Classes start tomorrow, and I'm getting organized tonight: doing computer chores, setting up a new printer, making sure I know where I'm going and when, and finding out whether I'll be "behind" on assignments before I even locate the classrooms... So I'll have to add more later. But what follows made me laugh so much I'm using it fill the "dead air." I don't know who did the transcription, where to find it (I've googled), or which Prairie Home Companion show it was on, but apparently the ELCA statement on same-sex relationships made the "News From Lake Wobegon" (thanks, JC!). I don't think anyone will ever characterize the text more perfectly:

By Garrison Keillor

Pastor Ingqvist was so glad about the snow. He was thinking he might have to do a sermon on the Lutheran church, its announcement of its commission on its position on same-sex relationships and the ordination of same-sex people. But then he thought, "No, I don't really need to do that. People are thinking about snow." Nobody had really asked him about this commission report, which was a masterpiece of muddling through - just a masterpiece. It was a beautiful piece of writing

It's a case where you establish a commission to take up a question that militants on either side are waving their bright shining swords, and they're up in arms about. And you put a commission in there, and it takes three years to work at it, and it puts out a report which nobody can understand, which says that essentially nothing has changed, and yet, some things have changed, but we don't approve of that, and yet if you went ahead on the basis of conscience and did what you wanted to do, don't worry about us coming after you, because we wouldn't do it. It's sort of a "don't ask, don't tell, never mind" position.

And it's beautiful. It's a Lutheran art to take a controversial subject, and to restate the question so that nobody understands it, and then to write the response so that it has to do with nothing whatsoever. And out comes the report, and nobody can really be that angry about it, because it's made up of all of this mishmash, this beautiful mishmash, and these sentences that are like extruded marshmallow. And so all of? the militants who would be tempted to go to battle over this... Peace is kept! On the basis of confusion! A Lutheran art, to achieve strength through indirection and vagueness. This is an irritating quality about Lutherans, and people have become angry at Lutherans. "Why don't you say what you mean? Tell us what you think." Well... no! No.

No matter how many militants and absolutists there are, there's a great tide of moderation in my little town of Lake Wobegon. Moderates are people who have experienced back pain. Lower back pain. That's what makes a moderate. When you're your age, when you're young, you can be extreme on these things and pick up the flag and carry it forward. But you get to be my age and you've experienced lower back pain and you realize, this is the crucial thing. These questions of principle and so forth, these can be put off until later.

So when I was your age, in the wintertime I used to see a piece of ice and I'd run towards it. I would run towards it and I would slide across it. And then I got to be towards my age, and I realized how treacherous the world is and how, even though you're very careful, you can step just the wrong way off a curb, even if it is shoveled, or you can climb up over a mountain of compacted snow and ice there on a corner, and you just take one little misstep, and there's a twinge in your lower back and now this becomes the focus of your life for a long time. This has happened to people. They go to specialists, and the specialists do X-rays, and they look at them and they murmur for a while.

And they have tried different healing solutions, and some people have, in their pain, they have left the Lutheran church, and they have gone off to the South. They have gone off to churches where people stand, and they hold their hands up in the air. Which feels good for your back. Or they encourage crying out, and shouting, which people who suffer from lower back pain often are tempted to do, anyway. And you go down to these churches, these Southern churches, and they do certain laying on of hands. Now we don't go for that in the Lutheran church, but they do that down South, the laying on of hands, and so forth.

But it just doesn't work, you see. Because they believe in positive thinking. They believe in putting away all negative thinking and creating positive expectations that create an aura of possibility that is powerful and that attracts success. This may work in economics. It may work in government. It doesn't work for lower back pain.

Complaining. That's what works. That's what never fails to make you feel better. The moderates sit there in the Chatterbox Cafe and they talk about this weather. They just cannot believe it. It is so cold. It is so miserable. They can't wait for winter to be over. They're complaining. They're Lutheran. It's winter. They're happy.

That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

I have time for a quick check-in. We're in the midst of electrical work that turned out to be more of a safety issue than a mere upgrade. Renting a 1929 San Francisco house has its charms and its... nailbiters. In any case, power is on and off, and when it's off, there's no phone or DSL.

Do see this very moving Auschwitz memorial piece by Aharon Appelfeld.

I watched Bush's hastily called press conference Monday. I saw him being surly, impatient, sarcastic, insulting, and irritable. Kathryn Jean Lopez, a conservative observer, apparently saw the same press conference and declared "wow, was he in a good mood. You almost get the impression he enjoys doing these now." That was a good mood? It must be the thrill he gets from insulting people and making them beg for information. (Did you read the transcript of the whole thing? Did you see how often the president "chuckles"? Substitute "snickers" for "chuckles" and you'll have a much more realistic picture of the event.)

And while we're entertaining ourselves with word substitutions, check out Michael Berube's version of the inaugural address.

Bill McKibben, at a conference on climate change, discovers the "state of the union" in a disturbing Powerpoint presentation. This is short and worth reading.

Douglas Feith has resigned (via Atrios) "for personal and family reasons" which probably include - as Juan Cole points out - a worrisome FBI investigation.

Another conservative commentator being paid to promote Bush policies... That's three, that we know of?

Infuriating: why the US media dismissed the Lancet study of 100,000 Iraqi civilian dead. If you have time, link through to the longer Chronicle of Higher Education story.

Molly Ivins' reflections on Bush's inaugural address:

...Unfortunately, the rest of the world is skeptical of Bush's benign intent, mostly because he invaded a country that not only hadn't done anything to us, but also was no threat to us. (There is a new line on the right that goes, "But everybody in the whole world was saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." Actually, everybody wasn't. Hans Blix and the U.N. inspectors had been unable to find any, even though we claimed we knew exactly where they were and had pictures of them. Quite a few people were beginning to doubt the existence of WMD, and what "everybody in the world" was saying at the time we went to war was, "Give the inspectors more time." In retrospect, it was quite good advice, wasn't it?)

At other points in the speech, one was left wondering, as one so often is, about Bush's grip on reality. Talking about his "ownership society," he said, "By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal."

He's delusional: He cannot possibly believe his tax cuts are making this country more just and equal — they are making it more unjust and unequal every day, not to mention getting us ever deeper into debt. One does not provide "freedom from want and fear" by privatizing Social Security. We've been there, we've done this — we tried unregulated capitalism at the end of the 19th century, and it was awful.

She also nails it on the ridiculous language war the administration is waging on "privatization." It's particularly amusing to watch this play out, because the press has been so completely obliging to the administration - carefully refraining from using the words "privatization" or "private accounts" - when Bush himself can't remember his rule.

Of course Rice was confirmed, but some Democrats (and Jim Jeffords) exhibited integrity.

If the 52% who re-elected this president aren't - as of today's press conference - really regretting their decision, I'm scared of all of them. The (short-tempered, irritable, ill-prepared) president and his supporters. I'll link to the transcript when I can find it (Update: it's here.). In one gem of a statement, he acknowledged that we must be sensitive to mideast cultures and traditions and then said (essentially; I'll find the exact quote when the transcript is up) he'd make them understand that democracy is superior. (Update:"And -- and so I fully understand developing a democratic society in the -- adhering to the traditions and customs of other nations will be a work in process. That's why I said we're talking about the work of generations. And so in my talks, in my discussions with world leaders to solve the problem of the day, I will constantly remind them about our strong belief that democracy is the way forward." And - my mistake - it wasn't specifically about the Middle East.) He insulted, snapped, "misled," twitched, grimaced, clenched his teeth... He told a reporter he was acting like a "senior citizen": "faulty memory." He barked answers. He told reporters he would only call on the ones who didn't yell. He interrupted a reporter before she managed to ask her question and then completely mischaracterized her question. This angry, impatient man is in charge of our "security"? God help us. I'll try to link to the transcript before my power goes off this morning.

