Additions to the blogroll

Several new additions to the links on the left that I recommend:

Deltoid is an Australian blog that attacks bad science, mostly regarding authors who make up studies to prove gun control is bad or that climate change doesn't exist. Most doggedly persistent analysis I've seen, and he beats the heck out of any of his subjects when they fight back. This site exposed a prominent gun control opponent, John Lott, as a liar.

Brad DeLong is a (liberal) UC Berkeley economist writing about current economic issues. I find him especially interesting to read because I don't think he's taken a position yet on Social Security privatization, but has many bad things to say about the Bush administration's approach so far.

Fafblog is a group blog authored by Fafnir, Giblets, and The Medium Lobster. Someone with the strange name of Chris is occasionally mentioned. Besides recounting their various adventures, they enthusiastically "advocate" conservative positions by taking those positions to their logical extremes.

All worth taking a look.

I hate the World Bank

Their stupid website crashed my computer twice tonight. The second time was after 90 minutes of writing my definitive post on Social Security privatization (I didn't realize it was the World Bank's fault the first time). The post is gone, all gone.

To summarize it, I have mixed feelings about Social Security privatization. And I'm feeling very sorry for myself (cue violins).

Gorillas' human-like reaction to death

This is from a CNN news item:

"After Babs the gorilla died at age 30, keepers at Brookfield Zoo decided to allow surviving gorillas to mourn the most influential female in their social family....Babs' 9-year-old daughter, Bana, was the first to approach the body, followed by Babs' mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs' hand and stroked her mother's stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs' arm."

There's apparently no question they understood she was dead, and were acknowledging her in some way, for whatever reason.

While I have very little in common with animal-rights people in general, my perspective changes dramatically when we're talking about intelligent animals. Considering gorillas to be the moral equivalent of cows or fish is a huge mistake. Maybe considering cows to be the moral equivalent of fish is also a mistake - I'm not sure. But wherever the line is drawn, the great apes and possibly a number of other animals should be on the side where we treat them more like people and less like chattel.

Zen and the art of Prius driving

So I finally got my hybrid Toyota Prius, 6 months after ordering it. (I put on the "Al Qaeda Hates This Car" bumper sticker soon afterwards.) The car has a video display that shows when it's using the electric motor running off the battery, when it's using the gas engine, or both, and shows the gas mileage you're getting at that particular instant. So if you drive it just right, accelerating and decelarating sloooowly, you can just use battery power and hit the 99.9 miles per gallon.

The result is a much more meditative, slowing of acceleration and decelaration - as long as there's noone following you that's going nuts. I kind of like it, and wish I could've tried it sooner.

Calibrating torture and the law

Talkingpointsmemo has a discussion of whether torture is ever justifiable and should be legalized here and here (my oh-so-slightly-less-famous blog hit the topic too here (scroll to June 8). Talkingpoints' discussion recognizes the justifiability and legalization are two different things. The point I would add is that society should calibrate its decision on what should be legal based on what will happen as a result. Liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz says torture will happen regardless, so it might as well be legal and regulated. As we've seen with the Bush administration, though, even semi-legalized torture has been completely abused.

I can imagine the extremely rare circumstance where torture would be justified, and I agree with Dershowitz that torture will happen. Where I disagree with him is in concluding that it should therefore be legal, when legalizing will bring vast amounts of "bad" torture, both legal and illegal. I think making it legal messes up the calibration. If something should happen, but only very rarely, the best way to achieve that result is (in this case) to make it illegal.

By this date in 2006,

if the current American casualty rate over the last 5 months in Iraq stays the same, more American soldiers will have died in Iraq than all the civilians that died in the Twin Towers.

Details on casualty rates are at this site.

I first wrote about this on September 7th, when the cross-over date was March 2007. Average American casualty rates have become worse since then. Maybe they will get better in the next 2 years, but we've heard that song before (getting better at the end of major operations, when Saddam and his sons are captured/killed, when sovereignty is turned over to Iraqis).

P.S. Can't leave out the token mention of massive Iraqi civilian casualties, far above what the US suffered, although it has no political importance here in the US.

Al Qaeda overplayed as a threat?

Kevin Drum points out a series of articles suggesting Al Qaeda is not the world-wide threat that Bush purports it to be. I'm not sure what to make of that, but like Kevin I thought I'd pass it along.

We still don't know the ramifications of the training we're giving today in Iraq for future terrorists, as well as the hatred for the US that Bush has created. If Al Qaeda is not the problem, other groups may well become the problem.

Kevin's also got a good, completely unrelated post on a screen-saver that launches denial-of-service attacks on spammers. Sounds tempting.

Night-hiking

I went backpacking over the weekend in Henry Coe State Park, which is a great local place to go to when it's not too hot. Since it gets dark at 6 p.m., I had time to kill after dinner, and went on a night hike.

First thing I saw was when I was using my headlamp at the beginning of the hike - something glittery and shiny on the ground. I reached down to touch it, and it scuttled away. It was spider eyes. The glint distracted me from the body.

I turned off the headlamp and walked in the moonlight. Nearly stepped on a very large toad, which is surprisingly unusual out here. It seems like back east I would see toads everywhere, but not so often in California.

Then I saw salamanders, lots and lots of salamanders. I had to watch my step to avoid crushing them. It hadn't rained in over a week and the rainy season is just starting anyway, so I was surprised by the numbers. The next morning it rained buckets and I saw only one. My lesson is that salamanders may like wet, but they like dark even more.

More reason to hike at night and see what's out there.

Update (5 p.m.): During the night hike, I took a break and sat in this oak tree with these weird growths that made an excellent seat. I just now got back from a meeting on oak woodland conservation as part of my job, and the person doing a powerpoint presentation had a picture centered on that exact tree! I of course had to interrupt the presentation to announce the very important point that I'd been sitting in that tree several days earlier. The coincidences in life...

Rabies cure and the power of prayer

New York Times reports the first-ever cure of full blown rabies. A teenage girl who had the disease was put in an induced coma and given a cocktail of anti-viral drugs. Medical progress continues. At the end of the article are these two paragraphs about the girl's father:

Her father, John Giese, said he was grateful to the doctors and their novel treatment, but added that prayer had made the crucial difference.

"The day after we found out, I called on everyone we knew for prayer," he told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week. "We believe a lot of that snowballed and it really made a difference."

I expect the thousands of people who die every year from rabies also have many people praying for them.

I'm agnostic but can understand how people have a religious sense of the universe, or believe that the God had to start it all. What I have trouble with is the idea that God actively intervenes in miraculously picking winners and losers . What kind of God would save this girl's life and ignore even more tragic circumstances elsewhere? Even if you ignore the obvious possibility that the world is what it is, without active miracles, the theological implications of a God who picks and chooses is terribly disturbing, especially when those of us who are more fortunate adopt that viewpoint.

I guess this is an unusual Thanksgiving Day post. But I am thankful for everything that's good in the world, and for the efforts by everyone who try to make the world better. If there's something to spiritual beliefs, I'm agnostic about it, but would be thankful if that turns out to be correct. I'll bend my agnosticism to believe that a beneficial spiritual presence doesn't pick winners or losers.

An Alaskan reaction to the election

A friend from Alaska responded to my posts about working on the campaign with an update of what's happening up there:

---------
Thanks for your work in Florida. I'd like to hear what the experience was like. Can't wait to see how Bush can find really cool ways to spend his capital he earned. New weapons to bring really bad people to their knees so that the U.S. can continue to win the love, admiration and respect of the rest of the world would be one guess. Scientists are reporting on the effects of global warming on the arctic and what causes the warming.

BUT WAIT! [Alaskan Republican Congressman] Don Young has beenholding back on the results of his thorough investigations on the matter. His results: "I don't believe it (global warming)is our fault. That's my opinion. It's as sound as any scientist's." Also, "My biggest concern is that people are going to use this so-called study to try to influence the way and standard of living that occurs within the United States." Makes me wonder why we even pay scientists
to come up with inconvenient conclusions in the first place. Don can settle the issue so quickly.

