We can’t even do it now, with at least 1 billion currently hungry. A new paper in Science describes how this can be done. The article is actually positive and provides solutions. The abstract reads:

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, and the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food, and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably. A multifaceted and linked global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security, different components of which are explored here.

The New Republic summarizes well and the recommendations are heavy on science and technology as a way forward. The main ideas are:

• Boost crop yields and increase production limits
• Reduce waste
• Eat less red meat
• Expand aquaculture

These recommendations are sound, but are going to require a massive rethinking to our global food system, including restructuring, major policy shifts and developing countries playing nice to the developing world. Tough tasks ahead but I think we are close to a paradigm shift.

It’s the political equivalent of the Hail Mary pass.

The  man Republicans often look to for the messages to help sell their policies showed up last week at the National Press Club with the Environmental Defense Fund–of all groups–with new poll results designed to help climate change advocates breathe new life into the  stagnant issue.

Pollster and political communications expert Frank Luntz, who coined the phrase “death tax” in the battle to repeal the estate tax, has come up several phrases to help EDF and other climate change legislation supporters overcome a skeptical public and an even more skeptical U.S. Senate.   

A blog posting in the New Republic outlines Luntz’ recommendations.   As far as the public is concerned, Luntz says the least important component about climate change is the term “climate change.”

Luntz insists that Americans would support a cap on carbon emissions—80 percent of Dems, but also 43 percent of Republicans he surveyed are either definitely or pretty sure climate change is a problem that’s caused in part by humans. But he doesn’t believe cap-and-trade can pass as long as “it’s called ‘cap-and-trade,’ and all the messaging that’s been used against it. The title has become so demonized that they’ve got to come up with a new name.”

“Cleaner, safer, healthier” is more effective than ’sustainability,” Luntz said.      

The opinion research was done in October and November — before Copenhagen (and probably before Climate Gate).

Luntz found that nuclear energy is increasingly popular with the electorate by a better than 3 to 1 ratio.  Only 19 percent are hostile to it and 64 percent of the public favors nuclear energy.    According to Luntz, people like nuclear because it’s:

• American, which matters to them
• It’s more efficient
• No carbon emissions

In the news conference, Luntz said environmentalists are “horrible communicators because they so desperately want everyone to agree with them so they preach rather than educate.”

Illinois Farm Bureau strongly opposes cap and trade legislation.  Not only would it put America at a competitive disadvantage and do nothing to change the climate, it would shortchange the energy needs of our economy, increase the cost of energy for farmers and consumers, kill jobs, and create incentives for farmers to grow trees rather than food for a growing world population.

Interesting debate on coverage of Haiti and the aid operation. I was rather unimpressed by this view, from The New Republic…

…in Haiti, the dozens of redundant dispatches are stressing an already perilously fragile situation, as all the journalists scrambling to get into the country chew up valuable capacity and resources. Surely there’s a better way.

The better way, Noam Scheiber goes on to say, is to pool coverage – for one team to be allowed access and for coverage to be spread through other media organisations, a common practice during dull Royal visits, say, or in situations where it might be too dangerous to have multiple teams roaming around.

When it comes to openness and access, like most journalists I’m usually in favour of more coverage not less. There’s a nice rebuttal here too about how Haitians have welcomed journalists who have come to tell their stories. In general, few things are improved by reduced coverage. That was until I read Andy Kershaw’s powerful critique of media stereotyping and the failings of the aid response. After describing the BBC’s Matt Frei as an ”incongruously ample figure around Port-au-Prince”, he goes on to pour scorn upon the alternate realities of Frei’s words compared with the pictures.

Over the weekend we saw him anticipating an outbreak of unrest, standing before a crowd of thousands of hungry, humiliated Haitians as they waited, patiently and quietly, to be given rations by UN soldiers. Their dignity and stoicism seemed to escape Frei who was, in any case, looking away from them while ranting about the inevitability of looming bloodshed – conspicuously unlikely, judging from the evidence of his own report. (When he is not almost tumescent about violence, Frei speculates and pontificates pompously to camera, or booms at earthquake victims in French. Most Haitians don’t speak French. They speak Creole).

Next in his sights are the aid agencies, for their obsessions with security, logistics and procedure in a country that Kershaw has grown to love through discovering its music over decades of visits, a country, which though poor and troubled, is not peopled by savages…

These obsessions indicate not only a self-serving and self-important careerist culture among some, though not all, aid workers (although wide experience of the profession in Haiti and across Africa tells me it is more common than donors would like to think), but that the magnitude of the crisis has paralysed them into a gibbering strike force of box-tickers. Most worryingly, it reveals that many – even selfless – NGO workers on the ground haven’t a clue about the country and its people.

It’s powerful stuff. If we are have to have a “disaster pool” will someone please make sure Andy Kershaw is in it?

Response from Master Yoda:

“You feel like what?”

I feel like having a Galactic rant!

Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope
Laid-up with a rotten cold, I was watching the film (again) late yesterday afternoon. A few, little aspects & details of Episode IV which stand-out to myself! Fellow Star Wars geeks, take note!

• Wuher, the bartender at Mos Eisley cantina, bears a strong resemblance to Anakin Skywalker’s one-time master, Watto.
  