Do you find there are days when reading the news is just too maddening, and that your mental health is better served by ignoring any mention of the Bush administration and its abuses of power? I've been having a lot of those days since the election ("gee, no kidding" say those of you loyal readers who pop in almost daily to see if the blog has been updated), and today - as Democrats do their pointless swaggering even as they admit that Condoleezza Rice's confirmation is a sure thing, and Bush asks for another $80 billion for his immoral war in Iraq (gosh, some of that missing money would be handy right now) - is definitely one.

We've been trying to restore order to our garage since the new furnace was installed. Part of the plan was to put back fewer boxes than we moved before the work began. That has meant spending many hours purging papers and junk in a marathon effort that must end before school starts next week. One of the "treasures" I found was an old copy of Congressional Quarterly, dated November 12, 1994. It's sitting right here next to me, a scary picture of Newt Gingrich on the cover, and one inside of Newt with his second wife Marianne -- the one he dumped when he learned she had a condition that could lead to MS (that was the one after the one he dumped while she was being treated for breast cancer). Under the headline "New Speaker, New Order" are three subheaders: "Gingrich Proclaims A National Mandate To Upend Government," "Historic GOP Sweep Brings Big Burdens With Hill Control," and "Clinton, Democrats Seek New Identity From Election Debacle." (Emphasis mine.) Same song, new decade.

I think the cover is casting some kind of depressive spell over me (no doubt something involving an eye of Newt?) because the longer it sits here, the worse I feel. Let me hasten to the recyling bin...

Remember, Bush calls them his base. In a Nation column, Micah Sifry tracks down an "elite" Bush donor/fundraiser and discusses the perks of being a mega-donor.

Johnny Carson, 1925 - 2005. My favorite moments of "The Tonight Show" won't surprise some of you: they were the animal segments (although any Tim Conway visit was a close second). For a long time, I desperately wanted Joan Embery's job at the San Diego Zoo, and my parents always let me (in those wee younger years) stay up to watch her appearances with Johnny. Johnny Carson milked more hilarity out of those animal segments (not just with Joan Embery, but with "Jim" from "Wild Kingdom," with Jack Hanna, etc) than anyone before or since, and viewers always managed to learn something about the animals at the same time. I still love watching those clips.

Speaking of inspirational animal people, naturalist Miriam Rothschild also passed away this week.

I'm really trying to puzzle this out. San Francisco wants to tax all grocery bags, plastic and paper, in order to reduce littering and to recover the costs of recycling the paper bags. "Officials believe that the city spends 5.2 cents per bag annually for street litter pickup and 1.4 cents per bag for extra recycling costs." Do officials know this, or believe this? If it's true, why charge the same tax for both, when recycling costs less than cleaning up? And what if this policy ends up compelling shoppers to make smaller but more frequent shopping trips -- in their single occupant vehicles?

If you think the earth is 6000 years old, this item won't appeal to you. Investigators in Ethiopia have found fossil remains from 9 individual early hominids (4.5-4.3 million years old), including fossilized foot bones that indicate the species (Ardipithecus ramidus) probably walked upright.

The news reminds me... In early January, Michelle Goldberg had a very disturbing story in Salon (and now via Truthout) on the Dover, PA school board's decision to teach creationism - excuse me - "intelligent design." In December the SF Chronicle had a similar feature about the nationwide trend. It ends in a special kind of twilight zone:

"I happen to believe both in God and evolution," (Jeff Brown) said, and his wife nodded: "Hear, hear."

The Browns appear to be in the minority. Although public schools have been teaching evolution for decades, a national Gallup poll in November 2004 showed that only 35 percent of those asked believed confidently that Darwin's theory was "supported by the evidence.'' More than one-third of those polled by CBS News later in November said creationism should be taught instead of evolution.

"A guy came up to me and said, 'Wait a minute, you believe in God and evolution at the same time? Evolution isn't in the Bible!'" said Brown, nibbling on a deep-fried mozzarella stick at the Shiloh Family Restaurant on Route 74. As he became more agitated, his voice grew louder, and other customers -- mostly gray-haired women and elderly men in baseball hats -- turned their heads to look at the couple. Carol Brown kept putting her index finger to her lips, gesturing for her husband to be quieter.

After the Browns left the restaurant, a waitress in her 30s slipped a note to a Chronicle reporter.

"Beware," it read. "God wrote over 2,000 years ago that there would be false prophets and teachers. If you would like to know the truth read the Bible."

OK, the original 1929 60-amp fuse box is being replaced/upgraded tomorrow (and probably the next day, and the next) which will be a very good thing in the long run, but will mean day-long brown-outs in the short run. I'm working from home tomorrow to make sure dogs, cats, bicycles, tools, etc. don't wander out of the garage while the electricians are coming and going. That means I'll need to conserve my computer battery for work-related activity. But if I can bring myself to read any news, I'll blog at night when the power is back on.

Sunday Night Dog Blogging

Sunday Night Dog Blogging
Originally uploaded by mizm_sf.

This hardly requires comment...

Global warming has already hit the danger point that international attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's top climate watchdog.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told an international conference attended by 114 governments in Mauritius this month that he personally believes that the world has "already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" and called for immediate and "very deep" cuts in the pollution if humanity is to "survive".

His comments rocked the Bush administration - which immediately tried to slap him down - not least because it put him in his post after Exxon, the major oil company most opposed to international action on global warming, complained that his predecessor was too "aggressive" on the issue.

A memorandum from Exxon to the White House in early 2001 specifically asked it to get the previous chairman, Dr Robert Watson, the chief scientist of the World Bank, "replaced at the request of the US". The Bush administration then lobbied other countries in favor of Dr Pachauri - whom the former vice-president Al Gore called the "let's drag our feet" candidate, and got him elected to replace Dr Watson, a British-born naturalized American, who had repeatedly called for urgent action.

But this month, at a conference of Small Island Developing States on the Indian Ocean island, the new chairman, a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute, himself issued what top United Nations officials described as a "very courageous" challenge.

He told delegates: "Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose."

Afterwards he told The Independent on Sunday that widespread dying of coral reefs, and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic, had driven him to the conclusion that the danger point the IPCC had been set up to avoid had already been reached.

Reefs throughout the world are perishing as the seas warm up: as water temperatures rise, they lose their colors and turn a ghostly white.

Partly as a result, up to a quarter of the world's corals have been destroyed.

And in November, a multi-year study by 300 scientists concluded that the Arctic was warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up to 20 per cent in the past three decades.

The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than it was in the 1970s and is expected to disappear altogether by 2070. And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts of the Arctic were having a January "heatwave", with temperatures eight to nine degrees centigrade higher than normal.

He also cited alarming measurements, first reported in The Independent on Sunday, showing that levels of carbon dioxide (the main cause of global warming) have leapt abruptly over the past two years, suggesting that climate change may be accelerating out of control.

He added that, because of inertia built into the Earth's natural systems, the world was now only experiencing the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s, and much greater effects would occur as the increased pollution of later decades worked its way through. He concluded: "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."

So, here's an interesting sequence to ponder some sleepness night: (1) Studies reported last week and last month suggest that the most likely cause of the mass extinction known as the "Great Dying" (250 million years ago) was not an asteroid or comet, but climate warming caused by volcanic gases. (2) Bush's own handpicked climate change lobbyist thinks global warming is accelerating out of control. And (3), many scientists believe we have entered another - the Earth's sixth - mass extinction. Here are two good info "portals" - one on mass extinctions and one on climate change.