There's scary stuff in the conclusions of the study. The polar ice cap is melting so fast that we may be able to witness the elimination of one of the world's great megafauna in our lifetime. Polar bears would have no way to survive without the ice cap. Better yet: [Alaskan Republican Senator] Ted Stevens's plan to deal with the effects of warming are ingenious. Develop oil in the Arctic Refuge! Use the federal revenues to do more research (funds to be spent in AK of course). We can take no risks with our family and must drive the biggest, heaviest tanks on our roads. Yet it is unthinkable that we might inconvenience ourselves to lessen the risks of destruction of the earth's ecosystem. We may make the earth uninhabitable, but we're not really sure. Great entertainment if horrendous stupidity is your thing.

----------
Here's a short FAQ on the study my friend refers to.

Here's the website to get the study itself.

Not exactly important news, but -

I was wrong when I stayed on the fence over Bush's invasion of Iraq - I should have opposed it. This is an after-the-fact judgment based not on how badly things have turned out, but on how badly the Bush administration officials have bungled things. Their willingness to let American soldiers and Iraqi civilians die just to spite the UN is unforgivable. While I think Iraq, maybe, could still turn out to be better off someday with Saddam removed, the United States is definitely worse off, while Middle East stability and attempts to control terrorism are also worse off.

After-the-fact judgment can change again over time, I suppose. Maybe things will turn up roses starting tomorrow, and in two years I'll have to say I was wrong in hindsight in failing to support Bush's invasion. But right now, that's not looking very likely.

And now, back to the show in Iraq. According to the ticker on Maxspeak, total American deaths are currently 1,228 and counting (it's posted on the upper right side of the web page). Don't even ask about Iraqi civilian deaths.

Bush flip-flops on the "social promotion" issue - look at the new, incompetent, National Security Advisor

Lost in the news of Condoleeza Rice replacing Colin Powell is Condi's replacement, Stephen Hadley. This man bears a significant level of responsibility for the two main foreign-policy failures of the Bush Administration: blocking Richard Clarke's efforts to elevate terrorism as a priority in the 9-month period prior to 9/11, and leading a drumbeat to war in Iraq with the disinformation about WMDs.



Clarke makes clear in his book Against All Enemies that Hadley (as well as Rice) were major impediments in his unsuccessful effort to get the Bush Administration to take terrorism as seriously as the Clinton Adminstration had. One example of Hadley's effects (not from Clarke's book):

"In its report, the [9/11 Commission] confirmed that Mr Clarke specifically advised giving secret aid to the main rebel group in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, to help it unseat the Taliban. The commission said the advice was rejected by Ms Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, who opted for a broader review of the threat."

On Iraq, Hadley emphasized WMDs and especially the "nuclear weapons program" as reasons requiring an invasion. Here he is on March 10, 2003 referring to the alleged attempts to buy uranium and centrifuges that the Bushies knew were either false or highly dubious:

"All of these facts point to a sustained, wide-ranging effort to develop nuclear weapons, which threatens the international community. This regime has cheated inspectors before; it has cheated sanctions for years. It has proven that its nuclear ambitions cannot be contained."

He was forced to apologize later:

"Stephen Hadley, President Bush's deputy national security adviser, on Tuesday became the second administration official to apologize for allowing a tainted intelligence report on Iraq's nuclear ambitions into Bush's State of the Union address. Hadley, in a rare on-the-record session with reporters, said that he had received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from agency Director George Tenet last October raising objections to an allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Africa to use in building nuclear weapons....Hadley suggested that details from the memos and phone call had slipped from his attention as the State of the Union was being put together."

From that March 10 speech, it apparently slipped his mind on a regular basis. I'm looking for the additional apology, Stephen.

He didn't suddenly become intelligent after the invasion. He gave yet another speech, claiming that minor and stale contacts between Iraq and Al-Qaeda prove a relationship existed, when the contacts were much more extensive between Al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia.

So this man will be giving our genius president his own genius advice.

My real question: how incompetent do you have to be to avoid receiving a promotion in the Bush Administration? Is loyalty really the only thing that counts? Why is social promotion bad for third-graders but good for the people who hold our lives in their hands?

Republican morality in Congress

About 10 years ago, Republicans passed with much fanfare a rule within their party that any member under indictment for a felony had to step down from party leadership. This was in reaction to the problems Democratic leader Dan Rostenkowski created for himself.

The Republicans just got rid of this rule this week, worried that Tom Delay is about step into the same trap. Talkingpointsmemo.com is all over this. I recommend taking a first look here, and then just seeing what the website is saying now.

The Democrats have had a similar rule for many years, and have no plans to remove it from their rule book.

(Thanks Steve for the pointer!)

“Leave our homos alone”

That quote shows the reaction in a small, conservative town in Oklahoma when an overtly gay-hating group came to town to harass a high school student who had come out of the closet. A bright spot deep in the heart of a Red state, and a great quote.

From a Washington Post article (hat tip to Tapped).

So what's on the Foxnews website?

Judicial activism!

Here's the lead-in:

John Morganelli, District Attorney for Northampton County, Pa., probably had no idea what he was in for last week when his office appeared before Judge Leonard Zito for the conviction and sentencing of 27 individuals accused of using false and stolen social security numbers.

Morganelli’s investigators had worked for months to prosecute the group, 14 of which had not simply used false social security numbers, but had stolen and used the social security numbers of law-abiding people.

But although every one of the defendants pleaded guilty, Judge Zito refused to impose any period of incarceration, nor did he fine the defendants. Zito based his decision on the fact that the defendants were all illegal aliens, remarking that they should never have been arrested in the first place because the men committed the crimes “strictly for the purpose of working.”

Sounds pretty bad, that identity theft stuff has defrauded people of thousands of dollars and ruined their credit ratings. The only problem is that's not what these illegal immigrants did - they "stole" those SS numbers because they had to provide numbers in order to work, and instead of taking money, they paid Social Security taxes to other people's accounts. It's as if someone hacked your bank's computer and started depositing money into your checking account, without any method for making withdrawals. That's the best I can tell what happened, from carefully reading this and other accounts. It's the impression from Fox - illegals conduct damaging identity theft, judge lets them off scott-free - that's important and deceptive.

Many people won't be surprised at Fox's approach, but this is a special post for my conservative brother-in-law to keep in mind as he reads or listens to Fox.

P.S. Two additional points - first, it's not clear to me that these uneducated laborers knew they had real SS numbers, as opposed to simply being told they had to put down something, and that the numbers given to them were ones that wouldn't get them in trouble. Second, I think this could have caused income tax problems for the real SS number holders, if the laborers didn't pay full income taxes. Nothing I saw that reported on this case mentioned that as having happened. This still wouldn't be anything like the damage that people think of when they consider identity theft.

Update, 11/18/04: Reaction from the brother-in-law is in:

What a can o' worms. Where to begin…?

Let's be fair. This is not a news story. It is an opinion piece, and as the sage once told us, like a common orifice, we've all got one. Just so happens, this is one with which we disagree.

I use “we” in the correct sense here; I agree that Matt Hayes’ opinion is wrong. However, he comes by his error honestly. He is not a journalist, consequently he misidentifies the story (no insult to present company; I am also not a journalist, but I played one on student papers both in high school and college attempt #1).

The story is that Morganelli's office is in desperate need of a paradigm shift. Why not bring in the criminal employers who hired illegals? The only reason these workers needed fraudulent SSN’s would be because the employers were filling out I-9’s and W-2’s fraudulently. Did the employers say, “Just make something up, we have to put something here,” or even fill out the form for the workers? Or did the fellows who brought them across the border for a price coach them, or give them stolen SSN’s? It sounds like the investigators from the DA’s office spent months on a fairly misdirected and uninspired investigation. So Zito isn’t the only one choosing not to “administer the law”.

