JUSIPER
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
More Katrinas on their way to red states
Guess not worrying about global warming might hurt the party's base where it lives: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, the Carolinas, and Texas.
Using records dating back to 1855, hurricane researchers say they have uncovered an ongoing rise in the number of Atlantic hurricanes that tracks the increase in sea surface temperature related to climate change. Critics of such a link argue that this trend is merely because of better observations since the dawn of the satellite era in the 1970s. But the authors of the new study say the conclusion is hard to dodge.
"Even if we take the extreme of these error estimates, we are left with a significant trend since 1890 and a significant trend in major hurricanes starting anytime before 1920," say atmospheric scientists Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. [...]
"In 2005 we had 27 major storms, the most ever measured. But six or seven of them were exclusively in the central Atlantic," notes William Gray, a meteorologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. "The record it broke was 1933 that had 21 major storms, but there was no satellite or aircraft data then. Had they had those measurements we probably would have had a comparable number of storms that year."
But Holland and Webster assumed that measurements taken before aircraft and satellites made storms easier to spot could have missed as many as five hurricanes per year. "Including these errors in our analysis changes the magnitude of the trend but leaves all the substantial conclusions unaffected," they say.
Gray's team will come out with its latest forecast for this year's hurricane season at the end of this week, having previously predicted 17 storms this season. "We will continue to predict an above average year," he says. "There's a chance we might lower the numbers slightly but if we change it, we're not going to change it by much." And Gray predicts that a global cooling will set in within the next decade, finally putting the climate change link on ice.
The experts agree that natural variability is largely to blame for the relative intensity of various hurricanes, but Holland and Webster note that the locations of such storms have changed. "As more storms form near the equator, they are experiencing much better conditions for intensification and they are experiencing these conditions for a much longer period," the pair note. And that means more numerous and stronger hurricanes in the foreseeable future, whether the forecast is from a computer model or a meteorologist's instincts.
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Hooray for Matt Bishop
The fate of democracy may depend on the efforts of a few heroic geeks.
Representatives of three voting machine companies on Monday criticized a state study that found their machines could be breached by hackers, saying it had reached unrealistic conclusions.
Their testimony was countered by a University of California professor who helped lead the review and said it revealed “very real” vulnerabilities.
“It may be that all of them can be protected against. It may be that some cannot,” said Matt Bishop, a computer science professor at UC Davis.
Bishop discussed the study during a hearing held by Secretary of State Debra Bowen as she weighed whether to prohibit use of any of the machines during the Feb. 5 presidential primary. State law requires her to make that decision by Friday.
“I intend to go through a methodical process to determine what to do next,” she said.
12:08 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, July 30, 2007
Roberts has a seizure
He's OK. The millions left to oppress should give him something to live for.
10:29 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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How about First Lady?
The job will, technically, be open.
If Chelsea Clinton returns to the White House, her role, or lack thereof, could be a clue to her own ambitions. She is biding her time, say friends, who toss out possibilities: A life in finance? The Clinton Foundation, which could pass from one generation to the next? Or, would Ms. Clinton run for office herself?
4:28 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bush's true heir
Huckabee?
A lawsuit was filed Thursday against former Gov. Mike Huckabee that accuses the Republican presidential hopeful of breaking state law when his administration destroyed government-owned hard drives as he left office in January.
Jim Parsons of Bella Vista filed the lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court accusing Huckabee of violating the state's Freedom of Information Act and a state law prohibiting damaging a computer
without authorization.
The state's Ethics Commission has previously dismissed two complaints that Parsons, a self-described "gadfly," has filed against Huckabee over the hard drives' destruction.
The lawsuit, described in the filing as a "citizen complaint," asks the court to "send a message that destroying public records is not the standard operating procedure" of elected officials when they leave office.
3:23 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The comfort women
The House is about to pass a resolution demanding an official apology from the government of Japan for the "abhorrent coercion of women into prostititution during the war." Amen.
Congress will presumably have less to say about our own Greatest Generation:
Japanese troops weren’t the only ones who used their nation’s coerced prostitutes; there’s evidence that Americans did, too. When U.S. troops occupied Japan after its surrender, the Japanese government operated special brothels for them.
“Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,” reported one police department. The purpose was to “create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.”
By then, U.S. authorities were well aware of Imperial Japan’s forced prostitution. The Associated Press reported in April that some of those authorities had also learned that women were being coerced into prostituting themselves to the Americans.
3:12 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Obama emails the Christian Broadcasting Network
Impressive.
12:26 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, July 29, 2007
"Things like this don't happen in a normal country"
At least not a normal Western country:
Italian police detained two gay men for kissing outside the Colosseum in Rome and accused them of "lewd conduct", sparking howls of protest on Friday from rights groups and calls for an apology from a government minister.
The incident took place late on Thursday, when the men, aged 27 and 28, were taken to a police station for several hours before being released, according to gay rights group Arcigay.
Arcigay accused the police of discrimination and called on homosexuals to gather near the Colosseum on Aug. 2 for a protest "kiss".
Police denied they were homophobic. "It’s not an issue of homosexuality, but of legality," said Col. Alessandro Casarsa.
"Faced with an obvious violation of the norms that govern a place visited by thousands of people, the two were written up and let go."
Italy’s Health Minister Livia Turco expressed embarrassment over the episode, saying "things like this certainly don’t happen in a normal country".
"I hope that these boys are given an apology because this was a bit excessive," she said.
Incidents like these, usually triggered by theology-fed authoritarian elements in Western nations with strong churches, only lend further strength to a thesis that the last few years have made so clear: that right wing Christians and the Islamofascists they condemn may differ mightily over the identity of their God, but little in their conception of an ideal society.
2:51 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Not that anyone cares
But a lot of evidence has been coming out lately about Rove's 2004 voter suprression efforts.
1:11 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Gary Hart on Hillary
Ouch:
"There still is an enormous number of people in the party who are unhappy with [Clinton] for what they perceive to be her vacillation on the war and her reluctance to confess error," he said in an interview. "People who care about these things remember when, remember how, remember who took leadership.
"She's one of the best-known women in the world," Hart added. "She's been in the White House for eight years. She's a senator from one of the largest states. And 60-plus percent of the Democratic Party wants somebody else."
In fairness to Hillary, not too many candidates in contested Democratic primaries have been as high as 45% in polling.
1:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, July 28, 2007
$4 billion for tap water
Truth in labeling won't matter. People are fool enough to buy it anyway.
Pepsi-Cola announced Friday that the labels of its Aquafina brand bottled water will be changed to make it clear the product is tap water.
The new bottles will say, "The Aquafina in this bottle is purified water that originates from a public water source," or something similar, Pepsi-Cola North America spokeswoman Nicole Bradley told CNN.
Pepsi will change current labels on water bottles to say the water comes from a public water source.
The bottles are currently labeled: "Bottled at the source P.W.S." Americans spent about $2.17 billion on Aquafina last year, according to Beverage Digest, an independent company that tracks the global beverage industry. The U.S. bottled water business in 2006 totaled roughly $15 billion, it said. [...]
Coca-Cola does not have plans to change the labeling on its Dasani brand bottled water, a company spokesman told CNN, despite the fact the water also comes from a public water supply.
Dasani's U.S. sales totaled approximately $1.89 billion in 2006, according to Beverage Digest calculations.
10:42 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Stockholm syndrome
Bill Clinton's prison legacy:
When William Jefferson Clinton took office in 1993, he was embraced by some as a moderate change from the previous twelve years of tough on crime Republican administrations. Now, eight years later, the latest criminal justice statistics show that it was actually Democratic President Bill Clinton who implemented arguably the most punitive platform on crime in the last two decades. In fact, "tough on crime" policies passed during the Clinton Administration's tenure resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history.
Although Republicans are normally thought to hold the tough on crime mantle, in President Clinton's first-term (1992-1996), 148,000 more state and federal prisoners were added than under President Reagan's first term (1980-1984), and 34,000 more than were added under President Bush's four-year term (1988-1992)
When President Bill Clinton included "the war on crime" as a major tenet in both his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, the past ten years had already witnessed the largest incarceration increase in the nation's history. During his 1992 campaign, to illustrate his resolve, President Clinton actually interrupted his campaigning to return to his home state of Arkansas to oversee the execution of mentally retarded death row inmate Ricky Ray Rector.