19-year old Web, sunning

"Friday Cat Blogging"
Originally uploaded by mizm_sf.

I figure this blog hasn't really earned its stripes until it contributes to the Friday Cat Blogging phenomenon. Above is 19-year old, 7.5 pound Web, who is one of the sprightliest 19-year old cats you'll ever meet. This is her favorite early morning spot for sunning.

I recently finished James Wolcott's delightfully snarky Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants: The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror. There's a chapter in there on Peggy Noonan which begins:

No matter what it says on the marriage certificate, Peggy Noonan is a bride of George W. Bush. He is the butch side of her, she the femme side of him, and together they are ideological lovebirds, united in holy sanctimony. They share the mission vision of world transformation through American might, subscribing to the same polarities of good and evil, innocence and guilt, love and hate. Both draw a line in the sand between those with us and those against us, seeing the world in black and white (even if Noonan's prose style tends to misty watercolors)...

So imagine my surprise to read (TheRevealer linked to it) Noonan's column about the president's inaugural address:

The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.

A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.

No one will remember what the president said about domestic policy, which was the subject of the last third of the text. This may prove to have been a miscalculation.

It was a foreign-policy speech. To the extent our foreign policy is marked by a division that has been (crudely but serviceably) defined as a division between moralists and realists--the moralists taken with a romantic longing to carry democracy and justice to foreign fields, the realists motivated by what might be called cynicism and an acknowledgment of the limits of governmental power--President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise. But he did it in a way that left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance.

The administration's approach to history is at odds with what has been described by a communications adviser to the president as the "reality-based community." A dumb phrase, but not a dumb thought: He meant that the administration sees history as dynamic and changeable, not static and impervious to redirection or improvement. That is the Bush administration way, and it happens to be realistic: History is dynamic and changeable. On the other hand, some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government.

This world is not heaven.

The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."

It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people."

The speech did not deal with specifics--9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

There were moments of eloquence: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery." And, to the young people of our country, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." They have, since 9/11, seen exactly that.

And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

Is their honeymoon finally over?

I've begun reading Michael Berube's blog regularly, and here is a hilarious reason why:

Women barred from Harvard presidency by "genetic predisposition," study finds

CAMBRIDGE, MA (AP)-- Researchers unveiled today a startling new study that suggests women are “extremely unlikely” to become president of Harvard University, and that women’s “distinctive genetic makeup” plays “a decisive role” in preventing them from becoming top-level administrators at the nation’s oldest college.

“Traditionally, presidents of Harvard have been men,” said Harvard geneticist Charles Kinbote, the study’s designer and principal investigator. “Now, after almost 400 years, we know why. To coin a phrase, it’s in the genes.”

According to Kinbote, the presidency of Harvard University requires a unique array of talents and dispositions which, statistically, only a small handful of women possess. “For one thing,” noted Kinbote, “it has long been one of the president’s tasks to deny tenure to promising female scholars-- personally, without stated cause, and after a department, a college, and a battery of external referees has approved her. My study shows that the X chromosome contains material that, in combination with another X chromosome, inhibits a person’s ability to do this.”

Men are also more adept than women at mentally rotating three-dimensional shapes on aptitude tests, Kinbote added. “You’d be surprised how often a university president needs to do this, and at Harvard the pressure is especially intense.” Kinbote estimated that the president of Harvard spends roughly one-quarter of the working may mentally rotating complex, hypothetical three-dimensional shapes, “and that’s not even counting all the time he needs to try to figure out why women aren’t as skilled at abstract mathematical thought.”

The X chromosome also seems to play a role in suppressing the ability to make fatuous remarks in public forums. “If you want to be president of Harvard,” Kinbote said, “you have to be willing to get up there and just let it fly, no matter what the facts are and no matter what the consequences may be. Not just in off-the-cuff remarks-- anybody can do that-- but in carefully considered, prepared statements. It appears that once again, the X chromosome works, when paired with another X, as an inhibiting factor in all but a tiny fraction of the female population.” That tiny fraction, Kinbote suggested, would be the subject of a subsequent study into the biochemical basis of Coulter Syndrome.

Here's a story about the Harvard president's enlightened remarks. Update: He's sorry.

Along with avoiding any visual or auditory contact with inauguration coverage, I've been trying to ignore - for the most part, successfully - the Condoleezza Rice proceedings. But I had a couple of accidental, unavoidable encounters with network news recaps, and was forced to contemplate what I heard. First, her unbelievable words, "the time for diplomacy is now..." They left me gap-jawed. Second, what happened to Joe Biden's backbone? What is the point of voting yes 'with a little bit of frustration and some reservation'??? Guess what? - it's only the "yes" part that counts. Third, thank God for Barbara Boxer. Again.

Speaking of the (3 years overdue) "time for diplomacy," the world is trembling at the prospect of another Bush term. Of course, the Bushies get off on that...

A poll of 21 countries published yesterday - reflecting opinion in Africa, Latin America, North America, Asia and Europe - showed that a clear majority have grave fears about the next four years.

Fifty-eight per cent of the 22,000 who took part in the poll, commissioned by the BBC World Service, said they expected Mr Bush to have a negative impact on peace and security, compared with only 26% who considered him a positive force.

The survey also indicated for the first time that dislike of Mr Bush is translating into a dislike of Americans in general.

The military is stretched to the limits in Iraq, recruitment and retention are plummeting, retirees are being called up, and the army is apparently considering outsourcing desk jobs in order to switch those folks to combat duty. But the Bushies are swaggering around Iran. War without end. Which reminds me: Do read Seymour Hersh's "The Coming Wars", in this week's New Yorker, which describes the extent of the preparations already underway for Iran.

This is just the kind of thing that gives me hope about outlasting the lunatic fringe: eventually, they become so convinced and enamored of their righteousness that they overreach, and their lunacy becomes apparent to everyone. Parents, your children are receiving pro-homosexual indoctrination via Sponge Bob.

Ouch.

On Thursday, the fairy king of fairyland will be recrowned. He was elected on a platform suspended in midair by the power of imagination. He is the leader of a band of men who walk through ghostly realms unvisited by reality. And he remains the most powerful person on earth.

How did this happen? How did a fantasy president from a world of make believe come to govern a country whose power was built on hard-headed materialism? To find out, take a look at two squalid little stories which have been concluded over the past 10 days...

Read the rest of George Monbiot on the "so-called liberal media" here (or here).

Whilst you are making your plans for Inauguration Day tomorrow -- whether you are taking part in the Anti-Inauguration festivities, joining the nationwide boycott, or actually watching or attending the most expensive inauguration in history (with the tightest security ever, where parade performers are forbidden to look directly at the emperor president) -- have a look at Peter Dizikes' summary of the administration "scandal sheet," a list of 34 scandals already pinned on Bush's first term. (It's in Salon, so you'll need to sit through a short ad if you aren't a subscriber. But it's worth it.)

I keep saying that I'm trying to get back into some kind of reliable blogging rhythm, and then I lose it again. So I won't say it again (but I am...). This week was spent juggling work schedules so that someone would always be home while the furnace guys were here. Downside: hours to make up at work. Upside: HEAT! HEAT for the first time since the beginning of November! The 1940s gravity furnace went to meet its maker, and was replaced by a Trane that blows so hot and fast it heats the house in minutes. The ancient flues with their 60+ years of gunk and build-up were replaced with sleek new ones that conduct so much air the cats are skulking in wide arcs around the registers, casting alarmed looks over their shoulders. One of the dogs was so startled by the long-forgotten sensation of warmth that - passing one vent - he skidded to a stop and stared into it for a long moment, trying to figure out what had changed. And me, I no longer have to type in gloves with the fingertips cut off!

