Things That Cause Me To Tune Out The Campaign News

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

Shit like this.

For those not clicking the link, it’s a Washington Post editorial which points out that Obama — no, not Obama — er, Obama’s minister — no, no, wrong again — ahem — Obama’s minister’s daughter runs a magazine which last year recognized the "achievements" of Louis Farrakhan, a man widely known for his anti-semitic views.

Even though the author of the editorial acknowledges that Obama probably doesn’t share the views of Farrakhan, and is on the record as to often disagreeing with his minister, he wants to establish this connection anyway.  ("Why hasn’t Obama disavowed this?")  And now another news cycle will be devoted to this silly question.

It’s a hack piece.  And what’s to follow?  How eeeevil Hillary Clinton is for somehow getting this editorial written (and/or not disavowing the editorial).  And then that becomes the next news cycle.

Sigh.

UPDATE:  Henry at Crooked Timber opines:

I strongly suspect that Barack Obama is being asked to condemn Louis Farrakhan not because there’s some bogus two-degrees-of-separation thing going on, but because Barack Obama is black, and because black politicians are supposed to condemn Louis Farrakhan before they can be trusted. This isn’t racism, but it’s an implicit double standard, under which black politicians have a higher hurdle to jump before they deserve public trust than white ones.

I think that’s true.  Nobody is asking Romney condemn the racism of the Mormon Church, or asking Huckabee to condemn some nutty thing that some Southern Baptist has said, or asking Giuliani to condemn the Catholic Church’s Pedophile Priest coverup for so many years, are they?

And this from The Carpetbagger, who clearly has been thinking along the same lines as me:

I’ve read Cohen’s piece several times now, trying to understand what possessed him to write it (and what possessed his editors to publish it). I’m at a bit of a loss.

At first blush, there’s clearly a degrees-of-separation problem. Obama belongs to a Christian church. The church has a pastor. The pastor has a daughter. The daughter helps run the church magazine. The magazine featured some praise for Louis Farrakhan last year.

Cohen sees this and insists, in his nationally-syndicated column, that Obama has a personal “obligation to speak out” — not because Obama has been connected with Farrakhan or anti-Semitism in any way, but because his church’s pastor’s daughter’s magazine said something complementary about Farrakhan.

This is utterly ridiculous and Cohen ought to be embarrassed for putting his name on such nonsense. Cohen’s been around long enough to know that he and his paper are above these kinds of attacks. Or, they’re supposed to be.

***

If recent history is any guide, Democratic supporters of Obama will take Cohen to task for writing inane tripe, and Democratic critics of Obama will suggest that somehow Cohen has a point.

I’d like to think we can reach a point at which Dems can just be Dems, and criticize stupidity, no matter which Democrat is the target. Cohen’s column should be Exhibit A.

Yup.

Glenn Greenwald On “Judicial Activism”

Ken AshfordCourts/Law, Right Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Glenn Greenwald writes the post that someone (myself included) should have written a long time ago.  He skewers rightwing bloggers and pundits who bluster uncontrollably about "judicial activism".  The thrust of Greenwald’s post is this:

Our public discourse has taught conservatives that any time a court issues a ruling that produces an outcome that they dislike, that’s "judicial activism." But that’s a cruelly ironic lesson because, to the extent "judicial activism" has any meaning at all, it means doing exactly what right-wing ideologues have learned to do when talking about court rulings: judge the rulings based solely on their affection for the outcome.

***

The systematic erosion of the rule of law in America has many aspects, and one significant one is that conservatives have been trained that they have the right to have judges issue rulings that produce outcomes they like, and when that doesn’t happen, it means the judicial process is flawed and corrupt. Put another way, those marching under the banner purportedly opposed to "judicial activism" have been taught that they are entitled to have courts ignore the law in order to ensure the outcomes they want.

What else could possibly explain how someone can be convinced that they are in a position to condemn a judicial ruling without bothering to learn anything about the laws and legal issues in play? Hence: Bush should be able to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants and any judge who rules that — under the law — he can’t, is guilty of "judicial activism." They’ve been trained to believe they’re entitled to have judges give them the outcomes they want, and when that doesn’t happen, that alone is grounds for proclaiming that the courts and judges are not just corrupt, but illegitimate.

I, too, have seen this phenomenon many times.  Occasionally, I will confront the accuser and ask, "Well, what were the legal issues involved in the case?  Why was the judge’s decision clearly outside the scope of legal interpretation?"  Eventually, my question becomes much more simple: "Did you even read the opinion to determine why the court decided the way it eventually did?"