That doesn’t mean that I agree with Zito’s decision. I was once told that “ignorance is no defense before the law.” And since when is committing a crime OK just so long as it’s “strictly for the purpose of working”? If the workers gave false or stolen SSN’s, they should be punished. But did they? The article assumes a great deal. But if the investigation showed they gave the employers false or stolen SSN’s, they should face the law. I know the penalty I would have meted out. An escorted, coach-class trip back to their point of origin. It may be that a portion of our economy is based on illegal workers. If it is, it is out-of-whack. The sooner we eliminate the illegal issue the better. That only happens over a long period of improving conditions in foreign nations, where illegal workers would frankly prefer to stay. They love their home countries; they just can’t make a go of things there due to the economic/social/political climate. And in the mean time, we need to actually enforce the law around border control issues. And I much prefer going after the employers and traffickers of willing slaves (which is what illegal workers are, let’s face facts). Those are the groups with the most power in the situation, the situation’s taproot.

Fair reaction, I think. And he agrees Fox News published an opinion piece that is wrong (yeah - progress!). I agree that illegal immigration is a problem, but our economy is dependent on that labor - the relationship is not simply of the US providing beneficial opportunities to illegals. Bushies and the Republican Congress have done nothing to address this problem (just like previous administrations).

Belated post about veterans

Veteran's Day was several days ago, and I rarely get things in on time anyway, but I received a thoughtful email about veterans and decided I should post it.

I actually don't mind missing the holiday decreed from on high by our government - the post is about veterans, not about what the government tells us to think and celebrate:

WHAT IS A VETERAN?



(Attributed to a Marine Corps chaplain, Father Denis Edward O'Brian)





Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a

jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence

inside them, a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the

leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in

the refinery of adversity.



Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America

safe

wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking. What is

a

vet?



A vet is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia

sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers

didn't run out of fuel.



A vet is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose

overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic

scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th Parallel.



A vet is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep

sobbing

every night for two solid years in Da Nang.



A vet is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or

didn't come back at all.



A vet is the drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved

countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account punks and gang members

into marines, airmen, sailors, soldiers and coast guardsmen, and

teaching them to watch each other's backs.



A vet is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and

medals with a prosthetic hand.



A vet is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals

pass him by.



A vet is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose

presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the

memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with

them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.



A vet is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now

and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who

wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the

nightmares come.



A vet is an ordinary and yet extraordinary human being, a person who

offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his

country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to

sacrifice theirs.



A vet is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and

he

is nothing more that the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the

finest, greatest nation ever known.



So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just

lean over and say, "Thank You." That's all most people need, and in

most

cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or

were awarded.



Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU".

Planning for what's next

Some friends are holding a meeting tonight to discuss how to recover from the disaster of Bush's election. One of the main things I think about is how the right wing portrays itself as the place where all the new ideas are coming from in at least two fields I know reasonably well - law and economic policy. I think it's partly true and partly a matter of better salesmanship, but I think the progressive groups are going to have to pay much more attention to developing and promoting their brands of new ideas.

Some links about this:

An article saying "Democrats look to think tanks for answer to message problem" from The Hill newspaper in Washington DC. It points out that one of the two main Democratic think tanks, the Center for National Policy, is in severe financial trouble. The other think tank, Brookings Institution, is far too centrist (I think) to become an activist arena that pushes its ideas.

I think one thing that people on the left will have to do is pony up money not just for advocacy but also for promoting new ideas. CNP might be a place for that, although I actually don't know much about them.

Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense both do more than advocacy, which I'd define as opposing some polluting action or promoting an existing concept like designating new wilderness lands, and come up with genuinely new ideas. If I were them, I'd allow people to make dedicated donations for the "think tank" components of their work. They don't, though. Maybe we should donate to them anyway.

For a broader discussion of needing progressive think tanks, here's a thought piece from Soros' Open Society Institute (pdf file).

Slightly different tack, but still relevant: showing support for gay marriage goes beyond judges is important, and there is a real chance that gay marriage will pass the California Legislature. While this may galvanize the cavemen, it takes their stupid "activist judges" argument away from them. It's a mixed bag, but I think if the choice is unclear, you might as well do the right thing. The real battle will be over the referendum that will inevitably follow passage of a gay marriage bill in California. We'll have to be ready to work and pay for the success of gay marriage through the referendum process, and it won't be easy.

Regardless of the gay marriage issue, a lot of progressive ideas will have to be fought on the state level for the next 4 years.

Reasons for moving from Rochester New York

No offense to my hometown, but on this mid-November Saturday morning, I was able to go out for a run in the bright sunlight. At 7:30 a.m., it's warm enough to run in shorts with no shirt. I ran up a green hillside park with great views of San Francisco and the Bay. Ran home and then went back outside to the back deck, put a yoga mat down and did some pushups and ab crunches under the banana tree, with a faint smell of roses from the bushes that still have a few blooms. Back inside for a shower, and then back outside again for a soak in the hot tub. All by 9 a.m. - not something I'd expect to do in Rochester.

Update: there's some cosmic justice for my boasting post above - this afternoon I went to watch a film at the San Francisco Film Festival, came out afterwards and found my bicycle had been stolen. I hate cosmic justice, especially when it smites me personally.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina...

My friend Bill Grantham writes about his experience in the presidential election:
-----

Hey Brian,



[this started out as a response to your message and turned into

self-therapy.  Sorry if I sound preachy or pundit-like -- I'm more

trying to work out my own feelings than convince you of anything]



Thanks for trying -- seriously, I mean that.  For my part, I spent

three Saturdays canvassing door to door, and worked the polls on election

day.  Mostly, I contented myself with giving fairly large sums of money, by

my standards, to Kerry, the DNC, ACT, and MoveOn.  I did my volunteering

with a group that splintered off from ACT in order to be more partisan.

So we were a grass roots bunch of Democrats with no name or official

status.  But we had very good organization at the tactical level.  We

were actually optimistic that we could get enough turnout of unlikely

voters in Wake County (Raleigh) to overwhelm the rural vote and tip NC

to Kerry, despite the polls and the fact that Kerry/Edwards had written

off the state.  Turns out we were wrong, obviously, but the process

illuminated how ineffectual and petty the Democratic party is in NC.

It seems they were more interested in turf and protocol than being

effective.  However, this is only based on one side of the story -- our

leader's -- as I didn't work directly with the party.  But there seemed

to be some truth to it.



I have had a strange reaction to the results, so far.  Perhaps it is

some sort of physiological defense mechanism, a deep form of shock or

denial, but I have a strange sense of peace, rather than grief or

anger. I'm sure it will pass as soon as Bush resumes his willfully ignorant

policies and pushes for something egregious like drilling in ANWR, but

at the moment I feel no hatred.  God knows there's plenty to be bitter

about, from Rove to the Swift Boat veterens to Bush's outright

slanderous misrepresentation of Kerry's positions on security, but I

just can't get myself worked up. Maybe I have indignation fatique.

Maybe I suffer from a variation of the Stockholm syndrome.



But I think another reason for this feeling is that some internal

tensions are resolved.  I can now root wholeheartedly for a complete

and total success in Iraq.  Previoulsy I was torn.  I had opposed the war

from the start, never believing that WMD  was the real reason (that

much was patently obvious) even when I believed they existed.  I was

appalled by the arrogance, stupidity, wishfull thinking, and plain

boneheadedness with which it was conducted, and hated to think Bush could get away

with it.  So I found myself wanting to things to go badly, but not so badly

Kerry couldn't fix them.  Until I remembered that going badly means

people dying.  So how many people do I want to die, in order prevent

Bush from being re-elected and pursuing policies that will result in

even greater tragedies -- more wars, a viscious cycle of terrorist acts

and responses?  A moral quagmire I don't have to deal with anymore.

For better or worse, the people have endorsed Bush's approach.



So now I can hope for a spectacular success in Iraq (just as I would

have if Kerry had won, as I fervently hoped).  I hope Iraq becomes a

stable democracy as soon as possible, Osama is captured,  Al quada is

crushed, peace is acheived between Israel and Palestine, and the whole

Arab world changes its mind and embraces Bush as a saviour.   Not

likely, but nothing would make me happier than for all these things to

be solved and off the table in 2008, so we can get on to what to me are

the real issues -- how can 5 or 6 billion (and counting) humans survive

and prosper without destroying all our fellow creatures on this planet?