  Wuher

  

  Watto

• Princess Leia Organa: her lips are always covered in lip gloss, and her PINK eyeshadow makes her look like she’s having an allergic reaction to a cosmetic product. Furthermore, as far as continuity goes, in some scenes on the Death Star, her buns are perfect, then slightly disheveled, but despite having been tortured, mind-probed, stuck in a trash compactor, and running around, escaping Stormtroopers, her buns somehow miraculously become perfectly coiffed again! Also, in some scenes, she has a lovely golden complexion, but in others, she looks like she’s anemic!
• Leia was tortured & mind-probed by the IT-O Interrogator. The droid has VAGINAL FORCEPS attached to it. What. The. Force. Was Vader a fly-by-night obstetrician? Were the forceps there in the event that during a torture session, the births of little Jedi twins became difficult, the babies were somehow stuck in a Galactic sized birth canal, and he had to “use the Forceps” to get them outta there?
  

  IT-O Interrogator: note the forceps!

  

  Forceps!

  

  Jedi twins?

  Perhaps there ought to have been a speculum attached to the IT-O Interrogator, too, so that — y’know, if Leia hadn’t kept-up with her annual/bi-annual pap smears, she could have conveniently set her feet into a pair of Imperial stirrups, and had cells scraped from her royal cervix? (cytology requisitions: necessary to screen for cervical cancer, even in “a galaxy far, far away”!)

  I dunno about you, ladies, but I’d consider having a cold metal speculum or the chilly, gloved, mechanical hand of Lord Vader shoved into my “docking bay” as torture in itself. No IT-O Interrogator necessary!

• Leia. Get her fucking name right! It’s pronounced “LAY-uh”, not “Lee-ah”! Grand Moff Tarkin mispronounces her name, as does Threepio (once), as do two senior members of the Rebel Alliance on Yavin-4.
• Leia: despite having been raised on Alderaan, she momentarily lapses into … a British accent. Warning: temporarily lapsing into a British accent may confuse your captors, but inevitably could lead to the destruction of one’s home planet!
• Moff Tarkin appears to have o.b. Tampons sticking out of both of his breast pockets. Perhaps with a lady aboard the Death Star, he was being gentlemanly, and was the only man considerate enough to have plugs available for his female prisoner, Leia. You know — because maybe Leia’s bitchy, snippy demeanor was a sign that Aunt Flo was soon to arrive. It wouldn’t have been very fair to deny the lady such necessities — especially since she was wearing a WHITE dress!
  
  

  Grand Moff Tarkin & his handy supply of o.b. tampons.

  

  “Rebel Alliance Regular Absorbency”, “Sith-Sized Super Absorbency”, and “Galactic Gusher Super-Plus Size”!

  “Obi Wan Tampons: Freedom & Reliable Protection For Women of The New Republic!”

• Stormtroopers are really, really, REALLY lousy shots! They never seem to strike ANYTHING when firing their blasters! Very easy for Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and the droids to escape! Perhaps Stormtroopers’ helmets compromise their vision, or they all have ADHD — when they attempt to aim at a target, they’re momentarily distracted, and their shots are fired aimlessly? (“Ready … aim …. f- … oh, look! A butterfly!”)
• Stormtroopers are Clones, all of whom were carbon copies of Jango Fett (Old Republic). Carbon copies: same height, build, stature, appearance, and voices. Stormtroopers of the New Republic: not-so-much! They appear to range in height, and all have different voices. Perhaps like the RCMP, the Galactic Empire was desperate for recruits, and lowered it’s admission standards?
  

  Jango Fett, his Clones/Stormtrooper predecessors.

• “Hell”. A few characters use this term, and/or make reference to it. What is this “Hell” they speak-of, and if there is supposed to be an almighty “Force” (not Heaven), why & how in the Force would they make reference to an imaginary place written in The Bible? Were Mormons going from spaceport to spaceport, galaxy to galaxy, and ship to ship, soliciting everyone as they do here on Earth? Were born-again, hardcore Evangelical types damning everyone to “Hell” there, too? Was hatemonger Fred Phelps preaching his Galactically evil bullshit amongst the Empire, too? “God hates faggot Wookies!”, or “Ewoks shall burn in Hell!”? Was Emporor Palpatine actually … Fred Phelps?
  

  Hatemonger Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church.

  

  Phelps/Palpatine?

• Aurebesh. This is the writing system used to represent Basic Language. Like our English alphabet, each letter and number had pronunciations.
  

  Aurebesh Alphabet -- sans numerical references.

  
  As each letter is pronounced differently, how could Lucas name the droids “C-P30″ and “R2-D2″? I don’t know how to pronounce the Aurebesh numbers, but …

  “C-P30″ = “CreshPethThreeOsk”.
  “R2-D2″ = “ReshTwo-DornTwo”.

  They don’t have quite the same ring to them, do they? **shaking head**



Obi-Wan & his burnt orange complexion.

• During his lightsabre duel with Vader, Obi Wan’s sporting a wee bit too much Mehron or Joe Blasco foundation: theatrical pancake. And it’s kinda orangey. It matches perfectly with his ORANGE lips. (Ah, the 70’s, when everything was glorious shades of Tupperware Burnt Orange, Harvest Gold, and Olive Green! Even in a galaxy far, far away …)
• Some of the commanding officers of the Rebel Alliance appear to moonlight as employees of … Purina. Perhaps times were tough, and to earn a few extra Galactic credits on the side, supplementing their income, they … manufactured kibble for Nerfs?
  