Some people don’t seem to get it: when courts rule, they issue a legal opinion.  You can actually read for yourself why they decided a certain way.  In every case, you can see the legal reasoning behind a court’s opinion. 

One may think the reasoning is flawed, but that is something entirely different from "judicial activism" which, by definition, argues that a court simply decided the outcome without resort to legal interpretation (in instead, based on the personal political predilictions of the judge or judges).  There are many cases where I disagree with the outcome, but I never — never — doubt the sincerity of the judge who reached the conclusion; rather, I simply believe his interpretation of the law was flawed.

I’m glad Glenn wrote this.  Another one of his seminal articles.

Meanwhile In Iraq…

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

They say that things are going very well there; that is, the surge is "working", even though nobody bothers to give a definition of what "working" actually means in this case.

Remember, the whole point of the surge was to give the Iraq government more breathing room to coalesce its government, and so that Iraqi troops could train and eventually take over their own internal security.  When they "stand up", that’s when we’ll leave.

But guess what?

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.

Those comments from the minister, Abdul Qadir, were among the most specific public projections of a timeline for the American commitment in Iraq by officials in either Washington or Baghdad. And they suggested a longer commitment than either government had previously indicated.

Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.

Bottom line: We’re going to be in Iraq for a looooong time.  Let me put it this way — whoever we elect as next president will be out of office before the troops leave Iraq (assuming, of course, that we go by Iraq’s timeline).

MEMORY LANE:

“The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. Now, there are a lot of claims on that money, but… We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” — Paul Wolfowitz, 2003

UPDATE:  And, aside from troop presence (and deaths) in Iraq, what’s going to be continued side-effect until 2018 (and beyond)?  PTSD-fueled murders here in America.

The Politics Of Sex

Ken AshfordElection 2008, Sex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

From the February issue of Playboy (so I’m told):

  • More people under 40 have sex at least once a week than vote for president once every four years.
  • 25% of all Republicans and 35% of all Democrats have had more than 10 sexual partners in their lifetime — a higher percentage than vote in congressional and local elections.
  • 55% of Republicans have sex at least once a week, compared with just 43% of Democrats.

    • [Note to my fellow Democrats re that last stat: I’m skewing the curve downward on that one.]

  • 14% of Thompson supporters and 12% of Obama supporters claim to have sex "almost every day." Just 5% of Clinton and Giuliani supporters have sex that frequently.
  • On average, Republicans say they were 18.4 years old when they first had sex. Independents were 17.6 and Democrats were 17.5.
  • 58% of respondents think Bill Clinton was the sexiest president of the past 40 years; Ronald Reagan is second, with 22%.
  • 38% say Richard Nixon was the least sexy; Bill Clinton is second, with 18%.
  • 23% of all Republicans and 24 percent of all Democrats would "definitely" or "probably" say yes to a one-night stand in the Oval Office with a president they found physically and sexually attractive.
  • 51% of all Republicans and 67% of all Democrats have watched porn with their sexual partners.
  • 55% of people who attend church every week consider themselves to be "sexually adventurous."
  • Americans of both parties say they are more turned on by intelligence than by physical appearance.

    • [Note on that last state: …the operative word being "say"]

    Drinking Makes You Gay

    Ken AshfordScience & TechnologyLeave a Comment

    I think the first part of this scientific study is a no-brainer:

    A team of researchers at Penn State has used an animal model to reveal, for the first time, a physiological basis for the effect of alcohol on male sexual behavior, including increased sexual arousal and decreased sexual inhibition….

    It is the first study to characterize the effects of chronic alcohol exposure in fruit flies. "Physiological evidence supporting various theories about the effect of alcoholic drinks has been lacking, so our now having a suitable animal model makes it possible to conduct much-needed laboratory research on this issue," explains research-team-leader Kyung-An Han, associate professor of biology and a neuroscientist at Penn State. Information from this research can serve as a baseline for similar studies in other animals, including humans.

    In contrast to previous studies in other labs, which subjected fruit flies to short-term doses of ethanol — the intoxicating ingredient in alcoholic drinks — Han’s team administered to fruit flies a daily dose of ethanol to more closely mimic the drinking habits of alcoholics and chronic alcohol abusers. The team investigated several factors that influence the physiological effects of ethanol, including genetic and cellular components, age, and prior experience.

    Drinking leads to decreased sexual inhibition?  You think???

    But then the study actually did hit upon something new:

    Among the team’s discoveries is that male fruit flies, which typically court females, also actively court males when they are given a daily dose of ethanol.

    Okay, to suggest that "drinking makes you gay" is a slight extrapolation, but still….

    Mona Lisa, Men Have Named You

    Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

    The mystery of "Who was Mona Lisa?" has now been solved.

