his room--not even Robert, who, later that evening, somehow managed to completely burn off the handle of my favorite wok while BUI (Barbecuing Under the Influence).

And in a world where it seems that pink maribou-bedecked books and rhinestone-covered fantasy gear dominate the real estate of children's retail and juvenile publishing, I have to say, thank goodness for Maurice Sendak, as well as Roald Dahl--both are children's authors who wrote brilliantly, sensitively, and unflinchingly about the dark (and funny!) sides of human nature.

Where the Wild Things Are will be in theatres just in time for my own birthday, this October. Hooray!

It's Working!

People said we shouldn't focus on the bonuses at AIG.  They said there's more important things.  Well, I say that sometimes we get good results.

Jake DeSantis is one of the clowns who caused the mess were in.  He was, until very recently, an executive vice president at AIG's financial products unit.  And his poor widdle feelings have been hurt, just hurt so badly by everyone's mean words.  And he's been working for only $1 a year, taking time away from his family and everything!  Except that he wasn't working for $1/year, he was taking that salary as part of a media blitz from AIG to make people think they were taking the problems they caused seriously, all the while knowing that his real compensation would come to him in a "bonus," paid without regard to performance and guaranteed by American taxpayers.  Now that Americans are deciding that DeSantis and his former colleagues deserve prison sentences far more than they do bonuses, he's quitting.

So Mr. DeSantis, let me say how happy I am that you quit.  I hope your former colleagues follow your example, because in rating your performance over the last few years, there are only two choices:  criminal or criminally incompetent.  Either way we're better off without you than with you.

If you act among your family with the same reckless disregard for others you have shown at your job, it's doubtful any of them are all that excited at the prospect of extra time with you.  I hear Wal-Mart is hiring!

Why American Religious Conservatives Want To Move To Costa Rica

Rod Dreher has a post about the number of people he's been talking to that are thinking of moving to Costa Rica, and he's curious about why so many American religious conservatives think about that country when they plan their escape from Barry Hussein StaLeniMao Obama's coming socialist nightmare.

It's simple.  Costa Rica is relatively wealthy.  It's majority Catholic, but Protestants are able to worship and even proselytize freely.  Abortion is very restricted, and abstinence-only education dominates that nation's sex-ed curricula (according to Planned Parenthood).  There are no capital gains taxes. It's warm, the American dollar still goes a long way there, and the country is just chock full of brown people doing all those quaint and sometimes funny ethnic things that brown people do while they're waiting for white Americans to come and bring civilization to them.

¡Hasta la vista, crunchy cons!  Or, you know, don't.

The DMV

Ezra has an interesting post about Americans' attitude toward the DMV, how it's so universally negative, yet no one seems to undertake the steps necessary to changing it to a more pleasant experience.  Ezra wonders why this is, given that anyone who could reform the DMV would be put on electoral easy street.

Perhaps it's because the problem is not so much with the DMV, but the place it occupies in American culture.  Here in Kansas the DMV is far from unpleasant.  There's plenty of chairs and even some comfy benches at my local office.  There's lots of desks, all of them are always occupied, and the messaging system is constantly calling out new numbers to be served; people don't mind waiting all that much as long as they can see progress.  The faceless nameless bureaucrats are unfailingly polite and helpful.

When I've lived in California, in San Diego, Long Beach and Concord, it's been miserable.  Utterly packed, ugly buildings with just a few poor souls desperately manning the desks, trying to get through hellish workdays.  It's awful foir everyone involved.

Arizona and New Mexico would bothbe , in my experience, about the middle between the extremes of Kansas and California.

The thing is, though, that in every place I've lived, the attitude toward the DMV is exactly the same.  It simply doesn't matter if it works well or not, the DMV is a handy cultural shorthand for the Evils Of Government.

This is why, in addition to actually running the government well, we liberals/progressives need to work as hard at changing and forming people's attitudes, regardless of how well a particular agency is run in a particular place, as the conservatives have been for decades now.  It's not enough to be right or to do well; we have to convince people that we're right and doing well.  The latter does not necessarily follow the former.

Incitement In My Sights: Townhall and Worldnet Daily Offer Fearmongering and Free Guns

Gun print by Andy Warhol

incite -- v.t. (from the Latin incitāre): to urge forward;
to stir, encourage, or urge on; to stimulate or prompt to action.

Fresh from my In box: via Townhall comes this risible wad of rubbish breathless and urgent call to action, titled in all-caps (of course) thus:

MILLIONAIRE PATRIOT WANTS YOU ARMED AND TRAINED.

Here's the main body of the e-mail, emphasis mine and inciting links removed (should you be so inclined, you can access the original Townhall link to this offer here):

Dear Reader,

The next four years may prove to be a turning point for all freedom loving Americans.