  Galactic Purina

• The Death Star target was like a big … vagina. Before the Rebel attack on the Death Star, their commander sounded like he was giving the men detailed instructions on how to: maneuver their X and Y-Wing fighters (penis) to approach (make-love to a woman) the target (vagina, cervix, and G-spot), unload their proton torpedos (blow their load), and begin a chain reaction to cause the Death Star to explode (give her a big, fat, mind-blowing orgasm).
  

  “weakness in the battle station”

  “The approach shall not be easy. You’re required to maneuver straight down this trench, and skim the surface to this point”

  “The target area is only two meters wide. It’s a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port.” (wait. maybe he was giving them sodomy instructions — to a two meter wide no-no hole/exhaust port!?)

  “The shaft leads directly to a reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction, which should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set-off a chain reaction.”

  “And this, flyboys, is called a vagina!”

• Rebel pilot Jek Tono Porkins. No explanation necessary.
  

  Galactic gluttony!

Now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have to go Force choke someone …

Yale’s Jacob Hacker is the guy who came up with “the public option” and so naturally he’s pretty passionate about it.  You can hear his defense of the idea on Where We Live in September.  But, this weekend in The New Republic, he writes about why the eviscerated Senate health care bill still needs to be passed:

I was devastated when it was killed at the hands of Senator Joe Lieberman, not least because of what it said about our democracy — that a policy consistently supported by a strong majority of Americans could be brought down by a recalcitrant Senate minority.

It would therefore be tempting for me to side with Howard Dean and other progressive critics who say that health care reform should now be killed.

It would be tempting, but it would be wrong.

Hacker was pretty “hacked off” at what he’d called the “perversion of the public plan” but says this watered-down version of the bill still includes vital reforms, which he says will have the end result of getting “good affordable health care for every American.”  He has, in the past, supported lawmakers who took a stand, and refused to support bills without a public option.

We’re talking with Hacker about coming back on Where We Live in the next few weeks.

You can read his expanded public plan ideas here.

Does Tiger Woods have the right to be attracted to whatever sort of woman he’s attracted to? Not in the racist minds of liberals like Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post.

Here’s my real question, though: What’s with the whole Barbie thing?

No offense to anyone who actually looks like Barbie, but it really is striking how much the women who’ve been linked to Woods resemble one another. I’m talking about the long hair, the specific body type, even the facial features. Mattel could sue for trademark infringement.

If Woods had only had affairs with dark skinned black women with big hair, would we be entitled to ask what was wrong with him?

But the world is full of beautiful women of all colors, shapes and sizes — some with short hair or almond eyes, some with broad noses, some with yellow or brown skin. Woods appears to have bought into an “official” standard of beauty that is so conventional as to be almost oppressive.

There are many patterns that appear in the qualities of the women Tiger is alleged to have bedded. To view them only through the lense of race represents the sort of narrow minded bigotry that liberals are expert at: consider Harvard Profiling Professional Skip Gates, who said he knew he was in danger when he saw a white cop on his door step.

His taste in mistresses leaves the impression of a man who is, deep down, both insecure and image-conscious — a control freak even when he’s committing “transgressions.”

The pattern I see in the women Tiger is linked to is tackiness. But that’s just me. Liberals are taught, and they seem to believe, that racial distinctions trump all others – even when it comes to sexual desire! Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe:

Few cultural ideas are more pernicious than the race fetish – the regard for skin color or ethnicity as the most significant factor in human behavior. Few falsehoods have caused more misery.

The good news is that except for the racists in the Democratic Party, there is nary a mention, let alone any outrage, over the idea that the Black Man is sleeping with the White Women – or, indeed, over the idea that he’s married to a White Woman. Listen to the shrugging shoulders across the land. This thought comes from John McWhorter in New Republic.

The pursuit of happiness is antithetical to hunkering behind the barricades of wary, defensive ethnic separatism when the times no longer require it. Pretending that they do denies what the Civil Rights heroes of yore devoted their lives to giving us all.

It is time for Americans to learn that we can never move beyond race until we move beyond liberals. Stop voting for Democrats.

(Before I even begin, this is all apropos of the fact that I’m rereading a few of the older books in the Expanded Universe)

It’s basically an article of faith among Star Wars fans that the Galactic Empire — as depicted in the original trilogy — is purely evil and the Alliance to Restore the Republic (or Rebel Alliance for short) is unambiguously good.  And there’s a lot of solid evidence for that assessment.  On-screen, we’ve seen the Empire wipe out the Jedi, destroy entire worlds, enslave peaceful peoples, and declare that their ultimate aim is perpetual rule through fear of force alone.  Indeed, the Empire is so evil that it actively rewards cruelty: Grand Moff Tarkin — the commanding officer of the first Death Star — was awarded his title after slaughtering hundreds of anti-Imperial protesters in cold blood.