Thursday the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America released its Report and Recommendations from the Task Force for Studies on Sexuality, addressing whether or not the church should bless same-sex relationships and whether people in such relationships should be allowed to serve the church as lay professionals or ordained ministers. A summary press release is here; the release was covered by the New York Times, the Toledo Blade (a paper near my "home town") and elsewhere (kind of interesting to compare the angles of the various headlines).

The report summarizes the opinions generated by a congregational study guide on the church and homosexuality, Journey Together Faithfully. That was not actually a "guide" so much as a list of diverse points of view; it went out of its way to avoid taking a stand of any kind. Not surprisingly, the final report does, too. The report does, however, offer one little glimmer of enlightenment in the suggestion that IF a congregation chooses to call a gay or lesbian pastor, the regional synod/bishop can choose NOT to censure them. Bishop Lohrman of the Northwest Ohio Synod, quoted in the Blade story, suggests that this policy risks "developing contrasting synods with contrasting policies" and Emily Eastwood, from Lutherans Concerned worried that it would "ghettoize" gay and lesbian ministers. I can see both points of view, but I can also see that this small concession - if we can even call it that - is a way to let independent communities get the ball slowly rolling. This recommendation might very well be rejected at the national assembly this summer (take a look at those summary percentages in Part 6 of the report, representing what the report authors euphemistically refer to as a "diversity of opinion"), but it is a small advance.

In view of Armstrong Williams revelations, the media is trying to make a new story out of the old story of Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas being paid as consultants for the Dean campaign. Both disclosed their activities -- Kos on his web site, and Armstrong closed down his blog while he was being paid. But this should not even be a story: as desperately as the right and their left-wing apologists want to point to Armstrong and Moulitsas as "proof" that the left has its paid shills, too, the fact is that these guys are bloggers, not journalists, and neither of them were paid by the government with taxpayer money. There's simply no comparison -- although I'm sure we can all look forward to someone trying to make one on some Sunday morning round table... You can track the slings and arrows through several Daily Kos items, if you're interested.

In the NYT magazine, Roger Lowenstein looks at the history, mechanics, and projections of social security and finds... no crisis.

How is this even legal? Bush is going to make the Social Security Administration use trust fund money to help him hype the crisis and promote privatization.

Just when you think the president can't possibly exhibit more arrogance, he outdoes himself:

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

Oh, and he regrets his tough talk. "I don’t know if you’d call that a confession, a regret, something.” Hmm, I was thinking "a mistake," maybe?

Geez, look what I missed while I was buried in the books. In Joyce Marcel's Alternet story about the president's prevarications, she mentions the press "buzz" about his "new debrillator." Huh? I googled, and hit on these two stories: one working hypothesis about the president's mysterious debate bulge is that it is a portable defibrillator.

Finally, Sen. Ted Kennedy has some inspiring words for progressives, from his address last week to the National Press Club:

I categorically reject the deceptive and dangerous claim that the outcome last November was somehow a sweeping, or a modest, or even a miniature mandate for reactionary measures like privatizing Social Security, redistributing the tax burden in the wrong direction, or packing the federal courts with reactionary judges. Those proposals were barely mentioned - or voted on - in an election dominated by memories of 9/11, fear of terrorism, the quagmire in Iraq, and relentlessly negative attacks on our Presidential candidate.

In an election so close, defeat has a thousand causes - and it is too easy to blame it on particular issues or tactics, or on the larger debate about values. In truth, we do not shrink from that debate.

There's no doubt we must do a better job of looking within ourselves and speaking out for the principles we believe in, and for the values that are the foundation of our actions. Americans need to hear more, not less, about those values. We were remiss in not talking more directly about them - about the fundamental ideals that guide our progressive policies. In the words of Martin Luther King, "we must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."

Unlike the Republican Party, we believe our values unite us as Americans, instead of dividing us. If the White House's idea of bipartisanship is that we have to buy whatever partisan ideas they send us, we're not interested.

In fact, our values are still our greatest strength. Despite resistance, setbacks, and periods of backlash over the years, our values have moved us closer to the ideal with which America began - that all people are created equal. And when Democrats say "all," we mean "all."

We have an Administration that falsely hypes almost every issue as a crisis. They did it on Iraq, and they are doing it now on Social Security. They exploit the politics of fear and division, while ours is a politics of hope and unity.

In the face of their tactics, we cannot move our party or our nation forward under pale colors and timid voices. We cannot become Republican clones. If we do, we will lose again, and deserve to lose. As I have said on other occasions, the last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.

Today, I propose a progressive vision for America, a vision that Democrats must fight for in the months and years ahead - a vision rooted in our basic values of opportunity, fairness, tolerance, and respect for each other.

These founding beliefs are still the essence of the American dream today.

That dream is the North Star of the Democratic Party - the compass that guides our policies and sets our course to freedom and opportunity, to fairness and justice - not just for the few, not just for some, but for all.

The whole address is worth reading.

Juan Cole:

An election in which the names of the candidates in the various lists are still not known 18 days before the polls open is a sick joke, not an election. What could it possibly mean, to vote for anonymous politicians? And note that they are anonymous because otherwise the guerrillas would kill them. Again, I think the election has to go forward, but I just don't expect much from it. The resulting government will be of questionable legitimacy, and the guerrilla war will if anything intensify. The elections are like all the other Wizard of Oz spectacles put on by the Bush administration in Iraq since April 9, 2003 -- the appointment of Garner, the appointment of Bremer, the appointment of an Interim Governing Council, the capture of Saddam, the "transition to sovereignty," etc., etc. Each of these was supposed to be some magical turning point and the beginning of sunshine and rainbows, and instead the situation has deteriorated every single month for the past nearly two years.

He goes on to summarize the results of a State Department survey:

Only 32 percent of Sunni Muslims are "very likely" to vote.

Among Shiites, 87 percent said they are "very likely" to vote.

Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs consider the elections "legitimate."

Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs think the elections will be completely fair.

52 percent of Shiites think the elections will be completely fair.

61% of Sunni Arabs are very concerned about their family's safety.

24% of Shiites are very concerned about their family's safety.

Among Shiites, 76% would boycott if a figure such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani told them to.

Only 32 percent of Sunni Arabs said they would boycott simply because a religious figure asked them to.

88% of Sunnis would stay home if they felt voting would put them in danger.

38% of Shiites say they would stay home if their are threats of violence against polling stations.

I wonder if a quarter of a million dollars would change my mind about something I initially opposed? Let's see... I opposed the war in Iraq, Faith-Based extortions, both PATRIOT acts, the tax "cuts," the cuts in subsidized housing, opening more "roadless" areas in national forests, the ridiculous "marriage amendment" -- OK, pretty much the entire platform on which this administration props itself. So, could I change my mind for a quarter of a million? Hmm, that would pay quite a few years of rent, pay off my old student loans, and then the ones I'm adding now. Oh, wait, I'm in the ethics program...

On an amusingly related note, via Buzzflash:

(from Financial Times) The electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, on Monday handed out cash to journalists to ensure coverage of its press conferences in a throwback to Ba'athist-era patronage ahead of parliamentary elections on January 30.

After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill contained in an envelope.

Many of the journalists accepted the cash - about equivalent to half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper - and one jokingly recalled how Saddam Hussein's regime had also lavished perks on favoured reporters.

The hunt for WMD is officially over. No "Mission Accomplished" banner or anything? Nancy Pelosi has a few words about it.