What has enraged me most about Bush is not just the folly of his

foreign policy.  It is that his administration systematically and relentlessly

undermines the only tools that offer hope in dealing with this grand

question: rational thought based on empirical evidence, and peaceful

resolution of issues through an open democratic process.  I don't

expect him to change on this, and we must redouble our efforts to prevent him

from taking us back from the age of reason to the age of faith.  In

foreign policy, Democrats and moderate (or non-neocon, at any rate)

republicans must try to make Bush's policy more responsive to reality.

But I am no longer (as far as I can see) faced with conflicting

desires. I don't worry about the Republicans getting credit for winning the" war

on terrorism"  -- if they actually did, it would be worth it.  Besides,

winning wars doesn't necessarily secure power.   The Dems lost in a

landslide after Wilson won WWI,  Churchill was voted out after WWII,

Truman barely hung on for another term, Bush I lost after what appeared

to be a decisive victory in the Gulf War.  If anything, there seems to

be a trend to turn to the other party for a fresh start after a war.



-- [Well that's as far as I got yesterday, and I didn't get time to

finish it today.  Need to go for a run before the light fades, and to

send this before the feeling goes away.  Was going to talk about some

more concrete reasons for hope and strategy Dems should take, but that

will have to wait.  The one thing I will say is that it does no good to

try to move to the right -- the right will just keep moving the target

rightwards.  they will always call Dems extreme left wing liberals out

of touch with the mainstream, so if we let the center become labeled

leftist, the far right will become center.]

-----

My one comment right now to Bill's post is that the Republicans are not looking for an end to the War on Terror, maybe hoping it will be a very long time before people start thinking of a change in political parties for the postwar era. We'll have to persuade the people otherwise.

Anyone else wishing to respond can post in the comments section here, or email Bill at wgrantham @earthlink.net (eliminate the space before the @ symbol).

From a correspondent, known as the Bush Redux Survivor:

Reference to "Bob G." is in the comments in the previous post. Two people other than me reacting to each other in the blog - a breakthrough!

Hey Brian,
Never visited a blog before. I'm as nervous and excited as a little girl. First off, I'd like to say, I really enjoy reading your blog although i am both a first-time reader and a first-time writer. I want to echo Bob G's request for "juicy details" of your florida trip. I think I speak for your father as well. :)
Well, this is by far the most catastrophic domestic political and societal event in my lifetime. After a brief period of denial I skipped right by anger and went straight to depression, where I've been lingering ever since. I occasionally take a little mental vacation over to the world of apathy, but my long term goal is to be able to maintain a permanent state of denial.
I will say this: As much as I'm disgusted with the 59 million-plus morons (yes, morons! you all know who you are!)who voted for their poster-boy, I am also disgusted with the democratic party which cannot seem to produce a charismatic leader who can inspire their membership. Clinton is the one exception in a 24 year span. Kerry took forever to make a point. Doesn't anyone on the left know how presidential politics works? Short, Simple, Black, White. Get elected, don't teach civics. The people don't want to know.
Okay, one other point and then I've got to go back to work: Let us end now the myth that the American people won't be fooled, that the American people are smart, that the American people understand what's important. On the contrary, they are constantly fooled because they're not at all smart and have no idea what issues most affect their lives. By and large, in contrast to almost every other culture in the world, Americans are ignorant, arrogant and obnoxious. This is why George Bush is president. And he has fooled them into thinking that he actually has moral values and that he is reducing the threat of terrorism against Americans when he, as you and I know, is willing to send untold thousands of people to their deaths, and to disfigure and cripple many thousands more, simply to pursue his pre-meditated ideological agenda. He is willing to lie about anything and everything. And he has almost single-handedly converted an overwhelming amount of global goodwill into unprecedented fear and loathing. Well, you know his resume. Anyway, that felt kinda good.
Thanks for trying, Brian. You fought the good fight. For what it's worth, I heard Kerry took Orange County. Way to go!

Until next time...

My 2 cents of reaction here is that I'd prefer to refer to Bush's elections as a stupid mistake, rather than the people electing him as stupid. Makes the world feel somewhat less messed up to me, for some reason.

My summary of the experience

It felt like being in a military campaign. In the aftermath, it feels like we had fought on the losing side of a war. I should quickly disclaim that anyone who has been in a real war might feel differently about the analogy (note to George "I have been to war" Bush: this doesn't include you).

There was an incredible amount of chaos and incredible hard work, and a feeling that if we only knew a little more about what we were doing, we could have been so much more effective. I heard some internal criticism of Kerry campaign in Florida, a feeling that it was being run in both too much of a top-down manner, but also with insufficient direction from the top. The sense was that there should have been less procedural control and more leadership. I don't really have the direct experience to say how serious or justified these criticisms are, and I don't think it's time to tear into anybody at the campaign. I certainly made my own share of mistakes.

So first, before I get too deep, I have a DVD recommendation: the four-disc Firefly TV series, from the creator of the Buffy and Angel television shows. As good as those two shows are, Firefly is even better. It follows the lives of some soldiers from a defeated army, living in a world where the wrong side won the war. Has some echoes to the current experience. I plan to watch it again. The series only lasted a year, but a movie is in the works.

Okay. Some thoughts on why people voted for Bush, and what we can do about it.

1. Argument in Bush voters' minds: 9/11 changed everything. Only a strong projection of military power and concomitant spread of the ideology of freedom will ultimately allow us to prevail over terrorism. While this is a simple concept, Kerry/the Democrats don't understand it and therefore will not protect America.

I think the response is 9/11 changed many things, but it did not change everything. Keeping such things as civil liberties and a decent respect for world opinion are still important. Democrats, and anyone with a brain, understand how important 9/11 was, but Democrats can also do a better job than the mismanaged job by Republicans. In 2006, it's time to tell Republicans to grow up - fighting terrorism is not a simple thing, as Iraq has proved.

2. Argument: You can't change leaders in the middle of a war.

Response: Why the hell not? The military does it - they sack military leaders all the time in the middle of actual wars when they're not performing. As I recall, they did it last year when one general wasn't being aggressive enough during major military operations. If you want more history, the North would have lost the Civil War if they had stuck with their terrible generals, instead of eventually getting Grant and Sherman in charge. Presidents should be sacked even more readily when the stakes are high and they are screwing up. Furthermore, the "war on terrorism", as Bush describes it, is not going to end in Iraq, so change is inevitable, and we might as well start soon with competent leadership. I think our response to this argument is to emphasize the military analogy - you sack bad leaders, fast.

Update: I suppose this argument and response doesn't matter much now that's the election's over. Still, the Reps might try to argue something like it in 2008, especially if they stumble into another war somewhere.

Variant argument: Bush got us into this mess in Iraq, and I'm re-electing him to make him go fix it.

I really have heard this variant. Our only response is to emphasize better education and child nutrition, to try and reduce the level of stupidity in our country.

3. Argument: We have to support moral values, to keep gay marriage from tearing apart the foundations of our country.

Not sure what to do about this, except to tough it out. People as individuals and as age classes are becoming less and less homophobic. There will be some negative repercussions from the worst homophobic amendments that passed, and people will notice that Massachusetts hasn't gone to hell. This will be a decreasing advantage for Republicans over the next 2 to 8 years, and afterwards it will be an albatross around their necks. They won't be able to pivot positions when homophobia is no longer a selling point, either, the evangelical right won't let them for several decades. It's in the Republican platform. Karl Rove may have elected his individual candidates, but he's severely harmed the Republicans in the long run.

So that's my argument, for what it's worth. The other part is to work on individual levels with Bush voters. I plan to convince my conservative brother-in-law that Reagan was bad. It's my starting point.