All of that said, I’m not so certain that the operating philosophy behind the Galactic Empire — that despotism is necessary to maintaining the peaceful cohesion of a galaxy-spanning empire –is entirely wrong.  Especially since we have enough examples of republican forms of galactic government to know that the alternative isn’t that much better.  The previous galaxy-spanning political unit — the Galactic Republic — collapsed largely because it was too large to be effective.  The Republic didn’t even possess the strength or legitimacy to handle a trade dispute on a minor core world, much less an existential threat like the Clone Wars.  On the other end of the timeline is the successor regime to the Rebel Alliance, the New Republic.  The New Republic was, like its namesake, a loose confederation of worlds united by common economic ties and a representative body.  It maintained a large military, for the purpose of defense and peacekeeping, and was firmly committed to respecting the rights of sentient beings.  It was also a complete failure.

For the full 23 years of its existence, the New Republic was beset by division and problems of legitimacy.  Consensus was habitually hard to come by, even in times — like the Thrawn crisis — when it was absolutely necessary.  Indeed, the New Republic fell precisely because it couldn’t muster the cohesion or will to defend itself against the extra-galactic Yuuzhan Vong, despite possessing the combined resources of an entire galaxy.

Now, to me at least, this suggests that a single galactic, representative governing body — no matter how well intentioned — is simply incapable of dealing with such an overwhelming diversity of cultures, viewpoints and agendas (remember, we’re talking about trillions of people and tens of thousands of different lifeforms).  If you’re committed to something vaguely democratic, the only real option is a galactic confederation — not dissimilar to the Federation in the Star Trek continuity — where each member planet or sector has extremely limited ties to a central “governing” body of limited authority.  Of course, there are real threats from within and outside the galaxy, and there is a real need for a centralized authority, if only for collective defense.  In which case, it seems that the only way you could have effective collective defense is by forcing each member planet to provide for a common army and navy, which requires enough force for coercion, which in this context can only be successful if the regime has little respect for rights: i.e. the Empire.

Palpatine was incredibly brutal and evil, but he also understood — correctly — that successful galactic dominion requires the kind of cruelty and brute force that we see on display in the movies.  Otherwise the whole thing will collapse into petty-infighting and jealousy.

Global e-waste dumping pollution

Google bringing free WiFi to 47 U.S. airports, $ for charity

Dirty truth about rural broadband from Free Press

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater approved payoffs of Iraqi officials

New evidence of Pharma’s sweetheart deal from New Republic

Google says Rupert Murdoch can go ahead and take off stories

Dalai Lama sticks his thumb in the Dragon’s eye

Blaming the workers by Dave Lindorff

NY Times publishes crowd-funded science article

Denying responsibility for the wars one cheers on by Glenn Greenwald

Former Sierra Club enviro Mike McGinn wins Seattle mayor race

How the US funds the Taliban from The Nation

Video shows Taliban with US weapons

The Department of Defense is rejoicing about its recruiting success in fiscal year 2009, due perhaps to the recession. The Washington Post writes:

The Pentagon, which made the announcement Tuesday, said the economic downturn and rising joblessness, as well as bonuses and other factors, had led more qualified youths to enlist.

The military has not seen such across-the-board successes since the all-volunteer force was established in 1973, after Congress ended the draft following the Vietnam War. In recent years, the military has often fallen short of some of its recruiting targets. The Army, in particular, has struggled to fill its ranks, admitting more high school dropouts, overweight youths and even felons.

Yet during the current budget year, which ended Sept. 30, recruiters met their targets in both numbers and quality for all components of active-duty and reserve forces.

Using data from the Department of Defense, Zubin Jelveh charts the percentage of recruits over the past two decades who have attained at least a high school diploma. During recessions, this ratio “tends to rise while in expansions the reverse is true.”

Michelle Goldberg’s New Republic piece on Alex Jones has been getting some attention. I kept running into Jones when I was writing CULTS, CONSPIRACIES, AND SECRET SOCIETIES, but anyone who spends any time on the Internet is likely to have seen stories about Satan and Moloch-worshipping Skull & Bones Bilderbergers posted on one of his Infowars or Prison Planet websites, which link in turn to his books, movies, and radio shows about 9/11, the New World Order, and Obama’s on-going efforts to build a totalitarian internationalist police state. Infowars has posted a rejoinder to Goldberg by Paul Joseph Watson–Bilderberg Media Front Smears Alex Jones In Feeble Hit Piece –which pretty much tells you all you need to know about Infowars’ characteristic tone and point of view. Goldberg described Jones’s Obama conspiracizing as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion stripped of any reference to Jews”; Infowars responds by accusing Goldberg 1) Of being a tool of Zionists, and 2) of race-baiting:

Miss Goldberg, is there no end to your cynicism? Don’t you know that constantly invoking anti-semitism as a means of smearing your political adversaries doesn’t work any longer? Perhaps the rapidly declining circulation figures of The New Republic should offer some clue to attest to this fact?

Desperate attempts at race pimping as a means to get us all at each other’s throats is so 1990’s. When will you realize that your lame demonization techniques no longer have any effect on a reader with two brain cells left to rub together?