Throughout its tenure, the Clinton administration consistently supported increased penalties and additional prison construction. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 provided state and municipal governments with $30 billion to add 100,000 new police officers, to build more prisons, and to employ more prison guards, as well as funding for crime prevention programs.
While everyone is affected by the nation's quadrupling of the prison population, the African American community has borne the brunt of the nation's incarceration boom. From 1980 to 1992, the African American incarceration rate increased by an average of 138.4 per 100,000 per year. Still, despite a more than doubling of the African American incarceration rate in the 12 years prior to President Clinton's term in office, the African American incarceration rate continued to increase by an average rate of 100.4 per 100,000 per year. In total, between 1980 and 1999, the incarceration rate for African Americans more than tripled from 1156 per 100,000, to 3,620 per 100,000.
Yesterday, meanwhile, at the Urban League's Democratic candidate forum in St. Louis:
The gathering offered the candidates a high-profile chance to woo the African American voting bloc, a core Democratic constituency.
The choice may pose a dilemma for black voters. Clinton's husband, famously dubbed America's "first black president" by author Toni Morrison, remains a popular figure in the African American community.
In her half-hour address, Sen. Clinton made a palpable emotional connection with the audience, who whooped and applauded throughout. [...]
Alonzo Byrd, 50, an executive with Enterprise rental car company, said he valued Clinton's experience.
She speaks to black voters "very effortlessly," Byrd said. "She has a penchant for connecting with this community in particular."
8:52 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Getting the Clintons back in
Worth losing a winnable election?
A new Rasmussen Reports Election 2008 survey shows former Senator John Edwards (D) opening up a seven-point lead of 49% to 42% over former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R). In late June, the two contenders were tied, and earlier in that month Edwards held only a four-point lead.
The national telephone survey also shows Edwards recovering a double-digit advantage over former Senator Fred Thompson (R). Edwards now leads the actor-politician 50% to 39% in the presidential race. That’s a slight improvement for the Democrat compared to his nine point advantage in late June.
These numbers echo those of another recent poll, in which Democratic Senator Barack Obama grained ground as well against both Giuliani and Thompson.
Giuliani and Thompson are frontrunners for the Republican Presidential nomination while Obama and Edwards trail Senator Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. But both men generally fare better than Clinton in projected contests with leading GOP contenders. Thompson and Giuliani are essentially tied with Clinton in recent surveys. New polling data on Clinton match-ups with the GOP frontrunners will be released next week.
When matched against Giuliani, Edwards does better among men than women. The reverse is true when the match-up is between Edwards and Thompson.
The partisan lines are a bit less clear when Edwards is offered as the Democratic candidate rather than Clinton or Obama. More precisely, Republican voters are currently less opposed to Edwards than either Clinton or Obama. As a result, Giuliani and Thompson each attract only 68% of Republican votes when matched against Edwards.
8:44 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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McCain
A coward on policy when it counted, but still a great interview.
8:27 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"I knew Hillary in high school
...but I think I might be voting Obama."
2:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, July 27, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Oh my...
Is the House minority leader next on the whorelist?
4:39 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Josh Marshall on impeachment
A serious thinker opposed to it has second thoughts.
Most of those facts I'm referring to stem from the on-going Gonzales controversy (farce?) and the various running battles over executive privilege. In fact, the exchange I noted yesterday between Gonzales and Sen. Schumer (D-NY) stands out in my mind.
This was the exchange in which Gonzales simply refused to answer one of Sen. Schumer's questions -- didn't say he didn't remember, didn't invoke a privilege, just said, No. Not going to discuss that with you. Move on to the next question.
It's not that this one incident is a matter of such consequence in and of itself -- though I would say it's pretty consequential. But it captures pretty fully and in one small nugget the terrain the White House is now dragging us on to.