A consolation

Silver lining in an awful week: I just learned of a 1965 low-budget horror flick filmed in Esperanto, starring William Shatner. I'm not making this up. Best thing ever - I have to see it.

Completing the circle

So I've returned back home. I somehow weigh what I did before I left, despite an exclusive diet of junk food and Coke. I climbed at the gym tonight, and it seemed to go like it did before I left for Orlando. And we have the same president. Except that we will still have him until January 20, 2009. That seems so depressingly far off. I can't stand it, I'm not going to think about it right now.

The work was great, and the people were great, and it was some of the most intense work I've done. I'd highly recommend to anyone to take the chance of joining an intense campaign in a battleground state. You can get more responsibility more quickly there than in anything else you can do. Of course, getting paid for it is unrealistic.

For what it's worth, we apparently won Orlando, and by a larger margin than last time. I'll take that with me. Update: turns out our victory margin was smaller than in 2000 - I'm not going to take credit where it's not due.

Time to surf the science websites for a while. There may be a way to get embryonic stem cells for research without destroying embryos. Let's see if Shrub can wrap his mind around this one. It might do some good.

Contingency plan

171 pounds. Damn. If Bush wins, I plan to get liposuctioned and pie him with all the fat I gained fighting his stupid candidacy.

Update: actually 171 is way too low, I was thinking 181, but that's what it said. I don't know what happened. Bush is sabotaging the scales in my sister's house.

Seeing twigs instead of forest

Got home at midnight tonight, and 10:30 yesterday. I don't know when I expected to have free time to do some work. I have to go to the climbing gym at least once, or my evil finger muscles will use the absence to collapse into nothingness.

As to how the campaign's going, darned if I know. I knew much more about the overall campaign when I wasn't volunteering. I don't even listen at the staff meetings for local news, when I can work in that time. I'm trying instead to figure out why we put a volunteer attorney in two polling stations at the same time. I argued that she volunteered, so it's her fault if she can't pull it off, but deputy counsel overruled. That's the twig level I'm on, I have no idea about the forest view.

Max Cleland came through the office yesterday. I shook his one hand and said, "you're doing a great job, Senator", and he said "no, you are." He hugged and kissed about every woman in the office - a Southern charmer. Kirsten Dunst came through this a.m., but I was too late - not sure if she hugged and kissed every man there.

So we may have an idea for what the Republican game plan will be, and it could be nasty. I hope to write more about this later before next Tuesday, but I probably won't have time to write too much more. We'll see.

Avoiding the scale in my sister's bathroom...

My fall and rise

Yesterday I showed up at Kerry HQ prepared for my exalted position of lackey to deputy counsel. Counsel was gone, and had the documents with her that I was going to use. So I got demoted, from lackey back to flunky. After calling absentee voters for 4 hours, counsel showed up and I returned to power, putting lawyers in their places.

Getting serious for a moment, I'd guess about half of the homes I called were African-American families. It's something of a mark of the racial separation of the country that my voice was in far more black households yesterday than I've ever visited personally. It probably shows I haven't done very much to overcome that racial divide on a personal level.

Got in a run yesterday, and the food doesn't seem out of control. Maybe I'll come out of this without looking like the girl who ate the piece of gum in Willy Wonka.

First day on the job

The Kerry folks are very nice and very happy to have an extra lawyer volunteering, especially one that's here fulltime until Nov. 2. I am catupulting up the ranks to the position of lackey to deputy counsel for Central Florida, with the likely job of organizing the part-time volunteer attorneys to make sure they're going to the right places where they're needed.

At first glance that seems kind of like semi-important work, the only problem being one that can be described by my friends, that "organizational skills" are not my strongest points. I'm thinking I can do this though. So there.

Sister's weight scale says 176. So far, so good.

This blog is going to go in a little different direction for the next 10 days. I'm sitting in the San Francisco Airport now, about to head off to Orlando to volunteer for the Kerry campaign until election day. Since this might be an interesting time, I'll try and do a more diary-like blog.

This may also help in my more typical shallow pursuit: keeping off weight. I've had a lot more time free to exercise in the last 2 months, and it's been great. I've been eating a lot AND losing weight. That's already changing as I've gotten busy recently. I weighed 173 last week, and 177 last night. I'll use the blog to try and control eating and get some exercise, or by Nov. 2 I'll be too huge to get down to the polls.

So....

I'm supposed to join an anti-dirty tricks legal team tomorrow. They don't know anything about me, and I expect some inefficiency with all the new manpower flooding in. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I'll be checking out this website, electionline.org, to try and get caught up on whatever dirty tricks might be out there.

Modelling his America after Putin's work

Bush's support and admiration for Russia's Vladimir Putin is well-known. One concept making its rounds is the gradual "Putinization of America" as the Bush Administration and its allies show decreased belief in civil rights, and in some cases like Karl Rove, outright contempt for democracy.

If any reporter has a chance to ask Bush a question, it would be interesting to ask him what lessons America should draw from Putin's "war against terror". Bush might show his admiration is more than an arms-length relationship.

Bringing "Question Time" to the US government

Kerry could make an interesting promise that would attract press attention: that he would bring some form of the British parliamentary "Question Time" to the US government if elected. Question Time gives parliamentary members the chance to ask questions of government ministers, including the prime minister. Kerry could do something similar in either or both houses of Congress. It would show the contrast between him and Bush, who is unwilling to be exposed to differing viewpoints. The Republican leadership in Congress also couldn't reject this offer out of hand without looking like Bush sycophants. And it would be a good idea.

Still more short items

From Media Matters: news media more concerned about Mary Cheney fake controversy than Bush flip-flop over Osama Bin Laden. (Thanks Melinda for the tip).

Video shows Bush debating-style deterioration over the last ten years. I watched this, and it's pretty remarkable. One linguist speculated Bush is deliberately acting stupid. I have trouble believing that he would dumb down his style from whatever worked in Texas.

Homo sapiens may have interbred with homo erectus in Asia in the last 50,000 years. Maybe this explains some aspects of the current president. It seems pretty doubtful to me though, considering how little evidence exists for our interbreeding with Neandertals, which are much closer relatives than H. erectus.

Heck, two more items from the Post:

For the first time in years, foreigners are disinvesting net dollars from the US. This could lead to a globally-disastrous run on the dollar, if some country loses its nerve and tries to sell all its dollars first. I hope it doesn't happen, but if it does, let it happen now so Bush can get his fair share of blame.

Greenspan says high household debt not a problem. He says people can handle the high debt, even if there's a housing bubble. How about those people with the adjustable-rate mortgages he's been advocating? He should read the previous article - what's going to happen to those rates when there's no foreign money coming in to keep them low? Greenspan is a bozo, and I'm getting cranky.

Bush hatred for UN more important than Iraq or US soldiers' lives

Bush rejected a plan to bring in several hundred Muslim troops, apparently including Arab troops, because of the condition that the troops operate under UN command. (Tip from Obsidian Wings, another great blog). Rather than admit that the UN has any use, Bush told the troops to stay away. Their purpose was to guard the UN compound. Without their help, the UN will not put a large ground team in Iraq to help prepare for January election. Bush stinks.

I wrote earlier that I think something like this might actually be Kerry's plan for Iraq: a split US-UN military command (scroll to August 7). The scenario: Kerry convenes a summit, a group of countries offer thousands of troops if they're under UN command, and Kerry tells America that we'd be stupid not to take the deal. Split commands are stupid militarily, but here they are smart politically, and they're better than not having any friends at all, which is Bush's plan.

Boy, I'm smart in calling this one. And anyone who claims I said last winter that Dean had the Democratic nomination locked up was talking to my stupid twin, not me.

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Short pieces:

The draft
Kerry is really stretching credibility in claiming that Bush may bring back the draft. That could only happen in an extreme emergency, under which Kerry might also have to bring back the draft. To be fair to Kerry, his enlarging the military and plan for Iraq would make the draft somewhat less likely under his presidency.