But Goldberg (who is very far from a neo-Conservative war-monger, an Israel-first ADL mouthpiece, or a shill for global corporatism) wasn’t so much out to take down Jones himself as she was the elected officials and mainstream pundits who have begun to appear on his show: not just Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Noam Chomsky (who in some respects have always been men of the fringe), but Congressman Louie Gohmert, who listened politely as Jones spoke about the “White House science czar calling for putting stuff in the water to sterilize us,” and Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano and CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

Until Obama’s election, Jones’s paranoia was non-partisan; he hated the Clintons and the Bushes equally as quintessential members of the Global Elite. Obama’s election didn’t change Jones, but it’s made a lot of Republicans insane–and desperate enough to reach out to Jones’s rabid constituency. “Jones has become politically salient,” Goldberg writes, “because much of the right is as unhinged as he is.” And that’s something to be scared of.

Leon Wieseltier does not rank as a must read for me.  I suppose it’s because he helped push Andrew Sullivan out at the New Republic, and I imagine that he has some of the Marty Peretz Jewish neo-con hawkish qualities that I totally disagree with.  But this little takedown of New York Times Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati is so good I had to share.

Marzorati blogged the following about the essence and ideology of the NYTM:

Call it Urban Modern. That is, I think it reflects not a left-or-right POLITICAL ideology but a geographical one, the mentality of the place [sic] it is created: 21st Century Manhattan. So: the Magazine reflects a place where women have professional ambition, where immigrants are welcome, and where gays and lesbians can be themselves (if not marry, yet). The Magazine also reflects a place where being rich is not a bad thing, where fashion is not a sign of superficiality, and where individualism is embraced. Here, arguing is not bad manners. Here, a chief way of loving your hometown is criticizing it: For, say, not doing enough for those (children, the poor, the homeless) who are most vulnerable. Here, art is never spoken of in moral terms, and most aspects of everyday life–food and drink and bathroom fixtures–are mostly spoken of in aesthetic terms. And here, as E.B. White famously wrote, it tends to be those who come from elsewhere full of longing who make the place what it is. More generally, we reflect a place where change is not a threat, where doubt and complexity are more TRUE than certainty, and where most everything non-criminal is tolerated–except a bad haircut.

Weiseltier does a fine job of calling out all of the idiocy in that description.  There’s no ideology there, no real call to disagree and fight back against the world.  Just this happy-go-lucky idea of 21st century Manhattan, bathed in ethereal light.  I won’t repeat all of those apt criticisms; read them for yourself.

What struck about Marzorati’s concept was how very, very boring it is.  Listen, I have no problem with Manhattan per se.  I’ve got loads of friends and family who grew up there or are living their currently.  I’m grateful for having spent so much time there, eating a wonderful restaurants, seeing shows, enjoying the landscape, etc.  But I would never, in a million years, want to spend a lifetime in New York City.  And that is said knowing full well that my intellectual brethren live there, at least more than they live in rural Ohio.  I would be thrilled to eat lox, great Italian, and Chinese everyday for the rest of my life — I would be even more thrilled to know that I never had to deal with another ignorant, redneck, right-wing conservative again.

But I wouldn’t do it, even for those benefits.  Because New York is insufferable.  It’s full of people who feel compelled to say things like this:

where women have professional ambition, where immigrants are welcome, and where gays and lesbians can be themselves (if not marry, yet). The Magazine also reflects a place where being rich is not a bad thing, where fashion is not a sign of superficiality, and where individualism is embraced. Here, arguing is not bad manners. Here, a chief way of loving your hometown is criticizing it…

Oh please.  As if Manhattan is the only place in the world where women have professional ambition and gays and lesbians can be themselves.  Is being rich a bad thing elsewhere (or, as Wiestelier pointed out, is being poor a bad thing in New York City)?  Everywhere but New York City?

The tone is so irritatingly cliche I could kill myself.  You are so unique, New Yorkers! You charming folks who understand fashion and wealth and individualism — even while being boiled down to little more than a collective mass of folks who understand fashion, wealth and individualism.  It sure is a good thing you have the NYTM to read every Sunday, speaking to your sensibilities and needs.

I get that Marzorati was being tongue-in-cheek.  His final line about New Yorkers tolerating everything but a bad haircut proves it.  But he nonetheless manages to encapsulate everything I disdain about the New York attitude, right down to that holier-than-thou mindset.  Maybe it’s the new-Midwesterner in me.  I don’t know.  But I was glad to see a little comeuppance thrown his way.

The New Republic has often drawn my ire for its steadfast support of the status quo, its corporatism, its hostility to the consumer, and, at times, its open agitation for war. I therefore take all the more pleasure in directing you to this informative piece on the Federal Reserve and its bungling of our current crisis. One would hardly expect such clear analysis from a publication whose role is to manufacture consent for the Fed’s policies, and one hopes such criticism portends a more vigorous phase in the magazine’s long and illustrious career.

After a short outline of the Fed’s birth and original purpose, TNR focuses on the organization’s role in the various booms and busts of the past 30 years. Startlingly, TNR asserts the Fed’s centrality to the boom-bust cycle, overturning the conventional wisdom that our central bank is merely an observer, able to lend a push in one direction or a pull in another, but largely helpless to shape the overall landscape. In their words:

The decisions he made during the recent crisis weren’t necessarily the wrong decisions; indeed, they were, in many respects, the decisions he had to make. But these decisions, however necessary in the moment, are almost guaranteed to hurt our economy in the long run–which, in turn, means that more necessary but harmful measures will be needed in the future. It is a debilitating, vicious cycle. And at the center of this cycle is the Fed.