    Many art historians have speculated that Da Vinci’s model was Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant named Francesco del Giocondo (which is why Europeans refer to the painting as "La Giaconda").  But that was just a guess.

    Recent notes from Leonardo himself have been uncovered and translated, and the mystery is solved.  Turns out the historians were right.

    Oh, By The Way, It’s The End Of The World

    Ken AshfordEnvironment & Global Warming & EnergyLeave a Comment

    The Washington Post:

    Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates.

    While the overall loss is a tiny fraction of the miles-deep ice that covers much of Antarctica, scientists said the new finding is important because the continent holds about 90 percent of Earth’s ice, and until now, large-scale ice loss there had been limited to the peninsula that juts out toward the tip of South America. In addition, researchers found that the rate of ice loss in the affected areas has accelerated over the past 10 years — as it has on most glaciers and ice sheets around the world.

    ***

    "Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes," said Rignot, a senior scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We believe it is related to global climate forcing."

    Even Al Gore, in An Inconvenient Truth, was concerned only about the ice shelfs on that (relatively) small peninsula in the West. 

    Antarcticamap

    But if we’re talking about melting extending to the whole western half of the continent — well, that doesn’t bode well for sea levels.  Coupled with the well-documented melting of Greenland, we are facing this scenario:

    Of course, a rise of 20 meters (as depicted above) is not a sure thing — certainly not in most of our lifetimes; it would take significant melting for that to occur.  But even then, a sea level rise of less than a meter, certainly possible within currrent trends and predictions for this century, is certainly nothing to ignore.  Here’s Manhattan enjoying a mere 0.7 meter rise in sea level.

    Can’t happen, you say?  Guess what?  It already is happening.

    Blogging Like Molassas

    Ken AshfordDisastersLeave a Comment

    320pxbostonmolassesdisasterBeen kind of busy lately.  Also got ingested by, of all things, a book.  Yes, it’s true — I found time to read.  (Well, actually, I don’t have the time, which is why there is light blogging and a pile of dishes in the sink.  But I digress).

    It’s Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molassas Flood by Stephen Puleo.

    I’m not going to recommend this book because I know that history isn’t a lot of people’s bag.  But ever since I was a kid, this story fascinated me.  Come to think of it, I’ve have a "thing" for historical American disasters: the Johnstown flood (David McCullough’s book on the subject is one of the best history books I’ve read), the Titanic, and the subject of Dark Tide — the Great Boston Molassas Flood of 1919.

    I think I first read about the Great Molassas Flood as a child, in a Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not cartoon.  21 people died — either crushed by buildings which were flattened by the massive surge, or by asphyxiating in the gooey liquid. 

    Every so often, I would try to find a book on the subject.  A few years ago, I searched in earnest, only to discover that there was no single book on the subject (only a handful of random articles in old history magazines).  Sometime last year, I discovered that somone recently wrote an entire book on the subject — Dark Tide.  It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while, and I finally opened it.

    The story has intrigued me for a number of reasons.  For one thing, the idea of a molassas flood is, well, kind of funny (not the fact that 21 people died, of course, but the flood itself).  But I also wondered why.  I mean, I knew a storage tank burst, and that caused over 2 million gallons of molassas to spill into the North End of Boston at 35 mph (that’s two tons of pressure per square foot).  But why was molassas being stored there in the first place?

    As it turns out, molassas is a by-product of sugar kane (it’s what’s left when you extract the sugar), and this particular molassas was used for munitions.  Fermented, it contains ethanol.  So the tank was built  to capitalize on World War I. 

    And it was built rather hastily.  Because of time pressures, the tank was never properly tested (by filling it with water).  It noticibly leaked since its construction, and for several years (children in the neighborhood would often collect the molassas from the ground in cans); the company’s response was to paint the tank — changing it from green to brown, making the "tears" dripping from the tank less noticeable.

    The book is also an intruiging look at the era and its politics.  The country was in the midst of a flood of a different type — a flood of immigrants.  The Boston’s North End, once a stronghold for Irish immigrants, was transitioning into an Italian neighborhood (like it is today) as the Irish people assimilated and moved up the social chain (including the Fitzgeralds, grandparents of the Kennedys).  It was also the time of great social upheaval, with anarchists (including Italians) bucking against the capitalist system and the greedy corporate fatcats.  It was the time of Leopold and Loeb, and socialists in the IWW (in fact, the corporate owners of the tank, as well as much of the public, were quick to blame the tank’s rupture on an anarchist’s bomb — this turned out not to be the case).

    Anyway, it’s a fascinating little piece of American history that few people know about.  And that’s why I haven’t been blogging.