All that being said, Kerry might feel he is doing the nation a service by either locking Bush into the "no draft" position, or making Bush pay a high price should it happen. This would be the Bush counterpart to Kerry being locked in on not raising taxes for people earning less than $200,000. I don't think saying Bush will create a "great potential" for the draft is the appropriate way to lock Bush down, however.

A Bush quote:
''Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things."

That quote was favoring leaving Ariel Sharon alone to use military force in the West Bank and Gaza. The result has been less than clarifying. I think though that the real reason that Bush and his administration have stayed out is because they knew they couldn't match Clinton's personal ability to negotiate a deal, and didn't want the comparison to be so obvious.

Another excellent analogy, from the same website:
"If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?"

An ethical dilemma
A Democratic Congressman in a tight race in Oregon, David Wu, was involved in some kind of assault on an ex-girlfriend 28 years ago, as a college student. Neither Wu nor the woman will discuss the details - the woman never pressed charges. The question is whether this disqualifies him from re-election. Wu apologizes for his "inexcusable behavior" but is otherwise non-forthcoming. My take is he should either cooperate fully with questions so the world can judge him, or the woman could (anonymously, through reporters) let the world know what she thinks of him now, but absent either thing occurring, he's disqualified.

Hard questions equal trick questions

I'm still amazed by Bush's refusal to admit ever making a mistake other than appointing certain people he wouldn't name. Recap is here:

Bush, who had said during an April news conference that he could not think of a mistake, did not point to anything specific when asked again on Friday. He said that there are "lot of tactical decisions" in war that historians may question, and that he has "made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them -- I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV."

I'd run these clips on commercials if I were in charge at the Kerry campaign, with an addition like "We all know someone who cannot admit a mistake. Would you give that person a position of responsibility? Do you want someone like that for President?"

For what it's worth, here's the conservative response, from the Free Republic website:

I think President Bush sidestepped this landmine deftly, but it clearly show's a moderator bias in attempting to give Kerry a powerful parting shot

Other conservative responses are at the link above. Along with Bush's refusal to answer hypothetical questions, it shows the line of thought is to say any hard questions are trick questions, and refuse to answer them.

Science news, starting with the very good news

Malaria vaccine proven effective. This could save millions of lives ever year, including some people in America when global warming makes the American South more habitable for the malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

Bad news about amphibians. They're disappearing everywhere.

Giant virus qualifies as a living organism. Unlike other viruses, it can produce many of its own proteins. Snobbish biologists have denied viruses are organisms, even though they reproduce and evolve, just because they require other cells to function. This virus puts a hole in that theory. Now biologists just need to admit that computer programs are also alive.

The science blogs on the left side of this page always have good stuff to look at too.

Extreme fact-checking

Kevin Drum has a great post, doing detailed analysis and evaluation of the distortions by both Bush and Kerry in the last debate. Result: both candidates lied, but Bush was far worse.

My minor addition is from my own post back on April 23, regarding Bush's wetland promises:

"The not-so-good article that's half-worth mentioning is an AP report carried by the Washington Post, saying Bush plans to recreate, improve, and protect 3 million acres of wetlands [UPDATE: link doesn't work now - try this site instead for the same information]. The fine print is that one million of the three million acres is slated to be "protected." The government already has the job of "protecting" wetlands, so that is an empty promise. "Improving" applies to another million, but large improvement projects are already in the works, so he could be taking credit for something already planned. Improvement could also be extremely marginal and still count under his plan. The million new acres could be good, unless he's counting the wetland restoration projects already in the works."

Kevin is over-generous in rating the debate statement "I've got a plan to increase the wetlands by 3 million" as a minor lie, when it was only 1 million acres.

Yet more interesting political-ish blogs

The best is Fafblog, a great satire site, featuring the authors Fafnir, Giblets, and The Medium Lobster. It's not easy to describe - you're better off reading it.

Also interesting is Rudepundit, where "rude" is an understatement. Its posts are incredibly profane, violent, well-written, and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I'd also consider it somewhat offensive to women.

I'm looking for a funny conservative blog. I can make myself read opinions I disagree with more readily if they can make me laugh. The best I've found so far is the Politburo Diktat, but there's got to be something better out there.

A dangerous bus driver

After graduating from college, I spent six summers driving buses in Denali National Park in Alaska. It was a well-paying job, partly because it involved driving a difficult, narrow dirt road with dangerously soft shoulders.

I remember talking to a fellow driver one time and telling him that I considered this other driver "most likely to roll a bus [down a hill]." He asked me why, and I said "nothing is ever her fault," that she never admits a mistake. The next summer, she drove a bus off the road. It didn't roll, thank God, but it did turn mostly on its side. People were lucky to just have minor injuries.

In tonight's debate, Bush refused to admit that he's made a mistake in the last 4 years, other than some people he's appointed but refused to name (apparently those stupid underlings make mistakes). This really struck me - he isn't qualified to be a bus driver. I don't know if it would affect Bush supporters or undecideds.

No real stylistic gaffes from either candidate. Too bad.

Post-law school careers

My law school classmate Junichi has a post about another classmate of ours who has allegedly become a high-class prostitute to pay off school loans (risque picture at the link). Junichi is right, there were lots of rumors about this woman when she came to campus, partly because she used to be on the TV show, Baywatch. It's funny how different (as in normal) someone looks in real life than in modeling pictures.

Federal prosecutors were going after her on criminal charges for prostitution and tax evasion, but are now "only" trying to use civil forfeiture to keep all her money that they had seized in the investigation. My main question is, why are the feds wasting time on this? Local police don't prosecute prostitution for the most part unless it involves streetwalking, human smuggling/slavery, or other more serious crimes. I would think federal investigations would prioritize even more carefully than city investigations, and stay away from the closest thing to a victimless crime.

I suspect the reason why they might be going after her is because the high-end aspect means she has money that they can seize. It all comes down to economics.

An additional note: she seems clearly guilty of tax evasion, which is bad. I don't see why they have failed to prosecute her for that.

Second note: Junichi laments that this option for paying off loans is unavailable to him. Don't be so sure.

One for international democracy

The European Union recently agreed to begin negotiating with Turkey for membership in the EU, a move that credited Turkey with significant improvements in human rights and the democratic process. A major reason and impetus within Turkey for improving its record was to get the chance to join the EU.

I think this shows the advantage of bringing democracy to international institutions. I've been a long-time supporter of international federalism, the idea of transforming or creating international institutions like the EU on a broader scale. Many years ago I was heavily involved with a group called the Association to Unite the Democracies. They've worked for exactly this idea - international democracy, an end to war, no more armies. Their history goes back to the 1930s, when they advocated a federation of America with the European democracies to stop Hitler from taking over the world. The group was also interesting in how its support cut across traditional left-right divisions. And on a personal level, both my grandfather and father were involved with the group over the decades.

I still think it's the right idea, but I just don't see it happening anytime soon. The EU could be a model, something that's far more democratic and hopeful than what many broader institutions like the World Trade Organization have become. Maybe someday they'll learn...

A thought experiment for Bush

Suppose in 1999 that Clinton, with Gore's approval, had started a war that Bush believed was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Would Bush have refused to criticize the Clinton/Gore decision in the 2000 campaign?

Of course Bush refuses to answer hypothetical questions, so he could avoid this question. Too bad that it means we have no idea how he will act under hypothetical situations. We can guess though.

Slate: Che Guevara was an evil man who helped send the Cuban Revolution down the wrong course. Glorifying him in a movie is a bad idea. (Hat tip Mark Kleiman).

Fighting terrorism, one high-mileage car at a time

(UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2006: I've still got stickers and they're still free, just follow the directions below.)

Several months back, there was a lot of controversy over Arianna Huffington/The Detroit Project's linking of SUVs to terrorism. Their point - wasting gas simply funds corrupt Arab regimes that are breeding grounds for terrorism - is completely valid. I think, though, that it would also be useful to create some positive reinforcement for doing the right thing. In honor of those killed on 9-11, in support of those trying to make the world a better place, and as a good luck charm to try and get to the top of the waiting list for buying a hybrid, I had 500 bumper stickers made and will distribute them freely:




I'm waiting for my hybrid before I'll put it on the bumper of my car, but I'll let each person decide on his or her own if their car deserves the bumper sticker. Just send a self-addressed, stamped envelope (the bumper sticker is standard-sized, but folds okay), and I'll send you a sticker. Sorry, one per person. Send it to: B. Schmidt, 265 N. Rengstorff #31, Mountain View CA 94043.