Strong words; and a few even stronger:

Enabled by the Fed, our system’s tolerance for risk is out of control. This is an increasingly dangerous system. It is only a matter of time until it collapses again.

The New Republic attributes this risk to the age-old complaint: bankers and CEOs are simply not punished for poor performance – on the contrary, they are rewarded with dollar amounts we mere mortals can hardly fathom. For evidence they cite Citigroup’s $100 million CEO pay packages to Robert Rubin and Chuck Prince – some of the main architects of our current boondoggle.

When discussing solutions, unfortunately, TNR once again displays its establishment colors. The recommendations it puts forth are mostly watered down, and appear limp when compared to the magnitude of the problems they address.

“Reasonable personal liability” for failing CEOs sounds nice, but will inevitably translate to a small slap on the wrist. Contrary to popular belief, there is not a large difference between a $200 million annual paycheck and a $100 million paycheck. What seems like “reasonable liability” to most CEOs still leaves them unconscionably rich. We must truly divorce ourselves from the idea that as a financial leader you can bankrupt thousands of people and still walk away rich as a Midas. If this means the CEO goes bankrupt with his shareholders – well, so be it. Nobody said banking was a safe business.

Likewise with their reccomendations regarding conflicts of interest. The New Republic advises a “cooling off” period for public servants who enter a regulatory position after making their fortune in the private sector (for example Hank Paulson, who retained his Goldman Sachs holdings while serving as Treasury Secretary).

This is not enough. If our crisis has taught us anything (something which remains to be seen), it is that financial ties run deep, and are often not erased by time. It is ludicrous to appoint to a regulatory position anyone who has ever had anything to do with the financial industry. Such conflicts of interest are inherent – “cooling off period” or no.

A weak finish to an otherwise outstanding article.

Shorter Glenn Beck: Boo!

This is the second part of Beck’s week-long series since returning from his enforced furlough, called “New Republic” — a loony, fear-filled witch hunt for Communists, Marxists, 60s radicals, community organizers, and other such nefarious villains connected to President Obama (who is DESTROYING AMERICA!!!) or serving as ironically named “czars” in the administration.

Kookerrific Update: As if things couldn’t get worse, Beale… oops, I mean Beck, is joined by Michelle Malkin to affirm the insidious EVIL of the crazed leftist radicals, extremists and former terrorists that constitute the dark, menacing substrata of the Obama administration that’s threatening to demolish the Republic with their virulent anti-American ideology.

After the break, Glenn wheels out his handy flip chart to provide viewers with town hall talking points, um sorry, I mean “Reasonable Questions for Unreasonable Times.” For example, “DO PRESIDENT’S ADVISERS HAVE CRIMINAL RECORDS?” And so on.

                     “Companies have their skeletons hidden in the archives of steel, have their childhood wounds” – said (in Brasilia, Nineteen Hours) Eugenio Bucci, past president of EBN – Radiobrás – EBC, to whom he rented his soul for four years, the company that houses The Ghosts of National Radio.

                        Leandro Fortes, the farewell in 2004 (EBC Community in Orkut) wrote that the Radio Nacional is “so eclectic, so full of wealth and misérias, so full of stories and destinations. So Brazil, finally. “

                      Pombal de Gente Inacabada

http://soundcloud.com/mamcasz/tia-heleninha 

                 This is what I am since December 1980 since the previous EBN – Brazilian News, where he was president, which was dismissed by then President José Sarney (ah … the ghosts never die!). In fact, my history with the National Radio begins even before he was born because my father through it, now ghost then expeditionary square in Italy, World War II, sent messages to his then fiancee, my future mother, also a ghost today.

                    This blog is a make of the book in late pregnancy that brings the ghosts of the National Radio of the golden years, the 40s, the undead from the deceased never decrepitude, which began with the suicide of Getúlio old in 50 years. They say it was a plague before the shot in the chest, which initiated the collapse of National Radio, which would never have the golden years of the 40s.

                    And so, VOU DAR LINHA À PIPA QUE O VENTO ESTÁ A FAVOR,    as  said to us my brother Tim Lopes, now ghost-mor (read Offertory, above).

So.

Long time, no blog. 

I am currently sitting on the floor of a guest room in my aunt’s house, pirating free wireless with my MacBook from unsuspecting neighbors.

In the past three weeks, I have:

1) Accepted an internship at the New Republic for the duration of my stay in Washington, D.C. and celebrated in a variety of legal/illegal ways

2) Finished work for the summer

3) Seen Blink-182 in concert. 

4) Spent several weeks with that boy of mine, who seems to become more wonderful every time I turn around.

5) Not eaten any meat. 

6) Packed up all of the shit necessary to my life for the next four months. 

7) Swam in the ocean.

8 ) Gotten a tattoo.

9) Said goodbye to said wonderful boy. A more heartbreaking scene in an airport has not been seen in recent memory. 

My mom and I are leaving for D.C. tomorrow, and the adventures will begin in earnest. 