With the new administration holding party majorities in the House and Senate, we are facing the worst political environment for the passage of unchecked gun control legislation and further erosion of our constitutional right to bear arms than we have previously seen in our lifetimes.

As the nation creeps from recession to depression, the potential for civil unrest in every major city grows more likely. There has never been a more crucial time in our nation's history to make sure you are armed and trained for the protection of yourself and your family.

One man in our country knows this better than most, and I'm proud to tell you, he is doing something about it.

Law and Science Triumph - I Feel a Change in the Air

The Bush Administration took both the politicization of science and contempt for the rule of law to heights not even Richard Nixon could have contemplated.  There is no more infuriating example of this than the treatment of Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill, by the Food and Drug Administration over the course of his two benighted terms of office.

Thus, it was with extreme pleasure that I read Judge Edward R. Korman's decision today invalidating the FDA's treatment of Plan B and ordering it to be made immediately available on an over-the-counter basis to all woman 17 or older.  Moreover, he remanded to the FDA consideration of whether Plan B should be made available to girls under the age of 17 on an over-the-counter basis as well, consistent with the opinions of non-political, public health professionals who had earlier considered the issue for FDA.    

Korman, appointed to the federal bench in 1985 by Ronald Reagan, issued a meticulous 52-page decision (Download FDA Plan B Decision) in which he details the degree to which scientific consideration of Plan B by the FDA was subordinated to White House pressure in order to appease anti-abortion activists.  It is a devastating opinion.  The Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the case, did a magnificent job from what I can discern.  I have had the pleasure of reading some of the Center's briefs in other cases and they do outstanding work -- their brief in the Stenberg v. Carhart, the so-called partial birth abortion case was one of the best pieces of legal advocacy I've ever seen.  So kudos to them and all those who have fought the good fight over these difficult times.

The Obama administration can now take two steps that will illustrate the substance of the change that occurred on January 20, 2009.  First, it can (and must) decide not to appeal the Judge's ruling and second, it can let the FDA  carry out its duties consistent with sound science and public health policy without political interference.  All indications are that this will lead to wider availability of Plan B on an OTC basis to girls who need it.  

And this should make Will Saletan happy (as fucking if) because it is likely to lead to a marked reduction in abortions.  (Lord Saletan would only support Plan B if it made appear on the forehead of the girl or women taking it the words, "I am a slutty, slut, slut, who should be shunned and slut-shamed by all decent people and should live forever with guilt and ambivalence for having had teh sex.")            

Monday Miscellany

Verily, I say unto thee, YouTube delivereth a cornucopia this day.

"Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion"

The first episode of Silly Money, which I linked to in five parts in the post below, also mixes together some snippets from Franklin Roosevelt's inaugural address of 1933. It may be interesting to quote it at a little more length. Both for the points where analogies with today's crisis are obvious, and the points where history suddenly seems to have tread a distant path. 

(There are also snippets that underline just how far more radical and leftist FDR's plans and rhetorics were in comparison with what today's Democrats would be willing to offer - nationalisation of public utilities, anyone?)

Why is it that we need comedians to expose the high jinks of high finance?

In America, you have John Stewart, asking the questions and making the points that mainstream news stations glossed over for years, in his interview with Jim Cramer. Explaining what really happened to all those who don't read Krugman. In England, I belatedly discovered only today, they have Bird & Fortune.

Two older men who play their parts convincingly, John Bird and John Fortune (or "The Long Johns") do this regular mock-up of a Very Serious Talkshow, nodding and folding hands and politely gesturing like the best of them. In the roles of interviewer and interviewee (always a senior political or business figure named George Parr), they exchange considered opinions in a serious and polite manner like a Sir David Frost or a David Dimbleby (I'm struggling to come up with an American equivalent; the McLaughlin Group, maybe, or judging on this classic video remix, Charlie Rose?) Except, of course, their version is heavily satirical. For a fun example, check the 2006 interview where George Parr is a top US diplomat. It's not as obvious as John Stewart's humour (no funny faces to punctuate the parodies), but it's definitely not subtle  either.

Bird & Fortune already took on the subprime lending crisis last year, with George Parr as investment banker, in a skit that apparently got 2 million views on YouTube (but that totally passed me by). But they returned to the subject of the credit crunch last November, and they are quite magnificent in laying it all out. Educating through humor, as one of the YouTube commenters noted.

Click on the videos for part 1 and part 2, respectively:

If you have a little more time still, then go for the whole show that these Bird & Fortune spiels were part of. It was called Silly Money, presented by comedian Rory Bremner, broadcast in four parts on Channel 4, and quite the versatile, eclectic and quick-witted take-down of the financial crisis.