As I explained in that post, testifying before Congress is like testifying in a court of law. The questions aren't voluntary. You have to answer every one. You can invoke a privilege and the court's will decide whether the argument has merit. But no one can simply decline to answer a question. And yet this is exactly what Gonzales did. [...]
The difference between invoking a flimsy claim of privilege and simply refusing to answer has little immediate practical difference, but it's constitutional implications are profound.
Though other events in recent months and years have had graver consequences in themselves, I'm not sure I've seen a more open, casual or brazen display of the attitude that the body of rules which our whole system is built on just don't apply to this White House.
Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.
If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.
11:10 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Hillary's Sister Souljah moment?
She will speak at Yearly Kos, but will this be her proud stand against the left? I actually don't think so. I don't think she'll change any of her positions, but will wow them with her competence, preparation. She will focus on the many issues she shares with the white left.
The bottom line for Hillary is that if she can get even a third of the progressive vote, she's the nominee. Engaging the left is the easy way to ending the primary season before it even starts.
2:30 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Today's House budget votes
Lots of amendments on the Transportation budget. One by Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona to cut $425 million from the Amtrak budget.
Energy independence is hardly an issue these days, so what better time for Republicans to once again try to fulfill their dream of gutting what remains of our public transportation infrastructure?
But there were more creative proposals afoot. Michelle Bachmann, the first Republican congresswoman in the history of Minnesota, did her state proud yet again: the self proclaimed "fool for Christ" wanted to take $106 million from the Amtrak budget to give it to homeless shelters.
Both proposals failed. But just imagine how many such proposals passed every single day during the twelve years Republicans controlled the House.
1:28 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Geez, what's the big deal
It's not like he was gay or something:
Former state legislator Coy C. Privette, who faces charges related to prostitution, has resigned as president of the Christian Action League, the group said.
Privette, 74, was suspended Thursday as president of the league until the court case is resolved. He resigned on Saturday, said the Rev. Mark Creech, the league's executive director.
"Because of the nature of the allegations, I believe it is in the best interest for me to resign so that the charges will not distract from the important work of the Christian Action League," Privette said in an e-mail sent to the league.
Privette, a Cabarrus County commissioner from Kannapolis, has also said he plans to step down from his leadership post with the State Baptist Convention of North Carolina. The retired Baptist minister is a former convention president who has been on the group's executive committee and board of directors.
Privette, a Republican, was charged with six counts of aiding and abetting prostitution by renting a hotel room and paying for sexual acts with 32-year-old Tiffany Denise Summers, who was charged with six counts of prostitution, according to arrest warrants. The state said all charges were misdemeanors.
12:24 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, July 23, 2007
Beware of onverconfidence
From ABC's latest poll:
It's noteworthy that while substantial numbers of Americans say they'd be at least somewhat comfortable with a black or woman president or Hispanic at 74 percent considerably fewer would be "entirely" comfortable with any of these 56 percent, 54 percent and 44 percent respectively. Should either current Democratic front-runner win the nomination, the dynamics of race and sex could prove critical in the general election ahead.
1:37 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, July 22, 2007
Romney: as pro-immigration as he is pro-life
Huh?
Speaking to members of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly — a group that supported the immigration policy overhaul — Mr. Romney said that the debate about the measure had been “mischaracterized” by some people and added that it is “very important that we as a party communicate how much we value immigration.”
Mr. Romney had been a vocal opponent of the bill, which one of his rivals for the Republican nomination, Senator John McCain, championed in the Senate. During the campaign, Mr. Romney has highlighted his efforts as governor of Massachusetts to enforce immigration laws and fight proposals to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and let them to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.
Who knows. But Republicans will have to choose between a candidate with a truly incomprehensible array of positions (Romney), and a cypher (Thompson).
9:32 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Generation Chickenhawk
And the case is made to draft college Republicans. Every last one of them.
9:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"Let us now lift a special prayer for peace in the world."
Presumably this is why allegedly anti-war popes Benedict and John Paul II went out of their way to make sure that the ordinarily Democratic-leaning Catholic vote went to George W. Bush?