Molly Ivins:

...Not that I'm accusing anyone of lying, of course, but these people are slicker than bus station chili. Count your change when dealing with Bushies.

I've been storing up some science/evolution items for a more organized posting, hopefully soon. But this came through this morning* in my "SojoMail" and it must be read (*update: mangled syntax corrected):

A UC Berkeley professor was recently denied tenure because his work - showing that Monsanto's genetically modified corn had contaminated many of Mexico's indigenous corn species - went against the interests of the corporation that had provided $25 million for his school's research. His findings had been published in the prestigious journal Nature and his colleagues had supported his tenure bid 32-1.

I clicked on "read more," which leads to this Berkeley Daily Planet story:

(excerpt)...For Ignacio Chapela, a member of the Cal’s department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management faculty since 1995, the day marked the end of the latest chapter of his battles for academic freedom and his challenges to an increasingly corporatized academic culture.

An overflowing crowd of students, faculty, and supporters crammed into his last class. As the 8:30 a.m. class drew to a close, Chapella thanked the crowd and vowed to “keep raising hell.” After a standing ovation, the group led a march to the chancellor’s office in California Hall. There they protested Chapella’s dismissal and called on the university to grant him tenure.

Chapela’s once-promising career at Berkeley foundered on two critical issues.

When Swiss biotech giant Novartis (now renamed Syngenta) struck a five-year $25 million deal with the College of Natural Resources’ Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, Chapela was quick to criticize, citing the obvious potential of conflicts of interest and corporate control of research.

His frankness did nothing to endear him to college Dean Gordon Rausser, one of the architects of the agreement.

But the crowning blow followed from a discovery made by Chapela and one of his graduate students, David Quist, one of the founders of Students for Responsible Research.

A native of Mexico, Chapela has remained deeply involved with his homeland, conducting research and helping indigenous people work toward economic self-sufficiency.

Quist and Chapela discovered strands of genetically modified DNA in the genome of native strands of corn cultivated in the heart of the region where maize was first domesticated.

Chapela and Quist submitted their findings to Nature, the British scientific journal which remains the world’s preeminent scientific publication. Their publication in November 2001 ignited a firestorm.

Their discovery wasn’t the first instance of artificial genetic intrusion. Reports have surfaced of strands of DNA conferring resistance to the pesticide Roundup finding their way into the weeds the herbicide was designed to kill.

But the Chapela/Quist discovery was especially troubling to the agribusiness giants whose patented strains of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are being spread throughout the world and generating huge profits.

The implicit threat their research raised was of homogenized crops, of a reduction of genetic diversity that could render crops far more vulnerable because diverse varieties with a wide range of resistances would vanish into a giant genomic blender.

The attack was instant and fierce. A British web site posted scathing critiques from non-existent scientists who turned out to be creations of a corporate advertising and Nature received letters, one from a UC Berkeley colleague of Chapela, who questioned the scientists’ methodology.

In the end, Nature published a partial retraction—the first in the publication’s history—that advised readers to make their own interpretations of the findings.

Other research has since verified their findings, but the damage was already done.

Chapela was already up for tenure when the Nature furor erupted, but the flap didn’t prevent department members from voting 32 to 1 in favor of tenure, followed by tenure recommendations from both his department chair and the dean of the College of Natural Resources.

On Oct. 3, a five-member Campus Ad Hoc Committee voted unanimously in favor of tenure.

The first blow came on June 5, 2003, when the university’s budget committee made a preliminary vote against tenure.

Then, on Nov. 12, the vice provost asked the ad hoc panel chair to reevaluate tenure in light of new critical letter, prompting the resignation of the chair.

After another negative vote from the budget committee, Chancellor Robert Berdahl denied tenure on Nov. 20, 2003, despite repeated tenure recommendations from the chair and dean.

I thought the story was ringing a distant memory bell, but later in the story I saw why: Tyrone Hayes, from Berkeley's Department of Integrative Biology, had also run into trouble with the same corporation when his research found that the herbicide Atrazine was causing severe deformities in frogs (see here for a related story):

Siegel pointed to another colleague of Chapela’s who had run afoul of corporate power, “Professor Tyrone Hayes of the Department of Integrative Biology, whose research discovered the unintended consequences of corporate intervention into biology.”

Hayes discovered the effects of the pesticide Atrazine on frogs, which developed severe malformations when exposed to the toxins.

Hayes then stepped forward. “If we lose Ignacio, diversity in the biological sciences will decrease by 50 percent. Isn’t it a coincidence that Ignacio and I have wound up on the wrong side of the same corporation that was funding research here at the university?”

Hayes said he had consulted for Novartis and his work had been published in Nature and by the National Academy of Sciences. “I was lucky I had tenure; the vice chancellor wrote a letter saying I shouldn’t be doing any work here on campus.

“This is bigger than frogs or corn.”

Much bigger. And if this interests/frightens you like it does me, check in on Chris Mooney's blog regularly (he writes about "the intersection of science and politics"), and also on Rep. Henry Waxman's web site, Politics and Science.

During the campaign before the 2000 elections, a friend and I bantered about an idea for a fictional "political thriller" about a highly corrupt, highly placed politician who successfully passes himself off as a virtuous leader of the Christian Right. I saved articles and tidbits about our "model" candidate, and even choked down a biography of him, all in the name of research. I think we abandoned the notion within the first year of George W.'s administration, when it became clear that the truth was going to be far, far stranger than the fiction. In any event, Paul Krugman has done a much better outline of his "bad novel" (I don't know how I missed it last week; thanks, Dr. R!):

I've been thinking of writing a political novel. It will be a bad novel because there won't be any nuance: the villains won't just espouse an ideology I disagree with - they'll be hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels.

In my bad novel, a famous moralist who demanded national outrage over an affair and writes best-selling books about virtue will turn out to be hiding an expensive gambling habit. A talk radio host who advocates harsh penalties for drug violators will turn out to be hiding his own drug addiction.

In my bad novel, crusaders for moral values will be driven by strange obsessions. One senator's diatribe against gay marriage will link it to "man on dog" sex. Another will rant about the dangers of lesbians in high school bathrooms.

In my bad novel, the president will choose as head of homeland security a "good man" who turns out to have been the subject of an arrest warrant, who turned an apartment set aside for rescue workers into his personal love nest and who stalked at least one of his ex-lovers.

In my bad novel, a TV personality who claims to stand up for regular Americans against the elite will pay a large settlement in a sexual harassment case, in which he used his position of power to - on second thought, that story is too embarrassing even for a bad novel.

In my bad novel, apologists for the administration will charge foreign policy critics with anti-Semitism. But they will be silent when a prominent conservative declares that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular."

In my bad novel the administration will use the slogan "support the troops" to suppress criticism of its war policy. But it will ignore repeated complaints that the troops lack armor.

The secretary of defense - another "good man," according to the president - won't even bother signing letters to the families of soldiers killed in action.

Last but not least, in my bad novel the president, who portrays himself as the defender of good against evil, will preside over the widespread use of torture.

How did we find ourselves living in a bad novel? It was not ever thus. Hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels have always been with us, on both sides of the aisle. But 9/11 created an environment some liberals summarize with the acronym Iokiyar: it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

The public became unwilling to believe bad things about those who claim to be defending the nation against terrorism. And the hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels of the right, empowered by the public's credulity, have come out in unprecedented force.

Apologists for the administration would like us to forget all about the Kerik affair, but Bernard Kerik perfectly symbolizes the times we live in. Like Rudolph Giuliani and, yes, President Bush, he wasn't a hero of 9/11, but he played one on TV. And like Mr. Giuliani, he was quick to cash in, literally, on his undeserved reputation.