In Silly Money, Bremner alternates between rapid fire impersonations of Gordon Brown and the lot (he does a good Clinton too) and what is really quite an in-depth treatment of the issues at hand and the history of the crisis. Much or all of it seems to be on YouTube. I watched the first episode, Where did all the money go?, which is on YouTube in five parts, and while part 1 is rather weak, the pace picks up in part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

For visual history buffs, the many bits of archive material used in Silly Money as satirical illustrations are cherries on the cake. One of the more depressingly hilarious (or hilariously depressing) bits in the first episode is an excerpt from what some Googling identifies as a short propaganda film by the National Education Program, produced in 1955. The film can be seen in its entirety on the Prelinger Archives site. It features one Prof. Clifton L. Ganus of Harding College, Searcy, Ark., whose lecture about how "American Capitalism is morally right" is highly entertaining / outrageous.

Things get even weirder, however, when Ganus' words are underscored by actors playing a British socialist and a Russian communist, both with ridiculous accents, whose ideological faiths are rattled to the core when they are shown U.S. supermarkets where even an ordinary railway engineer can shop. Definitely on a par with those fearmongering ads from the fifties about the dangers of marijuana.

When it comes to how the snake oil of unfettered capitalism is sold, then, little changes but the conventions of propaganda - which are simultaneously more sophisticated and less earnest nowadays.

A Cogitamus Welcome to Ilya

Our friend and faithful commenter, low-tech cyclist, reports that he and his wife have returned to the U.S. with newly adopted son Ilya, now a brand new American citizen. 

Congratulations and best of luck from all of us.  To quote Lou Reed, "it's the beginning of a great adventure."

Archbishop vs. Archbishop vs. Cardinal

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has just written an article that strongly condemns Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho, the man who excommunicated the mother and doctors of the 9-year-old girl in Brazil whose stepfather raped her and who was carrying twins in her young womb.  Archbishop Fisichella is described in the article as "the Vatican's top bioethics officer."

Archbishop Fisichella said that since excommunication for those who perform abortions is already established canon law, there was no reason for Sobrinho to act so quickly and so publicly, especially when a young member of his flock - remember, a bishop is to be pastor of everyone in his diocese - was suffering so greatly.  Sorinho had a pastoral duty, and he neglected it in order to grandstand his self-righteousness.

This article, appearing in the Vatican's "semi-official" newspaper, also contradicted - not implicitly, as the WaPo suggests, but clearly and intentionally - Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, who had already defended the decision to excommunicate the mother and doctors who saved this little girl's life. 

As if the foregoing were not enough of a shock to the casual observer of the Roman Catholic Church, this type of public debate over such issues is, according to Sandro Magister, "yet another sign of the disorder that reigns in the Curia.  It shows that Benedict XVI is paying the price for refusing to reform the Curia."  That type of statement bears further watching and researching, as such disarray, if it truly exists, may be a source of hope for the RCC.

In Praise Of An Apology

This isn't hugely important, but you know how Obama made a dumb joke about the Special Olympics and had to apologize for it?  At no point did he say, "I'm sorry you're offended."  At no point did he dismiss what he said because it was a joke.  At no point did Obama lament the loss of humor in American society.  At no point, and this is the kicker, did President Obama attempt to put responsibility on everyone else.

Have you ever been walking along, minding your own business as it were, only to suddenly find yourself in a cloud of honeysuckle scent?  You know how amazing that is?

That's what it's like, for me at least, to have a public official make a real apology.

Funny guys (& gal) at Fox News

See, it's funny because four Canadian soldiers died today.

I'm sure the families of the dead appreciate the sentiment.

Choose your perspective: four charts on this recession in historical comparison

A little over a month ago, as the battle over the stimulus bill was on, the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a stunningly alarming graph. For each of the last three recessions, it compared the number of jobs lost with each month that passed from the peak job month at the start of the decline. This one, it turned out, is costing far more jobs, far more quickly, than the ones that started in 1990 and 2001:

The graph, however, ran into some criticism because it used absolute numbers of jobs lost, rather than comparing the numbers as a percentage of the employment market. After all, between 1990 and 2008 the US population grew from 249 million to 304 million.

Bloggers jumped into the breach and compiled alternative graphs. Justin Fox charted out the percent decline in payroll employment from the peak month on for each of the last six recessions:

While the chart certainly looks more nuanced, it should still instill fear: the current crisis is heading to be worse than the one that started in 1981, and with that is set to be the worst in at least 35 years.

How far back do you need to go for an equivalent? Calculated Risk earlier this month provided a chart with even more datalines (click for larger size):