And we all know why. In the eyes of the Church of John Paul II and his successor, institutional support of homophobia will trump institutional opposition to mass murder. Every time.
8:40 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Hillary's stock in trade
"You'll notice most of their best candidates talk about beating me because they know from their own analysis that that's likely to be the outcome, and they want people to start seeing them as the person who can go one on one with me, which I sort of see that as a badge of honor," she said.
Clinton said she expects "the Republican machinery" to kick in to go after the Democratic nominee.
"Maybe I've been around longer and absorbed more blows and am still standing," she said. "But whoever is nominated is going to face the onslaught. One thing you know about is when the onslaught comes, I am ready for it. You can't know that about anyone else."
She's right, too.
8:33 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Teen sex rate stops falling
The rate of sexual activity fell throughout the Clinton years. But the decrease ended as soon as Bush came into office.
The halt in the downward trend coincided with an increase in federal spending on programs focused exclusively on encouraging sexual abstinence until marriage, several experts noted. Congress is currently debating funding for such efforts, which receive about $175 million a year in federal money and have come under fire from some quarters for being ineffective.[...]
A recent study of four separate abstinence programs, conducted for the Department of Health and Human Services by Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan firm, found no evidence that the programs delayed the start of sexual activity among teens, but Unruh and others said such programs need more time and wider use to counter pervasive messages encouraging teens to have sex.
And meanwhile a key reminder as to why it's so important to hold both houses of Congress--a subject this blog will revisit in the coming months:
The House last week approved a $28 million increase in spending on abstinence programs -- Democratic leaders said it was intended to win Republican support for the annual health and education funding bill -- but the Senate is considering a $28 million cut, largely because of concerns about the programs' efficacy.
3:48 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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John Kerry on a roll
Not only does he entertain us with a great limerick:
“There once was a man named Vitter
Who vowed that he wasn’t a quitter
But with stories of women
And all of his sinnin’
He knows his career’s in the — oh, never mind,” Kerry said.
More entertaining still, he's now (accidentally) calling other hypocritical and/or racist Republican senators "Vitter":
Kerry also incorrectly referred to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) as “Sen. Vitter” on the Senate floor this week, The Hill reported Thursday. DeMint has been one of Vitter’s top defenders.
Kerry’s office said it wasn’t meant as a shot at DeMint, even though Senate rules dictate that senators refer to each other as “the gentleman from” their respective states.
The VRWC really exists; John Kerry went through its worst. He deserved better from a shallow Democratic base that never accepted him as its own, even though he was the most liberal presidential nominee in at least two decades, if not ever. Now that he'll never be president, let's hope that he can find more joy in his work. Lampooning Republican idiocy is a great start.
3:36 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, July 21, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Remembering Ann Richards
A ham sandwich would have beaten George H.W. Bush in 1992. He ended up losing the election with just 37% of the popular vote--the lowest total for an incumbent president in decades.
When Bill Clinton for all effects the Democratic nomination in New York in early April, he was actually pretty close to being a ham sandwich: most of the country believed he was a liar and a bit of a slut (which is why he would survive Monica six years later--the country factored it in the first time and decided, to paraphrase one of the worse lines in Titanic, that they'd rather be Bill's whore than George's wife).
But I remember in 1991 there was just person I wished would be the next president: Governor Ann Richards of Texas. She would have destroyed Bush and carried Texas as well. Unlike the Clintons, she was a true believer and actually governed as a progressive. She proved that in the right woman's hands, the cowardice and cynicism of Third Way politics wasn't necessary, even in Texas, neighbor to Arkansas and the most regressive large state in the country. She had a 60% approval rating even when Bill and Hillary's unpopularity caused her to lose in 1994.
She could have been the first woman president. She would have been re-elected. Her successor would have been elected. And we would have been very, very proud.
This video is still shown at the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Austin. This is the late Molly Ivins' eulogy. And this eulogy comes from Glenn Maxey, Texas' first elected gay official. And here's the governor herself, on how to be a good Republican. And here are the stories about the Shirley Temple cup and the Easter egg.
1:10 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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