Once the New York newspapers began digging, it became clear that Mr. Kerik is, professionally and personally, a real piece of work. But that's not unusual these days among people who successfully pass themselves off as patriots and defenders of moral values. Mr. Kerik must still be wondering why he, unlike so many others, didn't get away with it.

And Alberto Gonzales must be hoping that senators don't bring up the subject.

The principal objection to making Mr. Gonzales attorney general is that doing so will tell the world that America thinks it's acceptable to torture people. But his confirmation will also be a statement about ethics.

As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales was charged with vetting Mr. Kerik. He must have realized what kind of man he was dealing with - yet he declared Mr. Kerik fit to oversee homeland security.

Did Mr. Gonzales defer to the wishes of a president who wanted Mr. Kerik anyway, or did he decide that his boss wouldn't want to know? (The Nelson Report, a respected newsletter, reports that Mr. Bush has made it clear to his subordinates that he doesn't want to hear bad news about Iraq.)

Either way, when the Senate confirms Mr. Gonzales, it will mean that Iokiyar remains in effect, that the basic rules of ethics don't apply to people aligned with the ruling party. And reality will continue to be worse than any fiction I could write.

"It's a shame we're wasting our time on this today..." said one senator on Thursday, showing the deep commitment to democracy that we've all come to expect from the GOP. No senator would do it in 2000, but - as noted Thursday - Barbara Boxer stood up for electoral reform this year. Thank her here.

Last spring, the progressive political community opposed the appointment of John Negroponte as US ambassador to Iraq in large part because of his fondness for death squads - which he facilitated during his early 80s appointment as ambassador to the Honduras. Mere coicidence, I'm sure, but guess what the Pentagon is talking about using in Iraq?

Meanwhile, though we learned last week that Bush will not let even close advisors give him bad news about Iraq, much of Washington appears eager to find a way out while still proclaiming "Mission (sort of) Accomplished." Go here from time to time to remember some of those who are paying for the president's delusions of triumph. (FYI, the New Yorker has set up a generous archive of all their reporting on the war in Iraq here.)

Marjorie Cohn effectively captures the charms of Alberto Gonzales. Here are some lowlights from the revolting "hearings" which took Gonzales one shameful step closer to confirmation. What a fine poster boy he will make as the US "promotes" human rights around the world. (Nat Hentoff has a good column on the meaningless posturing and absence of moral leadership of the Congress on torture "policy.")

Were you shocked to hear that the administration (indirectly) paid yet another journalist to promote yet another harmful initiative with fake news reports? Armstrong Williams initially said he wanted to do it because "it's something I believe in..." but now he calls it "a mistake." Yes, well, live and learn. Or not.

I heard this this morning and couldn't believe my ears. But now I've seen it in print. Ready? Newt Gingrich is considering a run for the presidency in 2008. (I needed a good laugh.)

Scientists have discovered that rats can distinguish spoken Japanese from spoken Dutch. Of course, they don't understand either, but just so you know -- if you switch from Japanese to Dutch and think you're pulling a fast one on a nearby rat, well, he's gonna know something is up.

Well, this is ironic. I was intending to pop online yesterday - and hope to again later today - in part to note that I have read a couple of nice comments lately, and wanted to acknowledge them. It's nice to have thoughtful feedback. But "John" below surprised me with a protest to my "hateful post" linking to Kevin Drum's malpractice analysis. All I can say is - Wow! Please re-read that post, John - and any other readers who found "knee-jerk liberalism" therein. Even reading between the very brief lines, you could only infer that I agree malpractice happens. And when it does, there have to be protections in place - for everyone. As for your conjecture that I make no effort to understand people who devote their lives to healing -- good grief, I almost wonder if you're confusing my brief post with someone else's. I linked to a study; I didn't tar a profession. I not only appreciate and try to understand physicians and other healers; I spend a great deal of my time with them! They would make my life very uncomfortable if they thought I make the kinds of sweeping judgements you describe.

Now, I must get ready for church, and then I must finish the basement. A furnace is actually coming this week. But I'll check back later with odds and ends I've been storing up. Again, thanks for the comments folks - even John's. It shows you're reading. (But please, lighten up on the "mindreading.") Peace.

"Our people are dying all over the world … to bring democracy to the far corners of the world. Let's fix it here..." Cheers and thanks to Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who challenged the presidential vote count based on the "irregularities" in Ohio. We can safely assume that Florida Rep. Ric Keller speaks for all Republicans when he says of the concerns about voter disenfranchisement and fraud, "Get over it." (Hey, Washington Republicans, "get over it.")

For those who might still be worried that Bush's social security rantings have some basis in reality, Josh Marshall provides some commentary about, and the full text of, a policy memo from a Rove staffer, leaked recently. This "reform" is all about killing a successful program that Republicans hate (at least until they collect from it) -- because of its success:

I wanted to provide to you our latest thinking (not for attribution) on Social Security reform.

I don't need to tell you that this will be one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times. If we succeed in reforming Social Security, it will rank as one of the most significant conservative governing achievements ever. The scope and scale of this endeavor are hard to overestimate.

Let me tell you first what our plans are in terms of sequencing and political strategy. We will focus on Social Security immediately in this new year. Our strategy will probably include speeches early this month to establish an important premise: the current system is heading for an iceberg. The notion that younger workers will receive anything like the benefits they have been promised is fiction, unless significant reforms are undertaken. We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness; it is the pre-condition to authentic reform.

Is the president exhibiting some kind of mental illness? Via Atrios:

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news."

Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse."

Our sources are firm in that they conclude this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

Kevin Drum links to an interesting study on malpractice (one of the president's other current pet peeves - besides social security and bad news), and concludes that the most effective way to cut down on medical malpractice suits is to cut down on medical malpractice. Hmmm... He might be onto something.

Great news from a New Yorkers Against Gun Violence press release:

(NY, NY) New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and its youth chapter ReACTiON Gun Violence, along with Million Mom March members and other concerned residents praised the City Council today for passing a package of gun bills that will reduce the flood of illegal guns in New York City. Illegal guns are responsible for hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries each year. The leading bill in this package is Intro. 365 – The Gun Industry Responsibility Act (GIRA), sponsored by Councilmember David Yassky (D -Brooklyn).

GIRA creates a "Code of Responsible Conduct" for gun dealers and manufacturers. If a dealer or manufacturer fails to comply with the code, they can be held financially liable to a victim of gun violence or their family. The legislation would be the first of its kind, while creating a national standard for the sale of only 1 gun per 30 days per person. GIRA is an incentive for gun manufacturers to use their selling power to make our neighborhoods safer by reducing the number of illegal guns on our streets.

Thanks, J, and congratulations!

If you have the stomach for it, read this and get a little insight into how some "Bushies" think... Kinda clears up their hang-ups about "elitist intellectual liberals" doesn't it? By that they must mean people who can spell and formulate complex sentences without threats or swear words? Lordie, it almost makes me want to tune into to Tucker Carlson for a few minutes.