Scientists fight back

From posts by Chris Mooney, I learned about a new advocacy group, Scientists and Engineers for Change. The group is one of the new "527" organizations that make independent expenditures in political campaigns. In this case, SCEC is sick of the Bush administration's interference with science policy, its policy of ignorance towards the decline in America's leadership on science, and its ignorance in general. What's best about this new organization though, is that it's about science, not about John Kerry. I hope SCEC stays around no matter who wins the presidency, and continues to press politicians to listen to actual science, and to support science.

The whole issue of "527" organizations is a different issue. These organizations pour money into campaigns, along with kinds of organizations and some shady operations. Fixing campaign finance is still a huge problem. No one should disarm unilaterally, though, as the Republicans are suggesting that the Democrats should do.

Attacked by credit card vampires

This weekend I was paying my credit card bill and noticed that through an oversight I had underpaid my last month's bill by $60. What I couldn't figure out was how that one-month, $60 underpayment resulted in a finance charge of $20. I called up the credit card company and they were happy to explain it to me: as soon as you pay less than the full amount of a bill, you begin paying interest not just on the carryover amount, but also on anything you add to the card in the meantime. My card was one that gives you points for using it, so of course I put everything I could on the card, and they were charging me interest on each purchase from the second that I purchased it. In other words, vampires.

Maybe I'm the only person who didn't realize this is how the financing works, but it got me pretty mad. My vampire card is MBNA, they do a lot of deals with organizations so that the organizations can have their "own" cards. Watch out for them, and carry garlic.

Why the left should support partial privatization of Social Security

Short Answer #1: It will eliminate the possibility of Bush's regressive tax cuts becoming permanent.

Short Answer #2: It will make money for future retirees, even if the stock market performs half as well as it has done historically.

Short Answer #3: Bush will screw it up just like everything else he does; this is a chance to propose something useful.

Please refer to the September 10 post below about the current Social Security surplus and whether the surplus is real, if you're interested in background. The main point I take from it is that the current SS surplus is real, but will entail problems in the future when the obligations created under current surpluses come due, and meanwhile Bush is using that surplus to hide the true size of the deficit he's created. There, now you don't have to read that boring post.

So this is why Short Answer #1 is important. If you partially privatize the SS surplus, then the current budget deficit is shown in its true awful colors. Bush's tax cuts will sunset in 2010 unless made permanent, as he is trying to do, and the income tax cuts are highly regressive, while the estate tax elimination is beyond ridiculous. Partial privatization will show the size of the deficit, and make it impossible to keep the tax cuts as is. Actually, I believe the tax cuts will be modified anyway, but this change will help push the changes in the right direction.

I don't see how the economy would be harmed. Some money currently invested in Treasury notes would shift to stocks and private bonds; no harm there. The federal government would have to offer higher interest rates on T-notes; slight harm to the federal budget, but much less harm than would come from extending Bush's tax cut. It's worth it.

As for Short Answer #2, the stock market historically has a 10% annual return, while T-notes have a 3% return. Many experts don't think the market will match its historical rate, but I'd like to be shown an expert who says it will underperform T-notes over a 20-year or longer period. Show me a financial manager who tells a 25-year old to invest her IRA in T-notes, and I'll show you an idiot. That's what Social Security is doing with revenues from 25-year olds.

As for Short Answer #3, it's self-evident that Bush will mess it up. I've looked at his "proposal" here and here. As this report says, the proposal is so vague as to be meaningless. My guess is Bush will eventually just offer tax deductions for larger IRAs. By his standards that's not bad, it's only skewed towards the moderately wealthy that currently fully fund their IRAs. By responsible standards, however, it stinks.

Today's inventions: the Hogmeter and the Interruptmeter

I came up with the first idea after a recent, annoying meeting. It would be a large electronic display showing the names of everyone at a meeting. Every time someone talks, a second display under that person's name shows the cumulative total amount of time the person has been talking, and maybe the percentage of time that person has been talking compared to everyone else. Even if the Hogmeter doesn't shut someone up, it makes what they're doing quite visible.

Kathy had the basic inspiration for the second invention, the Interruptmeter. This could be part of the Hogmeter, and just consist of a third display showing a running tally of how often each person interrupts other people at the meeting.

I think we're just approaching the technological level where voice recognition software could handle this , more or less. I look forward to the day when it happens.

UPDATE 9/17: An improvement on the Hogmeter (already!): if a person exceeds twice that person's percentage of time they should be talking compared to everyone else, a barely-heard oinking grunt will start as he or she speaks, and get louder as the percentage increases. Adjustments can be made for persons chairing the meeting, making presentations, etc. I like this idea even more now.

Identifying exactly who was forced into Bush's place in Vietnam

This post by Matthew Yglesias included the side comment, "Some other young Texan was forced against his will to serve in Lt. Bush's stead". It occurred to me that it might be possible to identify exactly who it was that was forced to go, learn what happened to him, and ask him what he thinks about how things worked out.

The way I'd guess it would work is to figure out who was the last Texan conscripted by the Texas draft board and later sent to Vietnam in the month that Bush got into the "Champagne Unit" of the Texas guard (I think that would have been May 1968). Arguably, this man would be the one that was sent instead of Bush. One thing wrong with that reasoning is that this man would probably be first on the list in the following month, June 1968. Bush did do him the favor of sending this man to Vietnam a month earlier that he would've gone. Would be interesting to find out what happened to this man in his first month in Vietnam.

Since this guy went to Vietnam a month early, though, he also leaves a month early, and somebody has to take his place a month early. The last man conscripted and later sent to Vietnam in the month that our Bush Replacement left also gets the privilege of serving in W's place (arguably). I believe Vietnam rotations were for six months, so there were probably 10-11 men that went to Vietnam a month early for W's sake, and finally one additional conscript at the very end of that chain, right before they stopped sending draftees to Vietnam, who would not have gone at all.

The main point is to put a human face on the cost that Bush's family imposed by using influence to get him into the Champagne Unit. It's something that the media could do.

Portrait of a serial killer

Last movie I watched was the documentary, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Aileen Wuornos was the prostitute/serial killer whose story was the basis for the movie, Monster.

I highly recommend the documentary, haven't seen the fictional movie version. Wuornos could pull off short stretches of seeming sane, but I would challenge anyone to conclude she was anything but crazy in her final speech the day before she was executed. She seemed a tragic combination of terrible upbringing, outright insanity, and rage. I doubt any avid supporters of the death penalty will see this film, and that's too bad (my personal opinion of the death penalty is a wishy-washy semi-opponent).

One sidenote: the documentary maker said that virtually everyone who knew Wuornos betrayed her in order to get money in a deal for a Hollywood movie. I'm very interested in knowing whether that deal, which the documentarian clearly condemns, resulted in the fictional movie Monster that has received such acclaim. A bit of brutal Hollywood irony, if true. Even more ironic is that the DVD makers stuck a trailer for Monster at the beginning of this documentary.

UPDATE: So it turns out I'm only about 2 degrees of separation removed from a glamorous Hollywood director. I have a source that knew people involved in making the Hollywood version of this story, Monster. I broke my source's ankle and got her to talk: apparently the Hollywood director (Patty Jenkins) visited Wuornos extensively and was on her good side, so the exploitation may be less of a concern, at least for people other than Wuornos' relatives and friends.

Homer Simpson and the Social Security surplus

In one episode of The Simpsons, a desperately-hungry Homer (is there any other kind?) seeks out his Emergency Donut Stash. The Emergency Donut is missing, however, replaced with a note: "I owe Homer Simpson one donut. Signed, Homer Simpson." Homer shouts out in despair, "Damn that guy! He's always one step ahead of me!"