There was a little boy at the train station in Long Branch as I was switching trains on Tuesday, after flying in to Newark Liberty International Airport. My seating options were limited and the platform was out in the open, and it was a hot day, so I plopped down in the closest available seat. I had barely done so when I heard a little voice next to me say, “We’re going to New York.” I looked down at literally the most adorable child I have ever seen; blond hair, big blue eyes. He proceeded to tell me about how he and the woman he was with (I assumed it wasn’t his mother, since she seemed too old) were from “far, far away, in Pittsburgh.” He had that early childhood speech affectation where you don’t pronounce Rs, so it sounded like “Pittsbugh.” He proceeded to ask where I was from, and I told him Michigan. I was in for a long wait; my train wasn’t due for another hour or so. I eventually pulled out The Dream Songs and started reading, but every so often he would ask me another question, when he wasn’t talking to the Caribbean woman who was sitting on the bench that was back-to-back with ours, or the other woman he was with, who I assumed was his aunt or grandmother. Eventually his mother came back; apparently she had been at a store, since they had missed their first train to New York and had a long wait for the next one. His mother was beautiful; tall, tan, blonde. She seemed far too young to have a four-and-a-half year old son (he informed me of his age.) Besides being the most adorable, this was also the most outgoing child I had ever seen; he approached everyone on the platform and asked them where they were going, and told them that his name was Derek and he was going to New York. 

He and his mother and aunt/grandmother eventually boarded their train for New York, which was going in the opposite direction of the one I was waiting for. I find these kinds of encounters so bizarre; I watched that little boy step onto the train, and I knew I would never see him again, and I wondered how his life would turn out, what he would do, what kind of man he would become. 

I suppose it’s these sorts of experiences that don’t make me entirely hate the thought of having children of my own someday.

Oh, and there’s this. It looks better now, since the puffiness has gone down.

Yup.

So I’ve been tooling around online a lot, mostly because I’m in a lull at work, and suddenly have no proposals to write. I have a lot of website-oriented headaches to work out, but um, making playlists is a lot more fun. Today I discovered mixtape.me, which is a pretty fly way to slap together your own mixtapes from a large library of online content. This may actually be really similar to Last FM, but I actually watched the tutorial video for this site, so I know how it works. And so I give you a very slipshod playlist I cobbled together today. There’s a lot of Beatles and Janis Joplin, mostly because I’m still on a hard 60’s kick after reading Armies of the Night. Also: Leighton Meester’s song w/ New Republic, and the Eagles of Death Metal. I’ve never heard that last band before, but now I really dig ‘em. See? Mixtape.me. Changing lives.

I dig.

Summer Mixtape

From Conor Clarke at the Atlantic:

One of the wackier developments in the recent health care debate has been the sudden return of Betsy McCaughey. Fifteen years ago McCaughey wrote an error-laden piece for the New Republic, a piece the magazine later recanted, that became a rallying cry of the successful effort to kill Clintoncare, and that McCaughey parlayed into a short-lived career as the lieutenant governor of New York. McCaughey’s health-care shtick in 1994 was to brag about having read all 1,000-plus pages of the bill and cite, with Biblical certainty, obscure provisions that made the Clintons look like serial killers.

Original DVD cover

And now McCaughey is back. And her shtick, like a bug trapped in the amber of the Clinton years, is to brag about having read the entire bill, while pointing to obscure provisions that make all that Obama campaign stuff about hope and change look like an excuse to get into office and start knocking off the elderly. [In the Wall Street Journal, she cites] page numbers in various bills to equate comparative effectiveness research with “limiting care based on the patient’s age.” [On Fox News she drops] page numbers to claim that the congressional plan will force you out of your current insurance program. [On] Fred Thompson’s radio show, [she] ostentatiously [cites] her reading of the bill to make the claim that “Congress would make it mandatory…that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner,”

That last claim about required government euthanasia counseling — repeated hundreds of times in dozens of places over the past week — is worth lingering over. [...] There is absolutely nothing about a “required counseling session.” Nothing. There is a requirement that Medicare cover the session if you haven’t had it in the past five years but, naturally, that doesn’t mean you are required to take advantage of the coverage.

From Politifact:

Republicans have found many reasons to oppose the Democrats’ health care proposal, but this is one of the oddest.

Betsy McCaughey, chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and former lieutenant governor of New York state, says the bill goes too far to encourage senior citizens to end their lives.

On the radio show of former Sen. Fred Thompson on July 16, 2009, McCaughey said “Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”

She said those sessions would help the elderly learn how to “decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care … all to do what’s in society’s best interest or in your family’s best interest and cut your life short.”

Her point has caught on with conservative pundits. On his July 21 show, Rush Limbaugh said the following:

“Mandatory counseling for all seniors at a minimum of every five years, more often if the seasoned citizen is sick or in a nursing home. … That’s an invasion of the right to privacy. We can’t have counseling for mothers who are thinking of terminating their pregnancy, but we can go in there and counsel people about to die.”

…snip…

In her chat with Thompson, McCaughey said the language can be found on page 425 of the health care bill, so we started there. Indeed, Sec. 1233 of the bill, labeled “Advance Care Planning Consultation” details how the bill would, for the first time, require Medicare to cover the cost of end-of-life counseling sessions.