Oh, indeed... Whatever could Tom DeLay have meant by reading, without comment, Matthew 7:21-27 at the Congressional Prayer Service this week? Here's from verse 24-on:

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

Shortly after the tsunami struck, when we were all beginning to grasp the potential toll, I was speaking with someone who I know to be devoutly Catholic. We were lamenting the terrible loss of life, and she said, "but you see, these things happen because they don't have God." She has a heavy accent, and we were standing in a pouring rain, so I asked her to repeat what she said, to make sure I heard correctly. "They don't have God. Why do you think these terrible things happen in Africa and India and Asia?" Some combination of shock and civility caused me to stammer, "oh, it seems like terrible things happen everywhere, to everyone, regardless of what they believe." But she was shaking her head emphatically, "Not like this! They don't have God like you and I have God." I was drenched and cold by this time, and not really up to introducing her to my considerably more universalist views, so I said, blandly, "well, for now, we can only pray for the comfort and safety of the survivors, and hope that the world is generous." She shrugged and nodded some kind of agreement. So many people turn to simplistic, absolutist explanations like this when faced with inexplicable tragedy. But how many are as depraved as those fun-loving Westboro Baptists, whose god killed 150,000 people in order to eliminate gay Swedish tourists from the beaches? Thank God, literally, for thoughtful voices like this one, from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

...The simplest explanation is that of the 12th century sage, Moses Maimonides. Natural disasters, he said, have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Planets are formed, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocents die.

To wish it were otherwise is in essence to wish that we were not physical beings at all.

Then we would not know pleasure, desire, achievement, freedom, virtue, creativity, vulnerability and love. We would be angels — God's computers — programmed to sing his praise.

The religious question is, therefore, not "Why did this happen?" but "What then shall we do?" That is why, in synagogues, churches, mosques and temples, along with our prayers for the injured and the bereaved, we are asking people to donate money to assist the work of relief.

The religious response is not to seek to understand, thereby to accept. We are not God.

Instead we are the people he has called on to be his "partners in the work of creation." The only adequate religious response is to say: "God, I do not know why this disaster has happened, but I do know what you want of us: to help the afflicted, comfort the bereaved, send healing to the injured and aid those who have lost their livelihoods and homes." We cannot understand God, but we can strive to imitate his love and care.

Good point... "Imagine if every single day there were headlines in every newspaper in the world and every television show saying: '29,000 children died yesterday from preventable diseases and malnutrition...'" Read Michael Lerner's Alternet column for more.

Several days into the New Year! I had intended to pop online to post something quietly salutational - something befitting heartbreaking disasters both natural and manmade - a little closer to, oh, New Year's Day. I don't know what I've been doing since then, frankly.

But today - in my wierd new parttime schedule, with classes 3 weeks away - is a "day off." I spent many hours purging the garage, hoping that by creating physical space through which we can remove the dead Volkswagon-sized furnace, I will cause it to be replaced faster. There is the reality-based factor of a landlord who has yet to contract with someone to bring the new furnace... But a girl can dream. Inside, the house is 50 degrees, with 87% humidity. We're our own little northwest winter rainforest. I haven't stepped from the shower into a dry bath towel in weeks, and the toilet paper feels like someone has already used it. I wouldn't so much mind feeling like I was living in the great outdoors if I was doing it on purpose and we weren't actually paying rent to live indoors. But this too shall pass... Presumably...

How odd was it to turn on TV to "watch the ball drop" on New Year's Eve, with the confetti and the balloons and the people smiling and jumping and cheering and hamming, and, spanning midscreen, right through the festivities, the Times Square 24-hour news ticker displaying updated estimates of the number of people killed and missing in the tsunami? Party on. It just keeps getting worse.

Shirley Chisholm, 1924-2005

And Rep. Matsui, 1941-2005, among many, many things, a talented and skillful opponent of the Bush Social Security Privatization Sham, whose voice will be missed in this debate.

More on that sham from Paul Krugman:

Today let's focus on one piece of those scare tactics: the claim that Social Security faces an imminent crisis.

That claim is simply false. Yet much of the press has reported the falsehood as a fact. For example, The Washington Post recently described 2018, when benefit payments are projected to exceed payroll tax revenues, as a "day of reckoning."

Here's the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the restof the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund.

When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund. And the trust fund will last for a long time: until 2042, says the Social Security Administration; until 2052, says the Congressional Budget Office; quite possibly forever, say many economists, who point out that these projections assume that the economy will grow much more slowly in the future than it has in the past.

If you couldn't quite put your finger on why you've been feeling a little despondent since November 3, Scott O'Reilly helps...

At America’s founding, a woman stopped to ask Benjamin Franklin what kind of government we would soon have. “A republic,” the founding father replied, “if you can keep her.”

As historian Gore Vidal notes, Franklin was certain that America’s grand experiment would someday end in tyranny. Is that day upon us? I’m sure Franklin would turn in his grave at the irony that a nation that cast off the yoke of an oppressive hereditary monarchy -- exemplified by the mad King George -- now finds itself in the thrall of yet another hereditary dynasty headed in recent years by a father and son pair of American aristocrats, both named, as fate would have it, George.

Contrary to some caricatures, America is not yet tyrannous. However, the past four years under the Bush administration have ushered in some ominous trends: one hijacked election; a radical right cabal that controls all three branches of government; journalists facing prison time for not divulging their sources (what has happened to freedom of the press under the First Amendment?); and an administration that has demonstrated a selective disregard for the Constitution, international laws and agreements, not to mention “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”

That the American people, by a slim margin, essentially endorsed the administration’s course in 2004 is discouraging, but it should not be surprising; civilizations and societies have frequently embraced disastrous leaders in times of strife, danger, and challenge. If the past is prologue, the future portends many perils on the path America is taking. Let me explain why.

The historian Arnold Toynbee studied the life cycle of civilizations. Of the roughly two-dozen great civilizations --Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Inca, etc. -- all but our present Western civilization has met its fate. There is a common pattern, Toynbee argues, by which civilizations flower, mature, and ultimately disintegrate because they fail to address challenges in creative and constructive ways.

Read the whole thing.

A worthwhile question from George Monbiot:

...Why must the relief of suffering, in this unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on the whims of citizens and the appeals of pop stars and comedians? Why, when extreme poverty could be made history with a minor redeployment of public finances, must the poor world still wait for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets?

The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities. And the one that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have promised to the victims of the tsunami still falls far short of the amounts required, it is partly because the contingency fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has been spent on blowing people to bits in Iraq.

The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half day's spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war.

It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war to the total foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The United States gives just over $16bn in foreign aid: less than one ninth of the money it has burnt so far in Iraq.

The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because, when all the other excuses for the invasion of Iraq were stripped away, both governments explained that it was being waged for the good of the Iraqis. Let us, for a moment, take this claim at face value. Let us suppose that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with power, domestic politics or oil, but were, in fact, components of a monumental aid programme. And let us, with reckless generosity, assume that more people in Iraq have gained as a result of this aid programme than lost.

To justify the war, even under these wildly unsafe assumptions, George Bush and Tony Blair would have to show that the money they spent was a cost-efficient means of relieving human suffering. As it was sufficient to have made a measurable improvement in the lives of all the 2.8 billion people living in absolute poverty, and as there are only 25 million people in Iraq, this is simply not possible. Even if you ignore every other issue - such as the trifling matter of mass killing - the opportunity costs of the Iraq war categorise it as a humanitarian disaster. Indeed, such calculations suggest that, on cost grounds alone, a humanitarian war is a contradiction in terms.

But our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair's New Year message was almost identical to that of his tear-jerking insistence that we understand the Iraqi people must be bombed for their own good. The US marines who have now been dispatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were, just a few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this, remember, is an illegal war), smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Even within the official aid budgets the two aims are confused: $8.9bn of the aid money the US spends is used for military assistance, anti-drugs operations, counter-terrorism and the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund (otherwise known as the Halliburton benevolent trust). For Bush and Blair, the tsunami relief operation and the Iraq war are both episodes in the same narrative of salvation. The civilised world rides out to rescue foreigners from their darkness.

While they spend the money we gave them to relieve suffering on slaughtering the poor, the world must rely for disaster relief on the homeless man emptying his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in helping people as they are in killing them, no one would ever go hungry.