An little-seen parallel may exist between Homer Simpson and the federal government regarding the Social Security surplus.* While the federal government as a whole is running a huge deficit thanks to the Bush Administration, the high payroll taxes funding Social Security have created a "surplus" where Social Security is taking in more than it spends. The idea is that this surplus will be saved for the future when the Baby Boom generation retires in droves, with a small population of younger workers unable to pick up the entire tab for their elders' SS funding.

The parallel to Homer arises because that Social Security surplus is invested federal government securities, Treasury notes. These are functionally the same thing as bond notes, which are functionally the same thing as loans. So the government is getting real dollars from workers and their employers, converting that money into loans to itself, spending the money now on the Bush deficits, and describing those current liabilities it owes as the Social Security surplus that will pay for Baby Boomer retirement. So is this surplus any more real than Homer's IOU?

Actually, it is somewhat more real, but that does not make everything hunk-dory. If Homer had the ability to tax donuts away from Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, or to reduce spending on their education to help him buy donuts, the analogy to the SS surplus would be a lot closer. I believe the SS surplus is real in the sense that the federal government will never default on Treasury notes, even ones it issued to itself. T-notes are too valuable in international finance to do anything that would reduce their reliability. However, the government will have to find the money from somewhere to pay the T-note obligations. Expect higher taxes and reduced government benefits in return. Baby Boomers may get their Social Security, partly, but will see other benefits like Medicare get cut.

This might seem somewhat abstract at this point, but knowing what you think about whether the surplus is real will help you decide what, if anything, needs to be done to change Social Security. I'm unsatisfied with most of the answers I've seen so far, but that's for a later post.

*P.S. I will swear on a stack of Bibles that I came up with the Simpsons analogy completely on my own. Unfortunately, in the process of writing this I committed my second-ever act of blog research to see if someone else had the idea, and someone did. Damn this guy! He's always one step ahead of me!

P.P.S. Simpsons purists may note some slight discrepancies from the actual TV show. Please don't flail me, I'm writing from memory. Noone could possibly expect me to do multiple acts of research for a single post. Do you think Homer would do that?

The 9/11 Commission Report

I've listened to about half of the audio version of the 9/11 Commission Report (available here in audio format, or here in a free, downloadable PDF). It's 20 hours total, so it will be awhile before I hear the whole thing. Maybe I'll have more to say at the end, but the thing that strikes me so far is that its effort to stay bipartisan makes the narrative clearly political. I mean that in the sense that it goes to such great political/diplomatic lengths to avoid making conclusions about what the US did or should have done, even when conclusions would be valuable. I suspect they avoid assigning blame for the past so that they could maximize unity around their recommendations for the future. I'm not sure that's the best way to learn from history.

Still, it's very important to read it, and makes a good contrast to Clarke's book, Against All Enemies. It's been several months since I listened to Clarke's book, but the contrast struck me most where both described an aborted attempt to pay Afghan tribal forces to capture or kill Bin Laden in 1998. Clarke described the proposal as "half-assed", but the Commission indicates that it was the last good chance to get him. The Commission implies that Clarke may have played a role in killing the project, and that George Tenet at CIA did as well, saying the mission would only be defined as successful if Bin Laden was captured, not killed. The Commission doesn't clarify, but this suggests that Afghan tribals would not have been paid if they killed Bin Laden.

The Commission emphasizes the uselessness of viewing this in hindsight and draws no conclusions, but that doesn't excuse all mis-steps. If the project was the last best chance, then you should probably take the chance, even if it is half-assed. Saying that capturing alone, not killing, constituted success also was a huge mistake, even discounting hindsight. Police units kill dangerous people all the time in the course of trying to capture them. Policemen still get paid. Tenet's definition was intended to stop the project.

Tenet, the Clinton administration, and Clarke himself all come off somewhat worse in the Commission report than in Clarke's book. I still have no doubt though that Clinton did a better job on terrorism than "War President" Bush.

The 1,000 milestone

I wrote this on May 11th:

"Sometime before the November election, the 1000th soldier will die in Iraq. I expect a lot of soul searching in the media. I also guess that both presidential campaigns already have their written statements prepared for that day."

According to this website, we've now hit that date. There's been some mention in the media, but less than I expected.

I have little doubt that we'll hit the 1,500 fatality milestone, half the number lost on 9/11, sometime in 2005. I don't know if the number of US fatalities in Iraq will ever exceed the number who died on 9/11, but I am more pessimistic about that now than I used to be. At the current average of 2.2 American deaths, that will happen in March 2007. If our death rate gets 50% worse, then it'll happen in May 2006. Those dates are not in the immediate future, but it's quite imaginable that Iraq will not get much better in 2 years than it has in the last year and four months.

America the Book the Audiobook

So I'm a late convert to Comedy Central's news satire, The Daily Show (my only excuse is I don't own a television), but I'm an early convert to the book resulting from the show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Audiobook): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. Okay, the title is ridiculously long, but the book is hilarious, pointing out the inconsistencies in American and some foreign democracies.

They converted me in the first five minutes, with an initial disclaimer that listening to an audiobook is no substitute for watching television, the true source of accurate information about the world.

Media in denial on hurricanes and global warming

Chris Mooney has a good post on how the media is ignoring the connections between hurricanes and global warming, citing the book Boiling Point that I had blogged about earlier (on August 17).

The post inspired me to take this blog to a new level - I committed an act of research, doing a Google News search on "Hurricane Charley" and "global warming". You can see the outcome - 23 hits, a mix of a few left-alternative news sources discussing the potential link, random posts that coincidentally contain the same words, some conservative news sources, and non-American news sources discussing the potential link. I think the foreign coverage says something by way of contrast. A Google News search for "Hurricane Charley" gave 47,000 hits.

One additional point the post doesn't discuss directly: it's newsworthy to mention that any particular hurricane may have been caused or worsened by global warming, even if you don't know for sure. The fact that global warming has made and will make extreme weather events even worse is also newsworthy, and worth more than 23 marginal mentions out of 47,000 articles.

Update, 9.6.04: Blogger John Fleck notes that the current scientific consensus does not find that hurricanes have increased in intensity in the last fifty years, although the consensus also considers it likely that warming will make hurricanes more intense. That point suggests I should back off from saying warming "has made" extreme weather even worse. I'm not going to back off completely though - hurricanes vary a great deal over time in natural cycles, and warming could have made them worse than they otherwise would've been. Better science might determine that in the future. The point about warming making extreme weather more intense in the future remains valid, however, and one that is appropriate to bring up in news about the weather.

Bush tells half-truth, recants the truth part, lies about recanting

News outlets have widely covered Bush's statement saying "I don't think we can win" the war on terror. He later recanted that statement, claiming he meant that there would be no enemy surrender ceremony, but that we would win the war on terror.

The half-truth was in the use of first person plural tense. Had he said "I can't win the war" it would've been entirely true. Bush thinks terrorism exists because terrorists hate freedom, not because of root causes like the Arab-Israeli conflict and Western support for tyrannical Muslim regimes like Saudi Arabia. If terrorism has no root causes, there's no way you can defeat it completely.

The press is wrong in suggesting that he mis-spoke -- Bush said what his advisors have been telling him, but forgetting that he wasn't supposed to tell that to the whole world. The claim about it merely referring to a surrender ceremony is an obvious lie - the transcript makes that clear.

I have to soften this criticism of Bush in two respects, though. Kerry will not be much better than Bush on pushing Israel to be less oppressive of Palestinians. No politician seeking nationwide office will say that the security of individual Palestinians should be just as important to Americans as the security of individual Israelis - the fundamentalist Christian and Jewish lobbies are too important. But Kerry would at least try to push for peace, which is more than Bush has done.

The other concession I have to make is that Bush is at least talking about democracy in the Arab world. Not doing much anything about it, but he's talking about it, and in our condition of dependence on oil-rich Arab tyrants, talking is an improvement. Just not enough of an improvement.