According to the bill, “such consultation shall include the following: An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to; an explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses; an explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.”

…snip…

Jon Keyserling, general counsel and vice president of public policy for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, which supports the provision, said the bill doesn’t encourage seniors to end their lives, it just allows some important counseling for decisions that take time and consideration.

…snip…

In no way would these sessions be designed to encourage patients to end their lives, said Jim Dau, national spokeman for AARP, a group that represents people over 50 that has lobbied in support of the advanced planning provision.

McCaughey’s comments are “not just wrong, they are cruel,” said Dau.

…snip…

Both Keyserling and Dau were particularly troubled that McCaughey insisted — three times, to be exact — that the sessions would be mandatory, which they are not.

For his part, Keyserling said he and outside counsel read the language carefully to make sure that was not the case.

“Neither of us can come to the conclusion that it’s mandatory.” he said.

…snip…

For our ruling on this one, there’s really no gray area here. McCaughey incorrectly states that the bill would require Medicare patients to have these counseling sessions and she is suggesting that the government is somehow trying to interfere with a very personal decision. And her claim that the sessions would “tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner” is an outright distortion. Rather, the sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning. McCaughey isn’t just wrong, she’s spreading a ridiculous falsehood. That’s a Pants on Fire.

Christopher Beam writes on Slate.com:

First came the “birthers.” Now, as President Obama makes a final push for health care reform, we have the deathers.

Many senior citizens are concerned that health care reform would mean cuts to Medicare. That much was clear at a town-hall meeting hosted Tuesday by the American Association of Retired Persons at which Obama fielded questions from seniors who don’t want to give up their benefits.

But one question stood out. It addressed what the host from the AARP called the “infamous” Page 425 of the House health care bill. ”I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone that’s Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die,” said Mary from North Carolina. “This bothers me greatly, and I’d like for you to promise me that this is not in this bill.” The host elaborated: “As I read the bill, it’s saying that Medicare will, for the first time, cover consultation about end-of-life care, and that they will not pay for such a consultation more than once every five years. This is being read as saying every five years you’ll be told how you can die.”

“Well, that would be kind of morbid,” Obama said.

The audience laughed. Many observers aren’t so amused. To them, the House bill and health care reform in general are the legislative equivalent of euthanasia.

“Obama’s not going to say, ‘Let’s kill them,’ ” says Charlotte Allen, a conservative commentator and author of The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus. “But he seems to be perfectly comfortable with the idea that a lot more old people are going to die a lot sooner.”

Deathers point to several parts of the House bill as evidence that health care reform means letting old people die. Most prominent is the end-of-life consultation provision mentioned above. An article on World Net Daily argues that the proposal “specifically calls for the consultation to recommend ‘palliative care and hospice’ for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions.” In fact, the bill says the meeting must include “an explanation by the practitioner of the end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice”—not a recommendation of it. (Emphasis added.) Still, Obama pointed out that it’s not too late to remove the language: “If this is something that really bothers people, I suspect that members of Congress might take a second look at it.”

Another seemingly scary provision is one that permits “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration”—or, more accurately, the withholding of it. Betsy McCaughey, founder of the Committee To Reduce Infection Deaths and former lieutenant governor of New York, wrote an influential (and, to many, misleading) critique of Hillarycare in the New Republic 15 years ago. She told me that the provision is a disturbing example of the government making decisions for the patient. But the bill specifically says that an order to withhold, say, an IV drip, must be one that “effectively communicates the individual’s preferences regarding life sustaining treatment, including an indication of the treatment and care desired by the individual.” In other words, a doctor can’t make you do it.

Read the rest of the article here.

SOURCE: New Republic

There’s a terrific four part series on working women in the New Republic. Series editor, Ann Friedman writes:

It is time for a different conversation about working women–one that considers the choices and careers of professional women with children, yes. But one that devotes far more time and energy to the needs of the majority of women workers–those without advanced degrees or professional salaries who must work to support their families–and to crafting policies that work for them.

The four articles are:

Pink-Collar Blues
By Dana Goldstein
Outside the 9-to-5
By Janet C. Gornick, Harriet B. Presser, and Caroline Batzdorf
The Invisible Workers
By Elissa Strauss
A Family-Leave Safety Net
By Heather Boushey

The Kaiser Family Foundation launched a D.C.-based independent news service on health.

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit health policy news service featuring free content available on a new Web site.

“The timing is just right for Kaiser Health News. At a time when Americans want and need more health policy news than ever, the American news media are in crisis and having difficulty providing resources for this coverage,”  Leonard Downie, Jr., chair of KHN’s National Advisory Committee, said in a news release. “Kaiser Health News is an important initiative in non-profit news reporting, which will be closely watched in the search for new models for in-depth, public service journalism.”

The content is provided by the staff of experienced health policy journalists and editors as well as partnerships with news organizations including the Washington Post, NPR News and the New Republic.

Its mission is to “do in-depth coverage of health policy that informs and explains and that increasingly cannot be done in the mainstream news business,” Kaiser President/CEO Drew Altman said in a news release.

“Health issues are always fascinating and a challenge to explain well, so we’ll do our best to provide high-quality coverage to interested news outlets and our Web site readers,” said Laurie McGinley, KHN executive editor of news.