Another horrible day in Baghdad. As Juan Cole remarks rather drily, "If things go on like this the real question won't be whether you could hold elections but rather whether the members of the new government could be kept alive."

And everything's under control in Afghanistan (remember that place?)

"It would have been the right thing to do, but it was becoming a distraction..." Ah, I see. So the House has momentarily backed off what Atrios called the "Republican Ethics Repeal Act of 2005." But not without a little bipedal swaggering at Nancy Pelosi - threatening to go after her for a campaign financing violation for which she has already been fined. But that would trigger intense examination of a dozen or so Republicans who probably don't want the attention, and thus they retreat - glaring over their shoulders. Well, if limiting the powers of the House ethics panel can be considered a "retreat." Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But James Dobson has his priorities in order! He's threatening "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if his judicial candidates are not confirmed this year, and he'll personally target half a dozen Democratic senators. Yes, this would be the same humble servant of God who believes he personally delivered the election to George Bush this year.

Does this mean it's no longer cool to be a lesbian? After reading several different obits about Susan Sontag, including the one I posted here last week, a friend said, "I could have sworn she was lovers with Annie Leibovitz, but none of them mentioned that." Apparently, they thought it in bad taste?

I guess we're supposed to "give it a rest" in Ohio? Suck it up and declare ourselves legitimately (if not fairly and squarely) beaten, as Kos recommends (of course, he has a good point about the buggability of paper trails)? It will be a very dark day when Congress officially accepts this vote, and some dark years if some major electoral reform is not accomplished. The mainstream media has definitely moved on, if they ever tarried on this at all, but not the Columbus Free Press. Via Common Dreams, here's a segment of their ongoing coverage:

Some 14.6% of Ohio votes were cast on electronic machines with no paper trail, rendering them unauditable. But on election night, electronic machines and computer software were used throughout the state to tabulate paper ballots.

The contrasts are striking. Officially, Bush built a narrow margin of roughly 51% versus 48% for Kerry based on votes counted on election night. But among the 147,400 provisional and absentee ballots that were counted AFTER election night, Kerry received 54.46 percent of the vote. These later totals came from counts done by hand, as opposed to counts done by computer tabulators, many of which came from Diebold.

Many of the electronic voting machines with no paper trail also came from Republican-dominated companies, including some from Diebold, whose owner, Wally O'Dell, infamously guaranteed in 2003 that he would deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush. Diebold also manufactured many of the tabulators used to count punch card ballots. In the vast majority of Ohio precincts, those tabulations were not rechecked or recounted. In at least two counties, technicians from Diebold and from Triad dismantled all or part of such tabulating machines prior to the recount. In Shelby County, election officials admitted that they discarded crucial tabulator records, rendering a meaningful recount impossible.

In many cases, the recounts were conducted not by public election officials, but by private corporations, many of them with Republican ties.

In other precincts, impossibly high voter turnout figures -- nearly all of them adding to Bush's official margin -- remain unexplained. In the heavily Republican southern county of Perry, Blackwell certified one precinct with 221 more votes than registered voters. Two precincts -- Reading S and W. Lexington G -- were let stand in the officially certified final vote count with voter turnouts of roughly 124% each.

In Miami County's Concord South West precinct, Blackwell certified a voter turnout of 98.55 percent, requiring that all but 10 voters in the precinct cast ballots. But a freepress.org canvas easily found 25 voters who said they did not vote. In the nearby Concord South precinct, Blackwell certified an apparently impossible voter turnout of 94.27 percent. Both Concord precincts went heavily for Bush.

By contrast, in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, amidst record turnouts, a predominantly African-American precinct, Cleveland 6C, was certified with just a 07.85 percent turnout.

The official count was 45 votes for Kerry versus one for Bush, in a precinct where the day's overall voter turnout would have indicated eight or nine times as many voters.

Independent statistical studies of Cuyahoga County indicate that if the prevailing statewide voter turnout was really 60 percent of the registered voters, as seems likely based on turnout in other major cities in Ohio, Kerry’s margin of victory in Cleveland alone was wrongly reduced in the certified returns by 20,000 or more votes.

New research has added confirmation to apparent widespread fraud -– most likely in the computer tabulation stage -- in at least three heavily Republican southern Ohio counties.

Mathematical researcher Richard Hayes Phillips, PhD., has shown that Clermont, Butler and Warren Counties, surrounding Cincinnati, netted Bush votes on par with his margin of victory in the state. But for Bush to have built up his margins in these three counties, 13,500 Democrats would have had to have split their tickets by voting for Supreme Court Chief Justice candidate Ellen Connally while simultaneously voting for Bush, by all accounts a virtually impossible event.

The numbers are startling. In Butler Country, Bush officially was given 109,866 votes. But conservative GOP Chief Justice Moyer was given only 68,407, a negative discrepancy of more than 40,000 votes. Meanwhile, Moyer's opponent, a pro-gay, pro-abortion African-American liberal from Cleveland, was officially credited with 61,559 votes to John Kerry's 56,234.

The Blackwell-approved tally would mean that more than 5,000 Butler County voters ignored Kerry's name near the top of the ballot, but jumped to the bottom of the ballot to vote for Connally. And this was to have happened in an area where some 40,000 Republicans did exactly the opposite, voting for the President while skipping the race for Chief Justice. Few who are familiar with Butler County politics believe such an outcome to be even remotely credible.

In Warren County, Bush was credited with 68,035 votes to Kerry’s 26,043 votes. But just as the county's votes were about to be counted after the polls closed on November 2, the Board of Elections claimed a Homeland Security alert authorized them to throw out all Democratic and independent observers, including the media. The vote count was thus conducted entirely by Republicans.

Here Blackwell's certified tally says the slightly funded Connally somehow outpolled Kerry by more than 2,400 votes, nearly 10 percent of his county wide total.

Phillips’ latest analysis was conducted at the precinct-by-precinct level. When looking at returns before they have been blended into countywide figures, Phillips says the suspect nature of the outcome in these three counties is heightened by the fact that precincts within them yield wildly inconsistent data. A few municipalities show Republicans and Democrats voting along party lines – as one would expect. But throughout most of these three counties are precincts with massive margins for Bush that are inconsistent with the rest of the counties and impossible to conceive except by some sort of manipulation.

This is an almost certain indicator of fraud, says Phillips.

The statistical analysis of these results show Blackwell’s certified vote is deeply flawed.

It does not, however, identify how the fraud was perpetrated. Based in part on these inconsistencies, the Election Protection legal team has filed suit with the state Supreme Court, asking it to overturn Ohio's presidential election.

But despite the fact that the contention rests in large part on Moyer's own re-election campaign, the Chief Justice refuses to recuse himself from this and related cases. He has helped write decisions denying a further public investigation into the count and recount processes, and has voted to protect Blackwell from providing public testimony under legal subpoena.

Well, for the moment, let me close with a Psalm. Of sorts.

TWENTY-FIRST [CENTURY] PSALM

A fool is my shepherd. I shall not think.
He maketh me to bog down in a quagmire.
He leadeth me beside dirty waters.
He destroyeth my ozone.
He leadeth me down paths to the extreme right, for his lobbyists' sake.

Yea, though I walk through relatively safe streets,
I do fear evil (the threat level is orange),
for thou hast scared me. My assault rifle comforteth me.
Thou anointest my car with oil. My deficit runneth over.
Thou preparest my table with fast food in the presence of my television.
Surely paranoia and resentment will follow me all the days of my life.
And I will dwell in this Empire of Fools till I die, uninsured.

--Lawrence Swan, Letters, The Nation